Big City Kids

Happy Halloween everyone!

This is one of my favorite days of the year.  You all know I’ll do anything to dress up.  And candy?  Hello, what’s not to like?!

But my favorite thing about Halloween is seeing what everyone else came up with.  In this city that takes itself WAY too seriously ALL the time, it’s such a breath of fresh air to see grown men dressed up the like the Joker and grown women in business suits and devil horns.

Much like elementary school, we’re having a party in the office today:

I’m rocking my S. Palin jacket and glasses.  I decided to skip the bangs.  Seemed tricky for the office.

We have a plastic pumpkin filled with candy.  We have mini Halloween cupcakes and super-sized Halloween cookies.

We have a suburban mom, a fancy pig and some guy who’s wearing like, a sock w/an eyeball at the end of it on his head.

On the train I saw the aforementioned devil and Joker costumes.  I’ve seen Shrek headbands, Elvira wigs and a “football player,” though I’m not sure that high socks and short denim shorts make you an athlete.  But hey, there’s always gotta be one person who’s willing to slut it up in their office and sacrifice all feeling in their legs (it’s COLD today) to wear the SHORT shorts (and trust me, I laughed while she shivered through her wait for the 6 train).

But tell me–what’s better than a day when it’s totally socially acceptable to forget that you are an adult, gorge yourself on processed sugar and rock a witch hat like it’s your job?

That’s what I thought.

Happy Halloween everyone!!!

I’m torn

As a writer, specifically a blogger, there are certain situations in which I find myself torn.

Situations like this:

Sunday night.

MetroNorth train from CT to Grand Central.

3 guys. 2 girls. Mid-twenties.

The girls knew each other.   The guys knew each other.  The guys met (I assume hit on) the girls at Fairfield.  Then they invaded my train car.

The guys, specifically a shaggy haired one who clearly thought he was The Shit, kept trying to instigate drinking games.  Because of course, what’s a 6pm Sunday train ride w/o a couple of cans of Beast.  That’s right–BEAST.

Shaggy: Okay, we’ll play popcorn.

Redhead: Omg, what’s popcorn?

Shaggy: Didn’t you ever do popcorn reading in school?

Shaggy’s tiny friend: Yeah, like, I’ll say ‘popcorn Alex’ and then you’ll have to drink Alex.  Then you’ll popcorn someone else.

Redhead/Alex: I don’t get it.

STF: Popcorn Alex.  Now you drink.

Alex: What?

Shaggy: Okay, we’ll play another game.  Maybe “never have I ever?”  Ooh, how ’bout the showtunes game?

Alex’s friend: No no!  I’m sure these people don’t want to hear us sing.

*Me, internally*: Oh dear lord no!

STF: They won’t mind if you sing good.

*Me, internally*: OH YES THEY WILL!!!!

I tuned out.  I tried to anyway.  When I tuned back in, Shaggy and Alex’s friend were talking about her aunt’s beach house and how it was “just so funny!” that he had rented there!  Whatever.

la

But I’m torn.  As a writer, specifically a blogger, I want them to keep talking.  I want them to be as assinine as possible so that I can write about them for all of you.

la

But, as a normal human being, one who is just trying to get home from a weekend w/her boyfriend w/o killing anyone, I want them to shut up.

la

I have the internal battle in my mind–throw them off the train while cussing them out for their pathetic attempts to hit on girls who were clearly only talking to them for their beer OR write down all of the stupid crap they said so I can come back here and tell all of you.

la

It’s a tough call, it really is.

In the spirit of things…

Halloween is on Friday.  And I keep hearing some rumblings about next Tuesday.  Some election or something?

Anyway, this past weekend, Boo and I went to a premature Halloween party.  So I thought, for your viewing pleasure, I would post some pics.

I totally had to make those bangs.  I don’t mean CUT them in, anyone can do that.  I mean, I did some really fancy work with bobby pins and MADE bangs.  And I brought my flute–just in case we were doing the talent portion :P.

Now before you get on my case about being totally cliched, let me stop and say that Boo and I had some other very clever, totally non-cliched costumes that we just shelved.  For this year, these seemed fitting.  He’s got the scruff.  I’ve got the accent (granted, unless I vlog, I can’t prove that, but if I can figure it out, maybe I will).  Plus, it was a week(ish) before election day–the timing seemed appropriate for these costumes.

Here’s one more from the weekend:

Now I really only posted this one b/c I totally look like my cousin Hailey in it and that’s just crazy!  None of you know Hailey, but that’s not really the point, now is it?  Also, this is what Boo would look like if he shagged out his hair.  And, you know, dyed it a funny reddish color.

So anyway…the party.  It was…interesting.  There were parents.  That always freaks me out.

Host and father were “dominating” the beer pong table.  This is where conflict struck.  The duo seemed to think that double tossing was OK.  You know, where they both throw at the same time?  Yeah, that’s not OK–that’s annoying.  So, to appease the masses, they stopped.  But they started rapid-fire tossing.  As in Pops would throw, then, before we could pull the cup, Sonny Boy would throw it in.

Fine, if you can’t win w/o throwing like that, go ahead.  (Let me also state for the record that they were up against the wall, leaving them no choice but to lean halfway over the already midget-sized table–again, if you want to cheat, knock yourselves out).  So anyway, Pops tosses the ball and it lands in one of Boo’s cups (we split cups b/c we don’t like to drink crappy beer so we were playing w/our own beer and I won’t drink what he drinks).  Boo reaches to pull his cup, SB throws it, and the ball bounces off of Boo’s hand.

SB: OHHH!!! RESHOT! RESHOT! YOU BLOCKED THE SHOT!

Boo: Uh, no, I went for my cup.

And then an all-out shouting match went down.  The kids from SB’s alma mater said that rules dictate that the player can throw the ball before the other cup has been removed and if the ball is deflected, it warrants a reshot.  Everyone else, seriously, EVERYONE else, said no way, bull shit and if you need to cheat to win, go ahead.

SB reshot.  House rules, or some crap like that.  SB missed.  Sad for him.  The next game, the table was pulled out from the wall.  SB and Pops stopped winning after that.

I think it’s necessary for someone, somewhere, to come up with universal rules for beer pong.  No point in everyone having their own house rules–then no one knows how to play.  So, given that there is a certain event being held next week where people will, one way or the other, be able to exercise a great deal of power/decision-making, I think that’s something we should focus on.

Universal beer pong rules.

That’s the real issue here.

*Note, this is not supposed to make light of said upcoming election.  I get that it’s a big important deal.  But I prefer to remain unpolitical over here.  So, deal with it.

**UPDATE: I just got confirmation/clarification from Boo.  Sonny Boy went to CCSU.  One of the other CCSU alum at the party thought that SB was being a douchebag and a cheater (and told him so).  SB’s roomie (who also attended CCSU) totally sided with SB.  We’re starting to think that they were trying to cheat and call house rules school rules, forgetting that there were people there who could blow their cover.

But really, it’s all about the head

I love my shower.  I do.  In high school, I used to get yelled at on a nearly nightly basis for taking showers that were deemed “too long.”  What were you doing in there? my parents would ask.

I was warming up (in the winter) or cooling off (in the summer).  I was washing away the stress of my day.  I was also washing my D.Ross-sized afro–that took time people!  I was shaving.  I was practicing my songs for the musical senior year.  I was practicing Britney Spears’ songs for the drive to school the next day.  And one time, after a particularly rough night at work, I recall crying.

And all of that took time.  The shower was the one place where no one would bother me.  No one was knocking on the door (well except for the one time when a boy I had a really big crush on and was waiting for a call from finally DID call me).  No one was dropping by to check what I was watching or reading or doing.  The only real issue I ever faced was after the shower, when I would plod downstairs in my sweat pants, all shiny and clean, and someone would tell me my shower was too long and I needed to watch it.

In college, I had my favorite shower stalls.  The one on the end was too drafty.  The one in the middle never got hot enough.  But the second one in, oh man, it was the best.  Great pressure.  Always hot.  Luckily for me, my best friend Cait always liked the third shower in (we had a bank of 5).  This way we never had to fight for the shower.  And when we came home from a party, we could both shower and make sure the other didn’t pass out in the shower next to us.  Drunk showers are awesome.

Uh, anyway, I digress.

Then, that same year, there was a disturbance in my showering paradise.  I walked into the bathroom one night to brush my teeth and I saw 2 sets of feet.  TWO.  This was disconcerting to me.  I don’t care what you do in your own time and your own bathroom, but when I’m trying to shower before class, I don’t really want to hear people canoodling in the stall next to me.  And sure, the excuse was made that since they were both of the same sex, it was okay, but it’s still something better saved for off-campus living.

I moved out of the dorms the next year, into an apartment with 5 girls, myself included.  That is a lot of girls.  This wasn’t all terrible though, because there were 2 showers in that apartment.  And 2 tubs.  And I love baths and I missed them during my dorm years.  Then I learned the most disturbing and, to this day, nauseating thing I could have ever found out.  One of my roommates was peeing in the shower.  Let me say that again.  SHE WAS PEEING IN THE SHOWER!  Because apparently the 30 seconds it took to sit on the toilet and pee before the shower was too much for her.  It took too much time out of her day. When she told me and I (rightfully) freaked out, her excuse was “well it’s always while I wash my hair so the soap rinses it out.”  One of our other roommates backed her up.  I was shocked and disgusted.  If you want to piss in your own shower, go right ahead.  But when you share w/other people, some of whom don’t always Lysol the tub before they take a bath (which, btw, I ALWAYS do now because I’ve been permanently scarred) have some courtesy.  Put the warning out there at the beginning of the year (at the VERY least) so they can at least be warned and pull out their dorm shower flip flops to avoid stepping in your bodily fluids.  The thought of excreting foul things into something thats sole purpose is to clean you off is beyond me.

But again, I digress.

Senior year I had one rule when it came to the shower: Don’t pee in it.  And if you do, don’t EVER tell me.  Things were fine.  I kept that same rule in my current apartment and again, no issues.

The thing that has held all of these showers together for me though, the thing that makes a shower worth taking, is the water pressure.  A shower head is a tricky creature–get the right one, and your shower is a glorious place.  A good, pounding pressure, that’s what you need.  Get the wrong shower head though, and it’s a chore.  Standing there, rinsing your hair for 5 minutes–a process that used to take under a minute.  All because your shower head doesn’t provide enough oomph anymore.

Now I realize that this is all because of the environment or some crap like that.  But truth be told, all this does is make me cranky and force me take a longer shower.  This is this situation at Boo’s apartment.  I hate his shower.  I’m sorry to say it, but it sucks.  It’s a very wussy shower head and the water never really heats up.  If it, by some miracle, does get hot, it doesn’t last.  But then I come home.  And I relish my next shower.  Because I’ve just seen what it could be.  And let me tell you, I am in LOVE with the shower head in my apartment.

Well, I was in love with the shower head in my apartment.  It was powerful and awesome.  There was one stream of water that always used to hit my shoulder blades just right–perfect after work.  Until it exploded.  It started shooting water everywhere.  It flooded Rachel.  It was a sad, sad day.  And of course, it was a Friday.  So until we could call maintenance, we ran the shower on half water pressure, with the nozzle at a weird angle.  We called this week and they finally came up to fix it.

But they didn’t fix it.  Oh no.  They replaced it.  And now, instead of my amazing, power pressure shower head, I have a nice, kinda decent mostly okay pressure, even-flow shower head.  It’s got evenly distributed nozzles instead of nozzles of varying size.

It’s probably good for the environment or some crap.

As far as I (and roomie) are concerned, all it’s good for is making us cranky and forcing us take longer showers.

And trust me, you won’t like us if we’re cranky.

Coinmach 1:, Lauren: 1

Remember my very trying night of laundry a few weeks ago?  No?  Well then, please remind yourselves.

Everyone caught up?

Lovely.  Then I’ll continue.

So I called them today.  Finally.  I don’t know what I’ve been waiting for.  Oh, wait, that’s right, I’m doing laundry tonight so this was logically the first time I would think of this.

It was a surprisingly easy solution.  I called.  They credited.  They didn’t even question me.  AND they said they are going to send someone out to repair the machine.

Only problem?  I forgot that it ate 6 of my dollars, not 4.  That is why I decided this should be a tied score.

On the one hand, I win my $4.20 back.

On the other hand, they botched my laundry night and kept $2.10 of mine.

Meh.

Since I’m still slumping

Mindy, bless her blogging soul, tagged me in a meme.  This may be the first time I’ve been tagged.  Well, that’s fun.  And convenient, since I’m still in my sophomore slump.  And by the way, thanks for everyone who stopped by yesterday to tell me to hang in and keep writing and saying they’d still be around.  I’m glad you’re not going anywhere!

Ahem…anyway.

Here are the Rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Ready?  Good, let’s play!

1. I don’t do well w/o plumbing.  Well, not even plumbing, I just need a toilet seat.  Friends always try to get me to hike or camp or go to rope swings and I can’t do it if there’s a chance I’ll have to pee outdoors.

2. I do not have a favorite color.  I never have had one either.

3. I did not cry when I watched The Way We Were. It pissed me off too, b/c I was hoping for a tear-jerker.  I watched Forest Gump immediately after and sobbed like a baby.

4. I once (strongly) considered going to school to study poetry.  Yup, I was going to get an MFA in poetry.

5. I suck at Monopoly.  I lose EVERY SINGLE TIME that I play.

6. I used to sneak sudoku books to class.  I ripped the pages out of them and hid them in whatever book I should have been reading.  I distinctly remember doing this in a poetry class.  That was when I realized the MFA in #3 was probably a bad idea.

There…that wasn’t that bad!

Now, on to the tagging:

How about…NotSoJenny, Lily, Kez, Mermanda, and Jamie!

And I’m pulling a Mindy and not linking to them…I’m lazy like that :P

Sophomore Slump

Lately I’ve been feeling a little…blah about blogging.  Don’t get me wrong, readers, I love it.  I love writing and I love reading what you have to say about what I wrote.  And I love reading what you have to say about your own stuff.  But the past few weeks have been a struggle for me to get something down on paper, er, screen.  I even took a whole week off, which was unintentional at first, but as the days dragged on, that’s how it happened.

I’ve been trying to figure out my problem.  Is it b/c it is fall and getting colder and there are less people out and therefore less people for me to write about?  No, that can’t be it.  I’ve seen lots of crazy stuff recently.  Is it that I’ve told you guys about all my weirdness?  My likes/dislikes/fears, etc.  But in a way less cheesy and obnoxious way than that?  Nope, I still have lots of weird crap to tell you about.

The problem, I’ve decided, is that I’m in my sophomore slump.  I’ve been writing since last summer.  About a year a half now.  This is really the longest I’ve kept up with any hobby.  Not that writing is a hobby, per say, but until I start getting paid for, it’s going to be categorized as a one.  I’m not BORED, mind you, just at a loss for words.  Which, for those of you who know me in the real world, is a shock, I’m sure.

So…that’s where I’m at today.  Sorry to not be my usual, hopefully witty or at least amusing, self.

I’ll work on it.

Happy Roomieversary! Happy Apartmentaversary! Um…HAPPY!

So…do you know what today is?  Do you know?  What do you mean you don’t know?  It’s right there in the title of this post!

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my apartment.  It’s the first birthday of The Carton (as it’s affectionately known).

This time last year, Rachel and I finally moved into our place (after a lengthy struggle with some questionable brokers).  We ordered in General Tso’s (due to lack of plates…and silverware) from what has become our go-to Chinese restaurant.  We camped out in our living room, her on a real mattress on the floor, me on my air mattress, and watched my little TV (because you KNOW we made sure to have the cable hooked up asap).

We’ve had some good times in this apartment so far.

We bought (and assembled!) some furniture.

We struggled with our appliances.

We got to know our neighbors.

We got annoyed by getting to know our neighbors.

We decided we were getting to know the wrong neighbors.

We checked out the local wildlife.

We decided we should stay away from all of our neighbors.

We fought with more of our appliances.

We celebrated our building company’s birthday.

We fought with our laundry room.

And we did a lot that never made it to the blog.  So here’s to The Carton.  Happy Apartmentaversary!!!!

la

la

*Also, Happy Birthday to a few awesome coworkers!  Thanks for being born–you make the office more fun and we get cupcakes to celebrate!  Also, happy belated (even though I did already wish it non-belatedly) birthday Daddy!*

Does it count as a hangover if I’m still awake?

In support of Ben’s contest, I decided to tell you all the story of my worst hangover.  Parental units, I’d stop reading here.*

la

There comes a time in every new drinker’s life where they will take one sip too many and realize, hm, this won’t end well.  I had my moment during my freshman year.

Spring semester I joined a co-ed service fraternity.  It wasn’t so much for the service as it was for the partying.  We pledged for the whole spring semester and it culminated in the I-night (initiation night) festivities.  For our pledge class, this consisted of I-night on Friday.  A pledge-hosted party on Saturday.  And then Bolt, where the pledges “kidnap” their Bigs to get them back (read: throw them a party) for the parties on Big/Little weekend, on Sunday.

For those of you keeping track, that’s 3 solid days of drinking.  So I-night we went were welcomed into our “families” and then went to the family party, where each fam has their own traditions.  The tradition in my family?  Shots of tequila and jungle juice made w/Everclear.  I put my foot down on the tequila shot but I was more than ready for the jungle juice.  Well on our way to drunk we made our way to the big party.  It was at a subset of this party that I had my first upside down margarita shot.  You know what I’m talking about: sit in a chair, tilt your head back and leave the pouring up to your friends.  In my case it was a senior I had a crush on, my senior pledge master who I also had a crush on and my best friend.  Margarita mix in, tequila in, triple sec in.  Swish and swallow.  Then my pledge master picked up, flipped me over, and “shook me like a salt shaker” (thanks, by the way, Ying Yang Twins for that craze).

Suffice it to say, I was completely wasted by the time my pledge master walked me home.  This led to bad decisions (read: making out and wishing the next morning that I hadn’t).  Saturday night and we hosted our pledge party.  My pledge buddies all heard about my misadventures with PM.  Taking advantage of that, they created a rule during a game of Kings: every time my best friend pulled a card (not every time she pulled a black or a red or a king or an 8–just a card) I had to make out with my other senior crush (the margarita mix pourer/friend of PM).  This obviously seemed like a great idea.  What did we know?  We were still liquored up from the night before.

Sunday finally rolled around.  Surprising even ourselves, we were up and kidnapping our respective Bigs by 2pm.  By 4pm they were all gathered in the apartment and drinking.  We thought that it would be a great idea to try and catch up.  With rum and cokes.  By 6pm we were out of ice so we went to convenience store downstairs.  At this point one of my pledge buddies realized that he’d spent $30 on mixers in 2 days (which said a lot in an era where mixers were 99 cent 2-liters of Pepsi).  This struck me as hilarious and I erupted in laughter.  Then gagged, afraid that in mere seconds I would be erupting with rum and/or coke.

After this I was sequestered in the bathroom.  It was a 90+ degree day in an apartment with a barely functionioning AC and WAY more people in it than should have been.  I was in panic mode (I do NOT throw up…ever…as in really haven’t yakked since 5th grade).  I spent the next hour or so on the floor, in front of the toilet with the shower blasting cold water behind me to try and cool me/the room down.  The rest of the party people played flip cup (a game I happen to rule at).  I was stuck on the floor.  Then they packed up the remaining booze and took the party off-campus.  I was still stuck on the floor.

After everyone cleared out of the apartment, my margarita mix-pouring crush walked (read: dragged my drunk, stumbling ass) me home and stayed with me for awhile until my roommate came home.  I passed on his offer to stay until I sobered up.  Given the amount of alcohol I’d consumed in the last 3 days, it was somewhere around Wednesday.

Don’t be a Jonze.

la

la

*Sorry to the parental units.  I know you probably read anyway.  Just remember that I totally dropped out of the frat and graduated in 4 years with 2 majors.  That’s something to be proud of, right?  Right?  Right.

It’s time to say ‘goodbye’

I don’t like to say “goodbye.”  I have a hard time with it.  Sometimes, I just can’t do it until the absolute last minute.

For example, if I try out a new recipe and I don’t exactly like how it turned out but I have a ton of leftovers, I can’t throw them out.  I’ll put them in tupperware then put them in the fridge.  In front, at first, as though I would actually eat them, even though I know full well that I wont.  But I can’t throw them out.  I just can’t bring myself to do it.  It has to go into the “staging area” as it were.  I know there isn’t a shot in hell that I’ll be reheating that meal but I also know that I can’t just toss it straight down the shute.

I have the same problem in my closet.  I have a lot of clothes in there that, season after season, just kind of hang out, waiting to be worn.  But I can’t bring myself to part with them.  Even though I know I’d rather do laundry then wear those things (and you KNOW that means a lot) I can’t bring myself to give them up.

In some cases it’s shoppers guilt.  I bought the same style in 3 colors before realizing there was some annoying aspect to the garment that I hadn’t noticed before that would make me stop wearing it.  I bought it at the end of the trend and now feel out of place wearing it.  Either way, I don’t feel quite like I got my money’s worth out of it and I can’t bear to give away something that I barely wore (which is totally backwards logic, I know).

In some cases it’s nostalgia.  It’s a jacket that I absolutely love.  A shirt that I wore the night I went to the best party of my life.  As great as those memories are I know I’m not pulling these things out of my closet anytime soon.  Despite that, these were clothes that I loved, dearly.  That I spent hard-earned paychecks (or less hard-earned birthday checks) on.  I can’t say goodbye yet.

And in some cases its wardrobe staples.  Blazers or button downs or sweaters, all in great condition and still my size.  Pieces that I always think I will still need to pull out of my closet but never will.  And so they sit for a season–my one-time go-to pieces relegated to “well, I’m not in the mood for them today–maybe tomorrow” until they find themselves in the stack of stuff I’ll never wear again.

Sometimes something tricky happens with these last 2 scenarios.  You pack away your staple pieces at the end of the season.  You forget about them until it’s time to unpack.  You pull out jackets, sweaters, and shirts with glee, remembering how much you loved this style last year.  You wait until its chilly enough and throw on a blazer.  Then, halfway through the day, you look down.  And it hits you:

It’s time to say “goodbye.”

The nerdy little blazer that spent season after season accompanying you to class, the bar, wherever.  It was outerwear.  It was innerwear (uh?).  It was adorable for so long and now–yikes!

But still, it tugs at your heartstrings.  You can’t bring yourself to pass this off to Goodwill.  Years of love and now, well, you know you aren’t wearing that again, but you love it too much to toss it.  You just have to realize, and accept that:

It’s time to say “goodbye.”