Jello/Mud/Lube/Crisco Wrestling…

Paraphrased conversation from my friend’s birthday dinner/drunkfest last night:

As 12 of my closest friends and I sit around a bar height table in the bar at On The Border, guzzling scooners of beer, the conversation steers toward Jenny’s upcoming birthday…

Me: Ok, so your birthday is the 28th. What’s the nearest Saturday to have a party for you?. {I pull out my phone open the calendar and determine that the closest Saturday is July 1st} PARTY FOR JENNY’S BIRTHDAY JULY FIRST EVERYONE!!

{Everyone turns to see what commotion I am creating now…they realize it’s not about me, and is instead, about their favorite girl, Jenny, and instantly, smiles begin to appear around the table…until…}

L: WAIT, that’s July 4th weekend! RC won’t be here! We CAN’T do it that weekend!

{oh heavens to Betsy…we CAN’T have a party for JENNY without RC!! OH NO!!! LORD HELP US!!}

Me: Um, ok, Jenny, {using my most patient tone here…} would you like to have YOUR {very subtle emphasis on this word that intimates to Jenny and only jenny (because we have Best Friend ESP) that it’s her friggin’ birthday and she can damn well have it on the 1st if she wants} party on the 7th instead??

{Jenny looks at her massive Phone-Computer-Text Machine-Internet Portal-Toaster and checks her schedule}

Jenny: Yeah that’s fine.

Me: LISTEN UP! THE PARTY FOR JENNY IS JULY 7th! {I use my best, Be There Or Die voice}

{At this point, I turn away to discuss some mundane conversation with a friend.}

{Suddenly I hear from a random voice:}

What about Jello! Yeah, a baby pool full of Jello!!

Me: {head snapping like a whiplashed monkey} Bwah? What are you talking about??

Jenny: Having a party with a baby pool full of jello and wrestling in it! Jello Wrestling!

Random Friend: Wait. It would be way too hard to make all that jello…what about mud??

Jenny: Yeah! Mud! Ty, can we use your backyard???

Me: Uh…{trying to be cool and down with the craziness…} sure!

Jenny: Cause I’m afraid the police might arrest us if we did it behind my condo…

{hmm…yeah…my neighbors might not like this idea too much either…keep your mouth shut…just keep your mouth shut…}

Me: Yeah, totally understand…

Random Friend: Wait! What about LUBE! Like in Old School! We could wrestle in LUBE!

Another Random Friend: Or Crisco!! We could just smear Crisco all over ourselves!

{mmm, yummy…}

Jenny: But I don’t know…I’d have to wear a bikini…I don’t want to wear a bikini…

{yes…bikinis are definitely the most degrading part of this idea…definitely…}

Jenny: Hey guys! {all of the guys are sitting at one end of the table, and all of the girls are at the other. It is loud, and the Mavs/Suns game is on} Guys! {she turns to me} They can’t here me. Maybe I should just text them at the other end of the table…

Me: Oh totally! A group text about Crisco wrestling!

{we create the perfect text message…}

TEXT: Hey guys! Crisco Wrestling Party at Ty’s house!! Join us!

{Jenny sends the text to 5 of the guys at the other end of the table. Shortly, everyone’s phone goes off. Oblivious to each other, they all pull them out and look at the text message. Quite a funny site from our side of the table. Rolls of laughter start to envelop the guys. The girls giggle and change subjects…the guys begin to quietly discuss something…}

RC: Ty! Could we use your house?

Me: That was the plan.

RC: Can we put a slip and slide on your stairs? And a baby pool full of mud at the bottom?

{Oh yes. Let’s!}

ME: $500 for the carpet and we have a deal…

Speculative News

This is from last Thursday on my John Stewart’s, America daily calendar…how can you NOT like that man… (click image to enlarge)

Mentally and Physically Repaired

It’s amazing what organizing your external world can do for your mind. This weekend I forwent almost all of my plans, trading in river trips and pool parties for hammers, nails and floor cleaner. For a while now, I haven’t been able to get on track with my home life. My house was a wreck. I could never get more than two rooms clean at any one time, and there were small projects lurking all around me. Everywhere I turned there was something that needed repairing or finishing or cleaning.

So finally, I decided my house–my responsibilities–had to come before my fun. The very first thing I did was head to Ikea…because all responsibilities start at Ikea! I bought drinking glasses to finally replace my old beaten up beer pints that I have used for the last 8 years and 9 shoe racks for my closet. But before I could tackle the closet, I had to tackle my driveway. I powerwashed my driveway using outdoor bleach. The mildew stains were driving me crazy!

Then my next task starting around 8pm was to install the 9 shoe rack shelves in my closet (giving me space for 27 pairs of shoes…which is just HALF of all the shoes I own!! Shhh!!). I will try to post a picture of the shoe racks. I seriously think I added resale value to my house with this one…If I were looking at house, and saw a shoe rack like this one, well I’d have to seriously think about buying it. I mean it’s fabulous!!

My next step, with all of the shoes that were scattered all over my house finally picked up and assigned a new, beatiful home, I was able to clean. And clean I did. I scubbed and scoured and vaccuumed my way to an un-embarrassing home! TA-DA! Next, I shopped. I found a Levolour faux white wood blind for my bathroom window on sale at Tuesday Morning for $24!! Go me! ( I later saw the same blind at Lowe’s for $45!!) During the Tuesday Morning shopping trip, I also found a new fluffy white bathmat and matching rug for a total of $20 for my guest bathroom, and 8 new highball glasses for $8! Cause I am a bargain-hunting machine!!

Once the blinds were hung, which is SO not fun, I started my next project, framing my master bathroom mirror. My mirror is 7 feet long and 3.5 feet tall! It isn’t coming down. SO to update it, I am framing it using crown moulding, Caviar Black paint, and epoxy glue. So I started mitering the moulding which of course I managed to cut incorrectly on two of the 4 sides…This project is not finished yet because of my idiocy, but I am still excited about it. Hopefully, when I am done, it will look something like this…And yes, I will be painting my cabinets as well.

I even managed to buy some new clothes for work, and a Bissell steam cleaner for carpet touch-ups this weekend as well! The Bissell rocks…although it did such a good job that in a couple of places I had to do larger swaths of carpet because the cleaner removed not only the small offending stain but also the surrounding dirt that made the carpet a uniformly dirty color!!

And, just so I didn’t completely deprive myself of fun, I played in a 2×2 coed volleyball tournament Sunday. And what fun I had! The other players were all better than I am, so we got our asses spanked, but I played hard, and managed to keep up most of the time! I played so hard, my inner thighs are sore from darting side to side in the sand!! Good times…

All in all, it was a very productive weekend. But the most productive part was the clarity I am feeling. The lightness in my head. The reduction in stress is palpable. Jenny called me last night when she got back from floating the river, and commented that I sounded great! The result of all of that hard work was so evident that it is coming through in my voice, in my personality.

I really feel back on track. Back in control right now. I cannot stress to you how much I needed a weekend devoid of fun to make myself feel better! Now how counter-intuitive is that??

Lost Advertising Monster

Anyone else watch the Lost season finale last night? Umm…yeah that second hour totally rocked…At the risk of spoilers for anyone who might have TIVOed it, I will refrain from discussing all the amazing, cool, wickedly delicious twist that came out of last night’s show…but I am definitely in for another season now!

So did you notice the ad about 15 minutes from the end of the second hour? For the Hanso Foundation??? I was fast-fowarding when I saw it. They totally got me to go back and look. It was an ad for this website www.hansocareers.com. It was an ad done by monster.com. Very creative. What a tie-in!! I sort of thought the jobs for the Hanso Foundation would have been slightly more interesting and revealing though…but man, on the advertising front, that’s great. I have heard there have been a few ad tie-ins during Lost, but this is the first one I picked up on.

I remember hearing there were a few probems with the cost of shooting in Hawaii, so perhaps this is how they solved that problem…

Photo Bug

This is way cool. An infinitely zoomable photo mosaic…

via Kottke.org…

Trainer Tally

My trainer thinks I have strong shoulders! Yay! Given that my arms are as weak as a four year old, it’s good to hear that at least my shoulders are doing well…And really, I must say, it’s kind of fun to look at my shoulders from behind in a mirror…errr…confession…I totally check out my shoulders from behind in the mirror…You know, holding a mirror in front of me, wall mirror behind me…Yeah, so if I put my arm at a right angle from my shoulder out, hand straight up, my muscles pop out in my shoulder…it’s awesome. So my trainer noticed yesterday. He has me do this ball throw. I lean back on a stability ball in the “ball bridge” position (but he lets me drop my hips a touch) and he throws a medicine ball at me. I catch it directly over my head and let it pull my arms backward past my head, then throw it back to him. I am great at this…And it is doing wonders for my shoulders, which is really sweet because those shoulders are really useful in volleyball! So IF I were keeping score, here’s where I stand with my trainer:

1 pt. for strong calves
-1 pt. for crappy arm strength
1 pt. for strong quads
-1 pt. for weak knees
1 pt. for “good legs”
-1 pt. for weak abs
1 pt. for strong shoulders

So, it looks like I am ahead by one point right now!! Thank goodness for that “good legs” comment!!

What This Girl Wants

I have been doing great with my singleton self lately. Enjoying my own company, getting things done at my own speed. Basically doing what I want, when I want. I was even dating a guy for a while who was as busy as I was and I was cool with that. But the last 24 hours have me feeling a touch sorry for myself. That old mental wrestling is going on again. It’s times like these that I so want a relationship. I want a best friend to do everything with. To do things FOR. Who will do things for ME. This isn’t to belittle my relationship with Jenny, but sometimes, you just want more. I want to be able to throw my man a big birthday bash like the one I went to on Saturday. I want to have a housewarming with my hubby while pregnant with our first child, like the party I went to on Sunday. I want to buy bikes with my husband of 30 years, like an older couple at that party. I want to be the one who gets a bed, because there are two of us at the lake house. I want to go on double dates, and cook dinners for two, and fight over the remote, and scream bloody murder at the sight of a roach and know that it will be attacked and destroyed for me. I want to have someone to stand at the bottom the ladder while I trim back a tree that has needed trimming for months now. I want a standing date. I want a partner in crime.

I don’t want to arrive alone anymore.

Demotivation–The Disruption of Sanity

You know what makes me NOT want to work more than anything? What completely ruins my motivation?? When I am doing a kick ass job, totally keeping everything under control on a project without any help (because I was asked to handle it) and someone barges into the situation and takes over. Irritates the crap out of me…

Of Sinkers, Floaters, and Fishballs…

This weekend I am going to a birthday party. For some reason, I am totally stoked about this party. It’s for a friend’s boyfriend. It’s not really that big of a deal, just another birthday…we have a lot of them in our massive group. I am friends with them both, but much better friends with her. But even then, while I consider her a good friend, I haven’t even really know her that long. I guess a little less than a year now. But I think she’s great, and I think he’s great, and well, I am stoked. Plus, we are going for Vietnamese food for dinner before the party! I love Vietnamese. I love pretty much all Asian food…except for the really crazy stuff that most Americans just cannot get their mouths around…not sure I could eat that blowfish that could kill you for instance, and I just don’t like the chewiness of octopus…I’ve tried. But a nice Vietnamese soup bowl sounds great! No fishballs this time though…I love matzo balls, but I think because I love matzo balls, I can’t get behind fishballs…the consistancy is a little chewy and it makes me think I am eating matzo balls that have been pounded into submission and turned into the little beige balls of rock…the Sinkers, they are called–I prefer the light fluffiness of the matzo ball Floaters (right now, my friend Sack is laughing his ass off because I wrote sinkers and floaters and he is undoubtedly thinking of upperdecking someone)…But yum. Asian food…mmm.

You know, I seem to have this uncanny ability to date people who don’t like Asian food. My ex-boyfriend–who is probably reading this right now–never liked Asian food when we were together. Especially sushi. I tried to get him to eat a California roll once, just some supermarket ones…nothing scary, right? I thought he was going to throw up he gagged so much. He sat there choking down this ball of rice, seaweed, crab and avacado, doing his best immitation of my cat throwing up a hairball in reverse.

So what happens after we break up? About seven or eight months later, I get a phone call totally out of the blue from him. “Hey. Do you know any cheap sushi places around here?” “Bwah??? Sushi? I must have some sticky rice in my ears”…Oh yes, after we broke up he became a sushi FIEND. He was eating sushi so often that he needed to find a cheaper place to eat so he could feed his habit without going broke! I am pleased that he discovered the complete and utter yummieness of at least one type of Asian food, but man it would have been awesome to have a partner in crime for some sushi trekking…

So perhaps tomorrow I should keep my eyes peeled when we go to dinner…pay attention to the my friend’s friends that can stomach a little Vietnamese goodness for dinner…perhaps my knight in shining armor will be sitting across the table from me slurping his soup, chopsticks in hand…

Clerks II

Internet-only trailer for Clerks II…not sure when it starts…the site says July 21, 2006 but the trailer says August 18th…but I will probably see it either way…