Wait, what just happened?

You know it was a good weekend when:

• You're out with friends, dancing to bad music in a club in Manyunk and the super tall guy behind you elbows you in the head. Then he does the let-me-kiss-it-to-make-it-better thing and exclaims "Wow, your hair smells amazing!" and then exuberantly SNIFFS YOUR HEAD, allowing for countless moments of giggling later on.
  
  
• Your chest is dubbed "The Star Spangled Banner" thanks to the super cute t-shirt you just bought at Target for $3. Anytime anyone (read: Lisa) hums "The Stars and Stripes Forever," you are required to shake what your mama gave you.
  
  
• You spend over 2 hours at the bar and end up not paying for a single drink, thanks to a certain Ass paying the entire bar tab.
  
  
• Brian and Debbie walk into the bar and Brian yells, "Right, you kids. You're all having another couple of drinks and then you're coming back to our place to party the rest of the night."
  
  
• You drink cosmopolitans that are basically just vodka, barely tinted pink. As the night goes on these become less and less potent. Or so you think. Then you realize you're just drunker.
  
  
• Sunday morning you wake up on the floor with no pants on to Debbie shuffling into the living room saying "I come with Advil. What the FUCK were we doing last night?"
  
  
• You then have a beautiful Sunday morning brunch, eating off of Debbie's china. Because, OBVIOUSLY that's what needs to be done.
  
  
• Over the lovely brunch, the 53-year-old British man says to you, "Darling, you are now my pet. I am making you my personal mission. I will not rest until you are happy and fucking your brains out with a dashing young man. I mean, look at you: you're cute as a button, you have brains in your head and marvelous tits that go out to here. How has this not happened for you yet?" Good question, Brian. I DON'T KNOW.
  
  
• You spend 2 hours crashed out on Debbie's couch watching The Incredible Mr. Limpet, starring Don Knotts as a fish.
  
  
• You finally go home with the very true intention of reading for class. Instead, you sack out on the couch with your roommate (who is hungover from a completely separate event), eat pizza, and watch bad MTV reality shows and The Office On Demand. You develop a school-girl crush on Jim.

No, it doesn't star Bowie. You're thinking of the other Labyrinth

Kelly and I went to see Pan's Labyrinth last night. You guys, WOW.



I cannot express how well done this film is. It so deserves the Oscars it is up for. Most especially that Best Makeup award, because damn, everything looks SO REAL. You'll know what I mean when you see the movie (which, go now, go!) because there were parts that had Kelly and I just cowering and shielding our eyes. And people, we are not squeamish girls.

It's creepy, dark, fantastic, beautiful, suspenseful, all of these things. Go see it.

You Make the Call III

Totally hypothetical, of course. This is not based on anything that actually happened, or something that practically made laser beams shoot out of my eyes in white-hot rage. And any relation to actual events that transpired recently is purely coincidental. Obviously.

PART 1

If you had a problem or concern with the way a coworker manages their time, say, the way they multitask between working on their normal duties (for the sake of argument and clarity let's call it "your publication") and a company-wide, once a year project (again for argument and clarity, "the video project"), would you:

a.) Talk to said coworker about it, expressing your concerns and perhaps offering suggestions on ways to manage time better,

b.) Talk to the coworker's manager about it, again expressing concerns and offering suggestions for better performance, or

c.) Go behind both the coworker's and coworker's manager's back and over their heads (quite the contortionist!) to speak to the CFO and head of department allowing for a whisper-down-the-lane effect to take place and the word to trickle back to the coworker that you think they are a shitty employee and unable to handle their workload.

Now before you answer please factor in the following:

1) During the past year's "video project," at no time did the coworker miss a deadline on "the publication."

2) The "video project" is about, oh, 9 MONTHS AWAY, making this, in effect, a pointless issue to bring up right here and now.

3) Your own work lately has been found lacking, making the fact that you're butting your nose into coworker's work terribly ironic.

So what would you do?

PART 2

Let's pretend, just for fun, that the event above actually did happen with answer "C" in place. Of course it didn't but let's just pretend that it did, and that you're the coworker that was spoken about in such a matter. Would you:

a) Confront the coworker, calling them out on it, making for an even more tense working relationship than you already have,

b) Speak to your managers about the issue, who then in turn speak about it to the CFO defending you and your work ethic, but the coworker basically continues in his pointless passive aggressive micro-managing of you,

c) Move up you career counseling appointment at the graduate school you're currently attending and buy the Sunday Papers scouting for possibilities of new employment,

d) Both b and c, or

e) All of the above.

These questions are purely for sociological and statistical research of course. So please, be honest.

Everybody to the limit!

QK and Becky are on their way here as I type and let me just tell you: I can not sit still, I am so excited.

Of course, the sucktacular part of it is that I have class tonight. So I can't go with them to see a Snow and Holmes perform improv magic tonight. And I have to work tomorrow. I wanted to take off, but logistically, given where we are with the schedule and blah blah blah too much of a headache-cakes. BUT! Tomorrow night, after work? Happy hour, my friends. And it's going to be amazing. I am all set, ready, excited for a night of tipsy fun. You should join us.

The Seven of Cups

This is a very spiritual card. It is a card of dreaming and possiblities. Tell the querent to interpret or write down their dreams, because they will find it easy to connect with their spirit guides and will themselves be experiencing some psychic visions. There will be many choices in the coming year, so tell the querent to prepare for changes, which in turn will take them to a new learning curve. Positive things are ahead, so looking forward to these experiences will open a new chapter in their life. The true answer to the question lies within. Await new beginnings.


Make of this what you will.

One more music related thing

To the bass player in the Philadelphia Orchestra, last row, 2nd chair from stage: You are smoking hot and need to CALL ME, please. You were impossibly cute via the Doc's opera glasses and of course we all know how sexy talent is. Which you obviously have. So, yeah. Call me.

Music Recommendation Monday

I was a little leery when Seth invited me out to a show at the First Unitarian Church last night. Generally, Seth and I don't have the same taste in music, or at least I didn't think we did. But I figured, hell, it's a Sunday night and I don't have anything planned and while Seth and I don't share exactly the same taste in music, I'm fairly eclectic and I might be surprised.

Well, I was. Not only was this totally not the type of music I thought Seth was into, it was also really good. So I would like to take a moment to recommend Emily Haines for those of you who might be feeling a little bored with their music choices. It's music that's perfect for a dreary rainy Monday too. Yes, I just doled out $9.99 to iTunes for her entire album. It was worth it. I am also being tempted to buy Metric's stuff too.

While I'm up, I'd also like to recommend The Sounds to you, another band that Seth introduced me to. Much different sound, much more 80s pop-ish and way fun. I was totally seat dancing in Seth's car last night, doing the shoulder shake and everything.

Buzz

After I settled down at the table, he turned to me and buzzed me on my arm with his electronic voice simulator. Zzzzzzz it vibrated against my forearm, zzzzzz. I looked up at him. That big open mouth smile, eyebrows raised like teasing child who knows he’s just been caught, but doesn’t care. Same old Doc.

So yes. I saw the Doc last night, for the first time since the operation. This is why I couldn’t be sick, why I had been over drugging myself for two days and pumping myself up with obscene amounts of vitamin C. And, obviously, it worked because I was sniffle free, felt fine, and was able to go. Let me just tell you: the Doc is AWESOME. He looks fabulous --- with the exception of him being mute you would never know he’s been through such a taxing surgery. "If you’re going to pull that ‘don’t squander illness’ schtick," I told him, "you’re going to have to work much harder on looking sickly." He just laughed at me, pressing the button on his simulator to make it buzz at me, the way you would buzzer someone who says a forbidden word in Taboo or ding someone in that improv game.

He looks great, has gotten really good at using the voice simulator and his spirits are high. But he’s not out of the woods yet. In the coming weeks he begins toxic radiation that is going to be quite taxing on him –- 2 hours a day, everyday for six weeks. And due to the nature of the radiation, there’s still concern about his esophagus closing up. So the prayers now are for the radiation to go smoothly and not cause problems with his eating.

Again, thank you all so much for putting up with all my cancer talk and depresso nonsense in the past months. But my friend is doing well, and I am happy. So thank you, for all those thoughts and prayers.

P.S. – I have "Peace" buttons for those who want them. See me and we’ll figure out a way to get them to you.

He's got radioactive blood, you know

SPOTTED: On Montgomery Ave. in Ardmore, around 5:30pm, SPIDERMAN waiting for the bus.

Yes, you heard me. SPIDERMAN. In full Spidey suit and everything. I mentioned this over at Miss J's, but man, things have got to be pretty bad in the superhero circuit if you're taking SEPTA. Or maybe he just ran out of web sling stuff. In any event, I feel like we should have offered our Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman a ride or something. Poor guy.

How to cure the cold you don't yet have

I woke up this morning with that pre-sick feeling. You know the one I'm talking about. The one where you feel mostly fine except for that icky back of the throat coating and your left nostril is slightly runny. You're not sick yet, but you know you're incubating something and it's just quietly biding its time before it rages on you.

Here's the thing: I CANNOT be sick right now. I have plans for this weekend, very happy plans of which I will tell you about afterwards and I can't be the slightest bit sick at ALL in order for them to carry out. Yeah, I know that sounds vague. But trust me, I am not going if I have the merest hint of a sniffle.

So. I am marshalling my forces. I woke up, stood up, realized I was about to host a virus in my system and said, "Oh, HELL no."

I started by taking some Benadryl Cold and Allergy, since it was the only cold medicine in the apartment. This proved to be a mistake since Benadryl, even the non-drowsy formula, knocks me out. I forgot about that. Once I got to the office I took some Airborne and drank some tea. For lunch, I ate soup and drank Vitamin Water. I picked up some real cold medicine on my lunch break and I've taken a dose. Now I'm sitting here sucking on a Halls Defense and sipping orange juice, even though I hate orange juice (for real, I have no idea why since I love oranges). Tonight, dinner will consist of more soup, another dose of cold medication and probably some Emergen-C. To be followed by a laying in bed and reading of library books and then an early bedtime. Last night I conked out at 10pm while watching old episodes of Carnivale with Kelly and Chris. At the time, I blamed it on the fact that I was tired from the gym. But now I'm worried that it was the impending cold, which will not come to fruition thankyouverymuch, that made me so tired. In any event, I am all about the preventive medicine. Keep your fingers crossed that I nip this in the bud before it actually happens. In the meantime, got any home remedies for me?

The Beginning: 2007

Happy New Year, everyone. More photos here.