Mac

After years of being a droid user, I woke up this morning and my phone was completely dead. Granted, it was so antiquated that the guy in the cell phone store laughed at it (WHATEVER, THAT THING SERVED ME WELL) and it did have one of those shift keyboards that made it extra bulky. I may have needed a new phone for awhile. I may have had to consistently delete updates because the phone couldn't handle them. Whatever.

Most technology I have was given to me in pity by my boyfriend. At work, as a communications manager for a nonprofit,  I am so up on every update, every new Adobe product, patches, social media trends, you name it...but in my personal life I just get lazy and don't feel like dealing with it.

I never knew I wanted an iPad until my Dad gave me his old one when he got a new one, and I fell in love. Aside from my nano, I've never been hard core Mac or PC or Droid or anything. But, dude, I really, really love that iPad. 

So, when it came time to buy a new phone, I kind of really wanted the iPhone but only because I love my iPad so much. So I got the iPhone 5. And have spent the last four hours playing with it. 

To be fair, I took a break to go see Elysium. Not bad. Entertaining. 

The whole point of this post was that I wrote it on my new iPhone. You're welcome. Siri, lets party. 

On a Happier Note....

 

On a (much better) note, my girl over at Charm(ing) City Style put together a sexy little blog post just for me! Since she is ridiculously fashionable and super smart, I demanded that she help me pack for the Middle East.

Thanks, CCS! You are the best (dressed).

My Friends Are Awesome

Legs is not the only one sprouting creative all over the web these days. It seems several of my friends are doing some pretty amazing things - from cooking to fashion to devotion to gratitude. I proud of all of them for taking these leaps, and highly recommend that you check them out:

Meet Kat, my former yoga/weight training instructor at my old gym, fellow bartender, and amazing writer friend. I find myself confessing lots of things to her and wanting to hug her all the time. She's my white Oprah. Right now, she's launched a 21-day Gratitude Project, which is pretty impressive. I always forget to be grateful for things. Unless it's yoga pants. I'm usually pretty grateful for those.

Meet Katie, a friend of mine from Girl Scouts/middle school/high school/college (we've known each other for a little while) that lives here in Baltimore and with whom I have recently reconnected. She is always awesomely dressed. She was sporting very fetching accessories during the St. Patrick's Day 5k last Sunday - the only runner in Kate Spade earrings, I'd wager. She's also hilarious. Her "I Love It, Now What?!" posts are excellent tips for wearing super fashionable items.

Meet Sweet Potato and Spice, another lass that I came up with in Annapolis and recently reconnected with here in Baltimore. She's really smart and does things that involve science for a living, but she's also apparently pretty wicked in the kitchen. Pumpkin black bean burgers sound good to me!

Great job, girls, way to keep blogging alive!

A Most Excellent Dinner

First off, you guys all need to go and check out my Book Club girl Legs's blog here. For years, we have all been entertained by Legs's emails which veer so far off-subject that you can't help but read, intrigued and amused. YOU SHOULD START A BLOG, I think we all said. Or we would have, if we could stop laughing. Either way, she did, and it's awesome. 

And now onto the good stuff:

My friend, The Kid, made a pretty awesome dinner last night.

It was a bit of a surreal experience, because The Kid is now currently living in the house owned by his older brother, my bestest Wingman Lee who decided to get married to (the awesome) Hot Curry and move off to the (not quite so awesome? Jury's still out?) city of Salt Lake a year and a half ago. Also now residing in this house, where I spent many a reckless evening drinking vodka and complaining about my life, is my own dear brother. He and The Kid have actually made a lovely home in Lee's absence, and it was quite clean despite what you'd expect from two boys.

I say surreal, because it's always odd to walk into someone's house when they no longer live there, and see all the similarities and differences. The couch is in the same position, but it's not the same couch. The enlarged framed Boardwalk Monopoly card is still on the wall, but now it's opposite an epic picture of a crashing wave that The Kid "found in the shed out back." It's the same house, but it's different.

Anyway, before I get too sentimental, let me go back to the food. The Kid is a freaking fantastic cook, and I'd heard rumors of this fact from my brother who was amazed that cooking involved more than "heating things up." But my pal Emily and I had yet to witness this for ourselves, and so The Kid invited us over last night for one of his delicious meals. And hot damn, did he deliver. 

The Kid made us chicken parmesan. Seems pretty simple, right? I guess, but SOMEHOW IT TASTED MAGICAL. I have no idea how this happened. I was drinking wine the whole time, however, and babbling on about politics so I may have  missed some steps. 

Step one: pour wine. Into plastic glasses. Because we're classy.

The first step to being an excellent cook - get some tattoos. Then de-fat chicken breasts. Mohawk optional but preferred.

Step two: arrange radishes prettily next to panko bread crumbs, prepare dipping procedure. Make sure wine is handy.

Throw that shit in a pan, and brown it for the amount of time it takes Emily to find a parking space, come in, and pour herself a glass of wine. That's a metric measurement.

Stick them in the oven with some magic sauce and some mozzarella cheese on top and bake for the amount of time it takes for all three of us to catch up on gossip and make big plans for the future and drink more wine. Again - metric measurement.

Pull that 'ish out of the oven, cut in  half to test. The Kid says that the proper time to cook chick en and bacon is "until you think it needs just one more minute - that means it's done." Totes brill.

The Kid made us basil panna cotta with strawberries for dessert (NBD, RIGHT?!). Shown here with classy wine glass to prove that The Kid only purchases multi-use materials.

Long story short, it was an incredible dinner, and I had some incredible chicken parm leftovers for lunch today. You know something is good when you can microwave the hell out of it in your crappy work microwave, and it's still so delicious that you  have to stop answering emails at your desk to sit and enjoy the zen moment of cheese, breaded chicken, and marinara. Awesome.

In other news - The Gentleman arrives next week, and we are taking off for his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and from there on to Cancun for 6 days where I can be found lying on the beach reading Ann Patchett and drinking tropical things. Buh-bye.

Also - The Gentleman's family procured us tickets to go to the rodeo in NM. I. Cannot. Wait. Pictures to follow.

Weekly Goals

So I have another blog post almost ready to go that features disgusting bodily processes and also a toot of my own half-marathon horn (WHADDUP, TAKING SIX MINUTES OFF MY PREVIOUS TIME BRINGING MY PR TO UNDER TWO HOURS?!) but first, it seems that one of my brilliant ideas is about to go viral so I'd like to take some credit where credit is due.

A couple of years ago, a group of us (including Legs and Joel) started a weekly email circulating. It usually went out on Mondays, and contained our goal for that week. It started out because some of us (mainly me) had found ourselves (myself) in a bit of a funk and needed to find ways to make life just a little bit better. And sometimes, just doing one small thing, getting one tiny victory, can change your outlook on a whole lot of bigger things that you feel like you can't control.

The idea was simple: pick something, anything, that's totally do-able, and DO IT. You're telling everyone on the email list that you intend to do this thing in this given period of time. There are no consequences for failing to make your weekly goal, except the sheepishness of having to tell x number of people on the thread that you suck at life. Which is pretty good motivation right there.

The goals ranged from "make my bed every morning" to "eating vegetarian all week." They were intangible ("be optimistic") and tangible ("work out for 45 minutes per day"); simple ("tell one person each day that I love him/her") and complex ("clean out my closet: donate clothes I no longer wear, reorganize my shoes, put away winter clothes, etc.").

Lemme tell you, even an accomplishment as small as just making your bed everyday can feel like a victory when you get to report, a week later, that you did it.

Recently, a friend of mine has been in a bit of a funk and so we decided to resurrect this practice. We are back on the weekly goals email and it's actually kind of exciting. Even though most of us are in far better places in our lives, I've found there's always room to say, "What can I do this week that will make my life look/feel/act better?"

For example: this week it was going to the post office. I frigging hate the post office. Joel has a joke, his "one Libertarian joke," as he refers to it:
Guy goes to the store the week before Christmas to buy his mother a gift. The store is mobbed, the lines are long. He finds a gift, waits in line, finally gets to the register, and says to the sales associate, "Wow, you guys are busy!" The sales associate says, "I know, it's been our best week ever!" Guy then goes to the post office to mail the gift.The post office is mobbed, the lines are long. He waits in line, finally gets to the front, and says to the postal worker, "Wow, you guys are busy!" The postal worker grumbles, "I know, worst week ever."

Ha.Thanks, Joel.

So I went to the post office to mail off some stuff that had been sitting around my room, just waiting to be mailed, and let me tell you what a relief it was. Just this one act - this one chore crossed off my list made me feel like I could take on the world. Vacuum my room? DONE! Dust my shoe rack? FINITO. The completion of one annoying, nagging chore can open gateways to cleaning up other areas of your life.

Or it can be a goal like: drink more water. Don't even get me started on health benefits of being well-hydrated, whether you're a runner or not.

I know, aren't I just a bastion of fun these days, all well-hydrated and going to the post office. Fear not, Glitteratis; April and May are already booked to the hilt with batshit crazy fun, including a baby shower, a Broadway play, two weddings, some family events, and (LET US NOT FORGET) my impending #dirtythirty birthday.

But anyway, I just wanted to take full credit for my awesome Weekly Email Update idea before Kid and Lee went off running and making money off of my brilliance.

Next post will be about how I puked again after last weekend's (otherwise totally awesome) half marathon. I know you're excited.

Post-Crisis, Pre-Thirty

Dear Blogging Community Who Patiently Deals With My Oft-Sporadic Posts,

I'm giving you a fair warning.

December is going to be batsh*t crazy.

I looked at my calendar for the month of December, and there are TWO (yes, TWO) days where I have absolutely nothing planned.

And I already turned down a housewarming, a Christmas party, a baby shower, and plans with my own mother because I was starting to feel crazed.

I'm grateful for the busy-ness, of course, and most everything planned is fun. Some is not so much "not fun" as it is sort of "chore-like;" but awesome chores like, "Get international driver's license." That's a pretty sweet chore to have on your list, don'tcha think?

Last night, I had the opportunity to watch the "Monumental Occasion" 40th lighting of the Washington Monument in Mt. Vernon from the newly-erected roof balcony of the building where Donna's used to be before the terrible fire last year. A friend of mine from high school (who is basically awesome) scored invites for herself, The Gentleman, and me. Open bar, catering by Donna's, heaters keeping us all warm, and the best view of the monument in town. Not only that, it was fascinating to be inside the building where they are now renovating so Donna's can reopen post-fire. It's such an old, beautiful building and was thankfully saved from complete destruction. Because this friend is an architecture nerd, we got to learn a lot about the interior of the building and the plans for its future. Also awesome.

In catching up with this friend, she told me that she reads Ye Olde Blog religiously, and how the content change over the years has made her feel like there's a sense of watching transformation. That meant a lot to me.

Three years ago, I was lamenting boy drama and crying about my future onto this blog. Which made it highly readable (and now, highly embarrassing...kind of like having your high school diary published in the yearbook). Now, the high highs and low lows of life seem to have evened out a bit more into a general sense of happiness about life, my blogging gets kind of sporadic.

I once had a guy I dated ask me if I was ever happy (I guess he meant content), would I stop finding things to write about? I guess I like to think that in my happiness, it's not so much that I don't have anything to write about, it's just that I have different things to write about. It's not about failed relationships, career mishaps, and the rocky life of a twentysomething feeling like the victim all the time.

What is this about? Well, I'm still the same emotional, highly neurotic person I always was, my life is just ten times better now. I still cry senselessly in public, embarrassing The Gentleman, and I certainly still do stupid things, like getting a hot stone massage while hungover and sunburned in Vegas.

If there's one thing I could say to the earlier me, to the me that was in years past, it would be this: you will become exactly the person you want to be, for better or worse. You'll make decisions you never thought you'd make, you'll wind up living a life you thought you couldn't have here or now or in the here and now, and above all- you will reclaim that unquenchable thirst for life that drives you to rebuild houses in post-Katrina New Orleans and snorkel with sharks in the Keys. And run a half marathon. And sign up for another.

It's not really a blog about the quarter life crisis anymore (especially because I'm six months away from 30, so damn well better not be!), or about awkward dates and failed jobs, and started and stalled careers. There's nothing to say it won't revert back to any of these things at any time, because - let's face it - the economy means no one's job is safe and I still stare quizzically at The Gentleman trying to figure out where along the line I got so lucky as to land this guy. But it's more than that now. Somewhere in there, when the drama of things that seemed so huge at the time began to fade away and I made decisions that made me feel confident, my real life began. The one I thought I was meant to be living a long time ago. The one it took many twisted paths to find. I think that feeling is universal to anyone who's tripped and stumbled and somehow regained footing. I certainly don't feel like my experience was unique in any way. I'm just the one who wrote about it publicly.

And now my days are filled with running, with working my ass off at a non-profit where I hungrily devour new projects that require me to do things like learn web design and write grants, eating and drinking my way around Baltimore, watching American Horror Story (amazeballs!), planning our trip to Amman and Istanbul, laughing with Book Club and good friends, and spending time with the best guy I have ever been lucky enough to meet.

So yeah, a lot of things have changed. Damn well for the better.

And now, onto December. READYSETGO!

The Cat Might Lose Another Life....

See, Mom?

See how diligent I am being in my posts?!

My mother (the queen of noticing unmade beds, finding crusts of sandwiches hidden under plate rims, and gazing steely-eyed through flimsy statements like, "Of course I am not going to ride around in that Mustang with that boy with the long hair without your explicit permission!") is one of my biggest fans. I get friendly little reminders that she's bored of the content of my blog when I don't update enough. And I listen to her. Because the fans shall have what they want! And, you know, she's my mom. Trump card.

I digress.

So, last night was typical Book Club. 7 pitchers of sangrias, probably thirty plates of tapas, three different desserts. Over the years, we have graduated from the $5 wine tasting to spectacular dinners where we always have to leave exorbitant tips because we (a) are loud, (b) drink so fast the wait staff can't keep up, and (c) due to said drinking, have a tendency to become loud about inappropriate topics.

Yes, we discussed the book last night.

I even made a list of questions prior.

Book Club has SOME structure; a free-for-all it is not.

I digress.

Day Three of training, which meant I was up at 5:45am to go to a weights class at my gym taught by a fabulous fellow writer/bartender/fitness enthusiast. This was especially rough given the aforementioned Book Club Dinner which lasted until about 10pm and throughout which wine flowed freely. But I made it through. My body will most likely revolt tomorrow when I go to strap on Ye Olde Running Shoes and discover I have lost the ability to run. Or, you know, move.

In other news, the cat and I are going to have words. I don't understand his insistence on puking. For years, we coexisted peacefully on this subject with a simple understanding: he puked only on hardwood floors, and only where I could easily locate said puke for ready cleaning. Now, all of the sudden, it seems he wants to puke in secret locations, i.e., wherever my poor roommate Jaunt wishes to set her foot.

This has caused her to become very upset when she's already running late for work and has to wash cat puke off of her foot.

This is not bearing well on her already tentative relationship with the cat, who thinks he is incredibly cute and can do disgusting things willy-nilly and expect no repercussions. He and I have had harsh words before regarding his complete inability to think about others. He will usually behave for a day or two, and then, WHAM, puddle of puke on the table by the front door, or WHAM, hairball on the mail.

I have tried to make excuses for the cat. It's spring, he is shedding his winter coat, this causes him to puke more. He dislikes the new food I bought. He is having mental distress due to the federal deficit. I am running out of explanations.

Soon, I'll have to tell him: Jaunt grew up on a farm where animals were not pets; they were working, contributing members of a whole. If he doesn't get his act together, there will be consequences.

That sounds like Jaunt is going to sell and/or consume the cat. I know she would do neither. There is, however, a risk that she might sell and/or consume me, and I am not risking this for the damn cat.

Straighten up and fly right, cat, or we're both going to suffer the consequences. Maybe no more tuna juice for you, hmmm? Or butt slaps. (Show me a cat who doesn't live for a good slap on the butt, and I'll show you a dead one. Seriously. They love it.)

In other news, the big debate this week is whether to go to AVAM's Flicks on the Hill tomorrow night or to see Harry Potter. I am excruciatingly divided. I love FOTH, and it's the closest to camping I'm gonna get this summer. But I'm also jonesing to see the final HP. I've read all the books, seen every movie, and must admit that I am looking forward to this with not a slight bit of trepidation only because when those final credits roll...that's it. Then there's nothing to look forward to until Twilight craps out another glittery sensation or Hunger Games finally releases a trailer. (And both, believe me, will be high points for me and my affinity for young-adult-literature-turned-film-sensation.)

In other news, there's a call out for a short story contest for the Boston Review. I'm tempted. We shall see. Earlier attempts at stunted fiction (as I began to see the short story genre) were not so successful. Then again, a contest creates accountability and a deadline. We shall see.

In other news, 35 days until vacation. I totally purchased the Living Social deal ($27 for a limo ride to BWI from the city - WHAT A STEAL) and so have already raised the bar on the expectations for said vacation. After all, if you can't party with class...I don't know where I was headed with that turn of phrase, but WHATEVER, A LIMO IS SUPER CLASSY. And it sure beats bargaining with friends for a ride to the airport. Oh, the promises I've made in exchange for such...

Words and Things

I am currently reading three books. This is not uncommon.

The first is the current Book Club book, which happens to be "Sweet Valley Confidential." Say what you will; those of us who grew up on Francine Pascal's fairytale stories of blonde twins in Southern California were chomping at the bit for this latest incarnation which sees both girls in their late twenties, Jessica already married and divorced, Elizabeth living in New York City and working as an off-Broadway reviewer. The writing is absolutely, undeniably horrible. Jessica prefaces every sentence with "Like," and Pascal seems to have schooled herself in the Harlequin School of Literature when it comes to cliches and descriptions. The story is predictable, the characters laughable. But it's perfect summer reading because it plays on nostalgia and, well, it's completely brainless. The kind of thing you can easily process after a three-martini happy hour.

The second is Junot Diaz's "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." And it is utterly fantastic; hands-down one of the best books I've read all year. This book has been following me around for years- literally. I was gifted a paperback copy, and it sat on my nightstand from 2008-2010. I finally donated it in a fit of ridding my life of things that made me feel like a failure: unread literature being chief among them. Almost immediately afterwards, Joel gifted me a second-hand hard copy of the book, and I decided that the Universe really wanted me to read it. It had come highly recommended, but for some reason it was just one of those books (like my copy of "A Moveable Feast" - another potential life failure on my part, unless I get cracking soon) that sat around and never got opened. Eschewed for a new Jane Green or the Book Club book I was supposed to begin three weeks ago.

The third is my lunch break book, "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. It's a delightful piece of nonfiction that I nibble away at in thirty-minute increments, when I don't have errands to run or have to work through lunch, that is. I embarked on my own Happiness Project a year or so ago, and now find clean delight in principles I'd come up with on my own that I see reflected in Rubin's research. Reading this book now is a reminder to return to the constant practice of those principals, for which I'm grateful. If I had tried to read this book in the past, I fear it would have struck me as preachy or, worse, unrealistic. But having carved my own path to some steady flow of happiness in my life has opened my mind to other peoples' journeys as well. Sure, I might have thought, Rubin has the resources to go about studying her own happiness: she's not a twenty-something bartender laid off from her freelance job due to the media outlet's pending bankruptcy. She probably even has luxuries like "health insurance" and a retirement plan. What audacious wealth! Those years are, blissfully, part of my past now. It's a little easier to contemplate happiness when you're involved in a job that brings you fulfillment, and living a lifestyle that blends much better with your personality.

I go back and forth on the subject of writing my own book. Part of me wholly believes that I lack the life skills and determination to come out with a solid body of work at this point, and part of me sees this as procrastination. The things I learned in my twenties could certainly fill a book, and a funny one at that, but humor requires a certain amount of distance from life experience. I am just now coming around to the idea that decisions I made at 22, 23, 24 are downright comical in how uninformed and dramatic they seem now. But to parse through all of that and come up with a solid plot line requires a little more tying together of loose ends; something that I'm still dealing with.

I will say, I am no fiction writer. Real life is too rich, too amazing, too eerily coincidental for me to make things up. Certainly, I see a definitive value in dressing up the truth as fiction (because, let's face it, I'm also a consummate over-exaggerator-slash-storyteller), and I have a feeling that at some point whatever work I come up with will be a curious blend of the two, if that's possible. I fiddle around with word choices, with story ideas, but nothing yet has compelled me to sit down and churn out a solid book.

I've been told multiple times to just compile all the emails I write for trivia and turn them into a book, but I fear that my audience would be...two hundred individuals living in or around Baltimore City. Which is nothing to sneeze at, but in terms of royalties...not ideal.

Rewind

There are days, like today, when I wake up, and suddenly realize that I have been living here for four years.

This may not sound like a legendary announcement.

Allow me to explain.

Routine. Alarm, gym, coffee, shower, throwing lunch in a bag, out the door, traffic, parking, rushing, booting, reading, answering, calling, reading, answering, calling, reading, answering, calling, meeting, eating, re-booting, reading, reading, reading, answering, answering, calling, meeting, meeting, reading, reading, traffic, parking, snack, cleaning, errands, dinner, reading, bed, STOP. REPEAT. You get caught up in this cycle.

Of course there are breaks. There are dinners, luxurious mornings of sleeping in, long runs, delicious treats, family, friends, boyfriend, cats, breakfasts, lunches, happy hours, films, books, festivals, travel. These are the things you remember the most, however, and the other days just seemed to get sucked into the tornado of routine, if it can be described as such.

The things I remember most are high highs and low lows. The everyday mundane tends to get swept under the rug, and it is moments like these that I am eternally grateful that I keep journals diligently. If not for this compulsion, we would all be devoid of gems such as this:

July 23, 2003
Denmark, Maine
Summer Job - camp counselor
2011 comments in italics

7:56am- Wake up.
8:00am - Breakfast. (Remember the days when you could wake up and be somewhere in four minutes? Like college. Strong prerequisite: not giving a shit what you look like when you roll in somewhere.)
9:00am - Stables, watched K8 (my nickname for one of my British friends, who is still a good friend of mine, and whom I still refer to as K8) ride new horse.
9:30am - Bunk inspections. Hadn't done them in over a week, but higher powers finally caught on and confronted me at breakfast. Foiled.
10:00am- Cleaned our room. Discovered beds are slightly more bearable with only one mattress instead of two. (Ahhhh, camp beds. For an entire summer, we lived on squishy, tissue-thin mattresses on military cots. With no air conditioning.) Got clean sheets for once - am tired of sleeping in own filth. (I went through a Bridget Jones-phase of writing in my journals. This lasted approximately four and a half years, and immensely entertained me.)
10:30am - Nap. Hungover from drinking in the C______ House (a run-down shack further down in the woods where all of the counselors snuck off to after the kids were asleep to drink Natty Lite and listen to music on someone's shitty boombox. Totally the stuff of horror movies.) Must make 34 costumes. Am very stressed. Solution - nap. I miss the cat. (I was in charge of costumes and set design for the camp's theater program. Sushi, who was only about a year old at the time, lived with my parents that summer. I think they still miss him.)

Someday...I shall post more journal entries. There is a statute of limitations in what I feel is appropriate to post, but I will admit that the Bridget Jones years are points of hilarity in a long history of melodramatic journal entries that read like Danielle Steele novels. (My mother once pointed out that my writing - MY EARLIER WRITING, I WOULD LIKE TO CLARIFY - was reminiscent of Danielle Steele. I am still not over this comment. I may need therapy.)

Journalling has been my constant compulsion. I once made Snap promise that, in the event of my untimely death, she was to immediately round up any and all journals in my estate (as if I have anything that would constitute an "estate" beyond a car lacking working shocks and two fairly brain-damaged cats) and lock them away. She - and only she - had full permission to weed through, decide what would be too humiliating for public visage, and post the remaining entries online. If she could find any that aren't too humiliating, that is. I have a tendency to...well...have literary diarrhea in my journals. Probably about that caliber of writing, too.

Birthday, Races, and On Being Plugged In

My mom told me I need to update my blog.

Thanks, Mom.

So, I know I made tall promises about blogging more often but then, you know, my birthday week happened and pretty much everything shifted to unimportant as I rang in 29. It was a delightful birthday week. Dinner at the Prime Rib; kayaking with Josh, Lee, and all significant others; a crab feast following said adventure; and then karaoke where Joel serenaded me with Billy Joel's Vienna. A week later, dinner with the family. So many birthday activities did I have, in fact, that my boyfriend asked if perhaps we had segued from celebrating my 29th to pre-gaming for my 30th. Har.

I got two very exciting new toys for my birthday: a gorgeous digital camera to replace the old one that had decided to take only blurry pictures and was causing large amounts of frustration for me, and a new phone. The new phone brought me out of the Zack Morris Era and into the Droid renaissance. I can Facebook, tweet, blog, Foursquare, Google shop, Groove Shark, Pandora, and participate in a variety of other dangerous social media activities from wherever, whenever.

Watch out, world.

So, with my new toys, look for more updates. I really have no excuses now. I could blog on the Circulator, tweet from the gym. I am Connected.

In other news, picked up my race number and timing chip for the Survivor Harbor 7 tomorrow morning. A 7-mile race will be my longest to-date, and I'm a little nervous about it, mostly because it's "only" supposed to be 92 degrees tomorrow. I hate running in the heat. I just wilt. I will say, however, that any race that includes $10-for-an-hour-of-open-bar at packet pick-up is one I want to run.

In other news, now that the ridiculousness of March-April-May is over, I am ready for some downtime this summer. I feel as though from St. Patrick's Day to Vegas to Snap's wedding to my birthday, it's just been a non-stop flood of events. Spring always seems to be that way, though.

And now, thanks to technology, I can attempt to be much better at staying in touch.

You're welcome, Mom.

Sumsumsumma Time and Blogging

Are we already upon the eve of Memorial Day weekend?

How did that happen?

Was it not just threatening to snow?

I think I lost a month or two in there due to complete and total crappiness of weather. I mean, really. April showers, ya, ok, no worries, but SERIOUSLY. I wondered if the latitude of Baltimore had shifted slightly to that of...Seattle.

Hand me a mojito and set me up on my rooftop deck with a book, I am READY.

So, in talking with Lee and various other peoples whose opinions I both respect and often desperately want to hear (because they are hilarious and on-point), it has been decided that I have become entirely too lackadaisical about blogging. Gone are the days of juicy gossip and dating stories, behind me are the endless nights of partying and living the young, high life of Baltimore.

OR ARE THEY?

Mostly I stopped writing about that stuff for three primary reasons:
1. I got a real job. Aside from issues of professionalism, I simply don't have time to be trawling about on the Interwebs all day.
2. I re-assessed the content of the blog and decided I was tired of being responsible for representation of my friends, family, and self. It's a lot to bear. If you get it right, you're golden. If you get it wrong, it's a lot of undoing and apologizing and backtracking. In the end, it just wasn't worth it to me to be constantly assessing what is and is not appropriate content for the Internet. It became too much of a hassle, too much of a burden on my sensitive soul.
3. Refer to #1- I started pursuing other things. Running, working, etc. Blogging kind of fell off of my plate when I decided to write only for myself.

But at Snap's wedding, a lot of stories about the blogging days of yore got tossed around. Those were some crazy years. A lot of them fun, most of them frazzled with that crazy electric energy of being young and directionless and la vie boheme and all of that crap.

My life, I'm sorry to say, is far less exciting now. Thank God. I don't think my sensibilities- or my liver- could handle that level of manic craziness anymore.

Not that I am entirely mellow in my old age of almost-29.

Not that my life still isn't crazy.

Just...different crazy.

So, once again, I'm tasked with finding a balance of writing outlet, drawing in you as an audience, and maintaining professionalism in my work life and enough privacy in my personal life. It's a juggling act, constantly, but maybe one I should pick up again.

I'm thinking that certain statutes of limitations may be up on certain stories, and it might be time to flesh out things from the past that are long gone and dead and buried, but still have immense comedic literary value were I to resurrect them.

Such as...the most awkward date I've ever been on.

I think I might start with that.

Tweet This

For as media-savvy as I pretend to be, I pretty much never update my Twitter. Primarily because my phone is circa 1995 (OK, 2008, but seriously...) and I can't update on some new-fangled smart phone.

UNTIL! Nickle taught me how to text in my Tweets. So here we go. My third attempt at Twitter.

Follow me @NewGlitterati. I will try to keep up the hilarity.

Why Lee Is The Best Ever

This is an example of the kinds of emails I send to Lee:

Subj: Are we still friends?
I had a dream/panic attack last night that I lost my job, got really, really fat and that all my friends and family decided to break up with me at once on the terms of me being a silly, impractical, and terrible person. This is what I think about sometimes. No wonder I am crazy.

PS: are you going to the dinner thingy on Sat?

The best part? He responded in a most reassuring manner that being silly and impractical are things he considers to be excellent qualities in a person and therefore part of the reason we are friends. Lee is still one of my most favorite people, despite the fact that he apparently loves his girlfriend more than he loves me- something I have come to terms with because sometimes I love his girlfriend more than I love him too. And he is one of my most favorite people not even because he calmly engages in my attention-seeking behavior by responding as though I were making some logical, reasonable argument.

AND I have already purchased his Christmas present, and I am so excited by it because I believe I have topped what I got him last year (an xkcd tie to outwardly display his inner geekitude), and I even believe it might be more geeky. I figure, I am a rather emotionally high-maintenance friend, so I might as well buy affection with awesome Christmas presents.

Who Sent You?

Recent Visitors:
Baltimore, MD
Washington DC
Buffalo, NY
Lutherville Timonium, MD
Annapolis, MD
Trondheim, Sor-trondelag, Norway
Northwood, New Hampshire
Odenton, MD
Arlington, MA
Moorestown, NJ
Fairfax, VA
Lisboa, Portugal
Bromley, UK
Saint Charles, Illinois
Ithaca, NY
Fort Worth, TX

Some of you came from:

Trendy, Philosophical Meanderings

Renovations in the Land of Pleasant Living

Your preferred search engines:
#1- Google
#2- Google.co.uk (Thanks, my European contingency!)
#3- Yahoo
#4- AOL.

(Surprisingly no BING.)

You left me for:

Despite his best efforts...

Where codes collide.

Trashy, ugly queens.

You Found Me

Here are search terms from viewers who wound up here while seeking...perhaps not me, but that's what they found anyway.

AP Essay Grading rubric art
LGBT glitterati
glitterati baton rouge
got a vasectomy
that jaunt be the sh**
the avett brothers
Drama Glitterati Party
Glitterati's Pizza
cutaway earth grading rubric photos
is Glitterati a place in new york?
glitterati blog
new york glitterati
new orleans sweat bands and their meanings
glitterati dinner theater

I am thinking of opening a bowling alley/roller rink/coffee house/martini bar/used book store/music venue/art gallery featuring all of the above search terms as themes/decor/stock. Or...I'd invite you into my head because that right there is probably a fairly accurate description of what my thought processes look like at any given moment. Throw a bunch of fairy lights on everything and call it a day.

This Is Why I Will Never Be An Adult

Clean ALL the things?

Hyperbole and a Half. Current Obsession.

Meh.

CATALANO: Um...so....your new blog format?

GLITTERATI: Yessum?

CATALANO: Well, it's great.....

GLITTERATI: But?

CATALANO: Well...it's just....kind of....a little bit......

GLITTERATI: Cluttered? Hard to read?

CATALANO: Um, well, kind of. Yeah.

GLITTERATI: Lee said the same thing. Dammit.

My Life Would Suck (Without You)

Oh, Kelly Clarkson. I have the deepest of love for you, ever since you graced us with "A Moment Like This" while Justin "I'm Totally Not Gay Because I Got Married To A Woman" Guarini stood by with his perfect 'fro and his perfect gap between his perfect teeth to smile you onward towards your pop career.

I digress. That was an aside, believe it or not.

The point of this blog update was to announce the reinstatement of @NewGlitterati's Twitter account. I canceled it awhile back because, well, it just seemed like one more thing. Like honestly, I already have an entire blog dedicated to my mindless musings...who the heck wants to follow my mindless musings throughout the day? To be honest, I never really got the point of Twitter. Facebook I could get on board with, for some reason, but Twitter....it was just one more account to check, one more log-in, one more thing to update. It's possible I will reach this level of frustration again, but since I've been cleaning house and shaping up around here (did you notice the changes? No? Really? Take another look. Go on...I'll give you a moment. No, really. Seriously? Wow. Come back and read this blog after a good 8 hours of sleep and we'll discuss this again. SERIOUSLY?!) I figured I'd get back on the multi-directional bandwagon of technology.

So yeah, you know, follow me or whatever or don't. It's fine by me. I can't promise anything staggeringly funny or different, but I can promise that at some point I'll most likely post something I'll later regret, I'll frequently mention weird inside jokes, and I'll probably talk a lot about food and drinks and movies and music since those are four of my Most Favorite Things and things to which I dedicate a lot of time. I'll try to be good and actually keep up with it this time.

But seriously, I thought I'd slip through the changes to the blog and just not say anything which, in retrospect, was a little rude. Those of you who have been coming here for years temporarily freaked out wondering if you'd somehow stumbled onto the wrong blog. It's sort of like when you come home for the summer after college and discover- gasp- that your family has converted your room into, say, a guest bedroom (or that your younger brother has hijacked it, boxed up all your stuff, painted it a different color, and moved in- NOT THAT THIS STILL BOTHERS ME OR ANYTHING) and you feel a little bereft at having been left out of the decision-making process.

I'm sorry, Glitteratis. But if I stared at that blank white page for one more second....it's had the same layout since inception (NOT the movie...) in March of 2008. 2.5 long years we've had here together, eh? Anyway....

The changes are not permanant and it may take awhile before I find a layout that I (and you, dear readers) can really feel at home in. But I liked this one for the meantime. A little cozy, no? Kind of makes you want a cup of tea and a cookie, eh?

Mmm...cookie.

On this lovely Wednesday evening, I am enjoying a glass of Martin Codax tempranillo in a (very loud) cafe and tempting myself with the idea of something sweet.

Movie I watched last night: Happy Go Lucky. Loved it. Took me awhile to place Sally Hawkins until I remembered that she'd guest starred on several episodes of Little Britain.

Welcome back, Glitteratis. Settle in. Have a glass of wine. Or a cookie. Or both! It's all fine here!

Oh, and follow me or whatever.

Agony Auntie

I have an intense desire to be Carolyn Hax. Or at least tap into her divinely creative and intuitive EQ.

I mean, I can't sort out my own interpersonal relationships for crap, but I would love to have a go at someone else's! Up for it? Email me at thenewglitterati@gmail.com and we'll see where it goes.

Forthcoming: more on the Happiness Project.

Stay tuned.

Unearth

Mercury retrograde unearthed archived postings on this blog.

1,214 pages, to be exact.

And that's just up until about a year ago, which was the last time I archived the blog.

Oy.

two years ago:


"Is this how this whole thing is supposed to work? This whole dating thing? Because if it is, I'm done. I'm done. This is exhausting and pointless."


Like not everything in your life can fall apart at once, right?

I wound up at a karaoke bar singing 4 Non Blondes and imbibing more sake than a Tokyo wedding.


At which point Snap and I had a discussion: sometimes it’s just not about them. Sometimes, it’s just about art. And ourselves. Mostly ourselves. But sometimes art.


But it's more than that. Ending a relationship is always fraught with difficulty, no doubt, but when someone moves out there is a certain feeling of monumental failure that is pervasive and all-encompassing.



I will say, in retrospect, that the burning down of Metropolitan opened up an entire avenue of events that would not have happened otherwise.

one year ago:

They say the way out of any life crisis; be it when you're twelve, twenty one, twenty seven, or eighty four; is a plan.

In your catalog of losses,
You cannot count yourself as one.

We were only there for one drink before it was last call, and at this point everyone was ready to head home. As we were walking out, I felt a pair of strong arms stop me and pull me back, and I found myself face-to-face with a very unconvincing drag queen."You are so pretty," s/he whispered. "I love your earrings. Wherever did you get them?"

The fact that Jaunt once let "somebody" (i.e. a charismatic male) call her "Jill" for three years is unastonishing.

"You look tired." (Which translates to: you look like a big bag of crap.)

Let me interject here by saying this: I am the most highly-functioning depressed person in the world.

I very strongly believe that when you are open and ready for change in your life, opportunities and ideas present themselves to you in ways you may not have anticipated.

Today:

I simply want to enjoy this happy, busy, interesting life for awhile.