This chair isn't going to pull itself out.

I was going to make a quick reference sheet the other day at work of images, and then, as I described it, I went back and put air quotes around “Sheet” because let’s be honest, no one is ever going to print this out.

Rach: Don’t worry, I talked you up.

Me: Oh good.  I’m glad you didn’t say anything embarrassing.  What am I talking about? I’m squeaky clean in that area. 

There is a guy at work that I just adore.  He happens to be from Florida, so during lunch, Kelly gave him the cute nick name of “Flo – Rida.”  And, to emphasize this nick name, I used my newly acquired photo shop skills.

When I got into work on Tuesday Morning:

Me: I *think* I had a dream last night that Tyler came over to me and said, “First, you need to organize your Sharpies.”

Christy: Are you sure that wasn’t real life?

So I asked Tyler… and confirmed that this is actually what my dreams have come to. 

Kelly and I had a play date at my house yesterday to play Halo in a safe environment in which no one would mock us.  (I felt like I needed a bus pass for her to come over.) Point of this story is, I am very bad at aiming, but I made up for it with my sweet melee skillz. (I didn't teach her how to Melee until we stopped playing). My cousin was laughing that we couldn't run, but we knew the names of all the weapons and ships.  You could hear us saying, "Which button jumps?" in the same breath as, “Oooh Imma shoot this Brute Minor with my Assault Rifle!”

Wednesday, I was at church for Ashes, when I’m walking down the aisle and hear a whispered, “Tiffany! Tiffany!”  Apparently, Shannon from Café Ladro was also getting her ash on.   I got home in time to go to class with Dawne, only to find out that class was canceled.  I promise you I wasted these extra 3 hours of my life doing something completely useless. 

Thursday morning I had breakfast with Becky where I learned that she gave up being frustrated for Lent.  Good luck with that. 

Thursday evening, I rounded up some friends to go to a “Meet Up.”  For those not in the know, Meet Up is a site that holds various events, for various types of people that you can join if you want to meet people.  The particular event we went to was at a bar near Pike Place Market and had 200 people signed up to go.  Before the event, Kelly brought this guy Ed over to my desk and told me that he too, was attending the meet up.  A little apprehensive, I asked him what it was all about/what it was like.  He responded, “Have you ever been to a bar before?”  Oooookay then.  If he is wondering why we mocked him for the rest of the night… this is where the gauntlet was thrown.   I asked if people were going to be socially awkward because of the nature of the evening, he covertly looked over at the play testers behind me.  “Why are you looking over there, Ed!?”  And I had my answer. 

Ed: I’m going to the bathroom.

Rach: Number One, or Number Two?

Ed: What?

Rach: What?

At one point, I wanted to check out another bar and the rest of the group followed us.  This was right after Rach found a book of stamps on the floor, and I proceeded to give them out to people - but not to Ed, because they were for special people.  When we arrived, Rach stood next to a chair and said to Ed, “This chair isn't going to pull itself out.”

Ed also told us that while he was in the restroom, another gentleman rubbed his elbow with is elbow while they were peeing.

Rach: Maybe he was just saying, “We’re all in this together.”

Laina: Right before he announced, “SWORD FIGHT!!”

Rach ended up on the phone with Ed’s sister, and then returned to tell us, “His name is EDWARD and he went to FORKS high school and he is very pale.”

On our way of the bar a chick complimented me on my shirt.

Me: Thanks, my 6 year old nephew picked it out for me.

Chick: My niece always tells me I dress weird.

Rach: Well, she’s WRONG.

Kelly told me, “I had a serious conversation with Andrew.  I told him about the gravity feeds.”

Laina, Rach, Kelly and I created the perfect system by standing in a square in the middle of the room, then bringing people into the circle and introducing those people to new people when we wanted to meet additional people.  I was very impressed with us.  In fact, Kelly and I gave us an A+ for the evening (the + was for getting a girl into our car.)  When I told Dawne that I made a new friend that was a girl, she was very upset and explained that that was NOT my goal.  She should know how hard it is for me not to make friends. 

Saturday morning, I woke up and walked into Zach’s room.  He was watching a show called “The Elephant Princess” that was the quality of a bad Disney Channel show.  The story line was about a girl who is a Princess in a magical land that she gets to by using a magical elephant.  But in the real world, she’s just an ordinary girl with a band.  Zach said the best part was that he couldn’t tell if they were in Australia or South Africa and he also watched both seasons that were available.  I asked if he’d like the soundtrack for his birthday. 

At Laina’s later that evening, we were told that she wanted to fill one glass jar with wine corks, and one with beautiful origami.  So we got started on that right away.  I remember it being a lot easier in 3^rd grade.  Here is what went into the jar (That sailboat looking thing was supposed to be a vulture, but I got distracted):

Sunday morning started out with a Skype conversation with Kathi where she told us that she looked at her bank statement the other day and she had received four euro’s in interest, but then was taxed 99 cents.  Maybe she can get a coffee if she takes it black. 

Then Lucas was looking for something else to watch, and said, “These are Top Pick’s for Zach, so you should like anything in this category” then made a selection.  

Meanwhile, we were getting ready to meet Rach at Guitar Center to pick out her very first guitar. 

Me: Lucas has a song he wants you to cover.  It is tentatively called, “My nipples are fine.”

Rach: Ok great!  We may need to work on the title, but I’ll address that later.  For now, we’ve got a lot of work to do if I want to strum out anything that remotely sounds like a song.

Me: Here’s a teaser of the lyrics. 

My nipples don’t need your charity.  My nipples aren’t here for your hilarity.

One’s innie.  Ones outie.  Like I’m in a Mercedes while driving an Audi.

My nipple be crazy, the other lazy.  I’m tryina’ think here but it be hazy.

Have no fear, don’t let it abhor us.  I’m getting’ old here, take it to the chorus.

My nipples are fine! They’re average and normal!

My nipples are fine! Just a little informal!

You get the idea.

Rach: I love it.  I love everything about it.  And I take it back; we don’t need to work on the title.  Also, I’d like to give Lucas a slow clap for incorporating the work abhor into song lyrics.

We went to Guitar Center, where Lucas tried to explain to Rach that it was like buying a car, and you didn’t want to buy something the first time you walked into the dealership.  After a lot of debate, we finally went to lunch at Bucca di Beppo’s where we explained that Lucas wasn’t really a vegetarian.  He eats hotdogs, chicken nuggets, and bacon.

Lucas: So not very Jewish.  But I have curly hair and I’m circumcised!

Rach proceeded to go back and buy the Guitar, and if you want a quick glimpse:

We also watched the Oscars.  I made a joke about kids not knowing who Billy Crystal was when he hosted the Oscars, but still got upset with Lucas asked me twice who he was.  My favorite moment of the entire show was when someone said Martin Scorsese and two ladies from Bridesmaids yelled, “DRINK!” and pulled tiny bottles out of their dresses. 

Challenge Accepted

Monday morning, Liz, a former co-worker, posted that she would be creating a Whitney Houston Pandora station and listening to it for 24 hours. 

Me: UPDATE: After two hours of Whitney, Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross, Boys II Men, Toni Braxton and Tina Turner, I finally had to give a thumbs down to Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On. I guess what I'm really saying is: I don't want any white people singing on my Whitney station.

Liz: End of day 1: I laughed, I nearly cried, I reminisced and I danced. I'm exhausted from all the emotions but will start again tomorrow.

Me: Day 2: Zero Crackers. Happy Valentine's Day!

Liz: Day 2: Heard "I will always love you" for the first time early this morning, I can't believe it's taken so long. Still haven't heard " I want to dance with somebody either". Too much Mariah, not enough Whitney, I'm going to have to be more severe with my likes and dislikes today.

Me: I'm not entirely sure Pandora knows the difference between Toni Braxton and Whitney Houston. Racists. Serious Question: If they had Dolly Parton singing "I will always love you" would you let it slide?

this is VERY close to what it sounded like when *I* tried to sing it. 

 (Deb can confirm.)

At 7:30 on Tuesday morning, I received a very disappointed message from my HS friend Stephanie, complaining about my lack of witty facebook updates for Valentines’ day.  Mind you, I hadn’t looked at fb yet.  I did however, put some effort into it, but it still took 4 updates until she finally deemed one to be “witty.”  Good thing she wasn’t my Valentine this year. 

When I called my parent’s house, I wished my father a very cheery Happy Valentine’s Day, to which he replied, “You don’t mean that.”  I thought I DID mean it, but I had to look back to last years “Reason’s why I’m not Bitter” to confirm, that I really did mean it.  Meanwhile, he told me that my mother was busy making a meatloaf into the shape of a heart, which is nothing short of adorable. 

I went over to Dr. Rach’s on Tuesday night for a dinner party.  My co-worker, Christy thought the dinner party meant that we were all going to make dinner together, but I assured her that Rach would never expect me to help cook. 

Me (watching Rach drink a bottle of beer): Are you okay? You keep drinking out of the side of your mouth.
Dr. Rach: I've had a minor stroke. (Spilling some beer on her very light brown shirt) This shirt used to be white.
Me: That's funny because it's something I would say. 

Over a year ago, Matty bought part of a cow, brought it to a butcher and then had copious amounts of meat that he stored in the fridge of the Brown House.  He then moved out, and left this meat in the fridge.   There must have been a two week period in which no one went into the basement of the brown house, and during that time, the fridge broke.  Lucas told me that on Wednesday, he (who is for all intents and purposes, a vegetarian) and his brother Zach had to clean up the bloody, rotting carcass of a cow.  When it was all done, Zach didn’t quite make it up to the house before vomiting outside on the stairs.  As you can imagine, they both stripped at the earliest moment to shower and was swearing hours later that the stench was still lingering in their nostrils. 

Me (tentatively knocking on Zach’s door): I’m sorry you had a bad day, buddy. 

15 minutes later, Zach came down to the living room and asked if I would get him some dinner (because he lost his lunch earlier.)  While we were eating, he asked, “Did Lucas tell you how we almost died today?”  I had only heard the rotting flesh story, so I was all ears.  I’ll do my very best to recreate what happened for you. 

Lucas has been driving to practice for his driver’s exam, mostly driving home from school (which requires you to go onto I-90).  He was driving along, and Zach was on the phone (I say this only b/c Zach was telling the story and admits that he and Lucas still don’t fully understand how this story happened) when Lucas merged into the next lane.  (In Luke’s defense, I am guessing this happened on the part of 90 that I hate because in the same two exit lanes of 90 are also being used by the traffic exiting 405 onto 90 so I’m surprised more accidents don’t happen.)  Anyway, either Luke looked failed to actually turn his head, or this guy was in his blind spot and before anyone knew it, the other car was coming at him, crossed in front of Luke’s car, and spun 180 degrees across 4 lanes.  No one was hurt, no accident occurred and Lucas kept driving.  Here’s my interpretation:

I thought about finding a car chase from Gone in 60 Seconds or The Fast and the Furious, but a post-it note works too.   Either way, after these two stories, I had a really hard time complaining about Casper chewing up 4 pairs of my heels – not an IMPOSSIBLE time mind you.  I just told the heel story first.  

Becky: So, I had to take the bus on Wednesday, and my driver totally reminded me of you.  He says, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?  If tomatoes are classified as a fruit, does that make ketchup a smoothie?"  LOL

I said yes, because in PGH we practically drink the stuff.

Speaking of Pittsburgh, we were watching a movie the other day and the mom asks the kid if she realizes why she loves Pirates baseball team, and before the kid can say because you were born in PGH, Lucas interjected with, “Because you’re a Pirate and you steal my soul.”  In this same movie I had to explain to Zach and Lucas that not everyone with a mustache is Tom Selleck, and not everyone with curly hair is Keri Russell. 

Kelly: Okay, I went out with this guy last night and, this might sound a little nerdy.  He told me that his birthday was in June and I said, “Oh Yay!  That’s the end of the Fiscal Year!”

Friday at lunch, we started speculating on what actor would play Master Chief if there was ever a movie.  The candidates included a young Harrison Ford or young Tom Selleck (clearly, this isn’t for a real movie.)  This is how the conversations progressed: 

Young Harrison Ford, Young Mel Gibson,  Will Smith, Tom Welling, (Yes, those last two were mine), Channing Tatum, Clive Owen,  then one of the guys on the thread Angel said that the search could stop right there and sent a picture of himself (as long as no one put him next to the other candidates.)  Naturally, I sent this next:

Then someone asked about who would play Cortana.  Angel sent a picture of Smurfette, and I seconded it with:

Friday evening I went to a charity event in which I might have complained about winning only one prize even though, with only ten prizes total, three prizes went to people at our table.  We tried to get out of listening to the speeches, but after failing, Becky and I grabbed drinks (in which I needed Becky to assure me that my work from 4 years ago does have value even though the company doesn’t think so, in case anyone was wondering what level of constant reassurance I need.) Also, the peach sangria and the matador is amaze-balls.  While I was out with Becky, Zach called me 5 times and when he couldn’t reach me, called Dr. Rach (I wasn’t home, calling Rach was a good guess).  Nala (the 3 pounder) was missing.  Zach said his voice was still hoarse the next morning from yelling so much looking for her.)  Finally, Zach’s panic took a brief pause as he sat down with Casper to think about where she might have gone.  Ten minutes later, on HER schedule, Zach told me that “she came sauntering in (like nothing was amiss); that bitch.”  It’s hard to get mad at her though, because then you look at her and she gives you that, “What? I’m not late, I’m cute,” look.

Saturday, I did some more organizing in my room.  Zach was keeping me company, so when I found bright red lipstick and put it on, he was quick to tell me that I looked like a Toddlers and Tiaras contestant.   Saturday night a bunch of Zach’s friends came over and someone mentioned watching a movie in the theater.  Zach said the theater was on the other side of the house, so one of the kids walked from one side of the fireplace to the other, saw the three chairs, a couch and TV and asked, “Oh, is this the theater?” And, despite the fact that there is an 18 person theater upstairs, Zach, replied, “Yup.  This is it.”  Mind you, when he told my friends and I the story the next day we thought this was super funny, he still never cleared up the misunderstanding with his friends.  I guess the next time they are over he can just say it’s a new development in the house? 

While Zach was “pulling one over” on his friends, I was out with Dr. Rach, her roommate Kyle, and his firefighter friend.  We grabbed some drinks and then headed over to see Underworld: Awakening. (I wish I could say that I didn’t love it, but I can’t. It was as awesome as the other films in the series.)  I’m a lil jumpy, so there were a lot of startled scream/jumps when I watched this epic tale.  When we finished watching, I announced, “I got scared a couple times.” In case those around me missed my “subtle” fear.   

On the way back from the theater, I asked Kyle to drive with me so that I wouldn’t get lost.  If you’ve ever driven with me, you have probably wanted to comment about my performance.  Kyle, however, was so polite about it, that I almost didn’t notice.  I mean, I totally did, but almost.  He started out with, “Oh, you like to sit close to the steering wheel.”  Followed by, “The speed limit on the exit is 25 but you could probably get away with 35 or 40.” And also, “I like how cautious you are with going to the first line at the light instead of the second.”  (Later we saw a cab practically in the middle of the road and I commented that he didn’t respect the first or second line of the stop light.) Meanwhile, Rach was in the car with the firefighter, and he was commenting how he had never hung out with girls who genuinely liked Sci-Fi.  I asked Rach if she had responded with, “Well, I’ve never hung out with a guy who has read Twilight, Sookie Stackhouse AND Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”  Because I would have – though probably best that I didn’t because then I would have followed that statement with, “And that might be the hottest thing I’ve ever heard a guy say.” 

We were back to Rach and Kyle’s for a moment, when the firefighter got hungry and said, “I ate one of your frosted covered animal crackers.  Don’t worry.  I ate it head first so it didn’t suffer.”  Then we grabbed something to eat, and headed over to another bar to play darts.  I think Sean would have been proud of my performance for the first half (I was cleaning up) but then then ultimately lost because, for the life of me, I could not get the last bulls eye.  I’m much better on a team. 

Sunday, Rach, Shana, and Laina came over – we went to the dog park, got pedi’s and then ate some dinner and thought about watching a movie.  I find that when people come over, deciding on a movie is the hardest part.  Zach and I put out some suggestions into the universe, but ultimately tried to get them to watch Lesbian Vampire Killers – I don’t know why there was a sudden mass exodus at that point.  I’m sure it wasn’t related. 

Last week, I got to talk to my dad again in the morning.  He told me that the boys were home from school so if he started yelling, “Kevin!” it was not because he had a sudden case of Tourette’s.   Then the boys were suddenly sitting on the couch, each with a book.  Frita then proceeded to mock the fact that Kevin, the 8 year old, was re-learning the Alphabet, Patrick, 9 was studying a pop-up book, and Kyle, 6 was upset because he wasn’t allowed to take the dictionary OR the encyclopedia on the trip with them. 

Kyle: I’m going to get gooder at that.

Kevin: You’re going to get BETTER, Kyle. 

Frita wouldn’t be able to mock that.  (I am not challenging you, Frita. J )

Have a great Fat Tuesday everybody!

Judgmental Highlights

First thing I did when I got into work this morning was take my Miss Piggy mug down to the kitchen to wash it and fill it with delicious coffee.  As the freshly brewed coffee dispersed into my cup, I saw a disproportionate amount of bubbles (rather than the bit of foam that sometimes occurs) indicating that I didn’t fully rinse the soap from my cup.  An hour later, I haven’t drunk the coffee, but I haven’t gone downstairs to rectify the situation either.  In case anyone was wondering how this week was going to go… 

Do you remember those “Double Check” pictures in Highlights magazine when you would look between two pictures and try to figure out what was different?  That’s what I did at work all last week only I was being a lot more judgmental as I was doing it.  I had no idea highlights magazine would have such a direct correlation or so effectively prepare me for my real world career.  The only way I could have made things more interesting would have been if I had stared at the first image for 60 seconds then tried to write down the differences from memory. While certainly more interesting, I’m not sure if my partners would have appreciated the results. 

The same partner owns their own factory, and my co-worker was feeling very jealous about someone owning their own Toy Factory.  I sent them an image for the Play-doh “Fun Factory” because my image search results for Toy Factory were seriously not work-appropriate.  Not having your own Toy Factory is sad, but the fact that my co-worker never had a Play-doh Fun Factory made me feel genuinely bad for him. 

Ooh! I made Brookies and Erika’s Hot Heaven for 13 of my co-workers.  Baking for an occasion isn’t as appreciated as random sweets on a Wednesday.  The night before I went grocery shopping with Zach and he couldn’t wait to leave.  There was so much pressure that I walked out of the store with the baked good supplies, protein bars, cereal and some juice.  This would be considered successful if our house wasn’t completely void of food.  This is why we had to order Dominos at 11 am on a Saturday btw. 

Last week I dragged some ladies at work to some very girlie girl stores in downtown Kirkland.  On our way back we grabbed some subway and whilst consuming our sandwiches, I was telling them about Lucas making his lunch the night before.  (He decided to pull out a lunch box to bring it into school.  The lunch box he found was a Donald Duck container he got at Tokyo Disneyland that I should have taken a picture of because it’s awesome.) The discussion progressed to the lineage of Donald, Scrooge, and Huey, Duey and Louie.  I thought it was a fabulous conversation, but by the time I started breaking out the Mallard family tree, I had completely lost Christy.  It happens. 

On Wednesday Dawne and I played hooky from our story writing class.  Instead, we had dinner with this guy who Dawne thought was a potential match (which was a good enough reason as any to skip class).  His good attributes were that he was a lot like Derek in that he was excellent at starting and participating in conversations, was very curious about life, genuinely wanted to know more about every subject, and as a result of this lifelong pursuit of knowledge knew a wide variety of information.  On the downside (and unlike Derek) he was extremely pretentious.  Lucas also got the same vibe, which is probably why he started saying things like “You know that guy with the chopping of the tree (George Washington) and the guy with kite thing (Ben Franklin)” which he absolutely knew.  And the guy responded with, “And THIS is the result of the US educational system folks.”  When I was talking this over with Zach later, he was like, “Yeah.  I knew you’d think he was pretentious.”  Am I that predictable? 

My weekend was pretty chill - hung out with Rach and BDug, hit up the dog park, made a trip down to IKEA.

Me: Guess where we’re going!?

Lucas: Home?

Zach:  No. We’re going to your favorite place.

Lucas: Guitar Center? Triple X? ChuckeCheese? Paint the town?

We went back and forth like this for quite a while before he guessed that we were only ten minutes from IKEA.  While it was awesome to have two boys to help carry things, I felt a lil rushed on the decision making process and ended up with two pieces of furniture.  When I got home, I had no idea if they would work or if they were what I wanted, but they were the right color.  That’s good logic right?  I spent a good chunk of the weekend between watching Breaking Bad and building/organizing.  I’m feeling pretty good about it – and I didn’t even need to call Diana, organizer extraordinaire to help.  : )

Shana: On my iPhone the facebook app sometimes swaps people's profile pics.  Because of habit I look to the profile pic to see who people are instead of their name. I saw BDug's pic with the status: I'm just incredibly grateful for the life I have and the people in it. ♥  I also noticed 2 people commented.  Those comments were: Sean P--- “You are absolutely amazing. ♥ “ and Jesse J--- “Yeah! I'm glad you’re in my life, and that I get to sit next to you!” I was about to hit send on: Riiiiight, you're incredibly grateful for the bottle in your hand and the 11 empties on the floor when I thought for a moment “Why would BDug say such a thing and who are these people commenting and why aren’t they being snarky?” Then I decide to look at the name and it's from a chick I work with.  I shook my fist at fb for fooling me.  damn glitch!!

See… I try not to comment on those updated because no matter what I want to say, it will immediately sound horrendous compared to the supportive, loving messages from those other genuine friends.  *sigh*

Shana: I’m watching The River and waiting for DinoCroc to show up.  S-Dawg will put his name on anything these days.

Zach: You gotta sell out sometime in your career – that’s the whole point of being successful. 

(I guess I should mention I started calling Spielberg “S-Dawg” after Jordan said he was at “Steven’s house” one day.  I thought if the whole house referred to him as “S-Dawg” Jordan would slip up and call him that and hilarity would ensue.  Way to remember that Shana Dueux!)

And finally, Zach (looking at Nala): It’s always surprising that she can move on her own.