A Happy Ending

So, even though I know it's just like, my sister and 2 other random people that even read this thing anymore, but I've been getting requests from those people to update the blog. So here I am. I do apologize for the lapses. I know this blog is like the very air you breathe.

Soooo . . . Joe and I are engaged. Ya, I know. I knew it was coming, because, being the smart man that he is, he thought to include me in the ring-buying process, to make sure he got me something that I wanted. But I truly thought he was going to wait until 2009 to propose. I had a list of like 4 or 5 dates on which I thought he was going to do it. Alas, he tricked me and popped the question on Christmas Eve.

The actual story does not involve fireworks or fancy dinners or a big production. We were at my house, exchanging our Christmas gifts. He hands me an enormous box-- big enough, for like, an industrial air conditioner. I'm all, "Oh, baby, you shouldn't have." Yeah, he really shouldn't have, although I have to admire the time it took to wrap that damn thing. Inside was another box, then another, until I came to the ring box. Because I have my pride-- and because I am also deeply suspicious of Joe-- I tried not to let my excitement show. I opened the box cautiously. Inside was a giant, 5-carat, soap or rubber fake ring. Attached to said ring was a little note, in Joe's handwriting, that said, "soon." Next to the 'soon' was a goddamned smiley face.

I didn't get mad. Well, I didn't get violent. I calmly closed the box, looked up and was met with Joe's laughter. He thought it was hysterical. Of course, he knew that I was getting the real one that night, so of course it was funny. He also told me that his mother supported this trick and thought it was funny. She knew about the real proposal, too. I, on the other hand, questioned his mother's personality-- how could she think such a thing was funny? He laughed and laughed and I told him that he was really mean. He pseudo-apologized and we went into the bedroom to get dressed for the Christmas Eve dinner we had planned.

About 45-60 minutes go by of us getting ready. The air wasn't tense, per se, but I was still a bit miffed. You see, Joe gains great pleasure out of teasing me, and teasing me about when he was going to propose (since I knew it was somewhat imminent) gave him more joy than he knew what to do with. I can take a lot of teasing, but the anticipation of being engaged was hard to deal with in a normal way, especially in the face of his constant joking about it. Anyway, he could tell I was upset.

I sat on the end of my bed putting my shoes on. The Simpsons were on the TV. Joe knelt down on the floor in front of me so that we were eye-level. In my huffiness, I failed to realize that he was on one knee. He said, "Don't be upset with me, it was just a joke." I said, "I'm not mad, I'm just . . . disappointed." He said, "I told you I wouldn't propose on Christmas. It's cheezy." I said, "I know, and I never thought you would, until I saw that damn box." Then he said, "But it's not Christmas. It's Christmas Eve." He then pulled a (different) ring box out of his suit pocket. "Braids,"-- although, thankfully, he used my real, full name-- "will you marry me?" In the box was the ring of my dreams, the one I had picked out a few weeks earlier. Uh, I said yes.

So, here we are. Just short of a mere 7 months of dating. But that doesn't even faze me, because I'm SO sure this is right. As Joe likes to point out (recently noticed by Green Eyed Girl, too), my very first Joe post is entitled "I Think I Found A Husband." Is that prophetic or what?

So, the ring. I wanted an antique. After a lot of online research and visits to at least 6 vendors in the overwhelming Diamond District of New YOrk City, I found the ring I had been looking for. From the 1930s, with the distinctive "leaves" of rings of that time that I love. My ring is actually a custom antique, because the jeweler had the setting alone. He called in his antique-diamond dealers and we got to pick the antique diamond (also from the 1930s) that fit the setting. I luuuurve it. Here's a pic: You can see the leaves and the main stone, although this picture does not do it justice. It is way more beautiful- and SO fucking sparkly-- in person.



Also, we will NOT be appearing in a Match commercial. I'm a Fed, people! I can't have my face and name plastered all over national TV!

Also also, I am not giving up on this blog. It needs to be re-imagined, obviously, since I am no longer dating. I was thinking of making it a wedding-planning blog, but I think that the stress of having to blog about the stress of planning my wedding might end up killing me instead of being an outlet. So I may just focus on pop-culture stuff. We'll see.

Happy New Year!

Sexy Pumpkins

A Halloween post, in honor of one of my all-time favorite holidays. (What can I say? I'm a total sucker for dressing up, and the candy doesn't hurt either.)

However, rather than extoll the virtues of this grand day, I'm going to take this opportunity to write about a problem with Halloween that is near and dear to my heart: "sexy" costumes.

You guys know what I mean. I don't mean costumes that by their nature are sexy, like a stripper. I also will give a pass to certain costumes that aren't sexy most of the time but are given an extra dose of sex on Halloween based on long-standing, general fantasy, such as schoolgirls, cops, nurses, maids. Mind you, you will not see me dressed as a schoolgirl in public, but I will give the pass.

And, I get it. I totally get it. We all-- men and women-- want to look sexy. Those of us who wear jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts to work and get told we "dress like a little boy" by our male coworkers really want the opportunity to go as feminine as possible. But because you're wearing a costume, psychologically women are able to think-- and the rest of the world accepts-- "I'm not a whore, I'm just dressed up as one because it's Halloween." It's totally the one day a year where we get a free pass to dress as sexy as we want with no repurcussions.

However, there are still problems with this. First, I think there's a way to do sexy without looking like a whore. There's a way to do sexy without looking like a complete moron. My rule is, you should not look like you are dressing like a whore just because you can. You should not buy one of those "Legs Avenue" costumes (that they sell in porn stores year-round as fantasy outfits, fyi) just because it's Halloween. If you have to look like a total slut, at least make it funny and/or creative and/or homemade.

Second, it's total misogyny. Do a search for the "sexy" costumes on a website and they are ALL for women. Why don't men seize Halloween to advertise their inner trollop? More importantly, why isn't it expected for men the way it is for women? It just boils my blood.

So, that being said, I will punch in the face any girl I see tomorrow wearing any of the following costumes (which exist, I took all of these from Halloween costume websites): sexy pilgrim, sexy Uncle Sam, sexy bee, sexy FBI agent (I don't wear hot pants and a midriff-baring bustier to work, sorry), sexy Raggedy Ann, sexy "Tin Girl" and Scarecrow (from the Wizard of Oz. . .), sexy Eve (as in, from the Bible), sexy Napoleon, sexy corpse bride (really??). . . ugh,I can't even finish the list.

But I will close with my number 1, all-time most hated sexy costume. This exemplifies so well the misogyny at play: Spongebob Squarepants. If you want to go as Spongebob, expect to be dressed as a giant, Velveeta-colored hunk of square foam all night. It's funny. And alas, the hunk of foam costume is juuuuust fine for men:



And here's the women's version:


Are you fucking kidding me?

Maine: A Travelogue

What the fuck is a travelogue, anyway? I just realized I hate that word. I looked it up, Mirriam-Webster's has one definition as "a piece of writing about travel," which totally makes sense, I just hate the word. For the record, I also hate the words purchase, moist, dud, tot (as in tater), and smoothie.

So Maine! Joe and I are now at 4 1/2 months of dating. Whoo-hoo! But who's counting? Well, I am. And I was expressly granted permission (by my older, wiser sister) to be "one of those girls" until six months of dating. One of those girls where I get to talk about Joe incessantly and in annoying ways.

This won't be annoying, though. I mention it only because Maine was a test: it was to be our longest period of consecutive time spent with one another. Maine was almost a full week of 24/7 contact, to be rendered that much more hostile by the trials and tribulations of traveling together. Anyone who's anyone knows that travel is a true test of a relationship's-- romantic, friendly, family-- strength.

And . . . we made it through. Not a blip on the relationship-strength radar. Sooooo . . . awesome.

And, oh yeah, in other news, Maine was pretty good too. Our trip, we discovered, was destined to be a dual exploration of the state: culinary and scenic. We ate ourselves into comas, and decided that, if we said we were taste-testing our way through the state, there was legitimate, scientific purpose for said comas, and it was all OK. When we weren't eating stuff, we were looking at stuff.

We started the trip in Kennebunkport, land of the Walker-Bushes. Our B&B was here, and we spent one day in Kennebunkport and one day in nearby Portland. Kennebunkport is cute, very cute. If I were a 70-year-old white lady (which one day I will be), I would love it. I think there's more going on there in the summer, cause there are pretty beaches. But in October, Joe and I just walked around the town, which is full of jewelry stores, art galleries, and other cutesy shopping. We dined on award-winning lobster rolls (a New England thing; Joe's first; and not an award-winner in my book), and. . . that's pretty much it. A welcome easy first day.. .. This picture is from a cemetary in Kennebunkport. Pretty, no? Look at that foliage!! I could die.(For all these pics, you can click on them and you'll go to a bigger version of them....)

Portland was next-- not the capital, but a cosmopolitan city that reminded me a lot of my hometown of Providence, RI. Small, with character even in the business buildings. . . the "Old Port" section with cute shops and cobblestone streets on the waterfront was adorable. Another day spent walking around, exploring, window-shopping, eating. Portland is the home of Duckfat, a restaurant that specializes in . . . cooking things in duck fat. Joe saw this in our guidebook and, unlike normal people, his little ears perked up.

Not only did the idea of random things cooked in duck fat excite him, he specifically wanted to go there to eat poutine, a culinary . . . thing. . . that involves french fries doused in both cheese curds and gravy. Yes. The image in my head showed steak fries covered in cottage cheese bathing in heavy brown gravy soup. In reality, it was a lot less disgusting looking (see below) and even pretty good to eat.



So, of course, we needed to keep things light for dinner, so we high-tailed it out to a little lobster shack on Cape Elizabeth, where you ate your $10 lobster overlooking an endless dark ocean. It was so gorgeous. Lobster was one of the things we taste-tested through Maine. The official judging included boiled lobster, lobster rolls, seafood/clam chowder, cole slaw, and blueberry pie/blueberry desserts.



The next day we rose early to drive the 4 hours further up the coast to Bar Harbor, which is the big town on Mount Desert Island. The rest of the island, pretty much, consists of Acadia National Park, which is famous for being, like, the most gorgeous place on earth. Rockefeller, back in the day, created 20-something miles of "carriage roads," dirt paths that only horse-drawn carriages, not cars, were allowed on. Today, you can bike/walk them. Also famous is the 27 mile "Park Loop Road," which you drive (or, for the Lance Armstrongs among us, bike) and which takes you through a good majority of the Park, hitting all the famous scenic sites. Joe and I were giddy with anticipation for Acadia. He loves all things outdoors and I love pretty views. I was even looking forward to stopping eating and getting my now-fat ass on a bike through the park.

Acadia was everything we dreamed. In October, the whole damn thing was just flush with color, those vibrant oranges and yellows and fiery reds that only New England can boast. The air was crisp and cool and you can take a deep breath without coughing. We drove the Park Loop Road with the windows down. We biked through the woods on the carriage roads. We had popovers at the Jordan Pond House, which are world famous. We sat and stared at trees and leaves and flowers and water and mountains and woods, which, in Acadia, are all within inches of each other. We drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is the first point in the U.S. to see the sun rise. The one day we managed to get our asses out of bed at 5am to see said sunrise, it was raining. But we did sit, snuggled in 14 blankets and each other (it was damn cold), on top of Cadillac and watch the sun set.

I can't even choose pictures from Acadia to show what it was like. But I'll try:






The culinary tour continued in Bar Harbor, although by that point we had lobstered ourselves out. The chowdering continued strong, as did anything involving blueberries and dessert. Bar Harbor was also the first, and only, time we indulged the curious Maineism of "whoopie pies," which are . . . like, 2 chocolate cupcakes sandwiched together by vanilla frosting. They were everywhere! Pretty good, not my favorite.

We also took a whale-watching tour. I grew up in New England but have never done this. It's kind of like how I live in New York now but don't deign to go to the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty, even though whales are totally cooler than that shit. Still. Also the whales are only on the East Coast from like April to the end of October. We had a great time-- we hit on at least two pods of whales and dolphins, and the big guys were so close to the boat! None of them fully breached all Free-Willy-style, but there was plenting of blowing and flipper and tail showing. The temptation to jump off the boat and ride a whale like Seabiscuit, if only for a moment, was somewhat overwhelming, but I managed to restrain myself.



A special note about our Bar Harbor B&B: Amazing. It hugs the cliffs overlooking Frenchmen's Bay, one of the bodies of water that surround Mt. Desert Island. 80 steps lead to a private beach, another path leads to 2 chairs on a deck on the edge of the cliff. It was truly breathtaking. I could have stayed in that chair for our whole time there. And our room had this supremely comfy bed and a whirlpool bathtub, which was so nice after a day of biking in the cold. (Actually, unbeknownst to us prior to getting there, but which is advertised inside the B&B, Jenna Bush stayed there and got engaged on the beach. That is truly icky to me, but it shows ya how gorgeous and romantic the place was.) This was the view from the B&B's back deck, although it scarcely does it justice:



Lesson of the day: So . . . overrall, the trip gets an A+. We managed to combine relaxation with activity, adventure, exploration, eating ourselves silly. . . and, despite about 18-20 hours with each other stuck in the cab of a pick-up truck, cramped and tired and repeatedly getting lost, we managed to do it all without so much as a snarky, fatigue-induced snap at each other. I think we are destined for great things. In Maine.

Best Friends in October

I have been sorely neglecting my blog, and for that I am sorry, to my 5 or so loyal fans. I honestly don't know what to write about anymore, now that I'm stuck like a fly in honey in my sickeningly sweet relationship bliss. I try the pop-culture bit, I try the my-random-thoughts-bit, but both of those get written when the inspiration hits, and clearly inspiration comes at times few and far between. Feel free to leave comments on what you would like me to expound upon.

I will say this: October is, and always has been, my favorite month. I loooove the cold weather, and I love the in-between coldness that October brings. I lurve Halloween. I love love love fall foliage, which of course we don't get here in NYC. Anyway, I'm excited for the rest of this month.

Also, because Joe and I leave in 2 days for a week-long vacation to Maine. Growing up in New England, I've been there a few times, but Joe never has and has always wanted to go. We're going at "peak foliage season" so I can barely contain myself. We're also spending 3 days in Acadia National Park hiking and biking around mountains, ponds, and those glorious leaves. So I'll be sure to post some sappy blogs when we get back full of gorgeous pictures.

Until then, please enjoy this Joe-taken photo of my cat Eliot and my snake Norman sharing some best friend time.

I love white people!!

I love all other peeps too. . . It's just, you know. . . I'm white, my family is white . . . is it wrong to have a little pride? It's been a rough ride for us white folks, you know, historically and all. Gimme a break once in a while.

Anyhoo, my sister (who's also white!) introduced me to the website Stuff White People Like awhile ago. This is a truly hysterical, entertaining site (and satirical, people . . . don't get your white or non-white panties in a bunch). Besides the funny general articles about white people, it's like a game for white people to play: look at the Full List of Stuff White People Like and see how many you fit! And how many you don't fit, so you can be like, "oooh, that's not me! I'm sooooo soulfull! I'm so ethnic!"

How do I rate so far? Before my induction to this website, I thought I was a fairly non-white white person. I have many facts for this claim: I have many non-white friends. I dated a black guy! My favorite music is old-skool soul and R&B. Um. . . . that's about it, but if you weight those facts, the math will show you that I'm at least, what, like Puerto Rican or something.

And the website supports me. I do not like rugby (#95), St. Patrick's Day (#89), outdoor performance clothes (#87). I despise shorts (#86) and lord knows how I love my TV (#28). Unfortunately, out of the now 109 things on The List, I think I totally embody like 100 of them. Even weighted, I don't think a black boyfriend can override the severity of my love of sushi (#42), grammar (#99), Arrested Development (#38), and coffee (#1). And in fact, I think me even trying to gain street cred with my black ex-boyfriend makes me whiter (#14).

Well, as I was perusing this site today, I came across #104 on The List, and all of my dreams of being cool and not-so-white were shattered. I literally embody #104, "Girls With Bangs." I quote: "It is a known fact that white people love women who wear their hair with bangs that hang straight down." Shit!! That's totally my haircut. It gets worse: "But for white people, this simple haircut makes a bold declaration by saying that the wearer is artistic, deep, and has probably dated a guy in a band you like . . . For white people, the haircut-with-bangs is an important symbol that a female has completed her transformation from a nerdy girl to a cool woman."

Well, I'm definitely deep and totally cool, although I've never dated a guy in a band. I will say that for me, I don't think I've completed my transformation, even with my "white" hair: I'm in the middle-- I'm a nerdy cool woman. Alas, I think I'm getting a little too technical, which is probably another affliction of me being white. And do you all want to know the most embarrassing thing about this? I brought in a picture of Lindsay Lohan to my hairstylist when I got my bang haircut. Lindsay fucking Lohan. Jesus, I should just kill myself. She had really great bangs, though.

Shout-Out of the Day: Copycat Emily and Shirlotta, I'm friends with you out of some deep-seated unconscious racial need! Although I'm technically exempt from this one, but still. I can't resist you Asian girls.

Friday means lists.

Things I hate:

- Babies-as-flowers photography. Babies-as-anything photography,for that matter. Babies are pretty cute on their own. Why muck them up by making me want to vomit?

- Commercials that address babies. People, you have your marketing audience aaaaall wrong. The babies aren’t actually buying the diapers!! You don’t need to entice them!

- Pimps. Don't get me started

- Shredded iceberg lettuce. In salads, sandwiches, anywhere. It should not exist. Why is it so gross?

- Chewing tobacco. More gross than shredded iceberg.

Things I love:

- Infomercials where they show people having a really hard time doing normal things, like boiling water and using scissors. Such entertainment.

- Sour Patch Kids commercials, the French bull California cheese commercial ("Hello ladies, je m'appelle Bob!"), and the gibberish-talking stain Tide pen commercial.

- The smell of the supermarket coffee aisle and sulphur from recently-lit matches

- The Burger King king. Yes, he's creepy, but in the funniest way.

- Little kids falling. Actually, anyone falling. The best falls are really bad ones, which are made better when people get up really fast and look around and just sort of pretend it didn’t happen. . . . priceless.

- America's Funniest Videos (AFV). It used to be uncool, probably due entirely to Bob Saget as the host. But now it's some funny shit. If only for the 2-minute montages made up entirely of clips of people falling. I love both the montages and the fact that someone else loves it so much they make the montages

- Animals stealing stuff from unsuspecting others. My friend sent me this video and I laughed for hours. I re-wound it to watch the 3rd clip, with that utterly confused but nonchalant kangaroo, like 15 times in a row. THAT is comedy. (Also, this clip comes to us from AFV, so. Holla.)

Lesson of the day: This blog leaves out the obvious and annoying to state, such as that I hate Sarah Palin’s stoopit face and I love my friends and the way Joe giggles (he calls it “chuckling”) . . . Y'all don't need to know all that. AFV, ya needs ta know.

Brenda rocked my world.

By now you all know my intense passion towards crappy, trashy television. I can't explain this. I'm a pretty intelligent girl. Why my brain feels the need to gravitate towards stupid people doing stupid things on stupid shows is an eternal enigma. I can't even tell you all the shows that are programmed to automatically record with my DVR. I can't tell you because they are too numerous to remember, and because despite my very no-holds-barred shamelessness about my life, some things are too embarrassing to reveal. Suffice it to say that I hold a place in my heart for Adrianne Curry and Christopher Knight (no doubt some, if not all, of you are like, "who??").

Perhaps it all started when I was a teen lump of clay, ready to be molded into whatever my master the TV wanted me to be. Apparently, the TV wanted to be one of those exceedingly well-rounded people who could carry on conversations about politics (go Barack!) AND Denise Richards. Because the first trashy show that I loved was Beverly Hills, 90210.

I still remember the summer of 1991. I was a fair child of 13, on my way to summer camp in Vermont. I remember the passionate, pleading converstation I had with my mother on the subject of the absolute need for her to tape (back in the VCR days) every single episode of 90210 that summer, or else I would be very upset. It's so funny to reflect on as a fair woman of 30.-- I can actually remember how desperate I was for her to remember to tape them, and how, excited as I was for camp, upset I was that I would be missing 90210 for so long.

This post was actually inspired by my blogging-colleague Copycat Emily's recent post on moving, as she lists "her life in moving boxes." Because the first thing it made me think of was this one episode of 90210 where Donna's all freaked out about this English class essay she has to write, an autobiography. But then they read them out loud in class, and nerd Andrea's literal, chronological listing of events in her life isn't so exciting. Donna, who has chosen to write her life out in terms of a chronology of all the shoes she has owned, therefore showing the evolution of not only her style but of herself, people, woos the class and the teacher.

Why do I remember the specifics of a meanlingless scene from a meaningless show, 17 years later? I do not know. But alas, I do. I also remember the white, skin-tight dress with weird holes/metal grommets all over it that Brenda wore in the pilot episode to go to some LA nightclub. I remember the episode where Donna gets like a 600 on her SATs, decides she's stupid (um. .. .), and drops all her friends to hang out with the "bad" kids (who are denoted as bad by their leather jackets and cigarette smoking). I remember Emily Valentine, a punkish girl who has a crush on Brandon, and so to get his attention, she burns down the stage of the school's talent show (but not before performing a rousing rendition of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" with Donna, Brenda, and Kelly as back-up). Also, I remember my undying love for Luke Perry, aka bad boy Dylan . . . I thought he was SO hot. He still is pretty hot, actually. And, to THIS DAY, there is a poster of Dylan/Luke hanging in the basement of my parents house, leftover from the early 90s.

Another thing you might all be wondering is, why am I wasting my time writing about 90210? The answer is twofold: I was reminded of my love for my original trashy TV due to Emily's blog, and then that reminded me that the CW's 90210 starts next week. 90210 is a newly imagined "re-creation" of sorts of the original show. I have absolutely no idea why I'm so excited for it, because there's really no guarantee, and even less hope, that it will be anything like the original show. It will probably end up being more like the crap that even I don't watch, like The Hills. I don't even watch Gossip Girl, despite that seeming like it's right up my alley and I've heard only great things about it. (Plus, I'm loving their current ad campaign, which is to show the characters in sexy postions with "negative" reviews of the show-- "mind-blowingly inappropriate"-- by insignificant reviewers-- the Parents' Television Council-- splashed across the posters.)

So, I give major kudos to the marketing people for the new 90210, who are going to manage to get at least one viewer based solely on the fact that they geniusly named the show after a classic, whether or not they live up to the namesake. Plus, they brought back Jenny Garth (Kelly) and Shannen Doherty (who's bitchy Brenda was the best thing going in the 90s), so that's too exciting for words, really.

Lesson of the day: I really need to get a life.