Emily. Shock and Awe.

Phil. Just Like In the Movies.

Wendy. Ski Bum and Adventuress.

Rachel. Dancing Queen.

Julie. The Littlest Elf.

Chris. There Ain't No Party Like a Marching Band Party.

Cyn. Just a Pink Haired Girl.

 

Our mysteriously free internet is down so I'm am coming to you live from Starbucks here. In other news, I have a job! Yay for employment! It's an office assitant job at a franchise thrift store called "Buffalo Exchange", which is a pretty decent small, private corporation as far as I can tell. I am continuing to shop around for jobs that will employ me full time and give me health benefits. It's a good thing I found something, though because I was getting to the point where my fear of unemployment might have driven me to stay in bed for days at a time. Kind of like my fear of graduating. It made me miss Rachel. Eben and I made cookies tonight and this made me miss the Danster as well. Actually, I think I miss everyone more now just because I we're physically farther away from each other.
I hope you all will consider making the trip to come and visit us out here sometime though because I'm sure we could find any number of fun things to do while you were here. We could consume excellent independent media while making yummy vegetarian food in my well-equipped kitchen. We could go hear a show at the little venue across the street. We could have sushi take-out from the place next door. We could watch movies rented from the independent video store. We could go shopping at the many cute stores in my neighborhood, where you can by aromatherapy candles, cute clothes, thrift store housewares and of course the Dr. Freud and the albine bowler action figures. Did I mention you could sleep on our luxurious hide-a-bed? Come on, what are you waiting for?

PS:I wasn't really all that mad at you guys for forgetting my birthday.

posted by Julie Comments [] 10:42 PM

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

 

i am a big fan of subtley mentioning one's own birthday a few days for the actual birthday. that way people are reminded. i highly recomend lines such as "see the funny card my mom sent me..." as a hey-it's-my-birthday-you'd-best-be-remembering icebreaker.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 6:52 PM

 

hey. happy birthday julie.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 6:49 PM

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

 

Thanks for remembering my birthday 2 years in a row, guys. (Cynthia is excused this year, but I didn't hear anything about tragedy striking anyone else this month.)

posted by Julie Comments [] 3:08 PM

Monday, October 20, 2003

 

This is what happened when I went to see the Brian Jonestown Massacre last night. The lead singer, a certain Anton Newcombe, has a reputation for being a drugged-up troublemaker, & on this particular evening he fulfilled that promise by being drunk to the point of extreme impairment before the band even started to play. Somebody tried to bring him some water, & he said "I don't drink water because fuckin' fish fuck in it! You ever see a Russian drink water?" After a few false starts they got started, but then they had to stop a lot in between songs so Anton could tune his guitar interminably. This always took a suspiciously long time, although he kept reminding us that it was because he had broken 2 strings in Richmond the previous night. The other band members would sort of apoligize & tell us they would be back on in a couple of minutes. The situation led to exchanges like the following:

Audience member: This is just like a documentary!
Other band member: Yes! It is just like a documentary!
Anton Newcombe: Any a you motherfuckers can fuckin' [inaudible].

This quiet periods also featured Anton swearing at & berating the other band members for failing to tell jokes & anecdotes into the microphone, accusing his hecklers of cowardice for hiding behind other audience members, & making incomprehensible pronouncements such as referring to the Beltway area as "the equatorial region of America."
Things had settled down a bit by the time I left, but this happened early because I was so tired; for all I know the whole thing ended in a tremendous melée. Also I got a free sticker at the merch table. Live bands rule.

posted by Emily Comments [] 4:54 PM

Sunday, October 19, 2003

 

last night i went to a knitting and jewelry party. basically it was a bunch of 20-30 something-year-old women, a lot of brie, even more wine, several small children running amuck, and lots of fun handmade jewelry and knit items. there were also puppies which had just opened their eyes. they were damn cute and really tiny because they were miniature dog puppies. after much drinking and trying on of hats, someone said to me "wendy! i never realized you had such drunken housewife potential!" it's not every day you get a complement like that.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 11:50 AM

 

If you haven't checked out the "Get Your War On" book, I suggest you do. I got it for Eben for his birthday and whenever he reads it, I hear him laughing uncontrolably. The guy who wrote it is giving some of the money he's making from selling it to an organization that's working on removing mine fields from countries all over the world.

Also, the book is fucking hilarious.

posted by Julie Comments [] 12:10 AM

Thursday, October 16, 2003

 

i will tell you all a story about how crazy my cat is.

at the marathon, they were giving out free samples of all sorts of products, and among other things, i picked up a packet of "heel-cream" (apparently it heals your heels... ha ha). last night i decided to use it as my feet were feeling a bit sad. after applying a generous amount, i noticed that my cat had taken an unusual interest in my feet. as the cat began to lick my toes i decided to read the heel-cream package. the first ingredient was concentrated urea. as we all know, urea is what puts the 'UR' in urine. what you may not know is the reason that cats like catnip is that to them, it smells like cat pee. thus, the fact that i now had piss on my feet made my cat crazy insane. naturally i made attempts to wash off the heel-cream, but the cat was in a frenzy now and chased me around the apartment attempting to bite my feet. hijinks ensued as a terrorized the cat with my feet, then got bit, then chased the cat, until the cat knocked over a houseplant and broke a wine glass and that was the end of playtime.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 11:12 AM

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

 

monkey. monkey. monkey.

now, that i've gotten that off my chest, well, yes, i just survived a highly eventful visit from my mom. not that family visits aren't great. free food. lots of drinking. we're talking people who buy you dinner and don't expect sexual favors in return. very cool. i guess my mom is having a midlife crisis because she elected to spend her birthday with me rather than with my father and brother. oh, and she wanted to run a marathon too. my mom is 49 and has decided she likes running marathons. which we did, and it was about as fun as you could expect running 26 miles to be. this is now the second time i have been suckered into running a marathon, which proves that i am not only durable, but also doomed to repeat my mistakes.

well, so today i am back at work trying to find ways to entertain myself that don't draw attention to the fact that i'm not working. this is a constant challenge. they keep painting my building different colors. in the past week, it has gone from brown to pink and back to brown with a great deal of noise, powerwashing, and shirtless boys in between. surprisingly, the worst is not the noise or the fumes, but that they've plastic-wrapped over all the windows. it hot and clausterphobic. i feel like shrink-wrapped produce. and i know there are shirtless boys out there. they're powerwashing and they're all wet and they probably have great bodies-- but i can't see them! whaa! i need to find something to do.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 7:17 PM

Monday, October 13, 2003

 

Hello. I'm writing to tell you about my weekend with Andy, who came down here on a visit. So the whole weekend started with ungodly chaos because Andy was late due to beltway traffic & we had to rush off to dinner & the theatre with my parents. New flatmate Josh arrived home at almost the same time, but he had to rush off & catch a bus to New York, & the two of them were like 2 ships passing in the night because each was in the bathroom during the time the other one was out & walking around. The night after that we went out to dinner, & to a radio station party, where I was not really my usual dynamic self -- I had a crazy sore throat malady this weekend which made me talk like Harvey Pekar, & I couldn't drink heavily b/c it hurt to swallow.
Then last night we made eggplant parmesan, causing the kitchen to look like someone had been murdered in it, & then we drove out to Baltimore to see a Black Keys show. We had quite the elaborate confusion trying to find our way around when we got to Baltimore. It's a messed-up city, & we spent a lot of time looking for various intersections of dubious validity. Then when we finally got on Howard street we had to drive down it endlessly, under bridges & over tunnels, through residential neighborhoods & abandoned warehouse districts, all the way from number 100 to number 2500-something. Nevertheless we finally found the place, & we weren't even late because there were so many opening bands. It was an excellent show. The same night we had the following conversation:

Andy: Yeah, my friend Jeff & I were talking about that whole Schwartzenneger thing, & we were like, "why doesn't that ever happen in Ohio? Why can't we get a celebrity to run for governor?" & then we came up with this idea that the new governor should be Jimmy Zero from the Dead Boys, & his running mate could be a picture of Johnny Thunders.
Emily: Maybe you guys should get David Thomas to run.
Andy: Yeah. Oh, but he lives in England now.
Emily: It'd still be easier to get him to move back than it would to get people to elect a picture of Johnny Thunders.
Andy: Oh, it'd make a great lieutenant governor.

Then today he had to leave right before I left for class at 6:30, & I was all emotional & stuff. There's a whole set of things that should be said to someone who is leaving; I remembered "Thank you for coming," "I'll miss you," "I hope it wasn't too boring," & "have a good trip," but I forgot about "thanks for everything" & "don't forget to write." On the way to class I saw a girl who looked like Rachel for an instant, & this just made me all the more overwrought. I was not in a linguistic-theory mood at all. I wanted to ask the professor, "Instead of talking about pragmatics, can we talk about all of the sadness & joy in the universe? I promise not to cry."

posted by Emily Comments [] 10:48 PM

Saturday, October 11, 2003

 

I decided to let Eben have some blog space. I hope nobody minds.
In other news, last night I made the best peanut sauce either one of us had ever had. It turns out I can do this whole cooking thing. Actually, it turns out that I have many housewifey instincts, some of which have been lying dormant until I had an apartment of my very own to cook and clean in. For example:

I have this desk from my grandmother that is possibly the nicest peice of furniture I will own for a long, long time. It's one of those old-timey desks with a glass case on top and drawers on the bottom and the desk part folds up and can be locked with a key. Everything looks classy on this desk. I have a purple stress ball, a mug of pens and a mini-champagne bottle full of bubbles on this desk and they all magically look classy instead of making the desk look juvenile. Anyway, yesterday, I noticed that by moving my computer around on it, I had scratched the desk quite badly in several places. I was distressed, but I thought maybe I could fix it by polishing the surface with some olive oil. Lo and behold, it worked. The desk is now back to its normal classy state.

No one has ever told me to polish nice wood with olive oil. This is some house wifery coming down to me through the ages, folks.

posted by Julie Comments [] 1:58 PM

Friday, October 10, 2003

 

Hello, it's Eben blogging from Portland. We still don't have a couch, but the kitchen and bathroom are done and we picked up a cute purple bookshelf from this totally rad establishment, Fairly Honest Bill's. Hoping to get a futon tomorrow so we can watch movies, ya know?

I took signatures for this totally sketchy political consulting firm, which turned out to be a bunch of right-wing nutcases. At the "debriefing" this guy gave me a disposable camera and a memo pad just in case the guys in red shirts show up and tell people to not sign the petition. I knew something was off from the get-go. So much for that job.

Took us but two weeks to score some choice bud. Turns out our next-door neighbor is a big time stoner, so there's that as well.

Julie went to see this cool Texan (yes they do exist!) and political commentator Jim Hightower at Portland State University. Hie jibed about the kleptocrats, wobblycrats and King George the W.

That's the news from the left coast, coach.

posted by Julie Comments [] 10:14 PM

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

 

Help help, I can't take any more of this grading! I feel as if it is eating away my personality & replacing it with shoddy, pre-chewed ideas about drugs, file-sharing, poker, reality TV, & role models in sports! To cheer myself up I will tell you about what happened when I tried to go to the doctor yesterday.

What Happened When I Tried to Go to the Doctor Yesterday

So I thought my appointment was at 12:45, although, as it turned out, it was really at 12:15. Thus I didn't get there until 12:30, & I still couldn't find their location within the little office park, so I called them on the phone. The lady at the desk explained that I was mistaken, & then I was like "oh no, is it too late for me to come in?" & she was like "the doctor isn't here anymore. He's on his rounds." What? I was only 15 minutes late! What fucking rounds? Who the fuck is this guy, Charles Bovary? Then I tried to get directions so I would be able to find it the next time, & the lady acted like it was TOTALLY OBVIOUS where it was. (She told me, for example, that it was "right in front of the pond," which was not at all within my line of vision.) In my head, I was like, "I'm looking at 1711 & 1715! There's no 1713 between them! It's NOT OBVIOUS, you stupid cunt!"
Since my urinary tract infection (YES! ANOTHER ONE!) is feeling better, I am considering not going in to my re-scheduled appointment tomorrow. This will really stick it to the man.
Oh, & this is kind of belated, but I'd like to pour out a 40 for my fallen homie, Edward Said. Edward W. Said passed away on Sunday, the 24th of September, at approximately 4:00 p.m. R.I.P.

posted by Emily Comments [] 12:15 AM

Monday, October 06, 2003

 

i find myself trapped in this horrible "new software training extravaganza" with only a doughnut and the internet to comfort me. this is yet another example of the tortures i've had to face since my boss left for a month in spain. for nearly an hour now my mind has been occupied solely by 2 thoughts: 1. the average six-year-old knows more about computers than my bosses and 2. why didn't i grab a cream-filled doughnut when i had the chance? i'm sitting between two upper managment people who are visibly excited about software that makes ski passes. are these people high, because i sure wish i was right now. anyhow, i've come to realize that the problem with my company is the people who run it aren't too smart. lets just say for example, if you had a business with a multi-million dollar operating budget, would you take a month's vacation and leave your business in the hands of a 23 year old person with no business degree who doesn't even believe in capitalism? even if you knew this person often sits around doing nothing but thinking up credit card fraud schemes, and occasionally even shares these schemes with fellow employees just for the hell of it, maybe see if they'd actually try it and see if it works? so, maybe you think i need a new job, but really i'm so cynical that i find myself perusing the classifieds and thinking, "that could be all right... oh, wait no, they wouldn't pay you to do that if it was fun." to hell with the man.

this has been my work rant for the day.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 12:28 PM

Sunday, October 05, 2003

 

I'm starting to think that this whole drinking regularly thing isn't going to work out for me. Despite this, I've named my liver Champ.

posted by Phil Comments [] 2:32 PM

Saturday, October 04, 2003

 

i know i should write something but sadly i have nothing interesting to say. i think i'm becoming old and dull. that sucks. so, well, hello anyway people.

cynthia-- are you going on your family ski trip... it would be most exceptional to see you, so i think we should both go.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 3:29 PM

 

Happy Birthday, Phil!

posted by Cyn Comments [] 1:22 AM

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

 

Coming to you live from Portland!

I just set up my computer and realized that I get mysterious, free wireless service in my apartment. This is possibly the coolest thing that has happened to me since arriving in my new home (not that unpacking hasn't been a blast in that cathartic, unpacking way).

Eben and I got here on Monday afternoon and, though we have no furniture, we have ordered a mattress (to be delivered tomorrow) and outfitted our adorable kitchen and bathroom. The road trip itself was fun...some highlights include: blazing it up with some other former Obies in Cleveland, receiving directions and/or coffee from people with exceptionally bad teeth in many a steak and pancake "restaurant," humping cows in Indiana, the Vagabond Motel (where there was plenty of human drama), Jackalopes in Wyoming.

posted by Julie Comments [] 12:49 PM