Tag: Friends

Fashion, Friends, Humor, Wedding May 20, 2009May 20, 2009

Eve vs. The Apple

“Look for the woman in the dress; if there is no woman, there is no dress.”
-Coco Chanel

It never fails. Whenever I recommit to frugality (and, though I don’t mind spending money, I already do live well within my limits) I remember something I need to buy, find a place that tempts me to dump money into it, or go shopping with Venice. Usually some combination of the three.

Last night was the third option. I told the girls I asked to be bridesmaids long ago that I want them to pick out a dress they liked, that flattered them, and that they could wear again…I had no idea it would mean frantic searching and agony on their part, I thought I was doing something nice! Venice and I went on the hunt for bridesmaids dresses, and since we live in wedding central, we reasoned, surely there must be something. Two hours later we had encountered monstrosity after monstrosity (long, hunter’s orange, chiffon with a BOW! I didn’t know they actually were legally able to sell something that ugly!) and I could tell she was getting frustrated enough to chew nails! David’s Bridal was explored and discarded, some pretty dresses but ridiculously priced and the alterations would cost a separate fortune. Other bridal shops were the same, the dresses in varying degrees of loath-ability. We’re about the same height (aka short) and let me tell you, no one makes pretty petite bridesmaids dresses. In fact, I’d say that very few people make pretty petite clothing for women in their early twenties period, but that’s an entirely different rant for another day. As if finding a nice bridesmaids dress wasn’t a chore to begin with, finding one in a “specialty size” was pretty near impossible, we continue to be confounded by our height (or lack thereof).

Finally we through in the towel (after we had both stopped into Anchor Blue for flip flops because we both needed a pair, were still both in our work heels, and dying) and slumped home in defeat. Then! At 10 o’clock she called (ironic, since we now live two doors down from one another) and I hurried over to see this marvelous site: Shabby Apple. Another friend had introduced me to it months ago but the memory of it was long gone. It’s a small business run out of Salt Lake City, UT and they sell nothing but fabulous dresses! She found one she really liked (it’s so classy, and not something vile that one tosses in the back of a closet never to be seen again) so we ordered it and we’re now a step closer to being done with this whole parade!

…of course, there were repercussions…I’ve had next to nothing to do at work today so I spent the day cruising the website, having to physically restrain myself from whipping out the credit card! I’m currently drooling over a few and debating which to buy first when I’m no longer out of my I’m-getting-married-and-have-better-things-to-spend-my-money-on hell. …that and today I’m buying a pair of stunning emerald earrings to wear on the big day. A girl can’t have everything. At least not all at once.

For your horror/viewing pleasure you may check out the following. I can’t belive so many people are this cruel to their friends!

Friends, Humor, Wedding, Working Out May 4, 2009

T-Minus Two Months

“Whenever a woman asks me ‘What’s the best way to lose weight?’ I tell her, ‘Get engaged.'”
-David Zinczenko

Nothing like a form hugging (breath constricting) gown to make a girl commit!

Yes, folks, my caloric intake is down and my amount of time at the gym is up. My sleep is heavy and my morning yogurt is “light.” My waistline is in and my muscles are out (in a sleek, feminine sort of way). Barring any mental breakdown and the metric ton of brownies that I would medically require to get over it, roll on July 1!

In other wedding news, Catriona helped me get started on invitations and announcements last saturday, so my stress level in that department has bottomed out, bless her! We threw on Some Like it Hot, I addressed (my handwriting is still awful) and she stuffed envelopes and stamped. With the list much shorter now, life seems so much more bearable.

And in weddings other than my own, good grief! It seems like I get an invitation to a reception, shower, or hen night every day! J. and I went to Marie’s sister’s reception last week, his best friend is getting married this weekend, Kays is getting married the weekend after that, and I get a brief reprive the week after that (unless you count my final dress fitting-which will hopefully be angst free as long as those brownies aren’t required!).

Friends, Humor, Wedding April 29, 2009April 29, 2009

Dude, Where’s My Pants?

“We’re going for the law of probability here: if we take enough pictures then one of them has to turn out!”
(Later)
“Good grief! If he’s not looking stoned then I’m looking like a gargoyle!”
-C

So, after being engaged for months and getting married in just two, J. and I finally took engagement pictures to send out with our announcements. What a migraine! First I had to figure out what to wear (a war in and of itself). This required a mad dash through the mall, trying on and discarding a number of dresses, falling in love with a fabulous white linen one, dropping way too much on it, getting it home, lovingly pulling it out the next day to admire it and being seized by a horrible rush of, “I’ll look like a Stepford Wife!” before finally being calmed down by well meaning friends.

Then we actually took the pictures. After a day of perfect weather, by the time we got to our shooting site there were threatening clouds, of course, and an atmosphere of dust that had blown in from the desert. Didn’t matter, we manned up and smiled bravely while Kays (darling and patient girl that she was) clicked merrily away, delighting mostly in the pictures in which we looked particularly ghoulish. Kays and I then decamped to her house for selection and editing (J. went to Five Guys with the boys. Men).

After everything, the editing was the adventure. By 11:30 pm Kays and I were giggling hysterically as we scrolled through indiscernible blobs, improbable facial contortions, and the occasional good shot (I can count the photos of myself that I’ve liked over the years on one hand, I think I must look very different in my head than I do in real life… ). She, being the photoshop whiz that she is, tweaked a few things like brightening colors, and fixing my hair when I had a fit of narcissistic angst.

Then, just when we were about to pack up for the night, something caught my eye. We’d just spent half an hour on this one picture but something…something was wrong. What was it? My hair was flowing and my hips were at an angle that didn’t make them look huge, J. was annoyingly handsome and smiling, the colors were vibrant…WAIT A SECOND! I looked closer at J.’s trousers and nearly choked. Somehow, by trying to make the colors richer, we had turned his trousers into a gaping pants-shaped black hole! You couldn’t see any pockets, pleats, belt, or anything, it was just a black splotch where light went to die. AND we hadn’t saved the version of the photo we had worked on to fix everything else. We stared in dismay at the screen at the pre-edited photo and the creepy post-production, until I blurted in almost-midnight-and-exhausted panic, “Can’t we just crop in the trousers from the original picture?”
“I’m not sure if I can…” but Kays tried.

Eh voila! The Black Hole is no more, you can’t even tell that it was cropped. Of course we still have to make a final decision and for all I know we won’t even choose that one…but midnight drama with an old friend is worth it! Plus, if we decide today, I can order the prints and get started on announcements finally!

Friends March 30, 2009March 30, 2009

Hooked

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive. ~Anäis Nin

Once a week my friends from London and I get together, nominally to watch The Office and 30 Rock but really to gossip and catch up and reminisce about England. I’ll never forgive Marie for going back this summer while I’m here, but I’ll be back in Cambridge for Christmas (this year with a husband. Weird) so I just have to hold out strong until then.

84_charing_cross_road Anyway, in the spirit of Anglophilia, Marie had rented a movie for us to watch and I’m completely smitten! It’s called 84 Charing Cross Road and chronicles a based-on-a-true-story 20 year correspondence between an American writer and the proprietor and staff of a bookshop in London that specializes in antique books (incidentally, a 200 year old edition of Newton from this place cost less than £5! Why couldn’t I have lived in the 1940’s?!). This film is absolutely charming, and I don’t mean it in the patronizing way that word gets used, it’s an engaging, delightful film and you get completely engrossed in the story. I may have to go on another Amazon.com spree here shortly! That and the next time I’m in London I’m going to have to find the real 84 Charing Cross, even though I understand the shop isn’t there anymore which is tragic in my opinion. Excellent choice, Marie.

coldcomfort1 But this incident got me thinking: I’m indebted to friends or circumstance for so many of life’s little gems. Way back when I was living in Micronesia my friend Biscotti Rose, during one of our many slumber parties, declared, “I have a movie you just have to watch!” And thus I met Cold Comfort Farm, with some of the greatest English actors working today: Kate Beckinsale, Aileen Atkins, Rufus Sewell, Joanna Lumley, and Sir Ian McKellen. Years later I bought the novel and laughed even harder at it than the film.

Angel introduced me to a science fiction series that I was initially dubious about. After all, scifi? Isn’t that for people who go to conventions, think Klingon is a legitimate language, and don’t make physical contact with the opposite sex until their 30’s? Not so! You want a series that delves deeply into human psychology, valor, and vice? Lois McMaster Bujold is the writer for you. Peregrine, I maintain, is responsible for much of my cultural happiness. Even though I resisted her civilizing efforts for years. She first exposed me to Chocolat and Amelie, plus more books and fine food than I can name!

BBC and PBS stations! Where would I be without them? Agatha Christie’s indomitable Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the upstairs/downstairs dichotomy of London’s 1920’s in You Rang M’Lord?, the hilarious, frantic antics of Hyacinth “Bouquet” (actually pronounced “Bucket”) in Keeping Up Appearances. I stumbled upon each of these gems while doing late night laundry across the years and they fulfill my need for British TV (even though You Rang, M’Lord? never shows up here, blast). I also watched my first opera on PBS when I was 9 and have been hooked ever since.

French classes exposed to Gerard Depardieu as Cyrano de Bergerac and Le Comte de Monte Cristo, as well as Marcel Pagnol, and the first time I read Rousseau it was his La Nouvelle Heloise. I read my first ancient Greek play on a whim after pulling down a random book from my mother’s library, but I was hooked and at 13 I wrote a short play on the ancient model that won me a competition and was produced by Theatre Virginia.

IRS Guy introduced me to a fabulous little restaurant called Gloria’s Little Italy and while he didn’t make it past a second date, Gloria and I have been very happy together ever since. Peregrine (again!) first took me to Bombay House for Indian food. J., who lived in Korea for 2 years, has completely addicted me to Korean cuisine and knows the best holes in the wall for oriental food, to say nothing of the local hotspots (he’s lived here longer than me).

What sorts of treasures have you discovered through other people?

Friends, Humor, Work February 6, 2009November 3, 2009

Cheese With That Whine?

“Do you just hate happy people today or something?”
“Yes.”
“Well, knock it off.”
“This? Coming from you?”
“Exactly. Consider the source. If I’m saying it, you may have crossed a threshold.”
-C. and Marie

A few lessons gleaned from this week, a few frustrations, and a few observations:

For all you would-be moguls out there, may I offer a humble tip towards being a good boss: Listen to your secretaries. They are the people who are responsible for keeping your megalomaniac ambitions logged, organized, and proceeding according to schedule. Lt. Citrus and Lt. Figaro both laid a project each on me this week without warning, which while it more than quadrupled my workload wasn’t too bad. The instructions, on the other hand, were maddening.

Quoth Lt. Figaro, “So, I’d like you to update this directory of every employee in the department. We haven’t done it in three years or so and it’s entirely obsolete. Theeson was the last person to update it” [Theeson was replaced by Tink who was replaced by Wise who was replaced by me, just for a time frame reference] ” but no one else ever really used it except me, and since she quit I’ve done without it, but I’ve decided I’d like a new copy.”

I tried to tell him that 1) we were hiring and firing half a dozen people within the week so the list would be obsolete by Friday anyway and 2) that I kept an up-to-date roster on the department server already complete with names, call numbers, and personal and professional contact information. “Well, just make it for me then if no one else will use it,” he smiled and went back to his office. I tried not to cry and mentally cut back my lunch hour.

Lt. Citrus’ project was validly important to the university, but the instructions he gave me to do it all came in the wrong order, with outdated software, and logically confusing interjections of last minute ideas, corrections, or modifications. And since it involved the creating, labeling, stuffing, packaging and mailing of literally 100 packets, by the end of the second day I had papercut my fingertips to shreds.

It’s been a long, hard week and I’m intensely glad it’s Friday. And I want Tink back desperately, work without a good friend to grumble about assignments to is drudgery.

Weird, Work January 27, 2009

Lockdowns, Employment and Otherwise

“This having a baby and going right back to work has got to stop. They may do it in Africa and Asia but here it makes the rest of us look bad!”
-C. to Tink

I’m about to have a managerial divorce from my work wife Tink. She’s going on maternity leave but due to family concerns, a recession-induced hiring freeze on the department, and our need for another dispatcher, she won’t be coming back. Hennessy is moving over from our Appeals department and she’s going to be lots of fun to work with, but I will miss my work wife!

The majority of my nightmares now include some variation on this theme

On an unrelated note, I am learning lots about driving in icy weather. I got my original driver license on Guam where the temperature never dipped below 75 F on a cold day. I never knew I’d have the experience to physically dig my car out of ice in a parking lot, nearly swerve off a road due to no fault of my own, or live in constant fear of killing a small child inadvertently. However this morning I discovered a new perplexity: my locks froze! I eventually got in the passenger’s side door and scooted over to drive to work, by which time that door was functional again, but honestly!

Small Dog Syndrome