Another phone call from a 916- number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is Joe there?”
“Nope, you’ve got the wrong number. Again.” (This is the third day in a row.)
“Oh, sorry, I’ll, uh, I’ll call another number.” Click.
…That is a great idea!
Tag: postaweek2011
So mostly today was just chill. I slept in, sat around reading, went to the gym, accidentally stole someone’s treadmill (totally not my fault), bought some fudgsicles, took a shower, washed some dishes, watered plants…
Then Drew came home and Facebooked me a Clue.
That started a 3-hour treasure hunt, that took us from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, to Sean Connery, to Milagra Ridge, to the Pacifica Pier, to Craigslist Missed Connections, to Barnes and Noble at Tanforan, to our closet.
It was a lot of walking outside in the wind.
But I found the first outside clue (at Milagra Ridge) pretty quickly.
I understood what “tadpole graveyard” was referring to…but that clue was well-hidden on another of the many Pacifica ridges.
After I finally figured it out, we trekked back to where the car was parked.
Next stop: Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealers FTW!
MISSED CONNECTION…I’ve never had a missed connection before! (Missed Connections is a section on Craigslist where you can put up a message for a stranger, maybe someone with whom you exchanged a meaningful glance on the street, in the hopes that they’ll read it and email you and you can fall in love. Or whatever.)
(Man, that table has become kind of a mess.)
Fun Fact: Drew has since gotten two responses to this ad, and neither of them are from me.
To Barnes and Noble!
While I looked through all the copies of A Streetcar Named Desire, a man perused the Shakespeare volumes on the higher shelf.
And as long as we’re at Barnes and Noble anyway, we might as well pick up a couple Stephen King books to round out my collection.
Then home, because I had to go through all these shoes…
And this laundry basket of socks…
To find my present: a passport! Well, everything I need to just go in and get my passport.
I’ve never had a passport, but I really want one. And it’s one of my 2011 New Year’s Resolutions to get one. But it’s one of those things that just kind of never gets done… Best birthday present ever! And best day ever! So much fun. And I’m glad Drew wanted to document the whole thing.
I probably don’t talk him up enough. Trust me – he’s the best. Like, ever.
Yesterday, around 11:30 am
Hmm…look at those co-workers wearing dresses. I never wear dresses. What’s up with that?
Last night, around 9:00 pm
Yeah, I could definitely wear that one dress I bought at American Eagle like 2 years ago…I have worn it like two times ever. I should do it! I should wear it! I will wear it!
This morning, 8:30 am
Find spanx. Find strapless bra. Put on dress. Inspect self in mirror. Think, I can pull this off.
8:37 am
Hair dryer miraculously works again! Stop while drying hair and look in mirror again. Think, Is this too low-cut?
8:39 am
I could wear a real bra instead of a strapless bra?
8:40 am
This dress is too revealing for work. What will people think? Will they call me slutty?
8:41 am
This dress is not revealing. I am just a prude.
8:43 am
It’s not too late! I could still change! I have freshly washed jeans, and a brand new UCD hoodie. I hear them calling me.
8:45 am
I should be adult about this.
8:46 am
Besides, I have to take advantage of this nice weather before it turns again.
8:47 am
OMG, I hope the weather doesn’t turn bad again any time soon.
8:49 am
Tell self to focus – I have to leave soon. Inspect self for twentieth time this morning. Remember the white cami I bought two months ago expressly for the purpose of wearing under revealing dresses.
8:53 am
After trying to go through clean laundry bag nicely, get desperate and dump laundry all over couch. (Sorry, Drew.)
8:55 pm
Find white tank, do fastest living room quickchange ever, one last inspection in mirror. Approved! I mean, white cami looks kinda weird, but better than making work friends uncomfortable with low-cut dress.
10:00 am
Realize that wearing a dress to work? Not really a momentous occasion in most people’s lives. Adjust to life in a dress rapidly. Just like a skirt, that covers more of you!
Okay, so it’s not really dirty and it’s hardly a secret.
I don’t really like going to the gym.
I like saying I go to the gym, I like the way I feel afterwards, and I like the idea of being someone who works out. But I don’t love doing it. I don’t spring out of bed to go for a run, and you will certainly never find me at a 5:30 am spin class. I think that I would prefer going in the afternoon, when I’m not dragging myself from bed…but then the weekend rolls around and manage to find other ways to fill my time. Since I joined this gym a year ago, I haven’t been transformed into a hard-bodied supermodel. (Not saying I’m not healthier but that’s a different story.)
This morning, since I had the chance to come into work a little later than usual, I dragged myself to the gym. Haven’t been there in almost a week. I couldn’t face getting on the treadmill so I focused on strength exercises, which are still good but don’t require quite as much psyching-up.
These people did get on the treadmill this morning – and I admire them. (In the foreground is one of my favorite strength machines – I think the exercise is a chest press? I do like that.)
Good for you, runners (and walkers). Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be up there with you.
Categories
Menlo Park, 94025
Day 2 of my Realistically Regular Life: lunch.
Trying to find the balance between “no money to spend on food” and “trying to eat healthy” is hard. Sure, I’d love to have piles of money to spend on fresh fruit and tubs of greek yogurt. The reality is that I have to figure out what’s already in the kitchen and how to put it together in the best combinations, to cut back on those daily trips to Safeway.
Some people can make eating on a budget sound glamorous and fun – I’m looking at you, Rachael Ray, traveling Europe and spending the equivalent of a tank of gas every single day and calling it a show. But really? It’s just another morning making another (lean) turkey and (2%) cheese sandwich with (zero WW-points) mustard.
This weekend I visited Davis, along with 2 of my girlfriends from college, and amidst the hours of nonstop talking (we had a lot to catch up on) I admitted having feelings of jealousy as of late. They reacted as I expected: much “Are you crazy??” and trying to explain to me why I was being irrational, but you know, sometimes jealousy isn’t rational.
We eventually decided the problem is Facebook – isn’t it always? – and then hatched a plan for a 14-day photo project.
The theory behind this is that people post all kinds of pictures of their awesome vacations, and their awesome dinners, and their awesome new outfits, and their awesome houses, and their awesome everything. And then you get jealous of them. But of course they’re not posting pictures of their dirty laundry pile, or the traffic they commute through, or the fact that for dinner they just made Hamburger Helper but they didn’t actually have hamburger so they used hot dogs and it was kind of gross.
So for the next 2 weeks I’m going to post realistic pictures of my every day life. Sounds like fun, right? Well, you’re welcome.
Day 1 – Here’s my getting-full recycling box at work, which I then had to take downstairs to the big recycling dumpster. Three cheers for mundane tasks that need to get done!
So on Memorial Day weekend, I planted a new tomato plant (in a Topsy Turvy) and pots of dill and basil seeds. Here is what they looked like two weeks ago:
We’ve had kind of back-and-forth weather, but the tomato has been growing upwards…and this morning I noticed there is baby dill! And one of the flowers on the tomato plant is turning into a baby tomato.
(You can see how great the weather is today…eh.)
No sign from the basil yet, but that’s okay. If it doesn’t take I might try again and hope for more sun.
All this gloomy weather – and the wind! – has meant spending more time indoors. We recently finished watching the second season of Modern Family on Hulu Plus. After we finished the last episode, this little notice popped up:
“Need a break? You have been watching for more than 3 hours.”
The thing is, we definitely hadn’t been watching that long at the time. So I don’t know about that. But I did like Modern Family!
This morning as I was leaving the gym, a bird attacked me and grabbed the back of my head with its talons. Then it flew up to the roof and sat there. The whole front wall of the gym is windows, so I’m wondering how many earnest morning bikers observed the whole thing.
When I got in my car the bird flew down and sat on the hood looking at me until I honked the horn. I mean, I assume it was the same bird.
Why would a bird do such a thing? Here are some theories:
- It was just in a pissy mood (maybe it’s not an early bird?) and I just happened to be there.
- It wanted to carry me away to feed me to its giant bird leader, who lives in a volcano.
- I got too close to its nest – but to that I say, the ONE bush outside the door of a 24 HOUR FITNESS is a stupid place to build a nest.
- Some kind of mass bird disease, or world takeover plan, a la Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
…Which inspired me to put this little trick together:
Which is actually more terrifying than the original incident. I mean, yikes. (The problem is, in 99% of pictures, I am smiling or having fun, so when I need a picture that shows some kind of negative emotion, like panic or terror, my options are limited.)
But this thing reminds me of the cover of the Aphex Twin album, Come to Daddy.
Again I say, yikes.
What do we think? I’m not sold on the header font, but seeing if it grows on me.
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 