6.29.2005
Bad sharer
Damn, I just worked for like 3 hours straight without noticing the time. I love when that happens, except when it's the end of the day and I look up and it's 6:30 p.m. and I meant to leave an hour ago. PowerPoint puts me in a daze.

I guess it's good that I've been at my desk all day, because I forgot deodorant this morning. Usually I put it on before my shirt, but today I wore one that has been in the closet for months and I wanted to try it on first. So I forgot. It shouldn't be a big deal until later, at the gym. Heh, sucks for the person on the next treadmill, and double sucks for anyone nearby while I'm lifting. And lucky Carly gets to hang out with me at Starbucks later on; if you want to reschedule, I'll totally understand.

Yesterday I didn't finish strong, food-wise. We went downstairs for a meeting of the condo association (consisting of us and the couple downstairs) and they grilled out so I had chips & salsa and hamburger rolls. It didn't occur to me that I wasn't planning to eat that stuff until I already had. I did make a huge salad though.

In the meeting we agreed to paint the front doors, paint and seal the front porch steps, and mulch the little side yard. In past meetings we had discussed powerwashing and sealing the deck. Finding the time for these projects is difficult; we are busy, they are busy, weather is a factor, and frankly the items are not at the top of our priority list when we are deciding what to do with our weekends. But I do want to get them done, because they add curb appeal and we will appreciate it when the time comes to put our place on the market.

They also asked us politely not to do laundry late at night because our washer and dryer are right under their bedroom. I had a feeling that would eventually come up. We always end up getting to it late because there is no other time and we are not people who will turn down a better offer just because there is laundry to be done. I guess the solution is to do the lights and darks on different days, rather than doing a laundry marathon. It's not a big deal, but I have to admit I felt put out--I'm all for common courtesy, but the beauty of owning vs. renting is the freedom to do whatever, wherever, whenever. So if I want to do laundry at 3:00 a.m. in our house that we pay the mortgage on, that should be okay. We aren't roommates asking each other please wash your goddamned dishes. I guess I'm old enough now that I've come full circle on sharing: I was bad at it as a child, good at it in college, and now I'm bad at it again. I want my own house, my own yard, my own everything.

Ooh, my boss just called and asked if I wanted anything from Dunkin Donuts. Sweet--medium iced french vanilla on the way! Nice boss. Good day... besides the deodorant thing.


6.28.2005
Hello? Motivation? Where are you?
Ever since New York I've been eating horribly and slacking off at the gym. I don't think a week has gone by since January where I haven't gone at all, but I have had a couple weeks where I only went once. Last week I went twice. I went last night. But none of those sessions have been great, the way they were until late May. I was going 4 days a week, mixing cardio and strength, really pushing myself. Then I got derailed and started slacking on weights, talking myself out of finishing my routine because there were people using the machines I wanted or because I wanted to get home at a decent hour.

That coincided with the start of summer Fridays. During the summer I work 9-hour days Monday through Thursday in order to leave work at noon on Fridays. So my workouts, which used to go from 5:15-6:30, now don't end until 7:00 and that's if I leave work on time. I planned to finish earlier by going 5 days a week and alternating cardio and strength, but it didn't happen because summer means a spike in after-work social plans. And I know myself--there's no way I'll go in the morning. Now I'm back to thinking that I have to suck it up and dedicate 3 nights a week to the gym.

This happened last year; I fell off the wagon in July and it lasted until the day I started this blog. I've worked too hard to let it happen again. So today was the first test. I weighed myself in the morning (damage: +5 lbs), ate well all day (save for a tiny handful of m&m's, which, hey, it was the first day), and abstained at an ice cream social to celebrate a guy who is transferring to a new location. The day's not over, but I feel determination brewing. I can usually tell the false starts from the genuine commitments and I think we're dealing with a commitment here. This may turn into a diet blog for a few days while I work to get re-settled into healthy habits.


6.27.2005
WHAT? YEEEAHH! OKAAYY!
Mere hours after I wrote that superficial diatribe about "WAH I can't find the perfect dress!" I found it, randomly, at Marshalls for $34.99. It's lilac and fits perfectly and I love it. Don't ask how these things happen.

The wedding was fun. My cousin actually had my uncle officiate; he went online and got licensure for one day, one ceremony. The ceremony was short and sweet; we drank bloody marys and vodka pineapples out on the deck during cocktail hour; and we got everybody going "WHAT? YEAH! OKAY!" when they played Lil Jon, who is becoming a theme in our lives this summer. The DJ neglected his duties during dinner, letting his loop of songs repeat, but later on he did play Poison (Bell Biv DeVoe, not Alice Cooper), The Humpty Dance, and Pour Some Sugar on Me.

I'm taking all of next week off but I only need to use 3 PTO days--for whatever reason, we have the 5th as a holiday too. That means this week is going to be excruciatingly slow, but it's a small price to pay.


6.24.2005
The opposite of providence is improvidence
Providence Place is a bad mall. Even though it's carpeted and has Nordstrom and an IMAX theater, it still sucks. A couple of months ago I ordered two dresses on Nordstrom.com and I plan to wear one of them to my cousin's wedding on Sunday, but there are minor issues: one is a smidge too long, the other I don't have a bag or shoes for. I hoped to find shoes, but what I really wanted was to find a third dress that would blow me away. Didn't happen.

This is one of those pointless missions I put myself on that only result in a lot of frustration and wasted time. The perfect dress isn't out there, and even if it was, it's probably too late to find it, and even if I did find it, it's just a wedding, not even my own... so why am I compelled to drive myself crazy? It's like in the morning before work when I stare at my closet and have no idea what to wear even though there are 10 pairs of pants, 5 skirts, and 20 shirts hanging there. Nothing matches, nothing makes a perfect outfit. I need to make a list of what I'm missing in my wardrobe. I need Stacy and Clinton.


6.23.2005
"Do people get hammered at the Pops sometimes?"
If you're a Guster fan, and you've been there for the rubber duckies and Big Friend and the ping-pong balls and the vegetable costumes and all the rest, you would have to seriously consider it the peak of your fandom to hear them perform Come Downstairs & Say Hello not just once, but again in an impromptu second encore, at Symphony Hall, backed by the Boston Pops orchestra.

"Holy crap," Ryan said when they got onstage. Holy crap is right. It was an awesome, rare experience. Also, it was just about the strangest Guster show I've been to, considering half the audience were senior citizens. And because the dress code ranged from t-shirts to black tie. At home, Joe and I were confused about what to wear:

"You think my 'Country Music Saved My Soul' shirt is inappropriate?"
"Ehh... it's the Pops."
"But it's also Guster."
"It's at Symphony Hall."
"People are going to wear whatever."
"So I can wear 'Vote for Pedro'?"
"Ehh... I don't know."

We compromised, and I'm glad we did, because we were still on the casual side. Even Guster was dressed up in button-down shirts and pants.

Keith Lockhart and Guster came out onstage to huge cheers. Ryan said, "We'd like to introduce our opening band for tonight, the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra," which got a big laugh. The first half of the show was just the Pops. They did 3 pieces: a Stravinsky, a Debussy, and some avant-garde piece involving a video and a "hyper-piano," which is a piano hooked up to a computer so that it plays additional notes while the pianist is playing. It was weird.

After Intermission, Guster came on with the orchestra behind them. They did mellower songs: I Spy, Backyard, Fa Fa, a couple of new ones. They did Two Points for Honesty, which sounded great, and of course Come Downstairs. For their first encore, they did Jesus on the Radio unplugged, with a violinist playing the fiddle parts. They got a standing ovation and came back out, but because they didn't have any more material, Ryan said, "We'll just play my favorite part of the show again," and they played the second half of Come Downstairs a second time, which was really funny and also great because it sounded even better. The first time, people had started clapping, which was annoying because the orchestra is not very loud, especially in the balcony, but the second time the clapping was good because everybody was into it and you could tell Guster was thrilled just to be up there.

I got a kick out of watching all the old people react to Guster. I wonder if they knew what they were getting into. The old guys sitting in front of us were bobbing their heads and clapping and seemed to really enjoy it but their wives were sitting there all stiff and decidedly not cool.

Tired today... I need a night where I can get 10 hours of sleep, because the last 3 nights I've had an average of 6. It's worth it, though. Hopefully work will go by fast.


6.17.2005
Everyone loves a drunk
I am all kinds of too old to be staying out until last call on a work night and getting 3 hours of sleep. But last night Joe and the crew went out to celebrate the end of the semester and I finally decided to go. While they were in class, Becca and I went out for dinner and shopping at the Chestnut Hill Mall. After wandering around Sephora, Coach, Barney's, Origins, and Crate & Barrel putting on yummy lotions and ruining people's wedding registries, we headed to the bar to meet up with Big Daddy Super Papa & co. Beer was ingested, quarters were bounced, Belinda Carlisle blared. It was like a flashback to 1998, or 1988 depending on how you look at it.

I always like going out for a drink or two. There's a world of difference between going out for a drink and being determined to close down the bar. We were at the couple drinks stage when the shot glass and the quarters came out, which signifies that you're in for the long haul. But it was also after 11:30 and decent people have to work early in the morning, so we left before we could get sucked in. We brought Becca home and then, 10 minutes away from our house, 10 minutes away from our bed, 10 minutes away from not feeling like ass this morning, we decided to follow some drunken advice and go back to the bar. It was something we could have gone either way on, but I know Joe enjoys his end-of-semester soirees, and it was already midnight, so it's like they said in Clerks: if you're gonna be insubordinate, don't pussy out when it comes to free shit to drink. Or something.

A roar went up at the table at the return of Ice Ice Delin. Everyone had dialed the drunk up a notch, and we never caught up and I couldn't anyway because I was driving, but it was still fun. The place became packed with generic, ass-wiggling underclassmen. A waitress cleared away the shot glasses at one point so quarters ended, and the pitcher supply got cut off so Brian ordered a dozen bottles. Bottles were clinked, much beer was spilled. We left at 5 minutes to close, gave Sue and Bill rides home, went to Store 24 for snack cakes, didn't get to bed until after 3. Thank God for summer Fridays.


6.13.2005
Everyone loves a stripper
Up until this weekend my life was just the tiniest bit incomplete because I had never seen a stripper, but guess what--now I have! Saturday night we went to this kid Brian's 30th birthday cookout, a kid Joe goes to school with who is a CPA by day and a gangsta by night. He's single, owns a house in the suburbs, and is the straightest guy, until somebody puts on Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz. Then his alter ego takes over and things get out of hand.

We showed up with two of Joe's other school friends, Lauren and Dave, so we would have built-in people to hang out with, and when we first got there it was pretty innocuous. There were only two other people there and they looked boring, and we got a tour of the house, and we stood around drinking and chitchatting. Later on though, more people started showing up, including about ten girls who looked like they were churned off the Forever 21 assembly line. Lots of tiny shorts and inappropriate shoes. They huddled together and giggled a lot. And one of them was a total bitch, sashaying around the deck trying to flirt with Dave.

Several beers and a few hours in, we all rounded up for what was supposed to just be cake but word had already gotten around that there was an ex-stripper at the party who was going to dust off her g-string and do a command performance. The bitch was a friend of hers, and she was running around trying to get the music cued up and making sure everybody was where they needed to be--we dubbed her The Madam.

After a lot of waiting for people to figure out how to work the laptop-iPod stereo hookup, the stripper came out. She had been there the entire time but we hadn't even noticed her, but suddenly she was 8 feet tall in these giant boots, and wearing a tiny tank top and shorts, and it was hard to believe it was the same girl. With my limited experience, her routine seemed pretty good but she did a lot of contortions, like putting her legs behind her head, that looked pretty unsexy. We were all impressed by her flexibility though. Then she stripped down to a g-string and took it up a notch from your typical lap dance. She smeared frosting on her tits and made Brian lick it off. Then she made him lie on his back and slithered all over him, biting the crotch of his shorts and practically sitting on his face.

Two things she did that almost ruined it: 1) she didn't take her top off, just pulled it up under her arms, and 2) she talked, saying stuff like, "Let's see if I can remember how to do this" and "My boyfriend is going to kill me; I'm going to smell so bad" after someone poured beer on them.
Right, like smelling like beer is why her boyfriend's going to be pissed? The reason she's an EX-stripper is because he made her stop. The Madam was clapping and yelling "Everybody cheer for Lisa!" and nobody really did because like, maybe we aren't quite as proud of your stripper friend as you are. We clapped politely, as if we were at a charity event.

After she was done, Brian had to go up and shower because he was covered in frosting and beer. While he was up there, three of the Forever 21 girls lined up outside his bedroom and asked if they could make out with him. Meanwhile, outside, the Madam was wishing she was hot enough to be a stripper because she flashed her bra to some guy and make him put a dollar between her breasts with his mouth. Later on, right before we left, she was standing on the picnic table and trying to get Dave to spank her with a wiffle ball bat. He had an evil look on his face and was gearing up to take a good swing but then he just smacked her lightly and we left.

On the way home we were planning to take Storrow Drive and we got off at the exit but the ramp was totally backed up. There were police cars but we couldn't see what was going on. 30 minutes later we crawled by the scene and this is what we saw:

  • a bulldozer-looking thing with a giant claw appendage, tearing up some steel girders; and
  • a guy holding a hose and spraying the big claw.

Can somebody explain what they might have been doing? Because we were at a complete loss.

So, the night was definitely memorable! And better than when Carly and I got up close and personal with some nasty, stubbly male strippers a couple of years ago. Female strippers are just more fun to watch. The best part was that we were in a totally suburban backyard in Reading, with neighbors and swingsets and minivans. I love the idea that all over the country, debauchery is taking place in the places least suspected.



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