Family Jewels

I don't do work on half days. Well, to be fair, I don't do work on Fridays at all, but that's practically office code unless something realllly important has to get done. I don't know if it's the same in all offices, but it was the same at my last job too. It was unspoken but collectively understood that we would clock watch and peruse Nordstrom's online bag selection, and at this company that mentality is exaggerated by a number of senior employees who are never here because they automatically get Fridays off--I think those of us stuck here are just trying to even the score a bit. Since I'm leaving at 1:00 today to go home and finish packing for my flight to San Francisco this evening, I'm doubly antsy and really committed to doing jack shit on company time. What American work ethic?

Hey, remember when I bemoaned my parents' insistence on keeping our family photos in the basement? Well diligent worker bee that he is, on a recent trip home, Deej took it upon himself to drag up a few boxes of the loose ones. He spent the better part of a day scanning his favorites and saving them to a CD. I am really grateful to him for this, mainly because I would have opted to just complain more about the situation.

SO!

How about you climb into the Way Back machine with me and we take a little joyride down memory lane? I'll do both of us a favor by omitting the truly awkward years, as I've discovered that the aroma of Noxema and Desperation tend to linger long past their zenith.

School Portraits: 4th through 6th grade pictures are missing, and I assure you, it's probably just as well. I do have Grades 7-9, but forget it. Did ANYBODY take school portraits those years that weren't completely mortifying? Your lying if you say "yes," and even if you aren't, I hate you. Take care to admire the epic fail of a side ponytail for 2nd grade.

Kindergarten

1st Grade

Second Grade

Third Grade

10th Grade

"Casual" senior portrait. ("Oh, I'm just sitting here in my abandoned rustic shed with my leg propped up, thinking about stuff!")

"Pensiveglam" senior portrait. The studied expression and mirror say "reflection," but the hemp necklace discreetly asks, "where's the party later?"

Other Portraits: My mom took Deej and I to Sears quite a bit before we both got too ugly, but the results weren't always spectacular. I don't know WHAT she was smoking when she selected the last one shown here, the one where I can practically hear her through clenched teeth hissing,"SMILE!!!!!!!" and me retorting, "I AM SMILING!" before bursting into tears.

Other Miscellaneous pics from when I lived in Omaha (1984-1989ish)

Easter just after Deej was born, so probably 1985? I love my mom's dress here. The blue eyeshadow? Not so much.

OMG, I still love, love, love the Ford Probe my dad got circa 1989--the headlights turned up and it was just the coolest thing ever. Lots of fond memories of listening to the Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack in the backseat on the way to church or wherever.

I remember being disappointed at the false advertising for the Super Pogo Ball, which promised to let me bounce higher than the last model. Lies. All lies.

I really like the composition of this pic. This is probably around '89, and that's my friend Jack in the tree, whom I spent a lot of time with. To my knowledge, he's still in Omaha and happily married, and I hope this is true. He was always a good friend to me.

My favorite candid of me and Deej from our Omaha days.

Happy baby! If only this stage had lasted longer, as I'm sure my parents would agree. According to my mom, I still haven't left my teens (or if I have, only very recently).

God, even looking at us sitting backwards in our old station wagon makes me nauseous. Of course we used to love the novelty of that seat and waving to the drivers behind us, but I'm pretty sure as adults it would be vomit city.

The zoo! That's my best friend Amy and I at the education center--Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo actually remains one of the biggest and best in the country, and for at least two summers Amy and I took zoo classes where we would learn about the animals and get special lectures and stuff. Pretty neat for a little kid.

High school/college

Graduation from the Wag, '03

Annemarie!!! If it isn't glaringly obvious, I love my college friends and am so thankful we've kept close.

My monkey collection in my old room. To answer your question, yes I am aware that I lived in D.J. Tanner's room, and yes, they will eventually all have their own room in the first residence big enough to accommodate them. They are currently boxed up in my parent's basement :o(

My first (and so far only) car, Irma!! An '89 Mazda, and man alive do I miss that car. It was small enough to fit in any spot, zippy, and never gave me a bit of trouble. I still see these around Brooklyn too, which only further whets my nostalgia.

So you know how they say your hair can completely change texture over the years? Yeah, mine doesn't do this anymore at that length (only a bit shorter than my current length) and I only posted this because it's kind of fascinating/frustrating, but only if you are a narcissist like me.

Family vacation to Vegas, '97. Hoover Dam.

I still love Christmas at my house--much as I harangue and roll my eyes, I love that my mom goes all out in decorating, and I really can't imagine not having a tree packed with ornaments and knick-knacks everywhere; but these are pictures from the Livonia house, which I miss terribly, and in the above is one of the only candids I have of my aunt, who passed away in '99. I miss her terribly too.

More to come!!! For now, off to San Fran! Have a great weekend.

my cup runneth over and stuff

I can explain!

Here's what happened first: (this is the unnecessarily verbose/whiney I Gotta Vent portion, so you've been forewarned)

I get home from work a couple weeks ago to find my internet out. No matter how many times I jiggled the cable and reset, unplugged, and sweet-talked the modem, that shit wasn't recovering for anything, save one little gasping green light on the end of the panel. Gave it a couple of days to reconfigure, to no avail, and then I resigned myself to being on the phone with Time Warner for a very long time. That part actually wasn't so bad. Mozart's Turkish March is part of their hold repertoire, and hearing that piano piece always reminds me of my brother practicing in our old house and delivers the warm fuzzies (but I can't front, Deej, I totally spent the last half hour on Youtube figuring out what it was called. I had a vague idea that it was a Mozart piece, but that's it. I was this close to calling you up and pulling a, "here, I'll sing the tune in "doot doots' and you tell me what it is, okay?" Aren't you and your sleep proud of my resourcefulness?)

I had to take a half day off of work for the repair dude to come out, and of course OF COURSE the morning he was slated to arrive, I glanced down at the modem, and the little pisser had decided to fully light up again for the first time in a week. However, it was too late to cancel the appointment or get to work on time, so I chose to just wait for his arrival. Repair Dude was very nice about everything and replaced my modem anyway; the only thing he wasn't able to ascertain was whether or not anything was wonky with the actual cable outside of the house, which runs through my back patio door and up through my landlord's deck to the side of the house. Reason being? The Damn Dogs, who were supposed to be in the house. I had warned Landlord that Time Warner would need to get back there, but like many things I tell him, in one ear...I was unable to hunt down either him or his wife to force them inside, and of course I couldn't blame Repair Dude for not wanting to risk being around the animals--I can only imagine the war wounds from over-excitable/malicious dogs in their line of work. But the connection now seemed to be okay, so I felt okay about him leaving.

You probably know where this one's headed: A storm woke me up around 3 AM the following night, and I decided to putz around the web for a bit until I was sleepy again...only to find the connection once again out. Grrrrr! Argggh! Repair Dude had checked everything inside the house, so the problem obviously had to lie with the exterior length of cable he couldn't reach. When I got home from work later that night, I opened the door to my patio to go out and investigate and promptly stepped in a huge pile of shit.

Oh, that?

Yeah, did I forget to mention that Landlord lets both dogs freely crap wherever they want out there and picks up after them maybe once a month, at best? Two dogs + multiple poops a day = you get the unsavory visual. The fragrance has been enough to keep my windows firmly shut all summer. I know, it's completely unacceptable, and I should have voiced my discontent about this right off the bat--I hate that I am spineless around him when it's been evident for awhile that he'll only take advantage of my good nature and use it to perpetuate his own laziness. I guess on the one hand I feel like he already has a nagging wife (though startlingly, not quite nagging enough), and on the other, I am so close to being out of there that I figure I can just grin and bear most of the unpleasantness for another month and a half. The icing, though? When I finished cursing and wiping most of the shit off of my shoe and finally located where the cable snaked up the deck, it was clear that the dogs were responsible for that problem as well--the cord was almost completely chewed through and hanging by the thinnest of threads. Livid doesn't even begin to describe me at that point.

The cable is one thing, but the surrogate dog owner in me is actually more riled up. The dogs' makeshift bathroom is an enclosed area with no grass or toys for them to chew or expanse for them to run. In other parts of the country, they would call the property in back of a house a "yard," but everyone in NYC knows these concrete, postage-stamp sized things are not yards by a long shot. It's therefore not enough to just let the dogs out back several times a day in place of taking them on actual walks around the neighborhood. Yes, it is sometimes annoying, and I get it, I do: plentiful has the walk been with Mama where my eyes are crusted over with sleep, my hair a messy paintbrush, or even though I know very well that Cory just took her last night and it's technically my turn for the morning shift, I will slink further under the covers until he sighs and pulls on his shoes, (thank you, honey!) but it has to be done. And if Landlord's dogs are bored and toyless, of course they're going to act out and go for the most accessible objects to chew. It's up to him to discipline them and move unsafe items out of their reach or accept that his cables, fencing, and spare wood (yes, they've even been gnawing on freaking firewood) are going to be destroyed. I know that Landlord's dogs are fed and kept from the cold in the winter, but by my estimation, that's about all that's he's doing for them. It makes me incredibly pissed off and sad, but what can I really do?

Anyway, I eventually did--quite civilly--let him know how frustrated I was a couple nights ago after I made yet another appointment with Time Warner for this Saturday, and he apologized and accepted most of the responsibility (though he couldn't resist interjecting with a comment about the "laziness" of the cable company for not "running the wires right"---sure, dude, they're lazy). In the meantime, the connection has fizzled in and out with more "out," relegating me to my web stuff during work hours. I know, I know, life is hard--I can also check my email on my phone or go over and use Cor's wireless anytime I want, but the whole point of this here entry was partially to vent and partially to justify why I haven't rapped at ya for some time.

But guess what? There are also fun reasons keeping me at bay! Namely,

Travel: my ten year high school reunion two weekends ago far exceeded my expectations, and not at all because I got to pull the Elaine Hendrix moment I told myself I wanted for so many years. For those who haven't seen Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Elaine Hendrix plays a reformed cliquey girl who has since Made It Big in NYC and comes back for the reunion as a sleek, above the fray fashion editor for Vogue, quickly cutting her adversaries down to size.

God, I wanted to be her soo badly, unflattering haircut and all. While I wasn't Miss Popular, it wasn't like I had any tormentors in high school either, yet I still had this relentless need to impress my classmates. Never mind that my town is the type where you could come back with an Emmy in one hand and a Pulitzer in the other and 75 percent of the population would still yawn or ask if I was married and had any kids yet (though I suspect this is true no matter where you are)--I had something to prove, dammit! Thank God that urge disintegrated. I love living in Brooklyn, and I love my totally low-profile but fun job. Most of all, I love knowing that my successes and happiness in life can be tantamount to my classmates' for completely different reasons, and that's okay. I went back and did a lot of laughing, drinking (duh), and managed to reconnect with both friends and people I hadn't seen since graduation day, talking with some classmates for even the first time--and it was awesome. Bonus points for getting a ride home with the high school crush (who was a complete gentleman) and getting treated to late night mozzarella sticks at Denny's by another long lost friend. Dear Livonia, bless her name indeed.

Last weekend found me in Vermont for the very first time, equally fun. Colleen and I took the train to Bennington to meet up with Meghan, in town for her own ten year, and we spent the weekend tubing, trying not to barf on the Gravitron, petting animals, and clogging our arteries with fried Oreos at the Vermont State Fair. A pefect, lax way to usher out summer, especially considering all that is upcoming.

As mentioned, the lease on my new apartment was signed and the deposit check written (I only had to pay one month's rent in the form of security, thankfully) and I now have a little over a month to pack up my stuff and head westward one block. This shouldn't be terribly daunting, however, a few days ago I found out that along with subtracting a few days of packing for my already planned trip to San Francisco in a couple of weeks, I'll also be going...

Back to Germany!!!!!

Attending the fair this go-around was a complete surprise that I'll have to elaborate on later, but I'm really excited and once again thankful for the opportunity. I'll be gone October 12th through the 18th, which gives me just enough time to get back home and get my business in check. All of this, by the way, continuously revolves around dear broomball, birthdays, a wedding, and other crazy work stuff. I've never been a member of the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" camp, but what happens when you don't have much of a choice? All the predicaments of a lucky girl, to be sure (well, minus the internet crap, but you can't win them all).