the years go by so fast

So. I've been home for a week now. Seven days in Middletown. The prospect of spending another two weeks here is not quite filling me with glee. Here's the thing. My town? Boring. Booooring. I forgot how boring it was because the bordom can be staved with an automobile. I no longer have one of those. So I stranded in my house with my 13 year old sister and dial up internet and a constant allergy attack. I think it may resemble hell a little bit. We've gotten ourselves into a bit of a routine. I wake up at 2. Sit around my house. Then at 11, A, H, and C come and we sit around someone elses house until 4 in the morning. Then go to bed. wake up. lather rinse repeat. There have been some enjoyable moments. I got stinky drunk with kids from the class of 2002 out in public instead of down in a basement because we can do that now. I have had lunch like a grownup. I've seen a lot of people and heard a lot of gossip which would lead me to believe we are all getting older even though that thought totally freaks me out. I saw a kid I had a crush on pretty much uh, forever, and he is a grown up. Like. grown up. With the manners and the facial hair. Weird. I took my brother shopping at American Eagle which was pretty much the funniest thing ever (if you know my brother...which you probably don't...so just imagine the goth kid who dresses in black and is grumpy all the time hanging out in AE)
In AE:
Buttmunch: Hey, Rach? I'm confused.
Rachel: By what?
Buttmunch: Well, is this the girls section or the boys section?
Rachel: Uh. Just guys. Why?
Buttmunch: Which self respecting male wears a pale pink polo shirt?

etc etc.

I also realized how much I don't about my mom and sibs day to day life anymore. Its kind of weird. My mom works strange hours so no one ever sees her, we just get notes. Written in red ink on backs of envelopes. The eating habits are totally absurd. I think we own stock in Ramen Noodles. My mom and I saw a woman crying in the grocery store and acted like it was no big deal. No big deal? Since when has grocery shopping become a three hankie event? Is this something else I have to worry about when I grow up? That at some point, string cheese and Fuji apples are gonna make the tears run down? If that's the case I'll stay young forever.

silver linings

The transit strike still completely blows, in case you thought otherwise. I had to pretty much run 20 blocks yesterday so I could take a final while snot dripped oh-so-sexily out of my nose like a leaky faucet. You would think that we would do this transit strike thing in the spring. Early May would be nice for a strike. It's also very possible that this strike could go until early May...so I probably shouldn't jinx it. And just like with all incredibly sucktastic things, the transit strike too has its good qualities.

They held off until Monday night giving me a chance to find a floor to sleep on in Manhattan so only had to walk 2.37 miles instead of 8.28.

Today I walked that 2.37 miles and will walk another 1.83 miles with a 20 lb. duffle bag on my shoulders which pretty much means I'm done with exercise until mid-February.

Making it onto my train will constitute a small Christmas miracle and if that isn't cause for celebration with club-car booze, I don't know what one is.

Bonding effect. I've noticed this in New York. People don't ever talk to strangers (because why would you?) except when bad shit is going down then everyone is your best friend. While I'm not a stranger in this office (I've been working here on and off for about 3 months) I don't really know anyone but since yesterday I've just been chatting up a storm with all the people who normally just walk right past me.

And after today, the transit strike won't affect me. Horray! I've pretty much decided that I probably won't be back in the city until after it's over.

new rule

Okay. I don't know if perhaps you live under some sort of large rock or something but if you have the internet access you should know that Christmas was effing canceled in NYC at like 3 this morning.

So, if you know this, you can safely assume that if you are attempting to communicate with someone who is based in New York City they probably had some sort of wrench thrown in their morning commute that probably forced them to wake up an extra hour or two early so they could hike like a friggin' nomad to the office that doesn't care about them anyway.

And in knowing this and being a sentinent human being you should probably get the fact that they may be a little crabby as its approximatly four degrees outside and business casual attire on a whole is not really made for Arctic treking.

So, for the love of all that is good and holy, do not yell at these people! Do not talk to them like they came to school on the short bus! Do not mutter under your breath or sigh like you have the worst life ever! It will really make them just want to hang up on you because they're cold and tired and may have just walked the equivelent of a marathon to talk to your car-riding, subway-taking ass.

So we're clear on this right?

there is such a thing as too much narcissism

So. Last Christmas Cougar, under direct orders, got me a digital camera so I could capture the beauty of South Africa. Which I did.
Then I get back from South Africa and I still have this digital camera. Now sometimes there are pretty things that need to be photographed and I do my best.
And I try to capture moments of beauty and adorableness like the picture at the top with my cutest Aviva-doodle. And when four friends get totally glammed up for a wedding:
This is my goal with the little love of my life the digital camera, to capture things of beauty. That being said, after looking at the pictures taken last night at my most sexellent friend Paige's birthday fiesta, and the vast majority of the pictures I have on my computer from this camera; About 93% of my pictures are of my friends and me being (for the most part) increadibly drunk and (for a fair amount of the time) some-what unattractive (though we all in real life are the sexiest people you've ever seen. Trust me). I've pretty much figured out how the drunk digital camera narcissism thing works. There is the ever popular self portrait that nine times out of ten completely does not work. This is a hypothesis that my friend Teeny and I are hotly contesting, sadly no matter how many experiments we try, the statement holds completely true. There is a problem with angles, someone almost always has a double chin and most of the time you end up cutting out half of a persons' face. Most times once it gets to the point in the night where you think you're ready to be Annie Leibowitz doing a self-portrait you are in no condition to operating heavy machinery.

Then we have the "faces" pictures. At some point in the night you decide smiling is for wussies and deicide that it's time to be daring and sexy with your photographs. Most of the time you end up looking you just have to go to the bathroom or you ate bad suschi or you smell a diper. Very rarely is it sexy or daring.

Also. I don't know if it's just me (oh, wait, no...it's totally everyone else too) but when you start drinking maybe you start to believe that the camera has magical powers and if you look into it alcoholic beverages will start squirting out of it like a soda fountain. So you decide to keep your mouth open, just incase.

Then there are the pictures where there is one person who is so obviously much more inebriated than the rest that the picture becomes a "which one of these things doesn't belong?" game for four year-olds.

If you picked the psychotic in one in the middle then you're right! Good job little Suzy!

At some point during the night people forget what the camera does, and how the little flash means that that face has been recorded for, potentially, all eternity, and so they just stop caring. This is also the time when people start to believe that they are fucking Annie Leibowitz and it's time for their goddamned Pulitzer Prize (did you ever notice that the cursing goes up when the drinks go down?) and so they start taking pictures of pretty much anything.

Like when Tierra and this kid decided to trade shirts.

Sometimes though you get a photographic gem of complete drunkness that makes the other 600 pictures where you look like an ugly, bloated walrus who is sometimes missing the right side of her face completely worth it.

To view other examples of my friends and I being increadibly beautiful and drunk check out either of my photo albums

Official Irony of The Week

So all these people were really rude to me this morning in the temp office du jour because they were being too loud during a board meeting and kept telling them to shh. The people in charge took pity on me and told me to help myself to the most delicious free office food in the whole world (chicken, pesto pasta, salad, salmon, bagels, fruit etc) because they felt so bad. They were pretty much telling me to eat my birthweight in free office food for feeling bad about myself. "Eat your feelings!" Was the subconcious message. And so I sat at the front desk with a big ass plate of food, occasionally answering the phone with a wad of masticated bagel in my mouth until I ate so much I pretty much wanted to die and now I'm considering the consequences of unbuttoning my grown up pants.

The office of the day: Weight Watchers Corporate Headquarters

it's starting already...

I seriously thought I had another few years to mentally prepare myself for this moment, but I guess not. A text message I recieved yesterday while at lunch clinched the fact that we are officially growing up. Since Thanksging, two of my best friends have gotten engaged. Two. One of them was my best friend in middle school and high school. A whole bunch of people that I graduated with have gotten married/engaged/knocked up and I was able to blow it off because the people I went to high school with were crazy-weird. Kates may also be crazy weird, but we planned our weddings together walking to school in eighth grade, so this crazy hits pretty close to home. Also, it kinda came out of left field as the topic of discussion via my lunch text messaging yesterday mostly focused on the gross concoction I had whipped up from the hot buffet at the deli, why? because I'm still at the mental age of about twelve which means my friends getting married is starting to wig me out a smiggin'. I think its that all the hypothetical, "when I get married..." talk I've been doing since I was six is starting to become not so hypothetical; which means that other things (babies, 401(k) plans, morgages) are no longer hypothetical either. People, this sort of future that isn't really future anymore nonsense is totally freaking me out.

Luckily for all of you, there's an ice cube's chance in hell I'll get married before I turn fifty. But I wear a size 4, so try to pick the least unattractive bridesmaids dress you can. And if, by some lightning strike of randomness there is a boy that does want to marry me, and he asks you for ring advice-- silver, diamond solitaire, preferably Tiffany Setting (because it looks like a snowflake) and absolutly nothing from Kay Jewlers.

This has to be it for now, okay? No more engagements until 2006. And no pregnancies until my cousin poops out her little tyke in June. I mean it guys.

Forget the hippopotamus...

All I want this Christmas is a fuzzy, wuzzy, cute, cuddly, melts in your mouth not in your hand baby panda bear. Today is the first day in a few weeks that I have been denied the all-wonderful, all knowing Pandacam from Animal Planet (which is far superior to The National Zoo one) The company I’m working for today apparently doesn’t believe in real player (but they do believe in a bowl of M&M’s on my desk, so thanks for that) and the need isn’t bad enough to make me download programs onto strange company’s computer, though, it’s early yet. This is bad news, I mean, I have no way of knowing what little Butterstick (no seriously, It’s Butterstick. Stop with your Chinese mumbo jumbo) is doing right now. Is he playing? Is he eating? Is he taking the cutest little panda dump that the world has ever seen? I hate being in the dark about this.

I’m pretty sure this addiction means I need a boyfriend. A girl should not only have a panda to love at this holiday season. And yes, I know that pandas are mean and kill people and if you took away the dark spots around their eyes they would look like oversized rodents but don’t hate on evolution. They have those black spots for a reason: it crosses the line from rodent to freakin’ adorableness. And I just found out that China gets to take Butterstick in two years and raise him with their family. That’s kidnapping and I won’t stand for it. Plus they now have 16 baby pandas in China. And that’s just in one zoo! I think the Chinese need to stop being greedy, because “that’s what Jesus would -freakin’- do.” Leave Butterstick here. Apparently he eats anything put in front of him and if that’s not a sign of a red-blooded American than I don’t know what one is.

Also, I really wanted the title of this blog to be “screw the hippopotamus” or something (ps- how hard is hippopotamus to spell? It took me three tries and to me it still looks wrong) in that vein, but it was too weird. No sexual references when dealing with huge amphibious (also impossible to spell) mammals, it’s just not okay.

All Butterstick news and other news to make you feel smart and connected can be found at Wonkette.

and so it begins....again.

I don't know why, but this morning I got increadibly frustrated at both myspace and livejournal. Pair that with the fact that I refuse to post the same entry in two blogs, forcing me to be doubly creative (which sometimes makes the head go hurty) and that I'm secretly (or not so secretly) jealous/in love with Courtney and Lizzie's blogspot blogs. I demanaded one too. As we head down this journey of discussing the banalities of my life, you'll come to realize that I am a very demanding individual.

At any rate, I've been playing this blog game since June of 2002, which is a long time ago. I now have a total of (wait for it) three blogs. This being my fourth and final (for the moment). All the vintage stuff is gonna go somewhere so you can see what I was like as a freshly minted high school graduate (pretty much the same) and where I'm going when I graduate from college this coming spring (hopefully a place where attractive men faun over me).

I have a dork infested love of various blogs written by strangers, friends and friends of friends alike. Read them. They're really disturbingly funny and talented. I learned everything I know from them.

I've decided that the layout of blogspot is much more friendly to the blogger inside that wants to be an extrovert. Navigating myspace and livejournal is a time consuming process filled with half naked women and complete lunatics. That said here's where all the good stuff is going to go. Memes, announcements and things that need to be said three or four times will get copied into other blogs. But here's where the magic's gonna happen; if you can call discussing the finer points of Patrick Dempsy's hair and why I need to stop drinking mind erasers before I get arrested, magic.

That said. This is me. And thanks for hanging out.