O what a beautiful morning

Last night the ceiling in my bathroom started leaking. I was just hanging out and suddenly there was a great ruckus ("Could you describe the ruckus, sir?"). Careful inspection revealed that the water was coming out of the light fixture(!) above, and it was really coming down, too, like somewhere between a trickle and a gushing. I went to the apartment above me, and this shirtless wet boy opened the door. He looked like Chad Michael Murray of the WB fame (shut up. My teen-soap-watching knows no bounds.).

*angels sing as the heavens part*

My first thought was, "Why am I here again? Oh yes, the ceiling! Ahem." He was very nice about it all. He offered to call the emergency maintenance number (my second thought: "We have emergency maintenance?") and then a little while later he came down to my apartment to tell me that he had left a message, and, in case they came in the middle of the night, did I want to give him my number so that he could warn me?

Why, yes. Yes I did.

He said he had only just moved in yesterday! Poor guy. I told him that this was the worst thing that had ever gone wrong in my apartment, and that the building was not in fact constructed from paper and duct tape. It was pretty late so he left soon after, and was very cute and kept apologizing needlessly. So I think I will go upstairs tonight to thank him for his help and see if he'd like to go for a drink in the neighborhood. Keep your fingers crossed for me and hot shirtless boy!

In other news, apparently overnight it became fall.

In other other news, my boss is being all lovely and friendly today. His wife and kids are out of town and he's bored being home alone, so he is taking me out for beer and pool after work.

It is SUCH a good day.

My weekend with Pa

I went to Atlanta! To see my dad and stepmom! Just for the weekend though, because that's the kind of jet-set girl I am. I got to leave work a few hours early and everything. Most years I see my dad's side of the family for a week at Christmas, and sometimes one in the summer as well. They live in south Georgia, which really is too far to go for less than a week, but I wasn't able to take that much time off work so we decided to rendez-vous in Atlanta for the weekend.

So, it was fun. Our hotel was across the street from this very fancy mall, and both nights we went there for shopping and dinner. On Saturday we spent a lot of time at the High Museum of Art, getting some culture and stuff. (If you have seen Manhunter, you will know this place as the prison where William Petersen went to see Lecter, when he freaked out and ran down the ramps and outside. The all-white building.) Other than that, we just hung out and watched Cold Case Files and What Not To Wear, which I forced my dad to watch and love. He watched and loved.

It was the perfect amount of time to be together in such close quarters. When I am at their house for an entire week, things get sort of strained toward the end. It is sort of a culture clash to be with them, and I am an opinionated pain in the ass, so we have tension. Plus during the holidays my stepsisters and stepbrother and their spouses and kids are there, which I totally love, but...you know. That's a lot of people for one house.

I prefer a little privacy mixed in with my family time - a place to go and take deep breaths when on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But I usually have to share a room with the kids, since I'm unmarried and therefore still a child myself (don't even get me started on the crappiness of this reasoning). It's hard to take calming deep breaths while children are leaping onto you and wheedling you to play Spiderman with them.

On the flight back this afternoon, I sat next to a guy who was pretty cute and we chatted the whole time. But when we landed, he got off ahead of me and...just kept going. Never looked back or anything. Oookay then. I guess I am not as charming as I like to believe!

Another day, another humbling experience.

And P.S., cut your damn hair!

After work yesterday my giant headache and I went with a friend to see We Don't Live Here Anymore. Have you seen this yet? Here is a review. I would put it in the same category as Boys Don't Cry or Monster, in that all three are both very good and very painful.

I know a lot of people have enormo crushes on Mark Ruffalo, and if you are one of those people, I would advise that you not see this movie, as his character was the assiest evilest manipulative cruel jackass ever. He sucked. There were at least three scenes in which my friend had to hold me back from, like, flinging myself upon the giant screen and clawing his screen-eyes out. ("How dare you speak to your wife that way! Take that, you cowardly, bastardly...screen! GAH!!!")

The sex scenes were pretty good though, I have to say. They were realistic enough that you don't see them and think (in a tiny voice inside your head) "Oh, is that how it was supposed to go?" but they were still very hot.

But Mark Ruffalo had SO MUCH DAMN HAIR, people! (On his head. I am not going to go into Peter Krause's chest hair, even though it was a Man Coat, because he is my husband.) In one sex scene with Naomi Watts, she is grabbing at his hair a lot, and afterwards he literally looks like a lion. He has a serious afro. It rivals that of Napoleon Dynamite.

But it's a very interesting movie. I am glad I saw it with someone, because afterwards I was all churned up inside and I had to talk a lot. Personally I think it would be a good date movie, in the sense that you could get into some really thorough issues with the other person. Like, for example, if I saw it with a guy and afterwards he said he could understand why Mark Ruffalo's character said and did a lot of the things he did, I would know to cut my losses and go home, because that guy and I would probably have very different ideas of how you should treat your loved ones. And also, because that guy would be a fucktard. Anyway, if you see it, let me know what you think.

doom blech blurgh

ONE

Things I have ingested since this morning in an effort to cure my PMS-induced headache:

--2 Advils
--water
--raisin bread with cheese
--1 can diet coke
--water
--water
--apple
--2 aspirins
--salad with chicken strips
--iced mocha
--water
--12 M&Ms
--water
--water
--more diet coke
--lots more diet coke

Way I would categorize the current state of said headache, objectively:

--killmenowpleasegodpleaseplease

and also:

--why WHY WHY? Why am I not a man? Just for today. Death doom pain blinding white light argh death please.

*pinches forehead between fingers for temporary relief from the construction crew jackhammering inside skull*



TWO

[Boss's name], please don't speak to me as if I were A) 9 years old, and B) retarded. I assume you know, since you HIRED ME, that I am neither. My decreased work function today can be directly attributed to the construction crew jackhammering inside my skull. And also, the fact that I want to kill you a whole lot right now. By any chance, can you feel rays of hatred all over you? That's right, those are coming from me.

New pants guuuuud. Old pants baaaaad.

I worked at Express for two years in high school, back when it sold generic teenager-y clothes and was not all hard and urban like it is today. Every shift, the manager would brief us on that day's big offer, which we were supposed to spring on each customer within four seconds of their entering the store. It was all very standardized. On any given day, you could go into an Express in Wichita and one in Atlanta and you'd hear the same offer, because it was handed down to us by the Corporate! Headquarters! people.

These were the same people who tracked each employee's selling prowess, via a dazzling array of statistical analyses. Every so often, my manager would sit down with me and tell me that my Average Sale Amount (or whatever) was good, but I needed to up my Average Piece Amount (or whatever). Which meant that I needed to "push more accessories." Every Express salesperson in the country was competing with each other for a RAV-4. Whatever that was.

I never won a "RAV-4," but I was pretty good at the whole shopgirl thing. I escaped the first cut of people who were hired for the holidays but let go soon after, and was allowed to stay on for good. A few months later, I earned a $0.25 per hour raise. Twenty-five freakin cents, people! Anyone who has worked retail knows the blood, sweat, and tears involved. Sadly, at the time I was ecstatic. Ah, the low standards of the average 17-year-old worker.

It's funny how seriously the mall retail industry takes itself. Every season the managers held a staff meeting early on a Saturday morning, when the mall was open but the actual shops were shut. Groups of middle-aged people would be powerwalking down the corridors. I looked forward to the meetings because I'd get to see the University of Maryland girls, who worked the weekday shifts between their classes. I was sort of in awe of them. They would show up with to-go cups from Starbucks and car keys twirling around their fingers, and they were perfectly made-up and wore tight jeans. Same jeans as the ones I had on (you know, the Express bootcut jeans that everybody and their mother wore back in 1996), but the older girls made them look sexy, probably because they wore them two sizes too small. I was desperate to leave for college, so to me they just radiated coolness.

I bought a whole bunch of new pants from Express last night, and it must have made me nostalgic about corporate retail, as evidenced by this twenty-page essay. Good lord.

Being in that store is fun for me now. The clothes have changed, but the important stuff is still the same. There was the girl using the Official Folding Board to fold shirts for the display table, which is a better task than you might think, in that repetition makes the hours go by faster. (This is also why working the cash register is considered such a plum assignment.) There was also the girl banished to the lame, out-of-the-way dressing room area that nobody wants to use because it lacks a three-way mirror, and I felt her pain. Finally, there was the girl learning to use the cash register and getting tripped up by the Line Item Discount and Group Item Discount buttons. Ah, good times.

Anyway, I got some kick-ass pants that I can't wait to wear. One pair is black with pink pinstripes and the other is red corduroy, and soft like BUTTER. I love them so much. Were it legal, I would marry them.

(Heh, is that what all those Republican politicians are worried about, with their "slippery slope of gay marriage" talk? I mean, one of them equated it to people marrying relatives or barnyard animals, but I suppose a girl marrying her trousers is just as godless...)

I think I'm overthinking this...

One of the movies I watched over the weekend while waiting for my gums to heal was The Shop Around the Corner, which is the original version of You've Got Mail, and takes place in Budapest in the days of yore. It was on TCM or AMC, so before it started an elderly suited man did a little introduction. Apparently when the movie first came out, everyone was uncomfortable with Jimmy "American Guy" Stewart playing a Hungarian. It sounded as if this was quite the worldly role old Jim had taken on, which made my mom and I kind of excited.

But the dialogue was all unaccented American English. I watched the entire thing (shut up) and it was pretty cute (shut up more), but there was nothing specifically Hungarian about any of it. The setting was this little olde-tyme leather-goods/novelty shop that could totally have been 1950s New York.

I guess people got all huffy just imagining Jimmy Stewart anywhere other than America...? I don't know.

It doesn't really matter. Mostly I just wanted to write an entire post that contained no mention of food or eating, because I think I am becoming tiresome with all my "IeatsomuchIamalardasspig" posts.

So there you go.

Dental surgery is underrated

So, the wisdom teeth thing was shockingly easy. I almost think the surgeon just put me out and read the paper for a few minutes before waking me back up. Seriously, I didn't have any pain, partially because he made one whole side of my face totally numb, from my lip to my ear, for about 6 hours afterwards. I had been warned about this, but it freaked me out anyway. All afternoon I kept gingerly poking my face and it felt like rubber.

Anyway, I spent Thursday through Sunday lying on my ass, watching 5.3 billion hours of TV and movies. That is some tough work right there, and I was forced to fortify myself with mashed potatoes, pudding, macaroni and cheese, and matzo ball soup. I swear I must be the only person ever who has dental surgery and eats such unhealthy foods they gain weight while recuperating. I mean, honestly. That's just sad.

But four-day-weekends rock! I caught up on crossword puzzles and sorted out a big load of old clothes for Goodwill, in between my Dawson's Creek reruns.

Also it was not so bad being at the home of my mom and stepdad. They are weird, and getting weirder as time goes on, but I probably am as well. If I can remember it all, I'm going to post the "conversation" I had with my mom in the car on the way home from the surgery. It proves, once and for all, that my mom is actually a visitor from another planet.

Will work for pudding

Am having my wisdom teeth removed tomorrow morning. Should be fun! The most painful part might just be the 3-4 nights I'll be staying at my mom's house. My stepfather, coincidentally, is having some sort of "man-test" done tomorrow as well, so both he and I will be down for the count all weekend. Good times for my mom.

So, I'll be gone for a while. If you need me, I'll be curled up in bed with a bag of frozen corn stuck to my cheek. Bring along some pudding, please.

Friday is good like drugs

Confession: Most Fridays I stay home.

Admitting it is the first step, I feel. Is that very lame, being young and single and still staying in? I guess it would be different if it were not by choice, but honestly I enjoy doing it. I usually feel kind of beat-down from the work week, especially if I have been meeting people in the evenings. Also I am trying to save money for grad school, which starts next summer. But mostly I just really like my alone time, maybe because I am an only child and good at entertaining myself. It's also possible that I am just a budding hermit, but this is okay too.

I have a routine, anyway. After work, I go to this class at the gym that is so vigorous, it brings me to the brink of death, and then I reward myself with takeout from the Indian place near my apartment. Indian curries are one of my favoritest foods evah! Plus they remind me of when I lived in London after college, which was totally the best year of my life. Then I go home and just hang out and read or watch a movie, or go out for a walk, or watch "What Not to Wear," which, oddly, plays on Friday nights. And yet it is so good.

That's pretty much my entire tragic-spinster Friday night. I love it so much. But it is dangerously good, like heroin (as I have gleaned from various movies, ex. Trainspotting), and I am starting to build up a tolerance and a desire for more, as evidenced by last night, when I pretended it was Friday and did aerobics and got the Indian takeout. The restaurant guys were surprised to see me, I think. They know my schedule. I might be partially responsible for keeping them in business.

The 100 Things About Me

1] I was born in south Georgia.
2] I had a strong Southern accent.
3] At age seven, my family moved to Maryland.
4] My accent was not popular.
5] I ditched it real quick.

6]I got glasses at age nine,
7] And contacts at age thirteen.
8] The bad eyes come from my dad, because
9] My mom has perfect eyesight.

10] In high school I became a vegetarian for about three years.
11] Now I eat everything.
12] Seriously, everything.

13] I write with my right hand, but
14] I am better with my left hand at dribbling a basketball
15] And talking on the phone.
16] Also I can use either hand to put on makeup.

17] When I'm in shape, I'm good at softball
18] And tennis
19] And running.

20] At age 7 I won a city-wide contest of who could color in a picture of a teddy bear, surrounded by bubbles, the nicest.
21] Then at age 13 I won a contest sponsored by a local bank, for who could draw the best Thanksgiving turkey.
22] I won a $50 savings bond.
23] I have no idea where that savings bond is now.

24] My parents are divorced, and both have remarried.

25] I hate having my photo taken, because
26] I'm very unphotogenic.
27] And also vain.

28] My grandma is from Germany, and
29] My mom is also fluent in German.
30] So when I was little they could talk about me without even leaving the room.

31] I have zero tattoos.
32] But I have five piercings in my ears, and one in my belly button.

33] For years when I was little, my career goal was to be a famous jockey.

34] I have never broken a bone (knock on wood!).

35] I have had a lifelong fascination with London.
36] When I was little, I was obsessed with Bedknobs and Broomsticks and National Velvet.
37] Now I have lived in England twice, for a combined year and a half.
38] It's still my favorite place ever.
39] I once fell off the open platform on the back of a double-decker bus (the lower level).
40] The bus actually stopped to see if I was okay.
41] I was okay.
42] But too embarassed to get back on the bus.

43] At age 20 I took a bus around Europe for 3 weeks
44] With only two sets of clothes.
45] Including the one I was wearing.
46] In Budapest I had a whirlwind affair with the Croatian guy who worked at the hostel.

47] I love most ethnic foods.
48] Especially Indian, sushi, Ethipian, and Thai.
49] But the only food I really could not live without is cereal.

50] I'm not on Friendster.
51] I refuse.

52] I love answering machines, but hate voicemail.

53] I couldn't walk in high heels if my life depended on it.

54] I love doing laundry and washing dishes, but hate vacuuming and scrubbing.

55] I hate leather jackets.
56] But leather shoes are nice.

57] The furthest east I've ever been is Budapest, Hungary.
58] And the furthest west is Salt Lake City, Utah.

59] The first foreign country I ever went to was Canada, when I was visiting relatives in Detroit.
60] I was 19, so it was also the first time I had a drink in a restaurant.
61] We tried to go to a strip club, but it was right before Christmas and they were all shut.
62] I did get to go to a strip club for a friend's 21st birthday.
63] My favorite stripper was the cop who hung upside-down off a pole by his thighs.

64] I've never seen a celebrity in person.

65] I've never been naked in public.
66] But I did streak around my empty dorm once, sophomore year, when I was the RA and I knew nobody else had moved in yet.

67] I've never thrown up from drinking.

68] My favorite movie is Wonder Boys,
69] And yet I completely abhor Michael Douglas otherwise.
70] Seriously. I, like, despise him.

71] I don't tan; I burn.

72] My favorite TV shows are Law and Order, Cheers, and The Golden Girls.
73] Blanche was my favorite Golden Girl.

74] I'm a dog person.
75] My favorite dog ever was that of a childhood friend.
76] She was named Bourtay, after Genghis Khan's wife(!). Seriously!
77] Totally adorable dog. Black Lab/Chow mix.

78] I was very animal-crazy as a child.
79] I once went fishing in a local stream, caught a small trout, and brought it home to keep in an aquarium.
80] Damn thing lived for two years.

81] I'm very succeptible to both poison ivy and mosquito bites.
82] But I almost never catch colds or become ill or nausious.

83] The features I get complimented on the most are my eyelashes,
84] And my small feet.

85] I get angry very easily, and then cool off quickly.
86] Like for instance, I get sidewalk rage at stupid and/or crazy people when I walk.
87] And also at bad or selfish drivers who don't watch out for pedestrians.

88] I love non-flashy, economical cars, like Hondas.
89] My first car was an '85 Accord.
90] It had 160-something-thousand miles when I got it.
91] I haven't owned a car in three years now.

92] I also love wine.
93] But I only drink red wine if I am home alone, because it makes my teeth all stainy.
94] And like I said, I am vain.

95] I know how to develop film and photos.

96] I can't curl my tongue,
97] Or whistle very well.

98] I have a scar over the veins in my wrist, from a fence-climbing accident when I was 13.
99] Very traumatic.
100] Cool-looking scar, though.

Aaaaand...I'm spent!

Pass the Tums

I think over the past two days I have eaten enough to satisfy a small lion. Friday's dinner party was great, once it got going. Two people showed up, like, 5 minutes after I walked in the door from work, and I had to throw together some drinks and appetizers and park them in the living room with music and magazines while I STARTED chopping and preheating and boiling things for the dinner. Some of which I could have done the day before, but I hadn't, and consequently all conversations for the next hour consisted of my peeking my head around the kitchen doorway while stirring something and being like, "What magazine are you guys talking about? Oh yeah, Lucky never has articles."

But whatever, more people came, and the pasta thing ended up pretty good, and we drank lots of vodka-and-cherry-limeade drinks, and watched St Elmo's Fire, which was howlingly dramatic (and therefore awesome), and afterwards talked for an hour, inexplicably, about toys from childhood and our Worst Babysitting Stories. We ate half a ton of cookies and creme ice cream and then they left.

Then last night I went to my friend Poppy's house, and I have written about her Great Boyfriend Drama of 2004 here, and apparently the Drama is still at a fever pitch, because her ex-boyfriend was there for the dinner! Which she had warned me about in a voicemail, but still, it was surprising, since he had been so livid and everything.

We ate a great big dinner that could have fed a small continent (such as Europe, or Antarctica, if we're going by population size and not square footage). It was delish. We had crackers and hummus and red wine and tomato mozzarella salad and risotto and shrimp grilled with Old Bay. And for dessert, more red wine. Then Poppy and I went out for a drink (?!? I don't know either), and she tried to convince Boyfriend to come, but he was tired from the food, and we just left him there in the apartment. That was when I found out that he's sort of moved back in, but hasn't helped out with the rent or bills. And when they went food shopping for that night's dinner, he put things for himself in the cart, but hadn't paid for any of it. And they were sleeping together again, but he "wasn't going to call the two of them a 'couple' just yet." I was like, are you shitting me with this shit? I mean honestly. The Boyfriend is a nice enough guy to talk to and hang out with, but knowing that he's taking advantage of her in fourteen ways simultaneously just pisses me off.

After all the drinks I went home and ate more of the cookies and cream ice cream, because it just seemed like the right thing to do. I don't feel so good today, and I bet my gall bladder is exhausted. I am going to have to treat it with kid gloves for a while, and eat nice mild things that don't require lots of digestion. Like, you know, ice cream.

Oh yes it's Ladies' Night!

Mark the date on your calendars, guys, because tonight I am cooking a recipe. For multiple people. And not just any people, but girl friends, most of whom are healthy, organic, gourmet-eating types. My favorite food is cereal, so you can see how this is a major culinary debut for me. A "coming-out party," if you will.

We are planning an orgy of dinner, wine, junk food, AND - the piece de resistance - Andrew McCarthy movies! St Elmo's Fire and Weekend at Bernie's, for some variety. This is all for a higher good: one of my friends was just broken up with, and she's in that stage where she wants to call the guy and talk to him about trying the relationship again or some such crap. So she needs to be with friends tonight, both for her mental state and for her pride, because left alone she would definitely end up drunk-dialing him. And that just will not do.

My recipe is from a book that my mom must have secretly slipped into my top kitchen cabinet when she helped me move in a year ago (crafty!), because I only just discovered it, while searching for serving dishes. It's pasta tossed with lemon juice, olive oil, fresh basil, plum tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese. I think I am going to grill some salmon and throw that on, too. See, I am going to town for these people! I even, you know, cleaned and dusted and vacuumed.

It is going to be the party of the century, and will be written up in the gossip column of the Post. Obviously.

The new Comments system is fortified with calcium

Just a quick note to say I have put a new Comments version in, which hopefully is more user-friendly. Let the onslaught begin! (Not.)

Maybe I can pass him a note in gym class...

Oh no. Am asking for trouble. Am going to get hurt. Is almost guaranteed.

There are about 16 reasons why I should not allow myself to obsess about that technical director guy. We have only just met, he is way older than I am, he lives in a different city, blah blah blah. I get this.

*sticks fingers in ears and sings "I'm Henry the Eighth, I am" in order to drown out voices of reason*

I couldn't care less! Oh I love him! Swoon swoon swoony swoon swoon. (Now that is a funny-looking word.) He is just so charming and manly that I keep drifting off into daydreams where he and I are picnicking in a park, or wowing an audience with our flashy dancing skills, or he is cooking breakfast for me wearing only an apron and chef's hat...

*5 minutes later*

Oh, hello! I'm back now. The last couple of days have whizzed by due to these, er, spells I keep having. Today has been especially blurry, because he has sent me an email saying it was too bad he had to rush back to work early from the bar, and that he would have liked to sit with me and "find out more about me, perhaps on the next show?" I keep re-reading the email, because I am 14 years old again. I have lost the battle and am officially obsessed.

I am off to buy a Trapper Keeper, on which I will scrawl his name repeatedly in big loopy script, with a fuzzy pink pen.

Office space

It's kind of a letdown to be back in the office again. I mean, as much as I bitched and moaned about how hard being on-site was, I do prefer those conditions to sitting on a computer for eight hours, answering phones and emails, and shuffling papers back and forth.

When I got in this morning, my email wasn't working, and I had to IM my boss, who is on vacation with his family (and yet, still online. Sad, yes?), to get him to reset the settings. When he fixed it I got a little message that said "Receiving email 1 of 38..." and I almost had an aneurysm over IM. Of course he mocked me. He always does. It's true; my 38 emails in a week are no match for his (allegedly) 60 emails a day. But that is why he makes the big bucks, while I have to sell a piece of furniture in order to do laundry.

Just in case any of you (or, you know, both of you, to be technical) are worried about my latest work screwup, it's been fixed. Turns out the guy left his guitar at a different hotel. One at which he was not staying. I mean, of course! Why did I not think of that? Silly me, to think that he would have left the guitar with the bellhop at his actual hotel.

God, people are weird.

I'm all growed up (part 2)

I loved my day off. I did an excellent impression of a beached whale and lay on the couch watching TV. Whenever I got sleepy I hit Mute, and when I woke up I hit Mute again. I did leave for a little while to run errands, but mostly I just lay around. The daytime Law and Order episode was an old one, with Mike Logan and Ben Stone, which made me very happy. I love the Jack episodes, but there are just so many of them. Every so often I get a hankering for Ben Stone and his cheerful, round head.

I did have one work assignment: the producer of the show asked me to call our Salt Lake hotel and have this rental guitar we used in the show couriered back to the music store. Only when I called the hotel they didn't have the guitar anywhere. And the rental store had no record that the client had brought it back himself, so I was all freaking out. I left the client a message asking him exactly where he left the guitar, and I haven't heard back from him, and I left a message with the producer telling her all this, and have not heard back from her either. So somehow we have displaced an expensive rental guitar. I guess I have done everything I can do at this point, but I have such paranoia about my professional abilities that situations like these make me nervous that I misheard the instructions, or I didn't ask the hotel the right questions, or whatever. I should probably just chill out, right? Well, it's hard, but I'll try.

Also I have been enjoying my goofy Haze of Love for the hot technical director, incessantly replaying every conversation we had and every smoldering sex-god look he gave me. He was so damn cool. He oversaw all the technical parts of the show (duh), which meant everything from building the stage to running the lights, sound, and video. So he was incredibly capable and he knew about everything. And even though he was running around frantically the entire week, he never looked anything but calm and unflappable. I probably pestered him with the stupidest questions known to man, and he was very patient. Which makes him a saint.

Plus he was really handsome and the perfect degree of muscle-y. Much older than me, but whatever. Knowing he'd be around all day, catching him looking at me, and joking around with him during what little spare time he had, basically kept me from dying of exhaustion. Without him, the week would have been just a hellish grind, but with him it was a hellish grind with a reason to wear lipstick and my cute pink cardigan.

Since so much of everyone's job on site involved running around backstage, he and I were constantly passing each other and giving little smiles. Sometimes I would look around and catch him watching me from really far away. Around the middle of the week he started greeting me as "hey, babe," which sounds asinine, typed out like that, but was actually adorable.

The best thing EVER happened on Saturday, the last day. I was wearing the magical black skirt that makes me look toned instead of smooshy. He sat talking to the client, whose back was to me, and he was pretending to look at her as she spoke, but was actually looking just past her ear at me the entire time I walked toward him. I am not very good at maintaining eye contact; it makes me uncomfortable, plus I am a blusher, which, at best, is endearing in a cutesy way. But I just held his gaze the entire time I walked by, except for the last second when I broke down and laughed and sort of mouthed "fuck off!" at him.

Dude, he winked at me, the bastard. And kept his eyes right on me.

It was probably the sexiest I have ever felt. As I said, I am cute. I am small and cute and have a very young-looking face, but I never think of myself as sexy. But damn if this guy did not make me feel at that moment that I was actually a maneater. THE maneater. The one Hall & Oates sang a song about.

Now, on most shows, you start really early in the mornings but end at a decent time, so the crew goes out eating and drinking together, but this show involved late nights too, so there was basically no social activity. I would just come back to my hotel every night (happily, right across the street from the convention center), take a shower, watch a few minutes of TV, and fall asleep in the tortuously comfortable bed for about 5 hours until my wake-up call.

As soon as the show ended, the crew starts tearing down all their equipment and packs up the stage, which takes all night. I finished packing all the stuff I had to send back to the office, and went over to Sex God, where he was very commandingly overseeing all the carpentry stuff. He asked if I was done and I said yes, and he asked if I was just going to go to sleep, and I sort of mealymouthed for an Ice Age until he made my freaking YEAR by asking me out for a drink. I was like, you can leave in the middle of all this? Rad. But as we headed out, we ran into the sound guy, who also was done, so he joined us for the drinking. When we got to the one bar in the entire city that was still serving at 12:30 (on a SATURDAY, you guys), of course a whole bunch of other crew people were there too. Which was still fine, except when we went over to them and had chairs added to their circle, the sound guy sat in the one next to me! Gah! And then Sex Godly Hot Man turned around to sit, and saw what had happened, and shot me this little Fucking karma, huh? look, and sat elsewhere. But of course we kept catching each other's eye and smiling, so that made me sort of happy.

He had to leave pretty soon, to get back to the stage stuff, so we didn't get to have any big dramatic making-out goodbye. But for some reason I am still all glowy and giggly about him. It just feels good, having a crush on someone again. Especially when he seemed to be attracted to me, too. It has been so long since I actually liked someone. I go on dates but I haven't really really liked anyone in just so long. And it's a nice feeling.

And I get sent on another show at the end of October, so who knows? Maybe I will see him again.

Fucking hell, people, this was a long post.

I'm all growed up (part 1)

I'm back from my first business trip! It was very overwhelming. I had some idea that it was going to be whirlwind and hectic, but I had no idea that I'd be pulling 16 hours a day for 6 straight days. Seriously, the hours were that long. One day our call time was 6:30 am, which I thought was horrendous, until the next day, when it was 5:30 am.

Now, I like to think of myself as young and spry and upbeat, but I have discovered that I am actually frail and whiny. I think I said some permutation of "I'm so tiiiiired" about 6.4 kabillion times throughout the week. I was the youngest one on site, and also the wimpiest and whiniest. I think that will be the major impression everyone else takes away of me. Not the most professional impact to make, but hell, I'm just glad to still be alive after this trip! Screw stoicism!

Anyway, I was sent there to work on this very large three-day convention my event production company was putting on. I had never been on-site before, and this was the biggest show we have ever produced, so it was cool that my boss chose it to be my first. I was the production assistant, otherwise known as the person who all the bigwigs get to wipe their muddy shoes on. Basically my week involved running around the huge convention center, helping all the producers and tech people with random stuff, and making approximately 56 runs to local Office Depots/Wal Marts/Staples/food courts. I now know the layout of Salt Lake City better than I know my own neighborhood. (It's actually a very well-designed town: from the square in the city's center, all the streets go out in multiples of 100 and are labeled South, West, etc. So every location is given as coordinates, like Office Depot is 400 South 900 East. Fascinating, yes? Ahem.)

The long hours hit me really badly on Wednesday, which was the last of our rehearsal days. My dad called me on my cellphone and I happened to have a lot of time to talk, and I just totally lost it and hid in a dark corner backstage for, like, 20 minutes, blubbering about how much I hated the production industry and how homesick I was for DC (that second point proving that the level of my insanity at that point was dangerously high).

For some reason after that night I felt better, and not so homesick or depressed. The actual convention went very well, and I think I did a pretty good job with all my tasks. And! My boss nicely gave me tomorrow off, which I think I will spend sleeping, eating takeout, and watching TV. I have Immortal Beloved from Netflix right now, so that should kill a good 3-4 hours. I will also make a big effort to type and post "part 2" of this trip saga, of which I will give you a teaser: it involves my enormous embarrassing crush on the show's technical director. He was hot, and we shared sexy eye contact all week, and I am now deeply in love.

Off they go! Wheeeee!

Am off to Salt Lake City for a week! Take care, and I'll type to you later.