good days gone bad

I know it's been a while but a lot has happened and I've been travelling like it's my job. This month alone, I have been to Long Beach, San Diego, Boulder, Fresno, and have spent a grand total of 5 days at home. Tomorrow I'm off to New Orleans for the Halloween weekend. I'm pretty excited about it!

As I allowed myself to wake up slowly this morning, I was thinking about how good my life is. Truly. Yes, I have stuff that worries me. Yes, there's stuff that could be better. But in the grand scheme of things, I'm living a pretty great life. It's good to realize that sometimes. I decided I would start my day off with a nice cup of my favorite coffee and write a blog post about how lovely my life is.

I made myself that good cup of coffee and sat down at my computer to begin putting my thoughts down.

Then I spilled that cup of coffee all over the table, my laptop, my favorite new WHITE shirt... CRAP!

Then I realized that I have a million things to do before I get on that plane tomorrow morning like pack, straighten the apartment, get work projects done that are due tomorrow, etc.

So I decided that instead of basking in the glow of a nice, quiet morning, I should go ahead and make myself some breakfast and get started on my to-do list and maybe calm down and write about my good life later.

Here's how this great day has gone so far: spilled coffee (I know I already said that but, come on, something that annoying deserves a second mention), burnt toast, spoiled milk, and that was just breakfast.

I have now given up and am just doing things as they occur to me. So far I've accomplished soaking that white shirt in stain remover, de-coffee-ing my laptop, having a cup of coffee without milk, eating scraped off burnt toast, and finding my work projects to be more difficult and annoying and time-consuming that I anticipated.

I foresee a late night in my very near future and I assume that when I get to New Orleans and unpack my bag, it will be a ridiculous mixture of weather-inappropriate clothing and missing/forgotten pieces of my costume.

Oh well... my life is still pretty great. Even when good days go badly. I'm getting on a plane to go to New Orleans tomorrow. Really? How awful is that?

getting ready...

I love fall. I mean I really love fall. The only thing I was concerned about when I moved to California was that there would be no true fall. Luckily that fear was never realized.

This week, fall has been in the air. I know the weather is going to change again and next week we will be plunged into a beautiful and delightful late summer (I was told last night that it should be called "Persian Summer" by some Persian friends). BUT I have been savoring this fall-like weather.

This fall-like weather has also put me in the mood for Halloween. I'm going to New Orleans for Halloween this year. I've never been to New Orleans and I'm really excited about it. Among the great music and the history, I am hoping that we can find a masquerade ball and/or some fun Halloween party to attend. And for this I have begun preparing:

Yesterday I played around with some make-up. It was the first attempt and I was a little rushed so clearly there are things that need to be refined but, my first attempt at my vampire look (New Orleans is the city of vampires after all...) wasn't awful. Now I'm even more excited!



Wig, no wig, different wig... I haven't decided yet.



little vampire teeth!



As you can see in this picture, I rushed on the eyebrow concealment. Next time, you won't be able to see my natural eyebrow. At least that's the plan.

Sometimes I forget

I often forget that I know famous people. It's not any fault of my own, it's that I went to a college that spits out performers, some percentage of whom are bound to be famous. But I don't typically run in those circles so it always catches me by surprise when I see one of my old classmates in a movie or a commercial or a tv show.

For example, a couple of weeks ago I was looking at some wedding photos from a college friend's recent wedding. The pictures of her bridesmaids made me stop short. I checked the tags in the picture (thank you facebook!) for the name of one of the bridesmaids and then checked imdb.com. I had seen a few episodes of "Drop Dead Diva" and, lo and behold, one of my friend's bridesmaids plays the main character on that show.

Earlier this year I was watching the Tony Awards pre-thingy. I knew he was doing a new show but I had no idea my old college friend Chad (with whom I share a birthday) was nominated for a Tony for his role in the musical "Memphis"! Yay Chad! (I promptly congratulated him on facebook.)

Last November, I was canvassing in San Francisco for a local election and walked by a store that had the cover of a magazine taped in the front window. The picture on the cover of that magazine stopped me in my tracks. My walking partner asked me what was wrong as I walked up to the window. "That's my college room mate" is what came out of my very shocked mouth. Yup, Florian is not only a well-loved German TV star (a German McDreamy if you will), but also a film star. He was in San Francisco the week before promoting two of his films. One mainstream (with one of my favorite German actors) and one independent one he wrote and directed himself. Very exciting!!! Unfortunately I missed him by one week. It would have been great to see him and catch up.

I recently began watching the TV show "Mad Men" on Netflix. Tonight I was watching episode 5 from season 1. About half way through, a new character was introduced and I completely lost my concentration as I said - out loud - "Andy? Andy Hoff?" So, I hit pause and checked imdb again. Sure enough. Another fellow TBC graduate.

It's nice to see so many of my college friends doing what they always dreamed of doing. Makes me proud.

personal space

Ok, we all know I'm a hugger. I am a tactile person. I don't have too many issues with people entering my personal space. I'm pretty casual about that. But sometimes, it's just a little annoying.

Here's the situation: I was at the post office yesterday, waiting in line. There were two people working and the line wasn't moving very quickly. I hung out at the front of the line for a while waiting for one of the two windows to open up. The person behind me kept crowding me, kept bumping their packages into my back. I could feel this person so close behind me that I felt I might feel their breath on the back of my neck at any moment.

I inched forward a little but I didn't really have anywhere to go and it wasn't as if the place was so crowded that this person was being pushed forward. There were maybe 4 or 5 people in line, a fairly normal mid-day "rush" but not crazy busy.

I inched forward again and really had nowhere else to go but this person bumped into me again. So, I had a choice to make. I could either ignore it, or turn around and say something. If I chose to turn around and say something, I had to decide whether I would be annoyed and angry or happy and smiley. My instinct was to be mad and say something rude but I know that I always get better results in confrontations when I smile and stay pleasant.

I plastered a big smile on my face and turned. All I had time to say was "excuse me, am I in your way?" before I registered that I was speaking to a very old man, a priest nonetheless. I don't think he even heard me. I was just thankful that when I turned back around, one of the windows was open and I got to move away from him. But it did annoy me for the rest of the day.

I think I might have a bruise on my back from the corner of his packages that kept banging into me. Hrmph.

lacking inspiration

I bought some beautiful eggplants at the farmer's market this past weekend. I know I had something in mind for them but I can't remember what it was and now I can't think of anything that sounds appealing to do with them. :(

Suggestions anyone? I don't want them to go to waste.

Reason #259 why I love my neighborhood

I know everybody is a little tired of hearing how wonderful my neighborhood is and how much I love living here but I have to share just one more thing.

Today, as I was enjoying my regular Friday morning conference call walk around the lake, I decided to take a little detour and explore the community gardens that are on the route. I have a friend in town visiting and thought it would be a neat little side trip on the walk. We walked through the herb gardens, the flower gardens, the bonsai garden, the little trails with benches, and observed a group of 60-somethings doing Tai Chi in the late morning chill.

As we made our way through the vegetable gardens back to the regular lake trail, I noticed a little basket on the edge of one of the gardens with a sign on it that read "free produce" so I peeked in. There were three beautiful large zucchinis and I chose one that looked just perfect. So, on the way home, we made a quick stop at the store and got a couple of additional ingredients to make a fresh zucchini and whole wheat pasta lunch. Simply delicious.

I love getting my lunch inspiration from the local community garden! I will make the gardens a regular side-trip on my Friday conference call walks now. Very exciting!!

how to make a lotion vest - for complete dumbasses.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Well, I submit to you that severe dumb-assery (another new word!) and pain are the red headed step-children of invention. Even so, step-children - especially the red headed variety - are sometimes prone to strokes of genius.

Here it is:

When you are:
a) a complete and total dumb-ass (as I am one)
and
b) you get yourself utterly lobsterized (see previous post)
and
c) you can't raise your arms to reach the burn on your back because of the burn on your shoulders
and
d) the mere thought of someone rubbing lotion - no matter how gently and lightly - on your burn makes you want to cry,

well, then you figure out how to make...

a lotion vest.

It's very simple, really, and disposable: The sun burn alleviating lotion of your choice slathered on a double layer of paper towel multiplied by however many you need. For me it was one for my back and one for each shoulder which made it look like a weird white papery vest, hence: lotion vest.

I'm a dumb-ass. But I did finally get some relief.