the weekend of being social pt. 2

well i dodged the land of the dead bullet. i should have seen that one coming, i'm slipping in my old age. she was a no on the batman begins front, so we agreed on the hotness & mrs. smith. it was like alias on the big screen and i loved every minute of it. the creepy mrs. smith didn't even bother me that much. vince vaughn was classic. we got to see the RENT trailer again AND one for the 40 year old virgin. i smiled a lot. it was 96 degrees on the ride home. josh rouse has a beautiful voice. i bought a lounge chair. my sunglasses are hot. i guess i'm done with the desire for hermit status, for right now. this was one of my favorite weekends ever. life is good.

smiling

i'm not sure which is more disturbing, the promo for TLC's the boy whose skin fell off or super-size she. both for very different reasons.

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K: i got high tonight.
me: with your mother?!
K: no! seriously, you're the third person who asked me that.

a 2 hour 3-way phone call with 2 of the funniest girls i've ever met is a great way to drift off to sleep.

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me: did someone remake...
lil' sis: roxette's "listen to your heart"?
me: yes!
lil' sis: yes.
me: spooky.

i love that she can do that. five minutes back into town, and she can do that.

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bewitched was okay. and to be honest, that's being generous. and let's be realistic here, i love hilary duff and mandy moore movies. so if i'm blah on a movie like bewitched, then something must be wrong. i did like will, he had some great lines, but aside from that nothing really seemed to work.

we did get to see the RENT trailer on the big screen, that i guess was worth the price of the ticket. the music started while the screen was still black and i yelled over to my sister. and by yell i mean a loud whisper because if you know me, i'm not the loudest talker in the world. but as soon as i said her name, she knew what was up. we were both terribly excited to see that.

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jules and i are doing the movie thing later today, my fingers are crossed for batman begins. then it's back home to dive into the several hours of degrassi seasons 1-4 that i have waiting for me on the DVR.

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it's been wicked hot here the last few days. 90-95 degrees and very humid. i love my flip flops more than life itself. that is all.

1 day in

after having my DVR for just 1 day, i am beginning to fear the complete and total end of what little social life i had left. true, i've been homebound for a month now do to the surgery and recovery, so any passes on social outings were more out of necessity and less out of a general lack of desire. but now that i'm almost back on my feet i feel like this thing could become my new go to excuse for passing on spending time with people who don't work from a script.

yesterday i hooked up the lil' DVR and looked for instructions on how to use it. no instructions? what? surely there's more to it than just selecting what you want and hitting record. surely there isn't. and thus began my descent into madness, well this latest mutation of it to be a little more honest. i recorded the new real world while watching something else. then watched the real world. when it finished, after successfully skipping through all the commercials i realized i missed the family guy. so i rewound the family guy AND futurama and watched both shows. at this point my mind was almost completely blown.

now with just the touch of a button i can get all caught up on the final season of angel, do the degrassi thing, watch some QAF, along with the episodes of kate & allie and moonlighting i have waiting for me.

wow, my life just detoured from sad to tragic in under 20 hours. and with 40 or so degrassi episodes on deck i'm well on my way to achieving the hermit status i've sought out for years now. score.

brought to you by the letter D

i've been kicking around the idea of jumping on the DVR bandwagon for a few months now. i know all the cool kids have TiVo, but a DVR was a much cheaper route for me. there really was no reason not to get it. the only thing really stopping me is that i procrastinate even the dumbest of things. then i saw the commercial for the degrassi marathon that's running all weekend. seasons 1-4! getting us ready for the new season that starts in july. i was sold. i called, ordered it, and was out the door to pick up my box. and with showtime free i can get all caught up on QAF as well. just like my hero kia. hotness.

on my big journey out i heard the new damien rice single, unplayed piano. i love it. just the sound of his voice sends me floating in the clouds. i hear him and i start picturing mini movies in my mind, or pretending that i'm drifting off to sleep while relaxing in a hammock in a big back yard in the middle of summer. then i remembered i was driving so i figured that closing my eyes wasn't such a good idea. but the song is great. word is it's not on the upcoming new cd of his that he's said will be "darker", but it's what's playing now. he was pretty heavy when ms. k and i saw him last year, a lot heavier than what the cd sounds like. needless to say ms. k was a little troubled by the loudness.

i'm not dead yet

i took G with me to lisa's wedding. never one to turn down free food and an open bar, she was in. i felt a little odd going to a wedding that was heavily populated with the people that i work with, still being on medical leave. G was of very little help when i asked her if it was weird that i was there since i haven't been at work since mid-may. "yeah, kinda," was her response. after the first awkward ten minutes i told G that it didn't really matter what anyone else thought, i wasn't going to miss out on lisa's wedding.

the wedding and reception were both held outside on one of lisa's good friend's property. their back yard was bigger than the neighborhood i live in. i've always wanted to go to an outdoor wedding, so that was a bonus. she had a huge white tent set up in the middle of the yard with lilies and candles everywhere. G kept going on about how beautiful everything was. it really didn't even look like we were outside. i told her it looked like we were at a southern wedding, at least what i have in my mind as what a southern wedding would look like. lots of white, candles, flowers, and a warm breeze. we later decided that it was a scene right out of my best friend's wedding. lisa arrived by limo, making her big entrance. in typical lisa fashion she was about twenty minutes late. they stood by the lake and said their vows, very short but probably the prettiest wedding i've ever witnessed.

as i walked up to lisa to congratulate her she asked me if i was dying. i informed her that i wasn't aware that i was, if i was. she said that D called her crying telling her that the doctors still didn't know what was wrong with me. ever the drama queen D was worried that i was dying. i think she was more worried that i wouldn't be coming back to work. i just laughed and told her that i would be back eventually.

everyone at the wedding had a partner. the two guys parking cars referred to one another as, "my partner." the djs did the same. G asked me if it was a gay wedding, i assured her it was not. she asked me if i would start introducing her as my partner and i said sure. we kept cracking jokes about it for the rest of the night. we brought up our plans to wed that we made last summer at P's party. we decided that gifts weren't enough, so we'd have to charge admission to our reception since we could really use the cash. i asked D if she'd pay to attend our reception and she laughed it off. for some reason she didn't take us too seriously.

G fell in love with the food table. she kept going on and on about how nice it was. she's an event coordinator/catering manager. she said that her place of employment would never think to do something that nice for anyone. she then forced me to take pictures of all of the tables so she could take them with her to work. i felt like a tool taking pictures of food. she told me to pretend like i was taking a picture of the cake in the center of all the tables. i felt like even more of a tool when we later found out that it was a fake cake just being used as a centerpiece. thanks G.

i've known lisa for eight years and i've never seen her look more beautiful. i couldn't stop smiling every time she announced, to anyone who would listen, that she couldn't believe that she was married. too cute.

when we finally decided to take off we had to walk out into the huge yard where all of the cars were parked. i had no idea what direction to even start walking in, since it was dark, pretty much every car looked the same to me. we walked in three different directions and i kept pressing the button on the remote that i was holding up in the air, no luck. we laughed at the absurdity of our situation, but i can't really say that i'm surprised things like that happen to us all the time. "this is ridiculous, it's not like we're at cedar point or something," G said. after a few minutes i finally found my car and we headed home.

i'm really glad that i talked myself into going. i would have been pretty upset with myself for missing lisa's wedding. and it was good that i could put all of the rumors of my untimely death to rest as well.

summer

this is about the only movie i'm looking forward to seeing this summer.

catherine keener, paul rudd, AND it's a judd apatow flick. this makes me very happy.

usually by this time of year i have 4 or 5 non-blockbustery type movies on my must see list. ones that fly under the over-hype radar, but usually wind up becoming my best of for the year. like garden state and before sunset last year. this year there's just not much on the horizon. sure i plan on seeing batman begins, war of the worlds, the fantastic four (yes, only for chris evans) and the dukes of hazzard (i better see some shirtless wood chopping like they used to do on the tv show or i will be so let down). but i don't exactly see me making room for any of those movies in my top ten.

stuff

ms. k bought me an *nsync jewelry box as this year's gag gift for my birthday. i popped the tray out and my xm radio receiver fits in there nicely, with remote. now i have a purse, err carrying case, to keep it safe. that is so not gay.

acoustic alanis was on letterman last night, i heart her so much and i have no idea why. i love her songs, but when i see her i just gush for some reason. ever since i saw her live a few summers back i'm like a deer in head lights when i see her singing. embrace was on jimmy kimmel as well. they did ashes, i still love that song even after listening to it once a day (slight exaggeration) for the past few months.

today i picked up the new wallflowers rebel, sweetheart. i've listened to it twice now and i really like it. and i'm not just saying that as someone with a huge weakspot for jakob & company, it's a good summer cd.

if i hear anna nalick's breathe (2 a.m.) one more time ima gonna kill someone. and i've been housebound for a month and have listened to very little radio. i can't imagine how tired it would be if i listened to the radio daily. it's been months, it's time for a new single.

the new season of phil of the future starts next weekend you say? something's not right about the disney channel becoming one of my most watched channels ever since i turned 30. new raven and phil, holla.

yes i have ocd, yes i own almost 1,000 movies on vhs. i either need to start selling them or open my own rental store, vhs only mind you. i'm expecting an elderly client base. i am doing my best to talk myself into keeping only 250. it's insane that i own this many.

felicity is up for a part in MI3 w/ jj abrams, nice. i fear that tom might dump katie and latch onto another former wb star, causing him to jump up and down on more couches, but at least keri is finally getting lots of airtime.

almost twenty questions

mindo: do you wish you were the bald soprano?
me: no, i never really dreamed for that.

me: if you could be one person in this school, other than you, who would it be? why?
mindo: mrs. j. i'd know if my hair was natural.

mindo: will i ever be content?
me: yes you will, we both will. and we'll find our soulmates.

mindo: what were you thinking of in your prom pictures?
me: i was thinking, "why?"

in moving and unpacking, and clean-sweeping lots of clean-sweeping, i find that i save everything. every note, every word, every thought, every scrap of paper, every souvenir, every picture, every card, every memory. i came across this today, it was a list of almost twenty questions that mindo and i passed back and forth throughout one day our senior year. mindo was always a hundred times deeper than i ever was, no matter how hard i pretended. i loved her dearly, but was always a little intimidated by her. she was open to everything, she was a free spirit. her flighty behavior well masked the depth that few of us got to see. and her goofball behavior was a harsh contrast to the girl i knew who talked about soulmates and life after death on a daily basis. i can still picture the sincerity that was in her eyes when she'd ask a question. you'd want to laugh at the absurdity of it, assuming that she was joking. then you'd look at her and realize she wasn't. i remember the emptiness that was on her face as she turned and grabbed onto us on that cold snowy day when she buried her mother. i know that growing up means letting go, i just wish that i would have tried a little harder to hold onto her friendship. meeting up with her once a year just isn't the same. especially when i look back on all the thoughts we shared on paper over the course of that year.

thank u india

"but i wish that you could see me when i'm flying in my dreams,
the way i laugh there, way up high,
the way i look when i fly..."
- patty g.

i needed that tonight. i needed you tonight.

thanks lyns. seven years later, this is me still adoring you.

sixteen years ago

i remember summer, 1989. i was fourteen then. our neighbors had just moved, their vacant house sat there for sale. my sister and i spent most of the previous summer days off from school at their house, playing with their three kids. that summer was a lot more quiet than the others, an empty house, an empty yard. i had my huge grey boom box, my first real stereo ever. it's funny to think back to me carrying that thing everywhere i went, now that i have my tiny little nomad. but i did, and i always had a blank tape in the deck, forever ready to tape any new song i was searching for on the radio. that's' how it was done before mp3s, and cassette singles really. it never failed, the djs would always ruin the beginning or the end of every song you were trying to tape. but i had the song to listen to whenever i wanted to, and that was the point. this particular summer i was obsessed with glenn medeiros' "nothing's gonna change my love for you." i managed to tape it at some point and i guess that's when it became my anthem for that summer. shortly after breakfast i would grab my book, the notebook i was writing in, and my large radio and head over to the neighbor's house. they left an old fold-out lawn chair behind, the plastic vinyl kind that had three sections to it. i'd find my prime spot in the sun, lay back and listen to that song over and over. being there, alone, in the quite yard i could pretend that i was rich and was spending my summer at my vacation home by the pool. there i sat, soaking up the sun, dreaming of stephanie g. and the fabulous life we'd have together. i even called the radio station once or twice and dedicated that song to her. apparently my day dreams of having my own four bedroom home at fourteen also included me being straight.

phobic

G told me that her first love contacted her the other night with a simple email telling her that he was married and had two kids. he mentioned very little else and then asked how she was. they haven't talked in over ten years. she asked me how she was supposed to respond to something as vague as that. i told her to tell him that she felt the simple route of settling down and having kids wasn't enough for her. that she has an amazing apartment, a great job in the city, and that she loves her life. she laughed and said she'd have to think that one over. i laughed when she told me she needed to get her locks changed but was afraid for anyone to see her place, fearing they'd think she was a crazy person. all of her furniture is now gone and she just has stacks of papers and newspapers everywhere.

jules sent me a brief email that said, "are we still on for sunday? oh, and i just quit my job and my stomach is a mess."

in twenty days one of my oldest friends is supposed to have a baby, another friend is going to get married. and here i am, always at rest, watching everyone else around me in a constant state of motion. sooner or later things change, right?

happy birthday kiki! i hope you have a good day.