Summer is my favorite season out of the year, and not just because my birthday falls somewhere in August. Even though I love pumpkin-flavored anything and busting out the sweaters, there’s something about the summer season that none of the others can touch. Things like:
I’ve been kind of lax this year on summer movies. As of now, I’ve only seen “Toy Story 3″ and “Inception.” Both were good movies, but they didn’t quite do it for me. Not like this one did:
I’ve been a bad blogger. Not only have I been slacking off on posting here and at PopBunker.net, but I haven’t really tried to show how much I want to attend this event:
From what I’ve gathered, this is the creme de la creme event for those of us who keep personal, informal, and semi-categorized tomes on the internet. What makes it even more tantalizing is that it’s an invitation only deal, and the list is
very exclusive. I probably have an ice cube’s chance in Hell of getting on that list, but to anyone who may be reading this, please note: I clean up very well.
It’s Jamison’s birthday today. He’s getting a little bit fussier as he gets older, but when you come right down to it, so am I.
Jamison, as you may recall, is the one I refer to as the gay ex-husband. We spent many hours together working retail, and that’s solid material that will forge a bond with almost any person. Add in the apartment, working for Corporate America, and a never-ending debate over what makes for a good boyfriend and you’ve got a relationship that will probably include visits to each other’s retirement communities.
It’s been a little bit quiet over here, but that’s mainly due to a bum finger. (Yes, I’m still trying to get back into full typing mode.) In the meantime, enjoy this piece I wrote for the now defunct Anti-Social Networking blog that I co-wrote with the Slackmistress, Felicia Sullivan, and Sevenlies.
Talking. It’s overrated and compiles 60% of my job. Naturally by the time I get home I don’t want to talk to anyone for a couple of hours. It’s a quick hello to whoever is in the house and then I’m watching the Food Network or taking an early peek at [adult swim]‘s weekend lineup. If you call me between the hours of 5PM and 7PM I let it go to voicemail. My mom thinks I’m being rude, but I pay for voicemail and I’m going to use it as I damn well please.
The best way to get my attention these days is to text me. (I would say IM or email, but my neighbors found out that I was “borrowing” their wifi and am reduced to sharing the PC with my dad for the internet. Hopefully TimeWarner [ha!] will come out and remedy this quickly, as the modem doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with my router.) And that’s actually my preferred method of communication. I would much rather type out an email to another hotel for room rates than pick up the phone and speak with the GM’s secretary or the Director of Front Office.
I used to love calling people up for a quick chat or to catch up with a friend, especially after high school graduation. If we did catch each other online, one would type “Hey, I’m gonna call you in about 5 minutes so we can talk.” It totally made more sense that way: I talked much faster than I typed. I would say that IMs and emails were only 30% of my chosen form of communication.
My European History AP teacher once said that instant messaging was taking us backwards, that instead of talking to people in person or over the phone we chose to be like primitive man with symbols in the shape of emoticons. I scoffed at that. We’d still talk to people over the phone. Instant messaging was just a cheaper way to talk to relatives in other countries.
But one day the house two doors down from mine from me proved me wrong.
My neighbor and her sister used to IM each other but were sitting across from each other. One would be in the kichen on her laptop and the other would be in the dining room, which was smack next door without any walls inbetween them! Instead of opening her mouth to ask for ice cream, one sister would IM the other with her request. The other sister would get up and go to the freezer, scoop out some vanilla, and place the dish next to her sibbling. And I was inbetween them, taking advantage of their HBO connection from the spare shabby chic armchair.
At the time I thought it was funny. They were silently communicating with each other but yelling out to answer their mom when she asked what our plans were later in the evening. It seemed too silly IM someone when they were right next to you!
Then it happened: I got an apartment with a gay friend and our bedrooms were separated by the living room and the kitchen. We were probably only 20 feet away from each other, but one night a message popped up on my screen:
J: Kath-er-yn!!!! I’m hungry.
K: What do you want to eat?
J: Dunkin Donuts!
K: We don’t have that here. Do you want to go to the store?
J: I don’t want store-bought.
K: Let’s get ice cream.
J: Diddy Riese?
K: Okay. You drive or me?
J: I’ll drive.
K: See you in the living room in 5 minutes.
And with that, we’d had an entire conversation via AIM.
It didn’t hit me until a few months later how we were now communicating with each other. He used to yell out to me or walk to my room and then scare the hell out of me. Sometimes I would go in his room to complain about work. And sometimes we’d just end up in the kitchen at the same time because we needed a drink. But now this was slowly grinding to a halt.
He would IM me if I wanted an apple martini. I would IM him to ask if he could move his car. We would IM each other to ask the other to come into our room and give an opinion on the outfit we planned to wear to dinner. My AP teacher had forseen this all.
The thing is, it just became so much easier to type things out than to talk. My roommate and I spoke the bare minimum at home but would send lengthy messages once we were in our bedrooms. Part of it was the convenience but a good chunk was because we were working retail and had several shouting matches with irrate customers over the course of the day. We were wiped out and didn’t want to speak another word.
Gradually I stopped calling people and moved exclusively to emails and instant messaging. It’s faster, leaves a trail, and means less interaction I have to make. You can also customize colors and backgrounds if you are so technically inclined, but I’m partial to traditional white background with black text.
Every now and then I get a burst of nostalgia and will call up about 10 people in a day to say hello. This, of course, is responded to with a text message or an email.
The topper on the cake? When I do get together with my old roommate, we email each other at work to set up a dinner date. This is then followed by a calendar invite via Outlook.
It’s been about three weeks since the “Cujo incident.” (That’s what the Bill Foundation is now referring to my accident.) How are things on this end? Let’s list them:
1. I’m almost back at my normal typing speed.
2. I can comfortably play my bass, and am working my way on being able to play the guitar and ukulele. (Who ever would have thought it’d be so much work getting a finger back into shape?)
3. Scabs are almost gone! Just dealing with dead skin that’s not quite ready to come off just yet. At the time of writing this draft, the scabs were still there. 95% of them are gone, with a stubborn one just refusing to fall off.
4. Yes, it’s taken me near forever and a day to just get this much done.
So what happened after my last post? It’s a little bit too gory for me to give details, so I’m going to do another list:
1. Large bite wound and high fever with swollen lymph nodes give worry to possible infection.
2. “Small surgery” performed to disinfect my finger.
3. A tetanus shot, antibiotics, and painkillers make for a very out-of-it girl.
I went in for a follow-up a week ago and came upon this unsettling discovery: the antibiotics weren’t so much to prevent finger infection as much as bone infection. o_O
I’ve done two adoption fairs since then and have come away without a scratch. True, I’m a little bit weary when I hear someone growl, but if Cesar Milan can do it every day, I can do it every other week. Without kicking anyone.
I absolutely adore doing my part with the Bill Foundation. These people let me sit with tons of dogs and get free love. Every other Sunday I come home with dog hair, what are hopefully dirt stains streaked on the front of my shirt, and some minor scratches from overzealous Chihuahuas who demand love immediately.
Today was a little bit special, because I walked out with more than I usually do.
I arrived later than usual, due to Father’s Day brunch at Off Vine. (Yes! It’s open again!) Quick greetings to the volunteers all around before I slipped into the puppy room (where any dog under twenty pounds gets to play) to say hello. I recognized everyone in there except for one new addition: an adorable black and white scruffy dog named Banjo.
After a few minutes of observation, it was painfully obvious that Banjo was trying to show his dominance over the dogs in the room. Angus, another one of our scruffy dogs, had just returned from being shown and was being sniffed out. Banjo decided to try and mount Angus. Growling was heard, and the next thing we knew, the two were going at it.
Thank goodness there was another volunteer with me in the room. We tried to separate the dogs quickly, but somebody had the other in his mouth, so pulling them apart was a bit of a challenge. At this point it was a matter of trying to reach in and stop the biting as the dogs were rolling and snarling.
Somewhere down the line, I got bitten on the middle finger of my left hand. It started bleeding almost immediately, so I wrapped it in a paper towel and asked for a bandage. People were asking if I was okay, but it happened so fast that it took me a while to realize that my finger was starting to hurt.
The wound, which is pictured after the cut, looks a lot worse than it is. (If you’re squimish, don’t look and don’t comment on this post.) It’s going to bruise up nicely and should be a pretty good conversation piece at work tomorrow. Unfortunately, it does call for a tetanus shot to be safe, which I’m not looking forward to. And it takes a little bit longer to type with the bandage.
This experience does not in any way deter me from spending time with these dogs. True, this is the worst bite I’ve ever received, but accidents happen, and the bite wasn’t at all painful. I’ve slathered my finger in Neosporin (the one with the pain eliminating element), slapped an oversized bandage on it, and am resting comfortably.
Tomorrow may be a different case after the shot.
Want to see the wound? :D Read more
Two years ago today was one of the most painful I’d ever experienced.
Two years ago, on this day, is the day I lost my beloved labrador to cancer.
It had been exactly a week since he was first diagnosed. We thought we had a little bit more time before he passed.
Last night I had dinner with a couple of friends. I ordered a cup of soup to go with my dinner. (This part is important.) When the check came, we all took a look to figure out who owed what.
Our server forgot to charge me for my soup.
I waited for the server to come back so the soup could be added to the bill. My friends (whom I met while working in the hospitality industry) were surprised – they would have just kept quiet and enjoyed the fact that they received a freebie.
When the server came back, I told her that she’d forgotten to add the soup. She waived it off and said it was on her, so I gave her a big thank-you tip.
Having worked in the hospitality industry for some time, food is one of the things that’s always written off. And that point was brought up while I was waiting for the check to be corrected.
But you know what? The guilt would have eaten at me.
It’s not like I didn’t enjoy the soup. And the service wasn’t awful.
In short, I’d have no plausible reason to take advantage of my good fortune.
Which seriously makes me wonder: did honesty die? ‘Cause if it did, then I’m going to be annoyed.
The sequel hasn’t officially opened to the public, and yet a lot of people are giving SATC 2 the thumbs down. As my friend James Rocchi puts it, “Sex and the City 2 is what happens when Consumerism, Privilege and Lazy Storytelling bump uglies and have a 142-minute long fake orgasm.”
Even in the feminine circle, the movie is getting negative reviews.
I totally get why there’s so much hate. This second movie looks like they threw caution to the wind and had the four ladies just whoop it up with their designer labels, credit cards, and bottles of champagne. Fun in the desert? Complete disregard for customs in the Middle East? Totally okay, because they’re Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, Charlotte York-Goldenblatt, and Samantha Jones. Or so it seems to be.
As much as it pains me to say it, I am very much looking forward to this movie.
I don’t have HBO. Probably won’t ever get it unless it miraculously becomes included in a programming package with Time Warner (HA!). As a result, I only saw maybe three episodes while the show was actually on air; everything else came to me a couple of years after the final episode premiered thanks to Netflix. With this logic, it makes absolutely no sense for me to get wrapped up in the cult following of high heels, cosmos, and flakey dating habits.
That should technically apply for the show “Six Feet Under” as well, but after watching two episodes at a neighbor’s house, I was completely hooked.
Also, I’ve got several Flame Dame tendencies. When you’ve got a gay uncle on each side of your family and tack on almost three years of sharing an apartment with the man who gets referred to as the “gay ex-husband,” you bet your ass I’ve got materialistic woes.
The irony of SATC is that I didn’t watch it to see who what the girls were doing that week. I watched it mainly to see if Steve Brady would make an appearance (because he shares an uncanny resemblance to my guitar repairman).
Going to see the first movie was kind of like going to a college graduation ceremony: you’ve been waiting for that person to walk the stage after years of discussion on whether or not to go for the doctorate. When it comes, the air is filled with anticipation and you’re looking forward to spending time with friends. At least that’s how I felt. And I had a friend who was going to see it with me. It’d be a great girly afternoon.
The duo suddenly became a party of five. My friend would be accompanied by her mother, another friend, and her friend’s mother. Since the four of them had made plans to do some shopping prior to the movie, it was decided that I would meet up with them at the Promenade in Santa Monica. They went ahead and purchased their tickets online, so I followed suit. Showtime was three-thirty; we would meet up about an hour beforehand so we could at least sit together.
I arrived a little bit early and texted my friend, asking her to call/text me when she arrived. She responded that they were wrapping up and that they should be on their way soon. That worked for me, so I did a little bit of window shopping.
An hour passed. No call, no text. I waited another ten minutes, figuring that they had run a little bit behind and would show up soon.
Ten minutes passed and apparently I’d been ditched.
And I was pissed off.
I was ready to just up and leave. I sent a text to my friend, saying that I was going to go home since I hadn’t heard from her. I also told her that I felt I was being a third wheel.
No apology came back.
Had I not already bought my ticket, I would have definitely left. But twelve dollars isn’t something I can carelessly toss around, and I kind of wanted to see the movie.
I felt horribly awkward. The theater was filled with groups of women who were chatting to each other, and here my single self was sitting in one of the side aisle seats, speaking to no one. But I sat through the entire movie and enjoyed myself. It was enough of a boost to cancel out the dejected feeling from earlier.
My therapist was incredibly proud of me for staying through the movie. And I was kind of proud of myself, too.
As cheesy as it sounds, the SATC movie gave me motivation to go out into a sea of women and feel comfortable enough to get out there without a group of friends. My friend had not been there for me, but I pushed myself beyond my social safety zone and I came out okay.
So badmouth the movie if you will, and if you need to cast stones at my person, I completely understand.
This has been a very wordy post, and if you’ve made it this far, thank you.
