I can never go undercover

This morning New York City proved something to me that I pretty much already knew:

I can never go undercover.

I’ll never be in the CIA. I’ll never get to dress like Sydney Bristow and kick serious bad-guy spy ass. This is because I know everyone in the world. Really.

This morning I was on the 6, heading to work, and not really paying attention to much beyond Eddie Izzard rambling about castles in my ear. Then I looked up and standing 10 feet from me was one of my friends from college. I kind of stared at him until he looked up. He only looked shocked for a second then gave me a “hey” heads up nod. He got off the train at the next stop, but he waved when he walked past my door.

My story doesn’t end there though. It never does. He texted me to see what I was doing on “his” train. I asked him the same, because I am a smartass, and told him I was going to work. Then he asked me where I live. Turns out, it’s a block from him.

Really New York City? Really?

I can NEVER be a spy now. If I were, it would always be like that scene in Ocean’s Eleven. You know the one I’m talking about.

Saul! Saul Bloom, is that you? Saul! Saul, it’s me! Bucky Buchanan! Remember? From Saratoga? (where coincidentally I spent most summers of my childhood).

That’s how it would be for me. Perpetually. I’d be in Russia, trying to steal the nuclear poison bomb back from some mobster, dressed all slutty but with a knife strapped to my thigh and then I’d hear:

Lauren? Lauren?! Is that you? Lauren, It’s me! Johnny Ruins Your Mission! Remember? From Penn State/North Allegheny!

I mention my high school too because this same train run-in happened in the fall with someone I’ve not only known since high school but since preschool.

I guess I’m destined to a normal life, free of fighting bad guys in cool outfits. Aww nuts.

It’s Friday, what can I say?

I’m taking the day off from writing and doing a little blog maintenance/updating.

Have a kickass weekend, kiddos, and I’ll see you all on Monday.

Over or Under: How do you roll?

I know how I roll.

Under. All the way.

Well, except for my current situation. Now I roll over. But it bothers me EVERY time.

Toilet paper. It is the biggest hassle known to roommate-kind. From how you roll it (over vs. under) to who buys it (a 12-pack can not be followed by a 4-pack and things still considered EQUAL. THEY ARE NOT!) to what kind is best (Charmin–thick as a towel and half the quantity per roll of other brands; Scott Thick–comfortably plush and ample quantity; Regular Scott–thinner than paper but plenty sufficient and not uncomfortable, plus best bang for your buck).

In my apartment junior year there were 5 girls and 2 bathrooms. Each bathroom had its own toilet paper-purchaser rotation. Because I will NOT fill your TP if you squander. Granted, the front bathroom had it’s downside–E, Bia and I were generally the public bathroom so we ran through things quicker…plus, there were 3 of us. But all that aside, that apartment ran like a well-oiled machine.

Except that I was an under and Bia was an over. If I reloaded, you could bet it was going under. If she did it, you could bet it was going over. If E reloaded it, well, it was on the roll–she really couldn’t have cared less about a direction. One day, I was in a non-over-rolling mood. So I switched the roll. A few potty trips later I noticed that the roll had changed back. Well that’s fun. So I changed it back again. And yes, it changed itself back. Bia came up to me later in our living room and asked me if I changed the roll.

Yeah.

OMG! I thought that was you! Oh well, it doesn’t matter, I switched it back.

Whatever.

Then I moved. And I experienced my first battles with purchasing toilet paper. Suffice it to say, at one point we had no toilet paper in the bathroom and I was frat-housing a roll back and forth with me for about 2 weeks. But, that is a story for another day…. If we did manage to keep the roll full, I got to roll it whichever way I wanted–and that was all that mattered.

Then I moved again. Well, and again, because I lived at home while I worked in the ‘Burgh and I could do whatever I wanted with my roll. BUT THEN I moved to my current apartment. And the positioning of the roll and the toilet make it such that an under-roll just isn’t feasible. How bummed am I?! I love my under roll. And I can’t seem to break the habit. Sometimes I still catch myself loading it under-style.

So…how do you roll?

Cuz that’s how I roll.

My blog roll was sad….

So I’ve added some of my absolute favorites, whom I could not make it through my day without! And the list is just going to keep growing from here…so get excited!

Adventures in paper clip orthodontia and still more signs it’s hard being a grownup

I was walking down the hall at work today and I looked down at the floor and saw this:

IMMEDIATELY I was taken back to 3rd grade, when Alan Laszczynski and I made paper clip retainers and our teacher, Mrs. Donnelly, busted us for it. We had to spit them out and it’s likely we probably received some other form of punishment.

But does anybody else remember doing things like this? Back when geeks ruled and the cool kids were the ones with glasses and braces. Hell, that shit was novel man. No one had seen that before. You had metal, you were cool. Whoa–hold on, I did not say you were COVERED in metal, man. Mouth gear was a whole separate (and unfortunate) thing.

I met a young girl on the subway yesterday afternoon who talked to me for the entirety of my trip. She told me all about the science experiments she was conducting, including one where she tried to filter sugar through colored soap to see if it would change colors (which, she informed me, half of it did).

Sometimes, I miss being that young. When you spent all day making retainers out of paper clips and fortune tellers out of napkins. When anything in your house could be turned into an experiment given the chance (and no, this does not apply to the teen years when “I’m doing an experiment” was the only excuse you gave as to why you hadn’t cleaned your room yet).

We were mini-MacGyvers in training if you ask me. And now–nothing. No chance to be all creative like that. Nothing. Granted, the Nabisco ad people nailed the idea with their “Miss Mary Mack” commercial. And, I’ve gotta say I applaud them for it.

But for the most part, being an adult is very boring. Although we can go to the bars and that always makes things more interesting.

My fridge kills everything

Dairy cannot survive in my fridge. Eggs can’t hang in for very long. Produce doesn’t last either (though, in all fairness, that’s because I usually only buy watermelon and I devour it the second I buy it, so I can’t really blame that on the fridge).

I tried to make eggs for breakfast last week. That is huge for me. Normally, breakfast consists of dry Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the office. I don’t tend to pencil breakfast in. On the days when I feel like I need something salty, or, you know, filling, I can just grab something on the way to work (I pass at least 3 breakfast-friendly to-go eateries on my way to the office). Imagine my disappointment, then, when I realized that my eggs were no good. Barely 2 weeks old and they were completely inedible. They had frozen.

I grumbled my way to work that morning, planning to make up for my lack of a homemade start to my day with a delicious dinner. WRONG AGAIN. The pack of shredded cheese that was in my fridge, just chillin’ (and yes, ALL puns intended), had taken it too far. It had frozen too. And then melted.

I realized on Saturday night that my fridge held a murderous rage toward all things that I liked to eat. Armed with a non-frozen bag of Mexican shredded cheese and prepared to make burrito bowls that rivaled Chipotle’s (which, by the way, they TOTALLY did…and I made the best guacamole I’ve ever made in my life. Just saying.) I was PISSED to find out that my sour cream had far surpassed the appropriate amount of sour.

That is IT refrigerator! I have had it! I raised you up to “5″ on the little dial because do you want to know what you were doing when you were set at “4″? Do you want me to remind you? You were MELTING everything. So, Fridgey-poo, let me get this straight: you melt all of my food at “4;” you freeze all of my food at “5;” you do not come with half-settings. There is no 4.5 that I can turn my dial to. In fact, I’m lucky if I can even turn my dial, aren’t I? I don’t think you were designed to have the dull end of the fork jammed in you every time you get a little crazy with your temperature. And yet, that is what I am resigned to.

So what now, refrigerator? Huh? What now? I can’t live with you! And, slight lactose intolerance aside, I can’t live without cheese so therefore can’t live without you. It’s either you or me, Fridge, and it ain’t gonna be me.

HOW MUCH?!

My aunt lived in NYC for most of my childhood before heading out to the left coast. And every time she came to visit, she would inevitably yell out “How much?!” wherever we were and whatever we did. We bought a pizza. How much?! We bought groceries. How much!? We went out for dinner/coffee/ice cream. How much!? It was as if she was experiencing culture shock. She just couldn’t get over how much things cost in the suburbs. Or, to put a finer point on it, how little they cost.

I never got this. It was just something we joked with her about–and sometimes, joked about without her (but only out of love Auntie, only out of love!). We used to employ her under $20 rule–if it’s under $20, you buy it. No questions asked. There’s no room for regret if you buy it with a $20. And we loved that rule–in the suburbs, we could get a good amount for that price.

Then I moved to the city. And it all clicked. I found myself yelling out how much!? when I went home. I’ve been known to blurt that out in groceries stores all around the Hartford area too. In fact, the last time I was at home, I stopped by Marshall’s (cheap in it’s own right) and found Steve Madden sunglasses that I absolutely loved. While trying to decide if I really needed another pair of sunglasses (and by the way, the answer to that is always YES, I do need another pair) I found the price tag.

$10!? OMG I am SO buying these!

Since I was in the Wild Wild Wex I shocked the hell out of the lady standing next to me, but I couldn’t have cared less because I could not believe how much these were!

I started thinking about all of this today after my Red Mango run*. I spent $4.55 on a small cup of fro-yo with raspberries and chocolate chips. And I didn’t bat an eye. Yesterday I justified paying $8.67 for a bacon cheeseburger. New Yorkers live with this totally warped sense of value. I should know. Remember the haircut incident? All of that could have been avoided if the cheapest salon in the city wasn’t charging a minimum $90 for a trim. And if I want to cater to my curls, I’m looking at $250. Are you kidding me?

So here’s my plan. Imagine this. IMAGINE that EVERYTHING in this city was half off. Groceries. Parking. Cab fares. RENT!!! Seriously. You want to talk about an economic boom? Us New Yorkers would be grabbing shit up like hungry rats.

If I could get out of Gristede’s for less than 28 bucks a shot, I’d be there WAY more often. And I’m already there at least twice a week. (Seriously…$8 for a box of CTC makes me want to kill myself, just a tiny little bit).

If I could buy razor blades for less than $20, I would be so much easier on the eyes during shorts weather (which, in case you hadn’t noticed, is now). I know I AM a little bit French…that doesn’t mean I have to groom like I am.

If Boo and I could go to the movies for under $50, then maybe we wouldn’t have to wait for everything to come out on DVD before we saw stuff.

Oh, sure, there are the obvious exceptions. My Cheers bar for one. And my favorite sushi place. And um…the hot dog guys on the corner. But really. That’s about it.

So this is totally my plan. Cut everything in half (prices, not the actual crap, geeze, don’t be so literal) and maybe we’ll hear an island-wide cry of “HOW MUCH?!”.

And, for once, the answers won’t make us die inside.

*If I haven’t said it before, let the records show that Red Mango is the poo and if you haven’t tried it yet, you suck at life. Seriously. And I don’t want to hear any of that Pinkberry BS–this stuff is better. Now shut up and go get some. Oh, but not until you are done reading. Thanks.

Curl me baby, curl me right

I am over my summer hair. This is a problem because, well, it’s not technically summer until next week. But I don’t care. I am OVER it.

In case you’ve never looked at my picture I have curly hair. And I have a lot of it. And it is big. So, to recap, I have big, poofy hair.

If my hair is short, I tend to look like this:

Except…you know…female.

And when my hair is longer, and I attempt to tame it (aka blow it dry so I can straighten the living shit out of it) I look like this:

Except…you know…without the freakish clown makeup.

So, as you can guess, this is kind of an issue. And when it’s hot and humid out, well, I look like Monica Gellar in The One in Barbados.

So I pile on the products. First the curling spray/leave-in conditioner. Then the gel. Then the smoothing serum. It looks good. Then I walk outside and….POOF! Cute hair is gone and poofy, ridiculous, uncontrollable fluff is back.

And there’s nothing I can do with it. Every day for the last few weeks I have twisted the front pieces of my hair into a little baby faux hawk and the rest of it just hangs in there, poofing and fluffing and doubling in size, despite its outer edges being crispy and crunchy from the gel. Then, about halfway through the day I get so annoyed with it and so overcome by hair claustrophobia that I have to pull it back and get it entirely out of my way. And it sucks.

What’s a girl to do? I can’t straighten it, which is really the only chance I have to make it do anything different. It’ll frizz out in moments and be a half an hour that I could have been sleeping. I can’t just leave it down–the faux hawk is the only thing standing in the way of me and frizzy little fly aways (well, mostly).

The result? At least 3 times a week I complain to Boo about how much I hate my hair and how I’m going to shave it and how I hope he still loves me when he sees me looking like I walked off the set of The Bald and the Beautiful.

Of course, he says he will because Boo is awesome like that. But I’m pretty sure if I pull a Topanga and hack out some of my hair in the hallway (to prove a point, of course) he’ll be wishing that I were still a little poofy head.

The water cooler

One thing I knew before I ever joined the work force was that people have conversations around the water cooler. I knew this because I watch a lot of TV and I am okay with that. It is a very reliable source of information.

Anyway, this morning I had my first water cooler conversation. Want to know what it was about?

Cool water.

I’m not even kidding. Our filtered water cooler was running like the Little Engine That Could last week. Filter clogs be damned that poor little guy made sure I could still fill a water bottle–even if it took me 5 minutes. This morning a colleague and I discussed the newly flowing cooler and then discussed how we can’t really drink water if it’s not the right temperature. Also how we always buy really big water bottles and never really get through more than 3 sips for the first day that we own said bottle.

I can’t believe it.

The laundry stigma–now with pictures!

I kind of forgot the main reason why I don’t hate doing laundry–well at least I forgot to post it. So…

That’s my friend Oak in my freshman roommate’s laundry basket.

That’s my friend Cait in her own laundry basket.

With friends like these, laundry is never dull.