Shonelley Belly Laughs

The Weekend I Went to Jail*

2011-05-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

Friday Night

“Are you crying?” Ryan asks me over the phone.
“I’m tired sob and drunk sob, because I almost finished a whole glass of cider, and I miss you sniff and I have to pee every ten minutes sob and I don’t sob have my own baaaathroom.”
“You don’t have your own bathroom?”
“The hotel everyone is staying in was booked sniff so they put me up in the sniff sister hotel. I didn’t know that ‘b & b style’ meant there would be one bathroom for the whole floor, and it’s just a toilet in a closet. And there’s only one shower sob and it’s also just a closet. And I am wearing my polka-dot clown pajama bottoms (bawling now) and see-through fuzzy white shirt. And I don’t want to go out and go pee again.”
“Sorry baby but it’s hard to understand you.”
“I’m whispering sniff because the walls are so thin, and I don’t want everyone to hear me crying like a spoiled princess about the hotel. My room is so small I can’t even fart without worrying the room next door will hear. And I feel sick because I had fried food for dinner. Sniff. At least I have a sink in my room, so I can take off my makeup without everyone seeing my hideous skin."
“You have a sink? Why don’t you just pee in the sink?"
“You’re gross! Sniff. And there’s this creepy theatre mask on the wall across from the toilet-closet, so when I come out of the bathroom, it’s staring at me. Sniff. And I have to keep locking the door to my room every time I go to the bathroom, and I’m tired of locking my door. And the light in the bathroom doesn’t work so I have to pee in the DARK because I don’t want to go to another floor.”
“Go pee in the sink.”
“I don’t want to pee in the sink! I just want to be hoo-oooome,” I wail.
“Do you want me to pick you up?”
“No I have to be back so early, I’d get no sleep and have to drive back, and tomorrow will suck even worse. I don’t wanna go pee again.”

Saturday Night

I’ve just finished another workday in San Francisco, setting a new store for Monday’s grand opening. I am sleep deprived and traumatized from commuting 4 hours a day in city traffic all week. I’ve recovered from my hissy-fit the night before, but feel groggy and grubby. I haven’t washed my hair, as I refuse to bathe in communal spaces without flip flops.

Joyfully, Ryan is driving all the way to San Francisco just to pick me up. I splurged and took a train + cab yesterday, so I could enjoy a work dinner without having to worry about my car. Ryan’s decided it’s worth the 100 miles round trip to get a few extra hours with me (it’s Valentine’s Day weekend). Plus, he pities me after my pathetic sniveling last night. He doesn’t even accept my offer to treat him to dinner at a nice restaurant in the city, because he just wants to get the heck out of San Francisco as usual.

Ryan picks me up from the store with a bouquet of red roses. My heroic hubby.

After a burger and some shopping in San Jose, I am dying to shower and get to bed. It’s 10pm and I proclaim giddily that I am going to sleep like a baby and actually get a solid 7 hours for the first time this week. He drives me to the Caltrain station to pick up my car.

My car is gone.
Gone.

When I parked at Caltrain the day before, I saw a sign at my usual lot announcing closure and towing after 7pm. So I made sure to park at the lot across the street without a single sign. Yet here I am, staring at an empty barricaded lot, which is in the process of getting repaved.

I start crying again.
I’m too tired to deal with this.
But Ryan informs me that he’s too tired to deal with me crying anymore this weekend.

I collect myself and call the transit number on the sign. Ryan drives me to the towing company, where I learn my car was towed by San Mateo County, which means I have to drive to the jail in Redwood City in the morning to get a release.

I lose all composure.
“I have to go to jail? To jail! In REDWOOD CITY?”
I am concurrently laughing and sobbing hysterically like a mad woman.
“To jail? In Redwood City? For parking my car in a Caltrain lot A MILE FROM MY HOUSE in San Jose, when there was no warning it was going to be closed for paving? I have to be at work at EIGHT AM in San Francisco tomorrow!”

Tomorrow is the last day to set the store with marketing materials before Monday’s grand opening, and I’m in charge.

Sunday Morning

I let my boss know that I’m coming in late, and give my team instructions for what to work on until I get there. Poor Ryan wakes up at 7am to drive me 25 miles to Redwood City, so he can drive me all the way back to the towing company in San Jose to pick up my car.
I expect the jail to be teeming with grimy criminals and despondent family members. To my surprise, there are only cheery, respectful, perfectly-normal-seeming people visiting the incarcerated. The government employees on the other hand are shockingly hostile.

The attendant greets a man entering the building with condescension:
“Did you read the sign on the door? No visiting hours today! The elevator is broken,” she barks.
“Oh no, sorry. I must have missed it,” the visitor replies graciously.
Ryan and I missed it too.
There were like 6 signs on door.

I wait in line for a clerk to review my paperwork and ID. Her demeanor says “I should have retired 20-years ago, and you mother-f*cker are the sole thing standing between me and any reprieve from my miserable existence.” She snarls that I need my car registration to get a release.
“It’s in my car at the tow company by my house, 25 miles away! They didn’t say I needed it when I called last night.”
Please don’t make me drive back to San Jose to drive back to Redwood City. Please don’t. I will go ballistic.
She makes a couple calls and I’m cleared.

I wait in line to see the equally cantankerous cashier. The women in the lobby exchange stories about visiting their husbands, and their suspicions that the elevators aren’t actually broken. I still can’t get over how normal they seem. And clean.

Ryan drives me back to the towing company, and the cashier mumbles that I don’t have the right release forms. I start giggling.
“Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we got to Redwood City and they made us drive back to San Jose to get my car registration, and then we got the release from Redwood City and drove back to San Jose and they made us drive back to Redwood City for a different release, and then we drove back to San Jose to get my car, so I could drive past Redwood City to San Francisco to start my work day?”
“No.”
Ryan does not agree that would be funny.
Maybe because he’s been doing all the driving.

$400 later, and four hours after leaving home for jail, I am driving back to San Francisco for another day of work.

In conclusion:

Dear San Francisco,
I know it’s not your fault that I didn’t have a bathroom in your hotel or that my car got towed, but I’m adding both to my grudge against you.
Still loathing you,
Shonelle

*I went to jail 3 months ago. I’m behind on blogging.

A Conversation with my Cat

2011-03-10T19:33:00.000-08:00

“Ugh, you guys are so messy. How did you manage to get your wet food all over the floor?” I grumble as I sweep the kitchen.

“Don’t judge me, Mom! You get food all over your face and your hair,” Oso retorts with the help of my husband’s kitty translation skills.

“Oh yeah? Well I’ve seen you roll around in your own litter. Your dirty litter.”

“So what? You don’t wash your sheets!”

“That’s not true. I’ve been washing them much more regularly.”

“I clean my litter box more often than you wash your sheets!”

“No, I clean your litter box.”

“Whatever!”

“Besides, you can’t compare your litter box to my sheets. I don’t poop in my bed.”

“Coulda fooled me!”

It’s not you, it’s me.

2011-02-14T22:55:00.000-08:00

I don’t think we should see each other anymore, San Francisco. We can still be friendly, and I’ll even visit once in a while for special occasions. But for now, at least for a while, I just need… a break. I know it may be cruel to do this on February 14th, but Valentine’s Day is a holiday for sharing your feelings, and I for one feel that we’re not a good match.

Look, it’s not you, it’s me. You’ve given me everything: fine dining, the best arts and entertainment in the Bay Area... And yes, I know you’re very popular and loved. But after spending a long week together, I’m sorry, but I can’t stand being around you anymore.

You’re smothering me, San Francisco. Your tall houses crammed tightly on narrow streets make me claustrophobic. And your friends are, I hate to be rude, but your friends are losers. They yell at themselves on the streets, make aggressive comments when I walk by, and have the audacity to ask me for money. Some punk kids mocked me for putting on my sunglasses upside down. Yeah, I did that, okay? I was exhausted and wasn’t paying attention. I laughed amiably, but I almost went ballistic and screamed “Mind your f-ing business! Why can’t I walk down the street without every single a-hole talking to me!” I kept my composure though. I am very polite. Unlike the rest of your buddies who don’t have the civility to let me merge lanes when I need to turn. Why do people honk at me so much here?

Most of all, San Francisco, I hate driving to see you. Do you realize that over 3 days, I spent a whopping 12 hours in my car commuting from San Jose? I know it’s not your fault that the streets confuse me, or that I'm scared of hills, or that I don’t know how far to pull into the intersection to make a left turn, or that I loathe dodging buses, or that I almost kill a pedestrian every trip. And I don’t even blame you (well not completely) for my inability to find parking. I drove around for 45 minutes the other day! I passed four perfectly good spots that I didn’t see until it was too late, I pulled into one metered spot only to notice the sidewalk labeled “Tow Away,” and I tried twice to no avail to parallel park. Call me pathetic, but I just don’t remember how. And truly San Francisco, you are an enigma. I was never able to read your signs. 2 Hour Parking 10am-6pm, No Parking Thursdays 9-11am, Parking with permit 7pm-7am. How many signs can you fit on one pole? You’ve been sending me mixed signals.

And one more thing—you are not a cheap date. I’m a pretty generous person, but I’m not made of money, you know. I drove two hours to see you the other night and spent $18 on parking. In fact, I spent $114 this week on parking, train tickets and taxi cabs. That’s not even accounting for gas on days that I drove. I can’t afford you.

Despite it all, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize. I said some hateful things when I left, and I was out of control. I’m sorry I screamed “F-you, San Francisco” repeatedly while driving away the other night. I’m sorry I called you a “sh*t hole,” and I’m sorry how many times I said I hated you. It was excessive. If it’s any consolation, the palms of my hands ache from banging them on the steering wheel, and I may have given myself whiplash. You stir up anger management issues I don’t have anywhere else in my life. You raise my blood pressure. Quite simply, you bring out the worst in me.

I stopped by this morning and gathered up all my belongings. I will be back in a couple weeks, but it will be strictly business. Don’t try to convince me to stay with your fun sock boutiques and vintage clothing shops. And don’t try to force me to stay with your traffic at all hours of the day and night. Don’t pretend you’ll miss me, because you have over 800,000 other people who don’t mind living on top of each other. This suburban girl never meant anything to you anyways.

Goodbye, San Francisco. I’m moving on.

Quotables

2011-02-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

These made me laugh today:

I enjoy the Super Bowl as much as the next guy, as long as he's a guy who doesn't really enjoy the Super Bowl.

- Joel Stein, Time columnist/my idol

Dennis: One word -- coffee. One problem -- Where do you get it?

Lemon: Anywhere, Dennis. You get it anywhere!

Dennis: Wrong! You get it in my coffee machine. Thirty-eighth and Sixth, in the basement of K-Mart. You just go downstairs, you get the key from David, and boom! You plug in the machine...

- 30 Rock

Fucking dance bullshit. It’s a fucking cluster fuck. It’s an epic fucking rolling boulder of festering shit.

- Anonymous

I resolve to eat more popcorn

2011-02-02T23:16:00.000-08:00

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. Don’t get me wrong— I love making resolutions; I just don’t believe in saving them for January. I make and break mine year-around whenever I’m inspired. If I want to lose 5 pounds in June, I make a resolution to do it, and I do it. This year however, after a season of unprecedented holiday binging, I decided to put pen to paper, and outline all my big goals for the year. Here’s a recap of my progress.

January 1, 2011
I resolve to take better care of myself, with consistency.

1. I will stick to my uber-healthy diet.
FAILED on January 18.
I ate a hot dog and chicken wings over a glass of wine with my coworkers in Napa. Ever the lightweight, I walked around the strip mall for two hours, trying to sober up so I could drive down the street to my hotel. I giggled alone through the aisles at Target and bought pink fairy stickers. I do not recommend trying on swimsuits when you’re drunk and bloated. The diet’s been all downhill since then.

2. I will get eight hours of sleep every night.
FAILED on January 5.
Not easy to do when you’re a night owl who catches the 6:40am train.

3. I will exercise for at least 60 minutes five days a week.
FAILED on January 2.
Hahahahahahahaha.

4. I will tidy up the house weekly and deep clean it every other week.
FAILED all month.
Please come over to hang out! I can’t motivate myself to vacuum without the threat of guests seeing my slovenliness.

5. I will blog at least once a week.
FAILED all month.
On the bright side, 2/4 is a solid F.

Ryan asked me, “Do you think maybe your expectations are too high? With your crazy work schedule and how much you commute, it doesn’t seem like there are enough hours in your day to do everything. You’re going to have to make trade-offs.”

I replied, “But isn’t that the point of New Year’s resolutions: to foster disappointment and self loathing?”

January 19, 2011
Revised Resolution: Lead a healthy life, with balance.

I will follow the rule of 30 minutes. I don’t have to spend two hours getting dressed, driving to the studio and taking a dance class. Instead I can work out at home for 30 minutes. Likewise, I don’t have to clean the whole house on Sunday. I can just do 30 minutes of something around the house every night.

I will stick to my healthy diet during the week, and splurge a little on the weekend.

FAILED both on January 20.

Last night I ate a bag of potato chips for dinner. Never mind that they were low-fat, all-natural, and only 3 servings per bag. The sad fact is that I ate a bag of potato chips. For dinner.

February 2, 2011
Re-Revised Resolution: Stop hating myself for failing all my New Year’s resolutions.

I’m taking a new approach, with a touch of reverse psychology. I’m setting resolutions with the most realistic chances of follow through. If I succeed, congratulations to me for finally sticking with my goals! If I fail, thank goodness I’m a failure!

I resolve to:
Keep the excess 5 pounds.
Spend more quality time with the television.
Disorganize my closet.
Break more electronic gadgets.
Eat more popcorn.

Wish me luck! If this week is any indication, these are going to be my most successful resolutions ever.

Lettuce Ride

2011-01-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

Ode to Amtrak!

The eastern sky was a vibrant peachy orange on my commute Friday morning.

Sometimes when we pass over a lake, the glossy water reflects clouds with perfect clarity. I stare joyfully out the window with a giant grin on my face. I am riding a train through the sky.

I once slept soundly from Hayward to Santa Clara. I had forgotten to take off my corporate name badge. I woke up feeling like a branded piece of company property. If found, please return to…

When I snooze on the train, am I drooling? Snoring? Murmuring about butterflies, like I do at home? Why are people smiling at me when I wake up?

Once, the train accidentally left five minutes early. Amtrak paid for a cab to drive nine of us 50 miles to our destination. I bonded with some intriguing fellow passengers, who I’d shared a train with for months but never actually met. Our taxi pulled up to the station about thirty seconds before the train. How’s that for service?

The other day I heard someone behind me sighing heavily. It sounded like a congested 60 year old man with heart problems, masturbating.

But this is my favorite story:

Lettuce makes a lousy train companion

I am carrying a giant potted bowl of lettuce, an impulse buy from the garden center at the grocery store. I also have three bags overflowing with produce, a backpack with (two!) laptops, a lunch bag, and my oversized purse.

It is a long half-mile walk from the store to the train station. I forgot to consider my transportation plans before engaging in an after-work shopping spree.

My backpack drags down my jeans with every step, until I’m mere inches from mooning the neighborhood. The grocery bags repeatedly slide down my arms and pinch my wrists, so I keep shrugging them back on my shoulders. I am helpless to pull up my pants with my arms wrapped around the potted lettuce.

Relieved to board the train, I face a new challenge: my girth. I knew there would be plenty of space to sit with my purchases, because I always get two seats to myself on Amtrak. However, I didn’t anticipate being too wide to fit through the doorway. I shimmy sideways, wiggling down the aisle, hugging the lettuce bowl, bags falling off my shoulders. “Ooh, excuse me. Oh I’m so sorry. Ooh sorry,” I apologize as I whack passengers in the head with my bags.

I finally plop down in a seat and stash my bags under the table and lettuce bowl in front of me. The conductor comes by and punches my ticket.
“That smells good,” he points at the lettuce.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I groan.
“No worries. I’ve seen people bring a lot weirder things on the train.”
I don’t want to know.
Actually I do, but am too tired to ask.

I realize immediately that I’ve picked the wrong place to sit. Normally the train is full of college students lounging with books and iPods, and working professionals clicking on their laptops. Tonight however I’m in ghetto row. A woman jabbers with her friend and yells at her toddler for the entire hour and eighteen minutes trip.

“Yeah, you playin player.”

“Sit down boy. Sit yo ass down. You know I’ll be hurtin you. Get yo little butt over here. Don’t roll yo eyes at me. You stop. What did you just say? No whattidya say after that? He lost dem bracelets. He’s through.”

“Who the fuck is so and so, I’m not fitting in no skinny 7 jeans.”

“And this man goes and says don’t whup him, and I must’ve turned around and cussed that man up. Don’t tell me about thugs. Fo real. Ya hear that.”

“When I bit him in the ass and he’s like won’t ride in the same train.”

You know I couldn’t make up that dialogue. I grew up in the ‘burbs where I wasn’t allowed to watch anything but Sesame Street until I was 10, and the “s” word was stupid and the “c” word was crap. I studied literature in college.

I desperately want to move to another car, but there is no way I’m going to make a scene by standing up with all my stuff. Those women would call me a racist and bash my head in with the lettuce bowl, I just know it. In fact, I’m getting paranoid they’re going to discover I’m writing about them and smash my computer over my head too. I need to go pee, but if I leave my stuff they’ll steal it, and if I take it with me, they’ll accuse me of being racist for thinking they’ll steal it.
I’m stuck.
And I don’t even have any music to drown out the incessant slang-babble.

As if I weren’t having enough fun already, I’m suffering from an allergy attack. My eyes are watering and my throat is itchy. Plus, my stomach is in a tight knot. Apparently raw tuna cucumber salad, vegan pudding, and dried oranges and mulberries do not constitute a digestible dinner. I’m starving, and I have tons of fresh fruits and veggies in my bags, but you already know why I won’t go to the restroom downstairs to wash them. And sadly, I’ve learned from experience that cleaning an apple by wiping it on the inside of your shirt will only make you sick.

This stupid lettuce better be worth the trouble.

When I arrive home, I proudly show off my purchase to Ryan. The lettuce looks sadly withered and crushed from my awkward travels, and the cats shove their little faces in the bowl before we can pluck our first bunch.

The lettuce tastes deliciously fresh.
But definitely not worth it.

Top 5 Top 5 Lists

2011-01-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

Farewell 2010! Here is my obligatory year-end wrap-up (two weeks late naturally). I present to you my top 5 favorite top 5 lists of favorite things I enjoyed last year.

(5.) Top 5 Food Finds

5. Cole's Chili Cukes: The world’s freshest, crunchiest pickles with a spicy kick.

4. Rosy’s Kitty Grass: Nominated as a Top Food Find by our dear kitty Oso, who races across the house when we bring home a new supply. Tucker is equally in love with Rosy’s cat nip toys.

3. Café Gratitude Desserts: If you share my dairy-free, wheat-free and low-sugar dietary restrictions (who doesn’t?) and still want to indulge in a slice of heavenly pie or tiramisu, nobody does desserts better than Café Gratitude.

2. Sea Thai Bistro: When I was opening a new store in Santa Rosa, I dined here three times in one week. Now I plan all my North Bay travel around Sea Thai, and often eat here for lunch and dinner in the same day. Everything on the menu is scrumptious, and I highly recommend the unique tea selection.

1. My Husband in the Kitchen: Since Ryan started culinary school, I have been the official taste tester for handmade ravioli, ice cream, soups and everything he brings home from class. Did I mention I love my life?

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(4.) Top 5 Awesome Things to Read

5. Inc. Magazine- Inspiring reads for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs

4. Not a Genuine Black Man- Comedian Brian Copeland’s hilarious and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in racist San Leandro

3. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency- Hilarious, irreverent writing

2. Persepolis- Beautiful memoir in graphic novel form

1. Zeitoun-The shockingly true story of a family in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, reads like a perfectly crafted novel. Dave Eggers is officially my favorite author.

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(3.) Top 5 (PG-Rated) Things to Put on Your Body

5. Kitty Blanket: I have a Tucker shawl and an Oso leg warmer. I just need a third cat to heat my mid section.

4. Skinny Jeans: I’d been dying for the skinny jeans trend to die ever since it started. Then I finally caved in and bought my first pair. They’re perfect to tuck in my snow boots (see #1) without bunching up, and my long winter sweaters cover my not-so-skinny ass anyways.

3. Peaceful Mountain Back and Neck Rescue: I was planning to list this as the ultimate massage cream for tense muscles, but then I found #2.

2. Green Valley Lab Extreme Heat Muscle Balm: This magical cream is made from essential oils, peppermint, arnica, cayenne and other natural ingredients. It’s so intense, your eyes will burn when you rub it on your shoulders. The relief is worth it.

1. Snow Boots: I bought my first pair of snow boots (for real snow) at the end of last year, and I’m hooked. I wear them about 200 days of the year, whenever I deem it cold enough. I feel like I’m walking around in slippers. Sinfully comfortable.

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(2.) Top 5 Addictions

5. Caffeine: Caffeine addiction is real, and it’s no joke. I learned the hard way that de-toxing feels like having the flu. No more black tea for me.

4. 24, Season Whatever: Don’t ever let me start watching another season with Ryan. We’ll stay up until 3am, anxious and angry from the suspense, and crying “one more, just one more episode.”

3. Glee’s Poker Face Cover: I would like to take this opportunity to announce that my husband downloaded, with his own money, a Lady Gaga song. Granted it’s sung by two brilliant contemporary Broadway stars, but I guess that hardly helps his case. We’ve probably listened to it 100 times together.

2. Popcorn: It’s the only food that I am truly addicted to. I can eat enough popcorn for a party of 20. I exaggerate not. Can’t. Stop. Eating.

1. Alex Wong’s Hip Hop Routine on SYTYCD (that’s “So You Think You Dance” for all you non dance watching losers). Possibly the most entertaining choreography of all time. I physically could not stop pressing Replay on You Tube. P.S. Alex Wong is a ballet dancer!!

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(1). Top 5 Life Changing Discoveries

5. Roman Paradigm Massage: Ask Andrea for a deep tissue massage if you want to simulate being tortured for information like Jack Bauer. You’re holding your breath, near tears, and it takes all your will-power not to beg, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Please just please stop.” An hour of agony is a small price to pay for saving the country relief from muscle tension. I go back twice a month.

4. A purse with pockets: For the first time in my life, I have enough pockets to designate a separate space for my keys, personal phone, work phone, name badge, chapstick, hand lotion and sanitizer, tampons, and gum and mints. Then I can fit my wallet, planner and makeup bag inside the purse, without ever having to search for anything. No more asking Ryan to call my phones to check if they’re lodged somewhere in my bag. No more digging around for lip gloss that’s gotten stuck in the lining. I’ve got it all within reach. And I feel powerful… pocket powerful.

3. Pandora Radio: Yes, I realize I’m a major laggard on the technology adoption cycle. I knew of Pandora years ago, but had no concept of how unbelievably incredibly stupendously rad it was. Pandora widened my selection of favorite artists when all my CDs had grown stale. I worship my Florence + The Machine station.

2. GPS: It’s not that I can’t print out directions and follow them (okay, that’s a lie), but it’s just that I can’t read street signs until I’m passing them (that one’s true). So it’s a lifesaver to listen to a soothing voice count down the miles until I need to turn. Now I can zone out and sing Thoroughly Modern Millie showtunes, rather than squint at street signs and make ten u-turns every time I drive somewhere new.

1. The Train: Not to sound dramatic, but the train gave me my life back. Instead of spending three hours a day hunched over my steering wheel growling at traffic, I apply my makeup, file my nails, stretch, eat, read, work, study, nap, eavesdrop on other passengers, blog… I love the train so much that I will dedicate my next blog post to tales from the train.

Happy Belated New Year!

Hotel Hell

2010-12-21T20:39:00.001-08:00

This is a mash-up of a few real hotel stays:

I park in the lower level of the hotel’s bleak parking garage. The ground, ceiling and walls are all the same shade of washed out gray, creating the sensation of being trapped in a cold concrete box. I open a door labeled “Stairs to Hotel Lobby,” take a few steps, and then open a second door labeled “Stairs to Hotel Lobby.” I walk up the stairs. At the top, there is a door labeled “Lobby.” I walk through, and after just four feet, open another door labeled “Lobby.” I start to worry I’m in one of those horror movie mazes with doors that lead to nowhere. If I went back the way I came, would I return to my car, or would I realize I’m trapped in a never-ending hallway? I open one more door and finally emerge in the lobby.

The crusty front desk clerk offers me a cookie while I check in. He points to a lone blob on a doily.
“You should have it. It’s chocolate chip.”
“Oh, no thanks.”
“It’s really good and it’s the last one.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine.”
“But I baked it just for you.”
Awkward pause.
He clears his throat and starts hacking.
“Take it for later. A midnight snack.”
“No thank you,” I reply firmly.
I’m not usually paranoid that the hotel staff is trying to poison me, but tonight…

When I enter my room, I anxiously lock the deadbolt above the door handle. To my dismay, there is no deadbolt chain at the top of the door to make me feel extra secure. When I turn the door handle to check that it’s locked, the deadbolt clicks open. I lock it again and turn the handle for the same result. Damn. It’s one of those doors that unlocks whenever you turn the handle, which means there’s no way to test that it’s actually locked. I open and close the door hard, and lock it one more time for safe measure.

On the nightstand I find a welcome note addressed to Ms. Hodginson. Could the hotel have accidentally given out two keys to the same room? Will Ms. Hodginson barge into my/her room in the middle of the night, killing me with a heart attack? Or was the room not properly cleaned, and I might find her dead body stuffed in a closet? Or am I somehow Ms. Hodginson, this is hell, and I’m already dead?

I’ve seen way too many horror movies.

Next I examine the bathroom, which is terrifying in its vast whiteness. The cabinets are white, the floor tiles are white, the walls are white, the towels are white. You could comfortably fit a family of 8 in the bathroom, but just as easily squeeze in about 30 people. You could arrange 5 people standing at the sink mirror, 3 in the bathtub, 1 in the shower, and at least a dozen lounging on the floor in between. Trust me, I mapped this out. A normal woman would relish having so much space, but I only see the perfect movie set for an insane asylum. I picture mentally anguished women in their panties, with blood splashed all over the perfectly white tiles and streaking the walls.

I’m disturbed, I know.

I walk over to the enormous windows, and notice my room overlooks a shadowy parking lot. I try to close the drapes taut but they flop open. I pull them shut again, but they slide apart. I drag over a chair, tuck the drapes one over the other, and wedge the chair against the window.

I inspect the rest of the room, opening each closet and peeking under the furniture. I make sure there’s no Ms. Hodginson, rotting bodies, or lurking murderers. I open a door on the side wall, and find myself facing another door. Oh my god. A door to the neighboring room. I gasp in horror and slam my door shut. Are all the rooms in this hotel connected? What if my neighbor had opened his door at the exact same moment? We would have seen each other!! And what if my neighbor was wearing a ski mask and holding a chain saw? I vow not to open it again.

As I get ready for bed, twisted faces stare at me from paintings on the walls. A drunk old man with chapped skin. A pale suicidal woman from the 19th century. Their sick faces haunt the walls of the room. I drift off to sleep, but awake to the bed shaking demonically. It’s an angry poltergeist! No, it’s an earthquake! No, it’s just me, trembling from too much caffeine.

I hate hotels.

I cost $120/night + hotel

2010-12-15T22:25:00.000-08:00

My boss booked me a hotel room in Mill Valley. It was 8pm on my seventeenth (that ‘teenth’ is no typo) straight day of working, and I had to be back by 7:30am for a store’s grand opening the following day. I’m not sure whether it was my spastic dancing or hysterical delirious laughing fits, but my boss decided I was in no condition to make the 70-mile drive home. He searched in his iPhone and called a hotel.

I stopped by RiteAid to pick up “a few” toiletries, and learned that it costs me exactly $120.73 to get ready for bed. I couldn’t settle for just a toothbrush and contact lens case. Nope. I had to have my full bedtime regimen. Face wash, toner and moisturizer-- all natural and organic, of course. Toothbrush, toothpaste, floss and mouthwash. Clean underwear. Pajama bottoms. A magazine, even though I was going straight to bed (well, what if I get bored brushing my teeth!). I cut myself off when I reached for a cute tote bag to store all my bedtime supplies. Not only did I already own at least 30 reusable bags, but I also had a couple in the trunk of my car.

Before you judge my compulsive bedtime expenditures, let me tell you that I stocked my entire purchase in a handy overnight/reusable grocery bag. It lives in the trunk of my car and has lasted me through four months of travel.

After concluding my mad shopping spree (I almost bought nail polish, and I don’t even wear nail polish), I checked into my “luxury inn.” It was the nicest hotel that work had ever booked for me, but like most hotels, still full of horrors. Stay tuned for my next blog, a compilation of death-defying hotel stays.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

2010-12-13T22:49:00.000-08:00

Ryan and I just watched the latest installments of the Toy Story and Twilight trilogies. These are our predictions for what’s next:

Toy Story 4- The College Years
The toys follow Andy to college, where they watch him get stoned and have sex in his dorm room.

Twilight 4- Dawn of the Bridezilla
A reality-TV style documentary of Bella’s wedding planning (spoiler alert: she’s a monster before becoming a bloodsucking vamp).

Speaking of Twilight...
Oh my gosh, I like so need to join the squealing tween masses and get a Team Jacob shirt. He’s hot-blooded as a human and furry-adorable as a wolf. Give that fine ab-tastic boy a break, Bella!!!!!
I mean it.

The Cat's Pajamas & Other Twisted Tales from my Subconscious

2010-12-10T21:54:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it was the cold medicine or sleeping until 4pm, but I had some seriously goofy dreams while I was home sick this week:

I am about to put on my teddy bear pajamas (those are real), and my cat Tucker jumps in them. Somehow they fit, and he starts walking on his hind legs, strolling around the bedroom in perfectly fitted mini teddy bear jammies. He grabs an inflatable monkey (not so real) in one front paw and a teddy bear in the other. I think it's adorable to see my cat walking like a person, carrying toys. I grab a camera and try to take a picture, but every time I press the button, the camera refocuses and won't snap a photo at all. After ten attempts of struggling and cussing at it, I finally take a perfect photo to post on my blog for you to see.

***

I am sharing a one-bedroom apartment with my sister Beylah in an enormous high-rise. The building is starting to burn down, something to do with it being a Jewish ghetto under attack. We have to pack our favorite belongings in one suitcase each, in just five minutes. I've already taken fifteen minutes, because I can't find an outfit that matches. Just when I think I've got it, I look down to see I'm wearing a turquoise dress with a pink sweater and purple scarf. That won't work at all. I try on something new. The fire is getting closer.

When we make it out safely, I meet a Korean man who shares my experience of persecution. So, we open a fast-casual restaurant together. It's a buffet with half Chinese food and half Indian food. It also features a long smoothie menu, with flavors named after Jewish/Korean motherly guilt trips. You can order an "Oy Voy I Can't Believe I'm Going to Die Without Being a Grandmother Tropical Smoothie," or a "Why Couldn't You Be a Doctor Like Your Brother Chocolate Milk Shake."

***

Ryan picks me up in an RV, and we see a car stuck between two trucks at the end of the culdesac. The guy in the car looks exactly like my high school boyfriend Nick-- same build, same haircut, same Hawaiian shirt. It's even the same car, except this one is blue instead of white. It can't be him, I think. He wouldn't look the same ten years later! As we drive away, the guy gets out of his car with a golf club. He screams that the trucks parked too close for him to leave, and starts swinging furiously at a pile of golf balls on the street. We hear the ping-pang-smash of balls hitting houses and cars. One ball grazes and cracks our windshield.

After driving for a while, I feel like we've stopped moving, and the unsolved crime show we've been watching on our car TVs is starting to creep me out.
"Hey, are we still driving, or are we going to sleep?," I ask.
Ryan grumbles that we're sleeping now, even though we're already in Campbell, just a few miles from home.
I go to the bathroom to get ready for bed, but realize all my toiletries are packed in the luggage compartment below the RV. There's no way I'm getting out of the RV alone, not after watching that creepy TV show. Ryan is sound asleep now. I nudge him, whining that I need my contact lens solution to get ready for bed. He grumpily unzips his hoodie, and hands me my contact solution and case. I see he has the entire contents of our medicine cabinet in his sweatshirt, but decide not to wake him again for my toner and moisturizer.

I grab my phone as I head back into the bathroom to remove my contact lenses for the night. I'm pretty sure I deleted Nick's number from my phone years ago, yet to my surprise, it's still there. I text him:
Did I see you golf balling cars tonight, or was it the ghost of boyfriends past?

***

Dream analysis, Anyone?

Reason 721 Why I Need a Man

2010-11-02T15:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry, Feminists. There are some things I like the man in my life to take care of. Mowing the lawn. Resetting the circuit breakers. Anything to do with my car. Other women may merely need assistance checking vehicle fluids or jump starting a dead battery, but my helplessness extends to parallel parking and inflating my tires. In fact, I recently learned that I am physically incapable of filling tires with air.

For a few weeks, my tire pressure warning light kept coming on. So, Ryan kindly inflated my tires whenever we were out together. Finally, I decided I needed to learn to be self-sufficient. I'm an adult for goodness sake. I should be able to fill up my own gosh darn tires all by myself. The next time we stopped by a gas station, I insisted he teach me how to use the tire gauge and air pump thingamabobber, and supervise my inflation.

My training went something like this:
"Am I doing it right now?"
"Nope. You hear that sound? That's the air leaving your tire."
"Shit. I'm still letting air out?"
"Here, hold it like this."
"Like this? Is this right?"
"Not if you still hear the air coming out. It should sound like this. Hold it at this angle."
"What angle? I'm holding it the exact same way you did."
"Straighten out your wrist."

After 10 minutes of almost deflating my entire tire, and running back three times to ask the scowling attendant to please turn on the air again, Ryan expertly finished the job in about 20 seconds, and I simply screwed the caps back on. So much for gaining confidence in my self-sufficiency. Now I know without a doubt that if my tire pressure is low, I should not attempt to fill it myself, unless my goal is to flatten it the rest of the way.

I took my car to the good folks at America's Tire, who inspected and patched my tire for free (the culprit was a screw). Now, at least for a while, I don't need a man to chaperone me to the gas station. You'll be happy to know that I am perfectly capable of pumping my own gas, thank you very much.

High School Reunion Countdown

2010-11-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

25 days...

Let the dieting begin!

Learn from my mistakes

2010-10-28T23:48:00.000-07:00

Helpful Tips for Work & Commuting:

Don’t drink tea in your boss’s doorway if you know you’re going to dribble the contents of your travel mug down your shirt. Every. single. time.

If you host a training conference call on Outlook and “share” your desktop, don’t forget to log off the call before taking a lunch break (especially if there are four other people who haven’t exited the meeting yet who can still see your every move online). Otherwise, you’ll pray that nobody watched you check your personal email, bank account and medical test results.

Don’t read David Sedaris or Sh*t my Dad Says on public transportation, less people think you’re insane from hysterical laughing. Don’t read A Thousand Splendid Suns on public transportation, less people think you’re insane from hysterical crying.

Don’t leave your ergonomic pillow in a hotel, your lumbar support cushion on a train, and your iPod in a “safe spot” (which you can’t remember), or you'll aggravate your travel-induced back pain and CD collection fatigue.

If you’re going to a meeting at a store in San Francisco with 4 locations, make sure to get directions to the correct location. Otherwise, you may hop a train to the city, walk a mile up-hill, realize you’re at the wrong store, take three crowded filthy buses across town, and show up at your meeting (which you’re co-leading by the way) an hour late.

Best Hubby Ever!!!

2010-10-01T21:49:00.000-07:00

Last night Ryan picked me up from the train station with sweets in hand. He'd baked me scrumptious peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that met my slew of dietary restrictions.

This morning he cooked me a mouth-watering veggie egg scramble while I snoozed, ironed my shirt while I got ready for work, and drove me back to the train station.

I'm not sure what I've done to deserve this life.

Me. It’s What’s for Dinner.

2010-09-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

I have the most scrumptious A+ blood. I know because insects love feeding on me. In fact, a bug (deserving of a serious ass kicking) had a field day on my face recently. I have a welt bigger than a quarter on my forehead, a shiny bright pink button on the tip of my nose, and nine other inflamed red bumps covering my cheeks. Then there are the 5 excruciatingly itchy bites on my fingers and wrists, which I hypothesize I earned while swiping at the little monster in my sleep.

The mysterious thing is I haven’t even been outside recently. Well, not more than walking from my car to the train station to the office. Yet out of nowhere, in the middle of the afternoon, I found myself rubbing my wrists against my jeans for relief, and pressing the knobs on my face to resist digging in my nails and tearing open my skin. I was training a new employee at the time. “I’m sorry, I just, I seem to have all these insect bites. I swear I’m not on drugs. I’m just so, ugh, darn itchy,” I explained as I squirmed more violently.

My insect magnetism is the reason I don’t go camping anymore. I love getting dirty and sleeping outdoors, but the mosquitoes refuse to let me enjoy any serenity. By the second day, I usually have about 40 bites. They’re not the little annoyances that normal people endure. Rather, mine are giant swollen nodules, intolerably itchy and bringing waves of nausea. No amount of insect repellent or clothing has ever protected me, and I wind up spending my entire vacation icing myself and practically bathing in calamine lotion.

Right now I have so many blotches of crusty pink Caladryl on my face, I should have just applied the medicine as a facemask. Then at least I’d have a consistent pepto shade of skin. Maybe if I invest in some matching baby pink lingerie, I can make this look work for Ryan.

Dear Diary, Am I the next Shakespeare?

2010-09-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

4-8-91

Dear diary,

Here's a poem I want to remember. It's made up buy me.

Shonelle

In the sunshine I can see your face looking down at me.

In the cloud way up high, I see your face in the sky.

Even when I pick up a dart, you are always in my heart.

If I can see you or if I cannot you are always at some spot.

Even if you're not at my touch, I'll always love you very much.

My poetry career was short lived.

This was the last entry in my little blue diary with white hearts, three weeks before I turned 10.

Dear Diary, I'm officially the biggest nerd ever.

2010-08-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

It took me three hours with the assistance of my sister's boyfriend to insert a single simple smilie face in my first diary blog entry. Therefore, I am not going to bother trying to replicate an entire chart, complete with stars, plus signs, and arrows. And since our scanner is broken, I will merely summarize for you the next entry in my little blue notebook with white hearts. It starts:

4-7-91
Dear diary,
I can't think of much to write about so I'm going to record a graph of my book reports on my next page.
Shonelle

Oh yes, I recorded a graph of book reports. For fun.

The columns of my chart are labeled with the headers "Bookreports," "How fun" and "my grade." The rows are labeled as "pop out poster," "diaramas," "poster," "few questions," and "poster with parts." I've ranked the fun factor by drawing one to five stars in the box by each project, and recorded one or two plus signs to designate my grade. I gave the poster with parts five stars, and a note to fill in my grade later. It says "Remember To Fill In" and "where the arrow is I haven't got yet." Of course I drew an arrow pointing up to the empty box in the grade column for the assignment.

I like to make fun of Ryan for watching geeky sci-fi dramas* on TV, but then he reminds me I own a bright yellow shirt with a rainbow and the slogan "Reading is for awesome people." Last week at the airport I actually sat in the terminal for an hour after my plane landed, because I couldn't make the fifteen minute drive home until I finished a book. Despite the fact I was starving for dinner. My grown-up diary would read something like this:

Dear Diary,

I love reading so much! I just finished grad school, and spent my first real week of freedom reading four novels.

XOXO,
Shonelle
P.S. Reading really is for awesome people!

*When I read this blog to Ryan for approval, he clarified, "They're not sci-fi dramas. They're sci-fi adventures, Crackhead." Offended by my poor choice of labels, he even opened up his Netflix instant queue to show me they're listed under the category "TV Sci-Fi & Fantasy." Whatever. They're still soap operas in outer space. Now he's really miffed at me.

I have no shame.

2010-07-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

If I'm driving home after a meeting in Fresno (or Napa or Sacramento for that matter), you better believe I'm going to sing to keep myself awake. In fact, I'm going to belt at the top of my little tone deaf lungs. I'm going to dance too. The movement will vary depending on whether I'm on stage in a Broadway musical, starring in a pop music video, or choreographing an interpretive dance to a rock ballad, but you can count on a dance frenzy in my Hyundai.

Should I feel embarrassed if someone happens to look over and see my mouth wide open, dramatic facial expressions, and spastic arm gestures? I think not. If anything, I'm providing comic relief for others' tedious commutes. Besides, driving 150 miles after a sleepless hotel night is hazardous. This is self preservation. I will however contain myself when passing a cop, for fear of being pulled over on suspicion of intoxication or questionable psychological fitness for operating heavy machinery.

I also "write" a lot of my blogs on the road. I composed this one in my head around Highway 152 and 101. If you like garlic, Gilroy smells heavenly today.

April 6, 1991

2010-07-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

Dear diary,

the reason I didn't write back for a few days because nothing exiting happened. Yesterday we had a sub again. At lunch Matt was following me and Daphna and they were bothering us. When we told the yard dutie, she asked Matt, "Who do you think I'm going to believe." Matt said, "me of course." They were benched. The reason she believed me is because she new that Matt, Jason, and Kenneth are meen.
I will write back soon.

Shonelle

P.S. If anyone else comes near you without my permision, Scream!! HAA HAA HAA!!!!

April 1, 1991

2010-07-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

Dear diary it's been a year. I've been so buissy but I'm going to start wrighting to you daily

Love,

Shonelle

My Private goals

1. I would like to get the chore chart out and work hard for allowence, after all, if I'm going to live here, I need to have more responsibility.

2. I would like to read in my Little House Books.

3. I would like to write to you daily.

Arielle broke up with me.

These are some memories

1. I was in preschool and Arielle said if I let Ilana play, she wouldn't be my friend. Ilana said she wouldn't be my friend if I don't let her play. Arielle was my best friend so I said Ilana couldn't play. She told on me. I got in trouble. It wousn't fair!!

2. Matt is a boy in my third grade class. One day there was a sub and Matt got his mean friends together at P.E. and kept on chanting S.R. overload. It was so embarasing. They followed us around and got us in trouble, I never wanted to go to school again.

April

This month is my birthday. I'm going to have Pizza, a Sunday bar, a movie, and a sleepover. I'm only inviting Daphna.

Dear diary again these are my goals. I'll see you.

Sincerely,

Shonelle

I'm writing again. It's still the same night. Here's a chart.

Boys I hate

1. Matt

2. Danny

3. Jason

4. Kenneth

5. Ben

6. Marshall

7. Bryan

Boys that I like O.K.

Michael Wong

Casler

Francesko

Ryan Maru (sort of)

Nice Girls

Catherine

Daphna

Nicole

Megan

Madree

Rebecca

Megan L.

Carol
Julie

Mean Girls

Evey

Kimberly (once in a while)

It's still April 1st.

Sincerely,

Shonelle

Worst. Hotel. Ever.

2010-07-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Napa Valley Redwood Inn,

Congratulations! You have earned my Worst Hotel Ever Award. It’s quite the accomplishment, given I stay at a value hotel about once a week, and have only two simple needs:

1. A warm place to spend the night

2. Internet access

Seriously, those are my only two requirements. I don’t care if you have tiny rooms and uncomfortable beds (as you do). All I need is a warm room with Internet access. In fact, if you had just one of those things, I wouldn’t be angry. Disappointed yes, but not fuming mad.

My room is freezing. I’m COLD. When I call the front desk you tell me the air is set on a timer and will be going off soon, but if it doesn’t I should walk downstairs to the office and get a blanket to put over the vents in my room. Are you freaking serious? When I call back an hour later, you suggest turning on my heater. After all, blasting a heating system across the room from a blasting cooling system makes perfect energy efficient sense. I am writing this letter sitting on the floor, warming my numb hands by the heater, because apparently neither of us has any control to turn down the AC.

If your hotel hadn’t promised free WiFi, I wouldn’t have planned to get work done in my room, along with a major grad school project due tomorrow. I couldn’t connect. I tried for an hour. I trouble-shot everything. I even restarted my computer. No Internet connection. So now I am cold and behind on all my deadlines, and will have to get up at dawn to find a coffee shop with WiFi to get caught up. And let me tell you, I am not a morning person.

Why didn’t I just leave? Oh, I seriously considered it. But I’m a woman, alone at a hotel at 11pm. I don’t particularly feel like checking into another hotel in a strange area, not to mention I don’t have Internet access to find one. I don’t even feel safe walking to the office, because a few rooms down the door is wide open with a shirtless man posing in bed. At least that’s what I passed when I walked from my car to my room. Not that it’s your fault. I don’t hold you responsible for weird guests or my nervousness staying alone in hotel rooms, only the pathetic lack of temperature control.

I look forward to NEVER seeing you again on my Napa trips.

Sincerely,
Shonelle

P.S. I just unplugged the alarm clock. It went off at midnight.

April 2, 1990

2010-07-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

Dear diary, I have a little sister named Beylah. She is very cute. There is a song that I learerd at music.

Love groas under the wild oak tree. Sugar melts like candy. Top of the mountan shines like gold and yo kiss your little felow sort of handy. Dreams Dreams sweet dreems under the wild oak tree. Dreams Dreams sweet dreams one for you and me so and then you start all over again. I'd fell inbarrest if my mom saw this. She wouldn't see that I whant to keep the song.

Talk to you soon

March 29, 1990

2010-07-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

Dear diary,

Arielle gave me a card that said she was sorry. So were friends again. One day I learned about the tooth fairy. I still think that there is a toth fairy. I'm just having a hard time telling my mom that after all the stouph I heard about it. I got it over with and now I think there is a tooth fairy. Talk to you soon,

Shonelle

March 26, 1990

2010-07-15T20:46:00.000-07:00

Dear, Diary I'm sorry I didn't write sooner. I've been buisy. Today I had a big fight with my best friend. Well I should stop calling her my best friend. Today we where playing with my cute little sister Beylah. Just then Arielle changed who everybody was. I said I didn't whant to play that game. She said to my mom that she wanted to call her mom because I was being meen. She didn't call her mom. She started playing a game with my sister that I didn't whant to play. I told Ma athoulsand times that I wanted her to go home. She told me to tell her to call her mom. She went home thankgoodness. My mom sais if i'm still mad at her tomoro I don't half to go to her house. I hope we make up soon somehow. Thats all talk to you soon.

Shonelle

And the Diary Postings Begin!

2010-07-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

This is my first entry in a little blue notebook with white hearts. I'm maintaining all the spelling and punctuation.

February 5, 1990

Dear Diary
On a Friday I went to see the elaphant seals at Anian Awavo. I am 7 1/2. At Anian Awavo some one named Ben took three pictures of me on the tour bus. He follows me all the time. It was fantastic at Anian Awavo. I got six post cards. In school we are learning curseve. I can write my name!

Shonelle

Good by foor today!

Look what I found!

2010-07-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

Oh boy, do I have a treat for you. I finally found my childhood diaries when I cleaned out my parents’ garage today. I also found the following gems:

There’s Something About Mary Hair Gel. That was from high school when my boyfriend worked at the movie theater, and I had an enormous butt from eating free jumbo bags of popcorn at free movies every night. We saw There’s Something About Mary three times, and I thought a promotional gift of fake semen was the greatest thing ever.

Every card I’ve ever received in my whole life. Birthday cards, Bat Mitzvah cards, letters to camp, postcards from friends at camp. At what point is it reasonable to part with your birthday cards? A week after your birthday? By your next birthday? How about 26 years after your birthday when you don’t even recognize the names on the cards?

My prized pencil collection, eraser collection and monkey stuffed toy collection. I am sad to report that my sticker collection, stamp collection and bottle cap collection are still MIA.

The greatest find of all, aside from my diaries, is a list I wrote during high school graduation practice. The rehearsal took hours, and it must have been over 95 degrees out that day. As I sat sweating on the un-shaded bleachers, I started to laugh at the ridiculous phrases sputtering from the mouths of the rehearsal facilitators (teachers I think?). I grabbed a pen and jotted down my favorite quotes on the back of the July 13, 2000 Homestead High School Daily Bulletin No. 171. My plan was to publish the list and distribute it to our class. I completely forgot it even existed until now. This is what I recorded, word for word, and I swear it’s 100% real:

Now is not the time for you to be all that you can be.

OK you bunch of whiners- LISTEN!

You’re not that important... (trying to cover it)- You’re important as individuals, but...

Is there the same number of boys and girls? No- there are always leftovers.

This is a graduation for the class of 2000. It’s not a graduation for you.

No dress shoes. No sneakers. No sandals.

The young lady over there said you’ll be stuck with who you’re stuck with. But hopefully you’ll be able to unstuck yourself before you’re stuck.

I busted my rump to get you out of this.

You are the first girl of the girl row inside the boy row Middle East Row 2. Understand?

Now is the time to listen. (Repeat every 5 minutes for the first half of practice).

Would you try walking a little faster dudes! Take your hands out of your pockets. You can walk faster with them out.

If you can’t hear me, you need to raise your hand.

Stay tuned for uncensored diary entries to keep you entertained until I start writing about my 2010 life again.

Another Hiatus?!

2010-07-08T00:07:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks. I'm spending all my would-be-blogging time working on my final MBA project, commuting an average of 3 hours/day for work, visiting the chiropractor because I spend too much time sitting instead of dancing, and trying to squeeze in the tiniest semblance of a personal life. Plus, it's So You Think You Can Dance season, and you know where my priorities lie.

I've been keeping notes on my misadventures, including my poor choice of train companionship (a giant pot of lettuce), and more hotel horrors (they are endless). Alas, it will probably be another month before I start blogging again and catch you up on everything. In the meantime, I leave you with a few fun tidbits:

I just discovered my threshold for shellfish. My body digested, with quite a protest, a dinner of 12 raw oysters, a large bowl of clam chowder and an entire skillet full of clams. Or maybe it was the seaweed salad that put me over the edge. I spent our Half Moon Bay anniversary weekend in bed, nursing a bottle of Maalox, along with Pedialyte & Soda Water Cocktails. I slept hugging a grocery bag just in case. So romantic. I'm thinking it's a Jew thing-- punishment for disobeying the Kosher laws and gorging myself on forbidden shellfish.

Ryan and I like to leave each other microwave surprises. I leave him mugs of water for tea that I forget to make. He leaves me platters of asparagus that he forgets to pack for lunch. Sometimes Ryan will find an untouched cup of tea in the bathroom. Other times he'll find a travel mug abandoned on the kitchen island. Last week, the mug actually made it to my car. As I drove to the train station, I felt awfully proud of myself and couldn't wait to enjoy a perfectly delicious black tea with soy milk and stevia. As soon as my train left the station, I realized helplessly that the tea would be resting in my car's cup holder for the next 10 hours. Damn. I really wanted that.

Tonight in class my professor told us to close our eyes and imagine we were flying.
Naturally I pictured myself soaring wingless through the sky, doing backflips in the air, looking down on my house.
"You're on a plane and the pilot...."
Oh. Not that kind of flying.

I'm feeling guilty about my blog neglect, so I'm going to make you a deal. Since I do best with public commitments (and the threat of shame that comes with failure), as well as hard deadlines (to procrastinate against), I proclaim the following:

After I graduate on August 11, I will start blogging consistently once a week.
Promise.

I did it!!

2010-05-31T22:31:00.000-07:00

I hope you’re impressed that I fulfilled my commitment of publishing thirteen blogs before the month’s end (I still have an hour and a half left!). Even though I wrote the last two in fifteen minutes. I’m a procrastinator. And I’m tired. I decided proofreading is overrated.

I almost posted a blog requesting an extension from you. We’re opening a new store at work, and my boss has been out on a personal emergency. So, I’ve been working a lot. I worked all weekend and 12 hours today. Not including my commute. Everyone else was barbequing today. I even passed a parade. Did I mention I’m tired?

This counts as #13, right?

Sorry Sis!

2010-05-31T22:21:00.000-07:00

I went to the ballet with my sister.

We took BART back to Berkeley from the city. My car was parked at the train station. We wanted to drive home quickly and go to bed.

It took me an hour to find the freeway.

An hour.

Even though I’d driven to that exact BART station at least five times.

And even though I’d driven to the station from work just five hours earlier. And I know where there’s a freeway entrance by work.

My sister called her boyfriend for navigational assistance.

He tried to give directions over my hysterical demented laughter.

It’s funny, being lost.

For an hour.

In my defense, the hour included getting trapped in a line of cars trying to merge onto a freeway entrance that had been blocked by police.

The other cars started driving in reverse to turn around.

The one thing I do worse than find freeway entrances is drive backwards.

We finally made it home.

Berkeley to San Jose in the middle of the night.

In just two hours.

Wet & Smelly

2010-05-31T22:03:00.000-07:00

I made sure to blow dry my hair nicely and dress comfortably for the mild weather on Thursday, as I was hosting a meeting in the afternoon. As my train approached Oakland, I realized I should have checked the weather. Apparently 50 miles can make a big difference-- it was storming! Although my office is right across the street from the station, I was drenched by the time I sprinted in. As I made a bee-line to the restroom, a couple coworkers looked at me funny, and one made a crack about forgetting an umbrella. Did I look that bad?

Then I saw myself in the mirror.

My hair was a flat mop of wavy frizz, and my “waterproof” mascara had run from my left eye all the way down my cheek. My unseasonably light sweater was covered with raindrops, and my soggy slipper-style shoes squished-squished all the way down the hall.

Best of all, from running in, I learned that I had forgotten to put on deodorant.

Shoe Shopping Sucks

2010-05-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

Shopping at DSW is torture. I find a pair of shoes I love, but there aren’t any in my size. I find another pair of shoes I love, but there aren’t any in my size. Repeat 20 times, until I can no longer tell if I actually like what I’m trying on, or if I’m just desperate to try on anything.

Ryan has excellent taste in women’s clothing. However, he only suggests shoes that Ellen Degeneres would appreciate. He holds up various masculine loafers and clogs:

“How about these?”

“Ugh, I’m not gay.”

“Well how about these?”

“Still not gay.”

“What about these?”

“Are you KIDDING me?”

After forty-five minutes we check out. Ryan buys three pairs of stylish men’s shoes. I leave empty handed, or with a pair of socks if I’m feeling extravagant.

Before we leave, I write down the name of my favorite pair of shoes. When we get home, I go online to Dr. Scholl’s. Yeah, I realize that’s the least sexy brand, but I MUST have those sinfully comfortable black satin ballet flats (with bows!) for just $25. The shoes don’t show up anywhere on the website. I do a Google search and find my coveted duds on a number of E-Bay style sites and discount retailers, but still not a single pair in size 9.5...except in nauseating pale pink.

Are Ellen vests and sneakers really my only option?, I wonder as I dance in frustration at my computer, holding my unused American Express card.

Hotel Horrors

2010-05-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

Due to excessive crime drama TV watching over the years, I am paranoid about getting raped and murdered everywhere I go. Last month I stayed in a hotel alone for the first time. I arrived around midnight, already apprehensive. As I approached the front desk, a creepy* man waiting to check-in told me I could go ahead.

Oh God, he wants me to go first so he can find out which room I’m staying in, break in, and rape and murder me.

“Oh no, thanks. You go.”

“No, no, go right ahead,” he insists, staring at me lecherously.

“Um, all right. Thanks.”

I reluctantly check in, and the front desk clerk asks if I want one key or two.

Don’t say one key. Don’t say one key. El Creepo will know you’re here alone. Say you need two for when your HUGE FOOTBALL-PLAYING HUSBAND arrives.

“One will be fine.”

Fuck, why did you say one?

I don’t know. I didn’t feel like lying. I only need one.

The clerk passes me a key and a map.

Please don’t say my room number out loud. They always say your room number during check-in. Can’t you see Creepy Stalker is staring at me and wants to know where I’m staying. Please don’t say my room number.

“You are staying right here,” she says pointing to the map.

Phew. Thank you for being discreet.

“Your room number begins with a 2 but you’re on the third floor.

Didn’t need to say that! Now Creepazoid knows what floor I’m on. And that I’m here alone. I’m going to die tonight.

I take my suitcase upstairs and make sure I’m not being followed down the hall. I frantically close the door behind me, deadbolt the lock, and turn on some music to drown out the quiet.

Mercifully, nobody breaks into my room. In fact, the rest of my hotel stay is practically relaxing.

*In retrospect, the man wasn’t creepy at all. He never stared at me. He merely gave me an amiable smile, and was was probably just being courteous or had already been helped. He was well dressed in preppy slacks and a polo, and seemed perfectly harmless.

But then again so did Jeffrey Dahmer.

He’s Married, Check His Pants

2010-05-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

Ryan just started culinary school, and he has to remove his wedding ring while cooking. We tried to find him a chain to wear the ring under his shirt, so he can at least have the cold metal searing his heart at all times when not wearing the matrimonial symbol in its rightful place (not that I care). We didn’t have any luck the first places we looked, as the necklaces were all too wimpy and fragile. We need something we industrial strength dependability, so I don’t have to worry (not that I would) about him losing his wedding band. Ryan found a solution in the meantime: tie the ring to the drawstrings. Of his pants. So the ring rests right above his crotch.

That will do just fine.

Where Have all the Care Bears Gone?

2010-05-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

Like any perfectly normal 28 year old, I threw myself a Care Bears/Fiesta birthday party. Picking Care Bears was mostly arbitrary. I wanted a kids theme, and Baby Tugs was one of my favorite stuffed toys growing up. So Care Bears it was!

Bad choice. The Care Bears have vacated the planet, and now live almost exclusively on the World Wide Web. The local party and toy stores carry every single other nostalgic character from my childhood—My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Polly Pocket, Rainbow Brite, but not a single Care Bear. Having planned too last minute to order online, the best I could scrounge up were some Care Bears plates, napkins, stickers and a candle from a discount party supply store. I was disappointed not to find anywhere:

· Care Bear piñata (preferably 3 feet tall, but I would have settled for a lesser bear)

· Pin the Sombrero on the Care Bear game (I could have made my own if they at least sold giant Care Bear cut outs)

· Care Bear toys to give to our child guests (they got mini bottles of tequila and dark chocolate instead)

Ryan and I originally envisioned a backyard BBQ, but were hampered by the fact that we currently HAVE NO STAIRS connecting our house to the backyard 4 feet below. Not to mention our yard is still a pile of un-landscaped dirt and concrete, there’s no shade except under a bug-infested rotting wood awning, and we don’t yet own a single piece of lawn furniture. Other than that it would have been delightful to celebrate outside.

Despite the limited Care Bears and outdoor festivities, it was the best (also only) birthday party I’ve had in the past decade. I was grateful to have so many loved ones in our DIY-house, and Ryan baked me a shockingly delicious gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free ice cream cake. Saintly he is indeed.

I’ve decided that mash-up party themes are the way to go. What do you think about a Batman Luau next year? Or a Barbie BBQ? Or an Elmo Casino Night?

Ballet Boot Camp Recap

2010-05-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

I drank an entire liter of water during my dance workshop on Sunday.

The first hour I felt pretty sharp. The second hour I started to get fuzzy headed and heavy limbed. By the last hour I spaced on the choreography every other count and could no longer coordinate my arms and legs together. I used to dance in 4-hour blocks in college, no problem. Once I even danced for like 12 hours straight to raise money for pediatric AIDS. When did I get so old?

Without fail, I’ve always felt energized after a good workout. This time however I stumbled into the house, ate a handful of nuts, cup of fruit, small bowl of popcorn and monster salad, took a hot shower, and crawled back into bed. For the entire afternoon.

You were right, Kim. I can’t hardly walk (still). My hamstrings are sore. And my calves. And my butt. And a whole lot of other muscles that I forgot even existed.

My studio just added an hour and a half Bollywood workshop to next month’s schedule. How can I resist something so fun? Of course it’s on Sunday afternoons, one hour after my ballet-a-thon.

Do I dare?

Ballet Boot Camp

2010-05-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

How can I ~~force~~ inspire myself to get back into shape? Simple! I drop a bunch of money on a 12-week dance class taught by a professional ballerina/Julliard instructor. I can’t flake on myself if I’ve paid for it already, especially if it’s non-refundable.

Did I mention the class is 3.5 hours? That’s 210 straight minutes of dancing (I counted), with a couple five-minute water breaks. On Sunday mornings. When I usually snooze until noon.

Not to worry that I haven’t exercised in ages. I devised the following plan to jump-start my fitness regime:

· Three weeks before the series, I will start attending 1-hour dance classes to ease myself back into dancing as painlessly as possible.

· Two weeks before the series, I will start attending two 1-hour classes back-to-back to build my stamina.

· One week before the series, I will add jogging to my workout schedule to prepare for the rigor of the upcoming classes.

· By the first Sunday of the series I will be rocked out and ready to keep up with all the strong and flexible dancers who have been training all year.

Do you know where this is going yet?

The series starts in four days. It’s been almost a year since I've stepped foot in my dance studio, and my running shoes are collecting dust somewhere. I can’t point my toes eight times without my calves cramping (seriously, I just tried, ouch), and I’m supposed to point them for three and a half HOURS. I can’t even run 20 steps to catch a train.

In Kim's words, "I have done nothing yet and I am terrified to start this class."

This is going to be ~~injurious~~ fun.

R.I.P. Man-Eating Rodent*

2010-05-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

A plastic bag bounced spastically in the wind. Only it wasn’t a bag at second glance. It was an animal, probably a cat, flailing violently in the street.

“Don’t look,” Ryan warned, as we sat at a red light at a major intersection in San Jose. It was too late. I was already staring helplessly across the divider, as the animal writhed and jerked in agony, cars driving by at 40 mph. You know that silly expression “too horrible to look away”? It’s not silly. It’s true.

I started blubbering. “I’m sorry, I’ve just never seen an animal in so much pain.” I didn’t know if it was a feral cat or someone’s pet. I couldn’t even tell for sure what kind of animal it was. It didn’t matter. It was awful.

By the time the light turned green, the animal was finally still.

Later, we found comfort in deciding that we hadn’t seen a sweet little suffering kitty, but rather a giant, evil, man-eating rat.

*Sorry if this blog title was misleading and you expected a gleeful tale of R-O-U-S slaughter. Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist.

Cirque de Parking Garage

2010-05-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

Great business ideas stem from problems that need to be solved, as consumers will pay a premium for you to alleviate their pain. Let me tell you about my recent pain:

I’m stuck in the Civic Center parking garage with my parents, including one who is sporadically convulsing with obscenities. The music of the ballet we’ve just seen is still pounding in my head, and it’s not your typical classical music. Nope- it’s the most godawful, loud, repetitive, headache-inducing “noise” electronic piece. And I’m hungry. And we’re sitting in the parking garage waiting to exit for AN HOUR.

Right now I would pay $10 for a chocolate bar. Or $30 for a pint of strawberries and a bag of peanuts. Or $40 for a juggling, tap-dancing clown. Make that $50 if he does balloon animals, comes with carnival games, or lets me throw a pie in his face.

I present to you the Cirque de Parking Garage Traveling Snack Shack & Fun-Mobile. It makes stops at the most miserable post-event traffic jams in the Bay Area.

I’m working on a business plan. Who’s in?

5 Things I Recently Learned in the Kitchen

2010-05-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

1. You can start a pot of brown rice, forget about it for the duration of a 2-hour movie, and not burn down your house.

2. You can’t cook oatmeal and quinoa together. I already knew that, but with only a half serving left of each, I decided that I would be the genius who discovered an award-winning million dollar new dish. Instead I created a pot of soggy oatmeal with raw quinoa flecks. Still ate it!

3. If you get bored cooking pancakes, go ahead and fill up the entire pan with the remainder of the batter. But if you can’t flip your monster pancake and wind up with a giant sloppy pile of unevenly cooked dough, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

4. I don’t know what I own. I once told Ryan it would be great to get a Foreman grill. His reply: “Uh, we already own one. You just never use it.” When my sister called to ask if we had a wet-dry vacuum, I told her no. After we hung up, she immediately called my husband for the real answer. He loaned it to her.

5. If it only takes you 30 seconds to cook an omelet, it’s probably because you used the power burner on high, burnt most of the eggs to the pan, clogged your sink (which especially sucks since you don’t own a garbage disposal*) and made your husband very upset. Because he does all the dishes. And the cooking. And pretty much everything else around the house (I love you, Ryan!!!!).

*We really don’t own a garbage disposal. I checked.

I owe you, dear readers

2010-05-12T23:43:00.000-07:00

As Kelly suggested, that Beautiful Blogger award went to my head. When you’ve reached the pinnacle of your blogging career so early, where do you go? Where’s the motivation when you know there’s no hope of topping your mighty achievement? How to go on?

Or, I’ve been sucked into a black hole of Finance in my MBA program. I do believe my last extended blogging absence was due to an Accounting meltdown. But I’ve learned that accounting is little beans compared to finance. I’m pretty sure I passed my class. Not with an A this time.

Or, I’ve been so tired from getting up early to commute to my new job + back pain from commuting to my new job + exhaustion from sitting in my car commuting to my new job that I don’t have the energy to blog. And if I did, I shouldn’t anyways, because I would write strange run-on sentences and made up expressions like “little beans.” Or small peanuts. Or are there mini potatoes involved perhaps?

But no excuses.

I owe you, dear readers. So to make it up to you, I promise the unthinkable. I commit to publishing 13 posts by the end of the month. That’s one for every week I’ve been gone. I won’t promise that they’ll be pretty. Or long. Or include correct idioms. But they will be frequent. And you will read them. And laugh. At me. Because I am so, so tired.

This counts as #1.

Congratulations to Me!

2010-02-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

I'm ecstatic to announce that I've been nominated for the prestigious Beautiful Blogger Award! It's technically the equivalent of a chain email, but it's called an award, so we're going to go with that. Congratulations to me-- I'm officially awesome!

Unlike chain emails, which I generally skim, cynically laugh at with my husband, and then promptly delete after sending to exactly zero people (proving my heartlessness to the "female angels in my life" and bringing seven years of bad luck upon my household), I can't ignore a chain award! So, I'm going to follow the five rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated me for this award. Thank you, Kim! I am honored (no sarcasm here), especially since you read about a billion blogs and have an extensive network of blogging buddies. Thanks for picking me!
2. Copy the award & place it on my blog. Aint it a beauty!
3. Link to the person who nominated me for this award. See above. I heart Kim.
4. Share 7 interesting things about myself. Since interesting=embarrassing in my world, I'm going to give you 7 mortifying tidbits of history from my life before blogging, and then write about them later in a blast-from-the-past series when I can find the time:

I kept a diary as a kid. It includes an account of the best day of my whole life (going to Chevy's on my 10th birthday and getting a free sombrero), as well as cheesy lists ranking my favorite things and people. Oh yes. I will dare to dig it out and post excerpts here.

I dressed up like a man and lip-synched an entire Richard Marx cassette tape to entertain my grandparents.

I already told you about how traumatic PE was for me. It's time I tell you about how I'm also scarred from math, art and debate. Did I maybe take school a little too seriously?

I flooded my house in high school.

I failed at sluttiness in college.

I lived with 4 musical theater majors, did background work in movies for extra cash, and danced really poorly in a student production. Ladies and gentlemen, my entertainment career.

I attended a plastic surgery expo for work. It destroyed the final shred of self-esteem I had retained after two years of working in Beverly Hills. I've thankfully gained it all back in Nor Cal.

5. Nominate 7 other beautiful bloggers. This is a huge stretch for me, as my blogroll is pathetically short. I doubt most of these folks will respond to this ~~chain blog~~ distinguished award, but here goes:

Kim's Kitchen Sink: The rules don't say you can't re-nominate the same person who nominated you, so ha!
The Funemployment Blog: I'm totally not insulting Chris's masculinity by nominating him as a beautiful blogger. It's just that his photography is so gorgeous. Anxiously awaiting prints on Etsy!!
The Bey Area: Although my sister Beylah has yet to start blogging, she has picked the perfect blog name and is one of the most beautiful people I know. So maybe this award will inspire her to start posting. Eh, Spuds?
It's a Beautiful Life: Becca's blog makes me alternate between wanting a baby and appreciating my sleep. The monthly letters to her son are touching.
Community Counseling Connection: I'm stoked my MBA buddy has started a non-profit that's a service to both her professional mental health community and the public at large.
ShaunaGlenn.com: My new blogger-idol, I'm lizzing (30 Rock, anyone?) when I read her stuff.
Lana McKissack on You Tube: Since I'm already out of beautiful bloggers, I'm hoping You Tubers can count. Lana is beautiful, super-sweet and super-talented, and I know she can sing 7 interesting things about herself.

In accepting this award, I would like to thank my husband for serving as my inspiration and blog editor, and my ~~four~~ many loyal readers for your support.

Contractor Deal Breakers

2010-02-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

15 Easy Ways to Lose a Bid in One Conversation (Or Less):

1. Forget to show up for your appointment.

2. Call to reschedule your appointment 13 minutes after it was supposed to start.

3. And then call 30 minutes before your rescheduled appointment the following week and ask, “Where are you?” as though we’re late.

4. Park in front of our house an hour before your appointment, call our cell phones and hang up without leaving a message, and force us to meet with you early when we arrive home from errands, because what are we going to do—make you wait in your car?

5. Take a look at the project, shake your head and mumble about how much work it’s going to be. Yeah, we know it’s a lot of work. That’s why we’re going to pay someone $70k to do it.

6. Tell us that you won’t assist with permits because you once “wasted” a whole day at the county office. You know it’s a 2-month $70k job, right?

7. Tell us that you’ve done foundation work before but don’t know any structural engineers.

8. Or grudgingly say that you guess you could pull an engineer’s info from past blueprints. Gosh, so sorry for asking. We didn’t realize it would be such a gross inconvenience to request a referral.

9. Tell us vaguely that you’ve done “a lot” of foundations but avoid divulging any details about where or when.

10. Get insulted when we ask what company you’re with toward the end of our first phone conversation. Don't you know that we’re going to talk to a bunch of contractors before hiring someone?

11. Send the newest plumber on your team to give a quote that’s $2k more than you quoted me on the phone, call back later and reduce it by $1k, and then offer a new price that makes no mathematical sense when we give a counter proposal. Are you just randomly rattling off numbers to see what sticks?

12. Keep talking about crawling under the house and the cost of digging out a basement after we told you repeatedly that we already have a full basement.

13. Accidentally give us a quote $60k too high, because you based it on the cost of digging out a basement from scratch, even after coming out and taking a bunch of notes in our completed basement!

14. Bad mouth other contractors. We want to hear why you’re great, not why everyone else is worse than you.

15. Continue blabbering after the second time a prospective client says, “I think we’re done here."

I acknowledge that business professionalism may not be in the same skill set as pouring concrete, but if we can’t trust you to remember an appointment, how are we going to trust you to coordinate a massive project with multiple sub-contractors on a schedule?

I think we’re done here.

Tennis, Anyone?

2010-01-12T08:52:00.000-08:00

The label on my new jacket reads:

Tumble dry low with 3 clean tennis balls.

Ryan suggested it's to prevent the down from clumping, but I think Kenneth Cole is just f&*king with me.

Does anyone have some clean balls I could borrow? I know tennis players and dog owners usually have extra dirty balls lying around... I'm hoping to avoid a trip to the sporting goods store just to do my laundry.

Business Idea: Laundry Balls. They'd look like tennis balls but would come in bright colors and cheery patterns, like polka dots. I love polka dots. Laundry Balls would be sold in the laundry detergent aisle of all major stores, and merchandised in 3-packs near winter wear in department stores. And ideally they'd serve an added function, like fabric softer. Laundry Balls. Do those exist already, or am I a genius?

Falling in a Winter Wonderland

2010-01-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

Ever the world adventurers, Ryan and I crossed the Canadian border and visited Costco, Whole Foods, Old Navy, a mall, and a movie theater (twice). To our credit, we were only in Vancouver to spend QT with dear family, and we thoroughly met our goal of having a real vacation. No email, no thinking about work, no accomplishing anything too productive....well, unless you count Ryan reading a linguistics textbook for fun (that nerd!). Just great food and great company. Oh, and I managed to get a massage.

We did venture out to a couple mountains, where I was awed by the breathtaking landscape of rolling white powdered hills and frosted trees. Think winter wonderland on a greeting card. Think snowball fight, snow angels, snow tubing (weeeeeee), and cross country skiing. Nobody warned me that the “country” isn’t all flat. I skied down most of the hills squealing with laughter, arms flailing as I tried desperately to dig my poles into the snow for traction, yelling “oh god sorry” as I missed crashing into other skiers by mere inches, and finally tumbling onto my back. Did I mention I’ve never even been on the bunny slopes?

Our last night of vacation was New Year’s Eve. We went wild and stayed up until about 11:30pm. Then we spent New Year’s Day in airport security, where we had to check all our carry-ons, discard the yogurt and fruit in Ryan’s Tupperware, and endure a highly intimate pat down: scalp, bra, the bottom of our socks, crotch, the works. The officer asked me to remove my shirt, but Ryan clarified that it was my shirt, not a sweater. So, I was saved from exposing my deodorant streaked, semi-transparent tank top (along with my love handles) to the entire airport. Thanks a lot, Christmas Bomber.

We resisted the urge to bring home any Olympic souvenirs, though the maple leaf sweatshirt in the airport was a-calling to me (could there be a more friendly national flag?). I am especially proud of myself for resisting the enormous array of bizarrely cute mascot key chains, magnets, pins and plush toys. Even our hosts couldn't explain the goofy animals to us, but I found their back-stories and introductory video here.

Oy, Santa Cruz

2010-01-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

The bunny musician is barred from our parking lot after attempting to run over one of our assistant store managers. Gone are the days of being serenaded by a grungy rabbit-wearing loiterer, sitting on a cage and singing with a twang, "oh what's that silly man doing with the rabbit on his head?" as I walk into work.

Yesterday a cashier showed me a dollar bill with a message scribbled in black marker:

I peed on this.

"Only in Santa Cruz," she sighed.

I laughed so hard I almost puked

2010-01-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

If you don't find this funny, I seriously need to reconsider our relationship*:

I'm pretty sure I was dropped on my head as a baby
ShaunaGlenn.com

*OK, Mom (and anyone else who doesn't share my crude sense of humor), I don't really mean that.

Kitty Greeter

2009-12-22T22:40:00.000-08:00

Tonight, like most nights, there was a cat in the window when I got home from work. Whenever he sees me get out of the car, he taps the window pane and meows. I can't actually hear him, but I can see his mouth moving in the shape of "mow, mow, mow." Then he runs to meet me at the door, the good little greeter. Tonight the cat was meowing and tapping the window, and also grooming his face with his paw. Tonight the cat was six feet tall and looked an awful lot like my husband.

Sick? Not a chance.

2009-12-21T22:56:00.001-08:00

I am not sick. I can not get sick. I will not get sick. I am not sick. I will not get sick. I am not sick.

My weapons of choice: vitamin C, echinacea, elderberry, chicken soup, hot tea, water, kombucha, fruits & veggies, yoga, rest, laughter, and an array of immune defense pills, lozenges & fizzy drinks. And of course positive thinking. If I lose the battle, you can't say I didn't fight.

I would like to frolic in the snow on our vacation, and not worry about snot freezing down my face. Wish me luck!

Shut Up, Baby!

2009-12-21T22:34:00.000-08:00

I am a heavy sleeper. When something is actually disruptive enough to tear me from my precious REM in the middle of the night, I still don't wake up fully. Instead, I drift in a state of vague awareness, not alert enough to exercise my problem solving skills. Take for instance the other night. Ryan was sick, snoring like a tractor:

"Snnoooooore."
"Shut up."
"Snnnooooore."
"Shup up."
"Snnnooooore."
"Shup up."
"Snnnooooore."
"Shut up."
"Snnnooooore."
"Shut UP Ryan."
"Snnnooooore."
"Shut UP!"

And on and on...

It was the exact same conversation the last time we let our kitties sleep with us.

"Mee-ow."
"Shut up, Tucker."
"Mee-ow?"
"Shup up, Tucker."
"Mee-OW."
"Shut UP!"
"MEE-OW!"
"SHUT UP, TUCKER."

Ryan says we can't have children until I get over my obsession with a good night's sleep, less I yell at the baby to shut up when it cries.

Hobo Fashion

2009-12-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

After eight years together, my husband still showers me with compliments:

“You look like a refugee who put together her outfit from a donation barrel.”
“I’ve never seen so many patterns on someone gainfully employed.”
“Hey! You look slightly less homeless today.”

Before you start thinking the worst of my husband, I should give you a little background on how I’ve been dressing around our frigid house this season. My typical outfit consists of:

- Black calf-high men’s socks, under beige knit pom-pom slippers or maroon bow-clad, kitty-chewed grandma slippers.

- Bright pink polka dot pajama bottoms, paired with a yellow t-shirt under a blue teddy bear pajama top under an oversized orange hoody under a worn snowflake robe.

- Bedtime accessories = glasses, retainer & moisturizing gloves (filled with coconut oil, the kind for cooking).

I pose seductively, leaning my head against the doorway and arching my back. “Hey baby, you want some of this?” Then I strut the invisible catwalk over to my husband and pull back my robe, flashing him fourteen layers of mismatched winter clothes. “Or how about this.”

My sexiness this winter surpasses even the Elmo slippers.

Drum Roll Please...

2009-12-03T02:50:00.000-08:00

Thank you to everyone (uh Beylah & Kim) who helped me find a respectable name for my blog. And the winner is...

“Shonelley Belly Laughs,” a variation on one of Kim’s many helpful suggestions.

The runner up was a submission from my sis, “Shonelle’s Out House” with the inevitable subtitle, “my dumping ground for all the silly shit in life,” but it felt a tad too crude in the end (no pun intended).

To thank both of you, I’m giving you, Oprah style, a few of my favorite things:

1. Poco Dolce Chocolate Squares. Best. Toffee. Ever.

2. Serendipity Spiced Carrot Jam. It tastes like Autumn pumpkin joy, and is handcrafted by a super nice local family.

3. Lesley Stowe’s Raincoast Crisps. There’s simply no better cracker for entertaining.

Happy Chanukah, Girls!

Santa Cruzian Talk

2009-12-03T01:13:00.000-08:00

The Good Times, a Santa Cruz news magazine, has a “Local Talk” column with residents’ responses to a question of the week. Recently- “Are you getting the H1N1 vaccine? Why or why not?” Here’s one response:

No. Because the swine flu is not real and if you have a healthy constitution you can fight off whatever comes your way. And if you have love in your heart you're immune to germs. -Jennifer Masten, Santa Cruz | Unemployed

Wowzers.

At least it’s nice to see a kind-hearted response. Every time the Santa Cruz Sentinel daily paper runs an article about local grocery stores, the Comments section on the website is filled with uneducated rants and personal insults between readers. Just a couple examples:

Whole Foods is the Same as Wall Mart
Profit driven scum
Go on Capitola, export your money to the lone star state.
-Fatso

Listen up, fatso. It's spelled "Wal-Mart. One farking "L" not two. Idiot. Good thing people like you are not in control of anything important.
-Thief in the Night

From a separate series of comments on the same article:

....But then you're probably just a METAMUCIL-SWILLING, NO-NOTHING DICK CHENEY CONSERVATIVE WHO FRENCH KISSES THE TV SCREEN EVERY TIME BILL O'REILLY COMES ON.
- The Scream

Scream, you're the reason that Santa Cruz is messed up and weird in the first place...
- Done and Done

Double wowzers. Whatever happened to civil discourse?

I Still Love Santa Cruz

2009-10-15T13:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday there was a gentleman right in front of our store entrance. He was sitting on a cage, singing & playing guitar, wearing a live rabbit on his head.

1000 Over Par

2009-10-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

I went golfing for the first time on Sunday in ninety-something degree weather. It actually worked out well, because we had the entire course to ourselves. Mild heat stroke is a small price to pay for the pleasure of a leisurely pace, without worrying about delaying other golfers.

We played seven holes and didn't keep score, but I would estimate mine around 150. If you count how many times I swung and missed, it was closer to 300. When I wasn't desperately swiping the air above the ball, I managed to uproot large patches of lawn by aiming too low. And I nearly clubbed my mother-in-law in the face when she tried to show me how to drive.

The last time I went bowling, a friend told me "your score of 29 would be great if we were golfing."

My inaptitude at yet another sport brought back memories of traumatic junior high and high school years in PE classes: cowering in the back of the outfield praying the baseball wouldn't fly my way... feigning nausea, sinus infections and coughing fits to be excused from swimming... getting yelled at and clobbered during flag football, because I had the misfortune of sharing my PE period with half the school football team. I did excel at one PE elective- aerobics. We worked out to a Paula Abdul dance video, and I earned an A+ because my mom owned the VHS and I'd already mastered and memorized every move.

I must be growing up, because I didn't play sick to get of of playing golf, and I didn't feel embarrassed about sucking so bad. Blogging has helped me learn not to take myself too seriously. I can have a chuckle at my own expense. I guess you can too.

Magazine Junky

2009-09-29T23:24:00.000-07:00

I subscribe to 8 magazines if I'm counting correctly. It would be twice that many, except the ones I have pile up unread as is. I tend to read them in order of fun factor: People Magazine first, Time somewhere in the middle, Business Week last. My very favorite though is Dance Spirit. By reading the letters to the editor, I just discovered that the average subscriber age is around 13. Feeling so mature right now.

My Punchy Hubby

2009-09-29T22:57:00.000-07:00

While driving to school past the new downtown Safeway with no parking, Ryan gets a brilliant idea:
“Someone should open a drive-thru supermarket like a car wash.”
“That would be a very huge store, blocks long.”
“Yeah.”
“And what about people who like to browse for their food?”
“They don’t have to come!”

While driving back from school past the old frat house he used to live at, another light bulb:
“I should join a frat and move in. And you could bring me ramen, and people will ask if that’s my mom.”

While drying dishes, after mentioning I’m soliciting help pimping my blog, Ryan is very quiet. I ask what’s on his mind:

“I’m trying to think of an acronym for CHOAD...”

A few minutes later...

“Hey—I’ve got a name: ‘Shonelle’s Cautiously Uncensored News Tidbits.' Get it? Get it?”

So crass.*

*Ryan insisted I add a disclaimer that he's only inappropriate because he likes to get a rise out of me. And after eight years together, it takes a whole lot to shock me.

Follow My Cats on Twitter!

2009-09-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

This is my 101st blog! In honor of this momentous occasion (yeah, I know 100th would have been more exciting), I would like to enlist your help giving my blog a desperately needed makeover. How about a real title? Color refresh? Links? I would greatly appreciate all your suggestions to spiffify my little writing space, except anything that requires too much tech savvy and time. Like more than two minutes. I'm not a superstarblogger like Kim.

I've got a prize (a real one, not some stupid virtual gift) for whoever who comes up with the best new title. And by best I mean of course the one I like most and actually use. Multiple entries welcome! And yes this is indeed because I'm too lazy to create one myself. Or let's just call it delegation.

Oh yeah, and you can now follow my cats on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/TuckerandOso

How to Impress Your Colleagues

2009-09-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

“Does anyone know what next week’s item is?” my boss asked at our weekly store management meeting.
“Odwalla bars!” I proclaimed with certainty.
“Uh, no not the weekly sale item, the weekly safety item.”
All thirteen people at the table laughed at me.
Apparently we’d been discussing safety audits and checklists for the past fifteen minutes, leading up to the question of the featured safety item of the week. So not only was “Odwalla bars” clearly the wrong answer, but it was now obvious that I had thoroughly spaced out during the meeting.

Dancing Fool

2009-09-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

It’s forgivable to goof up in a dance performance, so long as you cover your mistake with a confident smile. Professional dancers smooth a stumble into the next movement so seamlessly the audience second-guesses whether they really caught a glimpse of a mistake at all.

I am not a professional dancer. I don’t remember how to point my toes correctly. I don’t move nearly as gracefully as I feel. And I’m not even particularly fit right now. Yet I thought it would be smart to perform in a recital in August. Why not? I finally found a dance studio where I don’t tower over a room full of scrawny sixteen year-olds who snottily size up their classmates’ every step. Instead the dancers are in their twenties and (gasp!) thirties, introduce themselves to new classmates and offer lots of encouragement during “across the floors,” and perform often even though they’re not especially skilled. My kind of people!

I only invited my husband to watch me perform, but he insisted he would be bored at intermission if he didn’t bring along my mom and sister. When you’re only in two out of twenty-some routines, it can feel weird asking people to watch you perform (amateurishly mind you) for a grand total of six minutes. Thankfully, my fans came to the second performance of the evening.

During my first performance of a lyrical routine, I leaped a half count early, which is pretty impossible to miss. Instead of just smiling over it, I made a face. Not just any face. A mix between a grimace and mouthing the start of “oh f$#k.” I got through about “oh ff” before I realized I was making a face, so I reacted with a second face, a sort of wide-eyed, mouth-circled “oh”. As in “oh shit, I’m making a face.” At which point I snapped out of it, smiled big, and moved on.

DVD’s and photographs of the performances are available for sale. The last time I watched a video of myself dancing on stage, I swore I would never dance again in public. That was a whole seven years ago. This time I’ll go ahead and skip the documentation, so I might actually be silly enough to join more recitals before another decade lapses. And maybe I’ll even invite you next time.

Back on the Shit List

2009-08-25T19:57:00.001-07:00

Mini Gourmet. Ugh. Erase anything positive I ever wrote about that dump. Our last month in our apartment, we spent many an evening in Lowe’s and Home Depot until 10pm, followed by a late night diner dinner. Our last (and I do mean last) meal there Ryan had to send back his burger because it was raw. Not rare. Raw. Meanwhile, I ate the world’s saltiest, blandest bowl of minestrone soup. To add insult to injury, at least three gnats kept us company at our table for the duration of our meal. All that might have been tolerable if the fine dining establishment at least still offered the luxury of indoor restrooms. Instead, guests have to walk around the building like a gas station, which is fantastic in bad weather conditions and for women who are paranoid about getting sexually assaulted in dark public places. Suck it, MG!

The Good, The Bad & The Kitchen

2009-08-24T20:37:00.001-07:00

Some of you have been asking what happened to my blog. Well, I felt guilty sitting down to write while Ryan was building us a new kitchen. Although there’s still plenty of fixing up, unpacking, painting, and hanging artwork left to do, at least we finally have a working kitchen AND a real dining room table (how we’re moving up in the world!). So, I’ll finally start catching up on back-blogs since May. Here’s the first—a brief synopsis of our brand new home ownership... or should I say new ownership of a brand old home:

The Good:

Paying a monthly mortgage toward owning our home in 30 years, rather than paying WASPy landlords who drop by our apartment without warning and say things like “you have so much furniture” and “you’re feeding your cat way too much” and “how could you do that to the carpet?!” while shaking their heads disdainfully.

Barbequing in our backyard. Our very own backyard! Our little jungle urban oasis where we can listen to birds chirp and planes fly overhead.

Singing at the top of my lungs without having to worry about traumatizing upstairs neighbors.

Two words: man cave.

Two more words: power tools.

The Bad:

Paranoia that a big earthquake will strike and our house will crumble before we can fix our foundation.

Paranoia that someone will put their leg through our shoddy back porch steps and sue us.

Paranoia that someone is using our hose in the front lawn.

Paranoia that children are abandoning kittens in our front lawn.

And the Ugly:

Our kitchen until Ryan replaced everything, including hideous peeling vinyl on the walls (he's now a drywall expert!) and rustic Italian tile countertops, which matched exactly zero things in the rest of the house.

Our bathroom until I get around to repainting the walls. The aqua with gold marbling just isn’t doing it for us.

Our front lawn—the sole patch of brown along a street full of lush green (hose water thief clearly isn’t helping our cause)

That’s it for now! My latest mishaps and reviews of bad dining coming soon...

Newly Narcoleptic

2009-05-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

I must not be getting enough zzz’s because I keep finding myself in awkward situations with the hubby:

Drowsy Drive
My eyelids were so. very. heavy. Try as I might to force my eyes open, they kept dragging shut. I promised Ryan I would keep him company on the ride back from San Francisco, and was determined not to fall asleep in the passenger's seat. So, I skillfully rested my eyes while staying engaged in the conversation. He did most of the talking, but I injected acknowledgements, “oh really,” “uh huh” etc. and answered all his questions. I was quite proud of myself for fooling him into thinking I was fully awake.
“I can’t believe you slept the whole way,” he stormed when we arrived back at our apartment.
“What are you talking about? I thought we were having a nice conversation. I was listening to everything you said. “
“No. You slept the whole way. Occasionally you groaned.”
“Oh. I’m really sorry. And I thought I was being so clever by keeping up the conversation with my eyes closed.”

Morning Mumbles
On the phone in the afternoon:
“Hey Ryan! Did you hear what I told you this morning or was I just
mumbling?"
“No, you didn’t say anything. You just groaned all cranky when I kissed you goodbye.”
“Really? Because I thought I told you I love you and thanks so much for feeding the kitties, and have a good day and I’ll see you when I get home at 6.”
“No. You just grunted at me, kind of angrily.”

Dream Talking
“There’s so much storage space though,” I replied, drifting off to sleep for the night.
“There’s so much storage space in your butt?”
“What? No. I was dreaming about the house. I thought we were talking about the house.”
“No, I was telling you about how you back up your butt on to my side of the bed during the night and wake me up. I was talking about your butt and you responded ‘there’s so much storage space.’”

Awake and Proud
“I had a great day at work," I told Ryan excitedly. "I was worried about my presentation because I was so exhausted. But somehow it went really smoothly. What a relief.”
“You probably only thought you were giving a great presentation. You were actually sleeping.”

I don’t know what’s wrong with my lately. At least you can’t tell from my blog that I’m faaaalling asl

Classy Birthday Girl

2009-04-28T18:26:00.001-07:00

I took off work yesterday to celebrate my birthday with a day of pampering and relaxation. As the ultimate high-end princess, I indulged in the following:

- An early morning ballet class...at noon, fifteen miles away, because I couldn’t drag myself out of bed in time for the 9am one in my neighborhood.

- Lounging with a good book…at the DMV.

- A luxurious massage…at the chiropractor’s office.

- Opening a chic gift from Ryan… a bright yellow Brawndo- the thirst mutilator t-shirt, which I joyfully wore for our glamorous evening out.

- Fine Asian cuisine… at the mall (what can I say, Mongolian BBQ was my ideal birthday dinner).

- An elegant tea party…iced Teavana tea in a plastic cup, still in the mall.

- Gourmet dessert… at another mall across town. With a sudden craving for a candy apple at 8:45pm, Ryan drove me Mission Impossible style from Valley Fair to Oakridge, and I slid under the half-closed Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory gate at 8:59pm just in time to place my order. Mission accomplished.

- Sophisticated entertainment...in front of the computer with Ryan, watching Hell’s Kitchen and eating my candy apple and burnt popcorn.

- Creating literary works of genius…this blog posting of course.

All in all, a perfect birthday.

I Love Santa Cruz- Part 2

2009-04-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

As part of team member appreciation week, employees were given a free lunch coupon in exchange for participating in "crazy hat day" on Monday. Of course I am one of the few people who will happily dress myself crazy for a free meal. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that "crazy" at work entails anything other than the standard company uniform baseball cap. Of the few employees who participated, most took the opportunity to sport a not-so-crazy non-uniform hat, such as a straw beach hat or a stylish newsboy cap. Naturally, I wore a lady bug hat with felt eyes and antennas with bells. Oddly, not one customer asked why I was wearing it or even looked at me funny.

Today as I was walking from my car to work, I passed a man of unidentifiable age. He had long hair, leathery tan skin, and dirty baggy clothes. He threw up his arms toward the sky and shouted, "Sun! Sun: Please tell this girl she's cute, for I am too bashful to do so myself." I nervously squeaked "thank you" and scurried past him. He said something else, but I couldn't decipher it. I was too busy speed-walking down the sidewalk and not looking back.
Maybe I should try parking on a different street.

I Love Santa Cruz

2009-04-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I saw a man peeing in the bushes today.
I spotted him in the corner of a parking lot as I walked from my car to work.
At 12:30 in the afternoon.

Yes, I’ve Cleaned Myself

2009-04-14T23:03:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the outpouring of support from my devoted readers, who flooded my inbox with messages of concern for my personal hygiene, and requested an update on our shower status (translation: my Mom emailed me). Ashamed to appear in public looking like mountaineers who rolled down a hill, and smelling like homeless hippies, we didn’t leave our apartment for the rest of the Sunday evening. Instead, we threw ourselves a filthy movie party (filthy=us; the movie was probably PG-13), and ordered in pizza and Chinese food. Thank goodness for delivery. We were able to shower before we went to bed, and are currently squeaky clean.

Dirty Easter

2009-04-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

“Aren’t you glad we didn’t shower first?” Ryan asked as we drove away from our house. Our house! Our very own charming 97 year old Craftsman, with loads of “character” and a slant akin to the Mystery Spot. We spent a couple hours tearing out and hauling foliage in preparation for termite work, and were greased with sweat and caked with dirt from head to toe.

“Seriously. We desperately need a good scrubbing before Easter dinner.”

We rushed back to our apartment, with only an hour to shower and meet the parents at a restaurant.

I turned on the shower faucet. No water. The sink. No water. You’ve got to be kidding me.

“Hey Ryan—Guess what. No water.”

“What the--?”

After calling our landlord and learning the water was off for repairs for at least another hour, we weighed our options:

Shower at the gym.
Take a cold shower in our new house.
Push back dinner until the wee hours of the evening, pending our water being turned back on.
Go to dinner smelling like “butt, dirty feet and trash.”
Take turns standing under the Brita filter pitcher in the shower.
Fill up the sink with the water drips, and take a cold “monkey bath” in two inches of brown water.

We’ll be feasting on Easter dinner next weekend instead.

Mini Gourmet is officially off my shit list!

2009-04-12T18:12:00.000-07:00

Hungry for dinner on a Thursday at midnight, and feeling unenthused about our regular diner options, we decided to end our boycott and give Mini Gourmet a second chance. The verdict:

- Surprisingly efficient and super-friendly service
- A bigger and better menu than other 24-hour dining destinations
- Adequate food*, specializing in deep fried goodness

Just make sure to leave your water bottles at home.

* That one’s for you, Kelly! :)

Bedtime Tater Talk

2008-12-29T21:26:00.000-08:00

Just as I was drifting off to sleep for the night, Ryan questioned me from across the bed:
"Did you know that potatoes grow under ground?"
"Yes, of course."
"And carrots."
"Yes."
"And watermelons..."
"No. They don't."
"Haha, I got you."
"No. You didn't."
"Haha."
"I was already half asleep. What made you think to ask me about potatoes anyways?"
"I don't have to explain myself to you! Goodnight!"
Then we laughed really hard together. Then we proceeded to list every method of growing produce- under ground, on a vine, on bushes, on trees, etc.- and each fruit and vegetable we could think of that fell within each category. And then we went to sleep for the night.
Ah, marriage.

My Life in Numbers

2008-12-24T06:56:00.000-08:00

Last night for dinner I ate about 12 gingerbread cookies, 7 peppermint chocolate truffles, 5 spoonfuls of vegetable beef soup, 1 slice of zuchini, and 1 package of seaweed snacks. Then I went to hip-hop dance classes for 2.5 hours.

I have exactly 1,516 unread messages in my inbox. Sorting and deleting all those forwards have been on my to-list for at least 365 days.

I still have a car with only 3 door handles on the inside, 0 heating capabilities, and a pile of at least 60 miscellaneous objects in the trunk (tap shoes, seashell collection from my childhood, etc.).

1 sigh.

Quick Kitty Update

2008-12-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

Tucker reads my blog! I know because as soon as I published the last post, he started sitting on my lap again. I've guilted him into being an equal opportunity lap kitty. Hey Tucker- I know you're reading this little buddy. Mommy loves you.

Oso has discovered a few things while getting settled in our apartment:
- People have the best water. He likes to jump on the table and drink out of our water glasses, even though we serve him the exact same Brita filtered water fresh twice daily in a bowl.
- It's fun to knock things off the desk. His new hobby is sitting on the desk and pushing off small objects (pens, inhalers, chap stick, etc.), watching them fall to the ground one by one.
- Big brother is the coolest. Whatever Tucker is doing looks like fun, so Oso is learning to sit on our laps and walk across the computer keyboard. Yesterday he walked on some unique combination of keys and turned on an audio narration function while Ryan was working. It took Ryan fifteen minutes to figure out how to turn it off, all the while listening to a robotic male voice narrate "Safari...Preferences..."

Since the kitties like our computers so much and have an abundance of cute stories and photos, maybe I should let them start their own blogs. Ryan suggested giving them MySpace pages. They could use some cyber-friends, since we don't let them out of the apartment to socialize.

Whines of the Week

2008-11-17T22:43:00.000-08:00

It would be both untruthful and ungrateful to claim I had a bad week.* In fact, I guess you could say I had a great week. I read four magazines, went to three dance classes, played with two kitties**, went to one art show and ate a partridge in a pear tree (oh tis the season already). Nevertheless my joviality *** was interrupted by a series of irritations:

Not a Cat for All Seasons
My beloved lap cat has abandoned me for another lap. Now that the weather is cooling, Tucker uses my lap as a mere stepping stone to get to the bigger better lap in our apartment. Every time my heart leaps that I’m about to get a little lap lovin’ while watching a movie, Tucker walks right over me and curls up on Ryan. What a cruel kitty. Why won’t he just jump on Ryan in the first place, instead of strutting across me dismissively on the way to his real lap destination? Ryan tries to comfort me:
“Ah, Tucker still loves you Shonelle. I’m sure it’s only cuz' my lap is huge and warm for the winter. I actually produce heat, unlike you.”
“But I was counting on a kitty lap warmer for our cold apartment.”
“Exactly. Maybe he doesn’t like you sucking the heat out of his little 8 pound body.”
“Whatever. Tucker, come here and warm me up, darnit.”

“Californians care more about the rights of chickens than they do of gay people.”
I heard a man in a restaurant sharing the above election analysis with his date. I do believe he was quoting someone, and John Stewart is my best uneducated guess. I don’t want to get into politics, but suffice it to say that the passage of Proposition 8 left me deeply disappointed. And yes, I voted, so I’m entitled to complain.

Wake Up Call
Ryan and I enjoyed some late night QT on Wednesday and went to bed at 1am since we both worked later shifts on Thursday. I couldn’t wait to sleep in until 9, drag myself out of bed leisurely, and work out in the morning. However at 5:45am, I awoke to shrill unrecognizable music. At first I thought it was the radio in my dreams. Then I was sure it was Ryan’s alarm, so I kicked him to turn it off. Then finally I realized it was someone calling me on my cell phone. At 5:45. In the morning.

The following conversation ensued:

“Hello?”
“Good morning Shonelle. It’s Cindy from work.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just calling to see if you have the posters for the back of the tea fixture. They’re installing it right now.”
“No, I ordered the posters, but they didn’t come in yet. You didn’t tell me you needed them for a certain date, or I would have had them rushed shipped. And given them to you already.”
“Oh that’s ok. Don’t you worry about it. We’ll see you later.”
“Ok, bye.”

Here’s what the conversation sounded like in my head though:

“WHA-AATT?”
“Oh, good morning Shonelle. It’s Cindy from work.”
“For the love of Christ. It’s 5:45am. The store better be burning down.”
“I’m just calling to see if you have the posters for the back of the tea fixture.”
“Are you f$*king kidding me? You’re calling about posters? No I don’t have the goddamn posters.”
“Oh ok. Well I am truly sorry to wake you up. I probably ruined your day didn’t I?”
“Yes. I HATE you.”
Hangs up the phone.

As my husband will gladly corroborate, I am a miserable beast when my precious sleep cycle is interrupted. I was livid that my boss thought it would be reasonable to give me a pre-dawn wake up call on a day when I was scheduled to work from 2:30-11 PM for a store event and a meeting. In fact I was so irate about having my sleep interrupted, I couldn’t go back to sleep, which made me angry at myself for being so angry I couldn’t sleep, which made it even more difficult to fall asleep. I spent two hours in bed fuming, and was a resentful exhausted crabapple for the duration of the day.

*As you can probably tell, I’m a week late posting this. But I’ve been on hiatus for two months, so what’s another seven or eight days.

**Despite all the fabulous pet toys we’ve bought them, their new favorite toy for hours of entertainment is a shoelace. One. simple. shoelace. Followed by plastic shopping bags.

***Microsoft Word Thesaurus is informing me that a synonym for “jovial” is “full of beans.” Hee hee. Really? How delightful!

Little Basin Twilight Zone

2008-09-14T21:25:00.001-07:00

“I’m going to be sick.”
“Here, roll down the window. Do you want me to pull over?”
“No, I promise I’m not going to barf in your car. I just can’t wait until this drive is over.”

My stomach rolled like waves. As Christine wound up the hill, the road narrowed and became more densely wooded. I breathed in the fresh air and sucked intently on an Altoid, trying to keep my car sickness under control.

I don’t usually meet non-profit groups at event sites, but Christine (my counterpart at another store), coordinated the meeting. If she was willing to drive all the way down from Los Altos to pick me up for a conference in Little Basin, I wouldn’t refuse. We had a one o’clock appointment with an environmental group to discuss sponsoring an upcoming fundraiser. A half hour into our nauseating drive, I seriously regretted coming. Why didn’t we just meet at one of our stores? I sighed deeply.

“Sorry, Shonelle. I didn’t realize it was this far off 17.”
“Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have come if you told me it was going to be 10 miles of windy road. I should have looked at the map. Well, at least it’s scenic up here.”
“We’ve got to be close now. I better call and tell them we’re going to be late.”

Christine dialed on speaker phone, and a man picked up.

“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Christine and Shonelle, calling for Margie.”
“Margie no longer works here.”
“Oh. Is this the S Redwoods Fund?”
“Yes, but Margie no longer works here.”
“Um, that’s funny, because we have an appointment with her at one, and are on our way to Little Basin. We were just calling to say we’re running late.”
“Oh, we thought she had contacted you to tie up all loose ends.”
“No. We just confirmed with her last week, and had no idea she was leaving.”
“I’m so sorry about that. Well, like I said, Margie is no longer working with us, but we do want to meet with you about the sponsorship. Justin is already at the Little Basin site. I will let him know you’re on your way and fill him in on the details so he can show you around.”
“Ok, thanks. We should be there in about ten minutes.”

Christine hung up the phone.
“That was weird.”
“Who leaves without canceling appointments and letting their contacts know? She emailed us just five days ago.”
“It must have been really fast, on bad terms I guess.”
“That’s really strange.”

We underestimated the drive. It did not take us just ten more minutes to arrive at Little Basin. It took us yet another thirty minutes. With each additional twist of the road and flip of the stomach, I hated myself more and more for agreeing to the meeting. After over an hour in the car and half a box of Altoids, we finally pulled up to the site. As we entered the Little Basin destination, we saw a gathering of about forty men and women dressed in nineteenth century pioneer clothing.

“Oh my gosh, we drove so far we entered a different century,” I giggled.
“This is bizarre.”
“No, it’s just one of those re-enactments, you know?”
“But I don’t see any kids. Where are the field trip groups? This is something else.”

We parked in front of the main office. Relieved, I stepped out and stretched my legs.

“Oh, hey- do you want me to roll up your window before we go in?”
“Nah, don’t even worry about it. These people haven’t even seen cars before,” Christine winked at me.

The doors to the office were locked and the lights off. We double-checked our maps.

“Well, we’re definitely in the right place.”
“I can’t believe nobody is here.”

Christine tried to call the organization’s main office again, but had no cell phone reception. No reception on my phone either.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“This is like the Twilight Zone. I can’t believe we’re stuck all the way up the mountains, with a bunch of people from another century.”
The group began migrating, and we asked one woman what was going on. She explained they were with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "taking the youth on a handcart trek."

Christine and I decided we’d already wasted enough time, and would not wait around on the chance Justin showed up. We drove away, but it took us twenty minutes just to get back to the main road. With our luck, we’d timed our exit perfectly to leave right behind the pioneer expedition. We had to brake every couple hundred feet to let bonnet clad wheel barrow pushers move off the road and let us pass.

Christine and I laughed uproariously the whole way back to the freeway. I could hardly breathe.

“You know, I’m glad they were there. Otherwise, I would have just been mad about the whole thing. But this was a fun bizarre adventure.”
“You can say that again.”
“Uch, three whole hours of my day. Let’s not tell our bosses what a colossal waste of time this was.”
“At least we were in it together. Can you imagine if you went there alone?”
“If I drove on my own, I would have made it a quarter mile up the hill, and just turned around.”

A week later I received an email from the organization, apologizing for the mix-up, and asking if we’d like to re-schedule another visit to the Little Basin site.

No thank you.

My Traumatic Weekend

2008-09-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

by Oso Bellon, guest blogger

I was hanging out, just minding my own business and licking my crotch, when suddenly I heard a swarm of angry cats inside our apartment. Right inside! Terrified, I sprinted down the hall toward the noise, frantically scanning the room to find the invading cats. But there were none to be seen or smelled. Mommy told me not to be scared, that it was just a musical greeting card for a friend, with a chorus of cats meowing the Happy Birthday song. Alas, I couldn't understand her comforting words, because I don't speak Human. I was on edge the rest of the evening, knowing there was an army of unfriendly cats lurking nearby.

The next day, I was exploring a paper shopping bag. I poked my head through one of the cord handles to dip my nose into the bag and see what was inside. Oh. Just Daddy's new shirts. Boring. I was hoping there were more toys for me. When I tried to pull my head out of the bag, I couldn't figure out how to slide back through the handle the same way I went in. The cord was around my neck. A bag. Stuck around my neck. Aaaggghh! I ran crazed through the apartment, paws flailing, biting in a panic, until I finally tackled the bag off me. Phew.

I love my new home, but gosh it's scary sometimes! That's why I like to cuddle up in cozy camouflaged places, like this duffel bag. Can you spot me?

I Rule this Apartment

2008-09-07T17:18:00.000-07:00

by Tucker Bellon, guest blogger

Greetings! I'm Tucker, fearless captain of this apartment. Let me tell you about...oh wait Mom's coming home. I've got to greet her at the door. Hi, Mom. Purrrrrrr. Love me, pet me, feed me, love me. Purrrrr. Oh yeah, right on my cheek, you know how I like it, purrrr.

Do you see this? She's going to read her stupid books again. My woman needs to learn to pay more attention to her owner and less attention to her homework. Take that! Just try to read your business book with me sprawled across it. Hah!

Oh, my silly human, you think you're going to type now? We'll I'm going to rest my head on your keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseswawereyboard and meow for attention if you ignore me.

And sleeping? I couldn't care less if you're trying to get your eight hours! I'm going to walk across you stomach and your pillow, rattle the blinds, and meow on the window sill. All. night. long. That's how I roll.

Crap! Those crappy people kicked me out of the bedroom so they could sleep. Whatever. I'm going to walk across their kitchen table, move my toys from room to room, and show em' who is boss when they wake up.

My new apartment is great, but my people pets still need a little training.

Office Supplies on Lockdown

2008-08-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

If I need office supplies at work, a pen or a fresh roll of double-sided tape for instance, I need to find a Store Team Leader (we don't have "managers") to borrow a key. This key unlocks a lock-box of other keys. The lock-box is located in the Store Team Leader office, which is also occasionally locked. One of the many keys in the lock-box is labeled "supply closet," and I use it to unlock the padlock secured on the office supply closet doors. A ten minute full-security process just to refill my stapler.

When I visited Kim at Google, I was impressed with the heated toilet seats, free homemade organic cafeteria food, and even the laptop bags and backpacks on loan. Mostly though it was the office supply closet that blew my mind. No locks. No management permission. Just a giant unsecured all-welcoming cabinet full of highlighters and post-its galore. Ah, the sweet and fleeting taste of office supply freedom.

Meet Our Furbabies!

2008-08-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve officially graduated from training kittens, despite losing poor Gumball under the bed for months (he was just “hiding” I’m sure). We’ve adopted two real kitties from the Humane Society and boy do we love our little boys.

Tucker, age 8, is the ultimate lap kitty. He purrs and purrs on my lap while I’m studying, and puts his paw on my chest if I’m not paying him enough attention. A fearless explorer, he makes the nightly rounds to each windowsill in our apartment, and is quite the talkative boss. He plays vigorously (I saw him do a backwards somersault over a toy!) for all of 20 seconds before getting all tuckered out and taking a nap. Don’t be fooled by his svelte body; he goes insane for treats and begs for food every time I'm in the kitchen, even if I'm just pouring a glass of water. My sister, who coined “furbaby,” says he looks like a grumpy old man, and I must agree.

Oso (“bear” in Spanish), age 5, is a quirky little guy. He jumps at every noise but doesn’t hide. He only likes to be pet when he’s in a cuddly mood, but wants to hang out in the same room as his adopted family at all times. We could have named him Mouse or Bird for his squeaky chirp of a meow, but he struck us first as a cute bear cub. Oso has a one track mind: play time! Dangle anything over him and he’ll roll around on his back joyfully. He’s a little chubster, but couldn’t care less about food. In fact, we put a treat on his chair and he sat on it. We were happy to adopt such an adorable Halloween kitty, because we’ve heard how difficult it is to find homes for black cats.

We opted for two cats to keep each other company when we’re at work all day, and worried at first that Captain Cuddles wouldn’t get along with Mr. Playtime. Fortunately, they’ve grown to be good pals in just a few weeks. They box each other, wrestle, play tag, and even groom each other. They usually lounge within a couple feet of each other, and us.

I ask them daily “Great cats, or greatest cats ever?” and make sure they know the answer is “ever”. They use their litter boxes and scratching posts without fail and always seem happy to see us when we get home from work or wake up in the morning. What easy animals! Instant pets: just add apartment.

Vacation Blog Wrap-Up

2008-08-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

We discovered Shari's in the Northwest. It's a diner like Denny's, but with slightly better food and slightly lower prices. I ate a variety of breakfasts there, including a veggie omelet and potato pancakes with applesauce (Chanukah in July!). Ryan found a favorite dish and stuck with it, some kind of country breakfast steak. Looking for Shari's restaurants off the freeway became our road trip hobby on the way back down through Washington and Oregon.

"Ooh, is that a Shari's coming up?"
"Oh my gosh, I think it is. Woo hoo!"
"No it's a Denny's."
"Screw you Denny's!"
"Shari's! Shari's!"
"I'm getting hungry. Can't we stop somewhere else?"
"No, it's Shari's or bust!"

By the last day of our trip, we'd eaten a total of 6 meals at 4 different Shari's locations over 5 days. I'll let you do the math on that one.

And thus concludes my vacation blog series, a whole month in the making.

Cozy in Portland

2008-08-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

If you are a bookworm, there's no greater city than Portland. Our first destination was Powell's City of Books, the world's largest bookstore. Upon entering, we picked up a map to guide us through the maze of color-coded rooms featuring an eclectic mix of both new & used books. The musical theater section alone was bigger than most book store's entire drama sections, and the dance section was a 50 foot wall of shelves labeled by category, rather than just a single bookshelf! I left with a detox cookbook, and Ryan left with a stack of music books almost too high to carry.

Our book cravings satiated after a couple hours in Powell's, we headed out to explore the rest of the Pearl district. The first thing that caught our eye was…another bookstore! We couldn't resist spending some time in CounterMedia, where I bought What is Your Poo Telling You and The Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2007, and Ryan bought 50 Facts that Should Change the World and Against Civilization. We did not purchase anything from the store's expansive selection of comic books or adult publications, though who wouldn't be tempted by Naked Girls Smoking Weed?

Then a couple doors down we strolled into yet another book store, this one featuring literary journals, and local comic books and writing. Ryan bought a little something here too. It was a long walk back to our car with such a heavy bag.

In the evening I ordered surprisingly delicious Thai food out of a van. It was only $5 for an entrée, rice and drink, and to my delight it didn't make me sick. We also hit Voodoo Doughnut, a 24 hour donut eatery with punked out employees and a unique selection of donuts, including some in the shape of voodoo dolls. I don't usually eat donuts, but after passing up every scrumptious sweet this vacation (I discovered I'm lactose intolerant shortly before we left), I had to spring for a vegan pumpkin donut with rainbow sprinkles. I ate it in bed while watching the So You Think You Can Dance results show on our hotel TV. Are you starting to get the vibe of our vacation?

Day 2 in Portland, we explored the upscale Nob Hill area, which reminded us of downtown Los Gatos, with all its boutiques and quaint eateries. We found a tea shop specializing in boba/bubble drinks. I've only see boba drinks with tapioca balls, but this shop had quite a selection to choose from. I opted for a watermelon green tea with aloe vera boba. Heaven in a plastic cup.

We checked out Forest Park, though we didn't actually hit the main sites such as the gardens or museums. We mostly just walked up a hill and enjoyed the beautiful greenery.

After driving around various neighborhoods to get a feel for the city, we finished our evening at Kell's for dinner and traditional live Irish music (7 nights a week!).

We loved Portland so much, we actually discussed moving there in a few years. True it rains 155 days out of the year, but that's why there are bookstores, coffee/tea shops, and live music in pubs on every corner to keep you cozy!

Kilts & Other Seattle Attractions

2008-08-07T21:02:00.000-07:00

Seattle, Day 1:

Pikes Place Market: We’re not big shoppers, so we zipped through pretty fast, but the famous fish throwing was indeed entertaining.

The Original Starbucks: Eh. Not much exciting. Just a regular coffee shop with an old sign. I took a photo of everyone taking a photo of it.

"Buttnick”: A building in the Historic Pioneer Square. You know how we like names.

Utilikilts (Kilt Shop!!): There is a store in Seattle that sells nothing but man skirts. A few pairs of boots and tights, but mostly just skirts. I would call them kilts, but there wasn’t a single traditional Scottish design in the place. Man. Skirts. I didn’t actually see any kilted menfolk roaming the streets of Seattle (an underground kilt society perhaps?), so I’m curious how the store stays in business.

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop: Speaking of curious, we walked the Waterfront and stumbled upon ye olde shoppe of curiously useless crap. Human skulls, insects preserved in paper weights, Russian nesting dolls, shark teeth, souvenir coins. Curiously fun to explore.

Elliot’s Oyster House: We had an oysterfest when we happened in for lunch at 3pm and discovered happy hour oysters were a mere 50 cents!

Capitol Hill: Since 30 oysters weren’t enough seafood for the day, we dined on sushi for dinner with our friend. The best feature of all of Seattle was the free dance instruction on the sidewalks in Capitol Hill. Look down on the cement and you’ll see “The Tango” or “The Waltz” with footprints and numbers.

Seattle, Day 2 Itinerary:
Space Needle.
Science Fiction Museum.
Olympic Sculpture Park.
We did none of the above.
This photo is as close as we got to the Space Needle.
Traffic to the Seattle Center was intimidating, and the vibe of the city reminded us of San Francisco (see Halloween blog for how much we like driving there). We felt ourselves getting tense and touristy, not to mention itching for the privacy of a hotel room after staying with so many hospitable family/friends. So we scrapped everything we had planned to do in Seattle.

Seattle, Revised Day 2 Itinerary:
Drive to Portland.
Go out to dinner.
Watch So You Think You Can Dance in our underwear.
Ahh. Vacation.

Canadian Napcation

2008-08-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

A day or two into our Vancouver stay (gosh, this is a month ago now) we realized we were being pitiful tourists but admirable vacationers. Our days in Canada went like this:

10:30am: Wake-up, shower, have a leisurely breakfast on the patio
12:30pm: Go back to bed for a nap. “Our vacation is one big napcation!”
3pm: Get up, have a snack, lounge around the patio
5:30pm: Ryan’s family comes home and we spend the rest of the evening going out to eat and hanging out

Can you blame us? Look at where we were staying! Ryan’s step-mom happened to be house/dog sitting at a stylish home overlooking Horseshoe Bay, and the photo above was our view from the backyard patio.

When we weren’t napping, these were the humble highlights from our trip:

Having dinner at the home of some fun-loving British friends of the family, and watching Little Britain, a sketch-comedy show…like Monty Python, but modern and even funnier.

Taking a tea break at Urban Tea Merchant- Canada’s Teavana (our newly discovered fave Nor Cal destination; there’s one in Valley Fair). At Urban Tea Merchant, I was served by an employee with perfect formal manners and a charming French accent. “For you mademoiselle…” I enjoyed a refreshing unsweetened French ice tea with Roobios, strawberries, raspberries and toasted almonds. Delectable!

Cramming all our sight-seeing into one day: a walk around Granville Island, a drive around Stanley Park, and a stop at Cypress Point for an amazing view. No, we did not make it to the island, though we did pass the ferry exit at least 10 times on our trip.

Lunching at an upscale oyster restaurant, where we realized you don’t just order “oysters” like you do in San Jose. Rather you choose from a menu of 20 varieties, arranged by region.

Most importantly- just spending some serious QT with family, including being there for a killer birthday party.

We had dinner engagements every night of our Vancouver trip, so I resigned myself to missing the week’s So You Think You Can Dance episodes (on at 8pm in CA on Wed nights with a results show at 9pm on Thursdays), even though I am obsessed with the show. Obsessed. But my dad promised to TiVo it and try not to delete it for me. The only time we watched television in Vancouver was the last night of our trip. It was Sunday at 10:30pm, and we wanted to check out Canadian news. Lo and behold, what was on from 10pm-1am but my favorite American dance show, results show back-to-back and all! Dance show serendipity. That was the true highlight of our vacation.

Another Musical Interlude (Your Mom Rocks!)

2008-07-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

We stopped by the Voodoo lounge in San Jose tonight to check out some local bands. The following conversation ensued:

“You know what would be a good name for a band? Your Mom!”
“Hahaha. ‘Who are you going to see tonight?’ ‘Your Mom!’”
“Your Mom was amazing last night.”
“Your Mom sucks!”
“I saw Your Mom for $20 last night.”
“I wouldn’t pay 6 bucks to see Your Mom!”
“Your Mom Performing Live at 8”
“Your Mom Does the Voodoo Lounge”
“We’re Your Mom! Thanks for coming out.”

“When we get home, we have to see if that name is taken.”
“If it’s not, you should snag it. Open a MySpace page and put a placeholder: Your Mom, Coming Soon."
“Influences: Your Dad”
“It's got to be taken already..."
“I can email all my friends, 'I have a new project- Your Mom.'”

To our dismay, a quick Google search revealed that Your Mom is a Christian metal band, suing another band over the name.

“But that article you found on Google was from ’97? So maybe Your Mom is available now!”
“Yeah. I’m going to do more research. Your post isn’t going up too soon?”
“I have 3 friends that read my blog and I don’t think any of them are going to steal Your Mom for anything." (Don't even think about it, Readers)
“It’s time for bed. I’ll have to look for Your Mom later.”

I just can’t seem to stick to my travel blogs this week…

You know you’re not in California anymore when…

2008-07-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

A gas station attendant approaches you as you're filling up the first night of your trip:
“You know it’s illegal to pump your own gas in the state of Oregon.”
“Oh yeah, hahaha.”
“No seriously. It’s a $1,000 fine.”
Silence
Mumbling to each other, “Is he joking? He’s joking right?”
When you drive away, your Frommer’s Oregon book does indeed confirm that there are no self-service gas stations in Oregon (but that fine still sounds a little steep).
“Uch, we can’t find the freeway off rest stops and we can’t pump our own gas in this state? Oregon is on our shit list!”

You go to a Wal-Mart the next day to find that everything is a couple bucks cheaper, and there’s no sales tax in Oregon. So you have a big fat affordable shopping spree before resuming your road trip north. “Oregon rocks! We love Oregon!”

You don’t recognize a single traffic sign once you cross the border into Canada. What’s with all the yellow and black stripes? Are there really bears crossing here? And why are most of the green stoplights blinking?

You keep forgetting that Canadians use a different measurement system.
“Dude, that road traffic monitor is broken! It says I’m going 97, but I’m right at the speed limit.”
“That’s 60 kilometers an hour, not miles an hour!”
Or
“Holy crap! How did you manage to get a $40 lunch at Whole Foods?”
“Um, apparently 100 grams doesn’t equal a pound after all. So it was $8.99 for only a quarter pound.”

Flogging San Jose

2008-07-17T23:09:00.001-07:00

I am eternally grateful to coworkers who happened to be chatting by my desk after lunch this afternoon. The topic of conversation: A free Flogging Molly concert at Music in the Park in downtown San Jose. I interrupted them- Shut. UP! My favorite band? A FREE concert tonight? 5 minutes from my apartment? And Ryan and I miraculously both don't have work or school? How the heck did I not know about this? I would have cried tomorrow morning to find out what I'd missed.

Ryan picked me up right after work, we arrived 15 minutes before the band went on, stayed through the encore, enjoyed a nice late dinner together after, and I'm still managing to get to bed in time for my 8 hours of beauty sleep (or would be if I weren't writing this). What an amazing impromptu evening.

This is a little detour from my travel series, but I'll get back to Canadian adventure blogs this weekend. I just couldn't wait to share how the planets aligned in my musical favor today. I'm so happy I could flog, er blog!

Best Places to Pee off I-5

2008-07-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

Funky Exxon
We thought we were stopping at a regular Exxon gas station in far Northern Ca, but to use the restroom we had to walk through a restaurant/bar with all kinds of collectable décor. There was a 19th century oven and stove in the seating area, and every inch of the walls were covered with framed guns, articles about the end of WWII, dollar bills from around the world, license plates, and bumper stickers. When I opened the door to the single-stall restroom I jumped out of my skin and nearly yelped, because there was a fully clothed woman sitting in a bathtub right next to the toilet. Disoriented and embarrassed, my eyes focused after a moment, and I realized it was just a manikin. The employees were gathered around laughing, because apparently surprising visitors is the major form of entertainment in Middle-of-Nowhere, Ca.

Olive Pit
A certified olive freak, I was overjoyed to see billboards for Olive Pit in Corning, Ca, a town of 7,000 known as “Olive City” (not that I knew any of that before the trip). A restaurant/gift shop with a tasting bar, Olive Pit has an enormous variety of green olives stuffed with everything from garlic to nuts to anchovies. We also picked up some first-class apple butter and pumpkin butter from the yummy selection of other specialty foods.

Boring Ol’ “Safety Roadside Rest Areas”
By the second night of our road trip, Ryan decided that he wouldn’t stop for me to pee anywhere but official rest areas. Somewhere in Northern Ca, we followed a gas & food sign off the freeway, only to find ourselves on a dark desolate road with jagged horror-movie buildings (If we found a man working at a gas station in the area, he would tell Ryan in a scratchy voice, “I’ll give you one gallon of gas for every minute with your wife”…or so Ryan told me for the next hour). Then in Ashland, OR, we found a grocery store bathroom without too much trouble, but when we followed the road back the way we came, it dumped us off on I-5 heading the wrong direction, and there wasn’t an exit to turn around for 9 miles. So, we became big fans of the Department of Transportation’s toilets.

Lick my nooksack!

2008-07-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

I’m ba-ack! I just returned from a two week road trip to Vancouver (the one in Canada), Seattle & Portland. I have a blog for just about every day of my vacation. So, being short on free time, and to make up for my recent blog-slackerness, I’m going to recap my adventures in a very special travel series. Here’s your road-trip mini-blog #1:

Favorite Street/City Exit Signs:

Hooker
Weed (fittingly very smoky due to all the wild “fires”)
Talent
Wonderland
Easy Street
Nooksack (aka butt-crack…pee-ew! it’s cow central over there)
Chuckanut
Dike Access Road
Skookumchuck River
Balls Ferry

Real mature, I know.
22 endless hours over 2 days on the road + 2 people reading amusing street signs = 200 miles of buttcrack-nooksack jokes.

Backblogged!

2008-05-15T18:13:00.001-07:00

Why aren't I blogging more this month? What the heck am I up to? The ups and downs of being me:

Downside: I arrived at work at 5:15 am today, groggy after a short night of interrupted sleep. For some reason, I woke up at 2:30 am, sure I was snoozing through my alarm, which went off for real at 4:30 am. Total tired misery. Caffeine now fading. Can't blog coherently. Gosh, I hate my job.

Upside: I hosted an "energizer station" for Bike to Work Day on a creek trail, early in the morning before the 100 degree weather kicked in. The first five hours of my work day flew by as I served refreshments to 150 friendly bikers, and snacked on free orange slices. Gosh, I love my job.

Downside: I can't remember the last weekend I had to sleep in, with nothing on my to-do list except laundry and blogging.

Upside: Despite my frequent evenings on campus, and weekends at work this season, I've managed to get out of the apartment for some entertainment, including a show at Retox in San Francisco. It's a hole in the wall (more like basement in the wall) lounge, decorated like the interior of a plane. Rad.

Downside: School is squeezing all the free time out of my week, particularly the time I would be spending blogging.

Upside: I'm currently researching the fruit market in Japan for a group project. And writing a script for a skit on saki drinking etiquette. Who knew grad school would be so fun?

So unfortunately, "blog" is still about number 15 on my ongoing "Master To-Do List," but rest-assured, I have a bunch of topics to write about under my "To-Blog List" (oh yes, I actually keep lists with these titles). I'll get to my back-logged blogs (backblogs?) eventually!

Slick Talk in Bed

2008-04-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

“Hey you want to try this? A team member in the body care department was handing out samples.”

(Reading the package together) “Good Clean Love?”

“Yeah, it’s an all-natural sustainable personal lubricant.”

“Hm, cruelty free. So, I guess it’s not tested on rabbits.”

“And it’s 99.99% vegan! The .1% is the beef you provide yourself.”

“No sticky clean-up…? It can’t be any good if it doesn’t result in a sticky clean up.”

People keep asking us if we’re planning to have kids soon. Obviously not, considering our idea of bedroom action is laughing together at a bottle of lube.

BaulPointPen...WOW!

2008-04-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

Another ridiculously talented former roommate keeping me entertained online. I listened to the cheesy love song about eight times today. Thanks, Baul! Or is it Pen...?

http://www.myspace.com/baulpointpen

www.youtube.com/baulpointpen

Math Retard

2008-04-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

Why do I feel utterly retarded every time I sit down to do quantitative homework for a business class? And I don’t mean retarded as a derogatory colloquialism for stupid. I mean retarded as in maybe I really do belong on the slow bus, seriously mentally handicapped. Formulating equations in Excel makes me want to tear out my hair, hurl my laptop across the room, and then go find some crayons and a coloring book to relax. But I suppose that makes me psychotic, not retarded after all.

I'm Married to a One Man Band!

2008-04-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

Rock Star Hubby Take 2:

www.myspace.com/ryanbellon

Way more cool stuff than the Best at Recess link I posted earlier (see if you can spot the goofy photo of me)!

Make sure to add him as a friend and post slutty pictures of yourself to help develop his hot groupie fan base. :)

Bad Food Ideas

2008-04-02T20:48:00.000-07:00

More tips from the undomesticated! Recent discoveries I advise you to avoid:

Popsicles on the Road
I should have known that eating a popsicle on my drive home from work would be a poor idea. But that deliciously all-natural, real-fruit bar of watermelon goodness was calling to me in the store, and I couldn’t wait. I wrapped a napkin around it, and actually impressed myself with my driving-sucking coordination (sucking while driving, not sucking at driving that is) for most of the commute. I was expertly multi-tasking until I got down to the last part of the popsicle. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but I found myself covered with bits of red ice exploding all over the dashboard, running down my scarf, sliding underneath my jeans, and falling in the cracks between the seats. Sticky cold wet red messy fun everyone while I was merging off the freeway. It’s been a couple weeks. Perhaps I should clean my car.

Microwavable Salad
I have three methods of cooking: 1. Microwave everything, 2. Heat up canned food over the stove, and 3. Mix raw produce, usually into a salad. Ryan argues that none of these actually constitute real cooking, but of course I beg to differ. My favorite recipe consists of microwaving a bowl of raw veggies, and then adding it to a microwave bowl of instant noodle soup. Voila! A somewhat healthy dinner in exactly 3 minutes and 30 seconds. One night I didn’t have any vegetables in the fridge, except a Tupperware of salad that I had packed for lunch but didn’t eat. In an ingenious Martha Stewart move, I decided to add the lettuce to my soup, even though I’d already tossed it with pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds microwave well, right? A minute and a half later, I had a bowl of dense, soggy lettuce and mushy pumpkin seeds with the gag-inducing taste of butt. I fed the whole thing straight to the garbage, leaving me with absolutely nothing for a meal. I can’t remember what I ate, but it was probably some creative combination of sliced cheese, soymilk, applesauce, frozen wontons, and a slice of bread.

Office Free For All
I will eat anything at work. It’s a major compulsion. No matter how much I plan to stick to my healthy diet and pre-packed lunch, I can never resist the free food in the conference room or break room. The strange thing it’s not even food I like or would ever purchase: stale sugar cookies, hideous artificial candy-coated Easter egg chocolates, cold 2 hour old breakfast burritos, nearly rancid garlic bread. I wonder why I’m gaining weight, and then it hits me—I’m consuming an extra 500 calories daily of free food at work. And that doesn’t count the cookies I sample on the sales floor six times a day when I walk by. I clearly don’t understand the concept of self-control.

Gang-Approved Singing Ballerinas

2008-03-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

I went to the the San Francisco Ballet with Kim (blogging superstar and my ballet buddy) on a Wednesday evening (gasp!). I had high hopes for the production, a Jerome Robbins tribute, because what could be better than a Broadway theme ballet? Come on. Broadway. Ballet. My two favorite things in the world. Here's a run down of the amazing and amazingly strange program:

Act 1: Fancy Free
Even if you don't go out of your way to watch dance, you've probably seen bits of this classic number on TV. Three sailors fighting over two women in a bar... the whole story told through jazz dance. SF Ballet nailed it! Playful and perfectly performed, I chuckled out loud at a few parts, and literally watched the entire piece with a giant grin on my face.

Act 2: In the Night
Three couples tell the story of their different relationships (youthful romance, established love, fiery passion) through ballet. Each pas de duex is set to a Chopin Nocturne, and staged against a starry sky. The SF Ballet performance was gorgeous and emotional, and included some seemingly effortless jaw-dropping lifts. I didn't want it to end.

Act 3: West Side Story Suite
What the HECK? I was hugely looking forward to seeing a medley of dance numbers from one of my favorite musicals (yes, I realize I refer to almost all musicals as my "favorite"). The dancing was great, but why oh why did SF Ballet have their regular ballerinas singing? I won't say the singing was terrible, at least not in an American Idol first round of auditions sort of way, but it was pretty bad. Tony couldn't project well enough, so the end of every line faded into inaudible obscurity, and Anita couldn't hit the high notes. Oddly enough, in most numbers, a dancer stood off to the side of the stage and sang, while another dancer covered the choreography. So, why on earth didn't the ballet just hire professional singers to narrate the dancing?? The performance would have been a thousand times better if there were real Broadway singers in the corner of the stage, or if the show skipped the singing all-together, or if the ballet hired some guest musical theater artists to join the company for the program. Instead, they trained all the regular company members to sing, which turned a professional ballet with a professional orchestra into an amateurish cringe-worthy production.

To make matters worse, the Jets wore a rainbow of neon costumes and the Sharks wore black and pink, which reminded me of Disney's High School Musical. In fact, with the novice singing, the performance most closely resembled a high school production of High School Musical (not that I've seen one, but I can imagine). The program notes mention, "The choreographer even invited gangs to a preview performance to see if they thought it was realistic enough." I have a hard time believing that real gangs thought the gay costumes and ballet fighting mirrored life on the streets. Kim and I concluded the ballet probably just invited lower income students to an outreach performance, and assumed the kids were all in gangs, so they could label the show gang-approved. What a disaster.

I am inspired to send some feedback to the San Francisco Ballet: I love your company. The dancing is phenomenal. But for the love of God, please, please don't ever let your ballerinas sing again.

Click here to read Kim's review and check out beautiful photos that I'm too lazy to add to my own blog.

Every Hotsy Totsy Nazi Stand & Cheer!

2008-03-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

I ran into a major problem seeing Cabaret (one of my favorite musicals) last weekend. The show takes place in 1930's Berlin, and the score includes "Tomorrow Belongs To Me," which represents the rise of the Nazis to power. This particular production performed the song twice-- once in a barbershop quartet style of uplifting harmonies, and then again with a traditional accordion accompanied rendition to close Act 1. The problem? The song is so darn beautiful and catchy, and those of you who have been reading my blog know that I have a tendency to get Broadway songs stuck in my head and then sing them compulsively on repeat. So here I am, an All-American Jew, strolling around work all week, merrily singing the Nazi anthem to myself.

The show must have put Ryan and I both in the Nazi spirit, because we burst into a spontaneous Producers duet in our bedroom:

Ryan: Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Me: Look, it's springtime!
Ryan: Winter for Poland and France
Me: Ah ah ah ah ah
Ryan: Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Me: Springtime, Springtime, Springtime.....Come on Germans, go into your dance!
Insert tap dancing here.

I need to get a fresh soundtrack stuck in my head pronto, because I'm disturbed by my growing Broadway Nazism.

Best at Recess

2008-03-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

Check out my hubby, the rock star!

www.myspace.com/bestatrecess

More music coming soon, I believe...

Must-Miss Movie

2008-03-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

I delight in articulate devilishly bad movie reviews. I never even heard of “Things We Lost in the Fire” with Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro, but Time Magazine graded it ‘F’ with the following quote:

“Noble in intent, dreadful in execution, this soporific soap opera is in no way to be bought, rented, bartered, played or allowed in your house.”

Mwahaha. Love it!

Satan in the Grocery Store

2008-03-03T19:16:00.000-08:00

My grocery bill came to $66.66 today. “Ohhh. That’s unlucky,” the cashier told me, her voice filled with doom. She shook her head at me, like I personally conjured the devil to possess my shopping cart.

Boiled in Bed

2008-03-03T19:14:00.000-08:00

I woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. I like sleeping in a cool, crisp room so I can burrito myself in our toasty down comforter. Unfortunately, since moving our bed away from the wall for some mold clean-up, we mixed up the switches to our heating blanket (which we use as a heating pad/mattress). I like my side of the blanket set to low. Ryan likes his set to high. The controller is on his side of the bed. You get the picture.

If it weren’t enough that Ryan was burning me with the blanket when I awoke, he was sprawled out on his back, hogging nearly the entire bed. His head lay right next to my pillow, and his sleep apnea breathing apparatus was making an obnoxious bubbling sound right in my ear. Blurp blurp blurp. Blurp blurp blup. Relentless blurping.

I couldn’t fall back to sleep until I rolled Ryan over, which was no small feat for my wimpy arms. Between the heat and the wetness and the bubbles, I had the distinct terrifying feeling of being boiled alive.

America’s Next Top Stripper

2008-03-03T19:02:00.000-08:00

Home sick last Wednesday night, I indulged in the CW, which is junk food for the soul. First, I watched America’s Next Top Model. I admit I usually enjoy the show, because I love photography, and it’s cool to see what the competitors must endure to get their shots—rock climbing, floating in water, and such. I could do without all the model cattiness, but that’s a small price to pay for watching some creative photo shoots. It was the wrong night to tune in however, because the girls were moving into their reality TV pad for the first time. So the show was pretty much an hour of the contestants running from room to room and NY location to location screaming and giggling. Eeeeeeeeyyy! Look at this! Yaaaaaay. Woooohooo. Tyra, Tyra, Trya! Oh my gohhhhhsh! Tyra Mail, Tyra Mail! If my cold was caused by a stomach virus, I would have puked all over the TV, because there’s only so much high-pitched squealing you can endure from a gaggle of underfed immature reality TV stars.

The evening was downhill from there, because up next was The Pussy Cat Dolls Present: Girlicious, and it’s a testament to how ill I was that I didn’t have the sense to change the channel. The show is a follow up to last season’s acclaimed Pussy Cat Dolls Search for the Next Doll, with the group’s creator looking for three fresh faces (bodies) to start a new group called…you guessed it, Girlicious! The contestants are mediocre singers and unimpressive dancers, but I bet they could strip with the best of them! I suppose my expectations shouldn’t be any higher for a Hollywood burlesque group, but somehow I thought there would be more talent. I guess all the real singers are on American Idol and the real dancers are on So You Think You Can Dance. The Girlicious “challenges” consist of performing Britney Spears, In Sync’ and Madonna songs in tacky whorish clothing and excessive make-up, gyrating against the poles in the Pussycat lounge. Meeow!