southern gothic.

yesterday i visited sherry at the house where she is currently house/dog sitting. the dogs are great - a boxer and a bouvier des flanders. cutest. dogs. ever. especially the bouvier. she's a sweetheart. 

the house? straight up southern gothic of the very best kind. huge. brick. lots of wrought iron. tons of gardens with little wrought iron gates and fences and paths. fabulous built-ins. huge windows. ancient wallpaper. tons of books and art (she is involved with the orchestra, he is an art dealer/historian). not one wine cellar, but two! a french-country kitchen. and, in the back, past the yard, before and surrounded by the gardens, a pool. totally the setting for...something. i'd hoped to go swimming today, but alas had other plans. c'est la vie. the one weekend we have pool access and i have other plans.

but i digress.

this house is so beautiful, especially the library, where there is a marble floor in black and while, heavy curtains, a haunting painting of a haunted looking young lady. 

i don't think i could spend a night there. it would be much too creepy. but, oh, so lovely, too. 

oh joy.

so friday my computer and boxed up office belongings (a scant two boxes' worth, thank you very much) were moved to my new space with my new team. tomorrow the new position begins and i am so very happy. 

if i'd have heard my now-former-supervisor say one more time, with obvious joy & glee, 'i'm old enough to be everyone's mom here! i'm like the surrogate mom here!' i would have enacted a smack down. seriously. uhm, feeling bad you're back at work and not home with you annoying children? don't take it out on your coworkers. we don't want a mother a work. it's insulting. seriously. at my going away lunch friday, i finally told her that she probably thought i was younger than she thought i was. she looked at my blankly with her mouth in a perfect 'o.' yes, i said, if you were really old enough to be my mother, you'd have had me in your teens. 'o' her mouth continued to say. i'm almost xxxx, said i. the 'o' stayed put and she blinked like a deer in the headlights. 'oh, gosh,' she finally said. 'i guess i would have been in my teens!' 

garghh! she so doesn't get it. i'm glad i don't have to hear it anymore. 

onto brighter things. new position with new team starts tomorrow. yay. no mothering there, that's for sure.

the person who annoyed me most this weekend.

vegan no. 2 and i, along with the fabulous betsy,  stopped by a coworker's pseudo-hipster garage sale this weekend. when said coworker came up to say hi, i introduced vegan no. 2.

'oh,' said coworker. 'do you live in memphis?'

'no,' vegan no. 2 replied. 'i'm in from oklahoma.'

'i see,' the coworker said. 'so this is an internet thing?'

okay, in his defense, i'm sure the coworker doesn't know about the grad school friend betsy and i had who married someone she met online and, well, was killed by him before he killed himself.  if you know me at all, you know i would never, ever date online. ever. not only do i think it's scary and frightening (see example), but i can't help but think it's a level of desperation i won't ever possess. 

but i digress.

said me icily to said coworker, 'uhm, no. we've been friends for quite some time. we met in the tundra.'

grr. 

summertime, part two.

vegan no. 2 visited this past weekend. it was a lovely visit, a lovely time. i heart vegan no. 2! aside from the wonderfulness of seeing him again, we totally played tourists in ye old memphis and i attempted to make a gourmet-like vegan dinner. i chose this recipe from vegan yum yum and i have to say, it was a good effort. cooking with tofu is certainly not my forte (yet), but i think the dinner turned out fairly well. [as an aside: i decided to use mostly spinach and just a tick of kale and am v. happy i did. turns out kale isn't a particular favorite of mine]

as for vegan no. 2's visit, what didn't we do? we went to the national civil rights museum. it is awesome, incredible, overwhelming, depressing, amazing. we went to graceland, saw the prices to tour the mansion, and decided not to go past the gates and into the mansion. we did, however, visit several of the gift shops. graceland is lousy with gift shops. we ate vegan-friendly meals out. we listened to live music and drank at dive bars. we took zoe and angus bean for a long walk. in short, we had a fine time.

upon his arrival back in oklahoma, he wrote: 'two minutes after crossing into oklahoma, i saw a dead border collie along the roadside and it started to rain. i was not surprised.'

that's the kind of thing that makes a girl swoon.

best slogan ever.

so on saturday, at the local coffee shop, one of the baristas sported a t-shirt with the best slogan ever:

an awkward morning
beats a boring night

love!

summertime.

various summertime fun includes drinking wine outside; celebrating my new job - the offer was made wednesday and i start june 30. yay!; a visit from vegan #2, this coming weekend; and sun. lots and lots of sun, whether you want it or not.

summer is squarely here, though i suppose technically it's still 13 days away. i think overnight it maybe, maybe, got down to 80. saturday afternoon at softball practice is was hot, terribly hot. we soldiered on. i turned pink, as i am wont to do in the heat and sun. it generally tones down.

but generally.

not saturday. i radiated heat all night long. at brunch yesterday, someone exclaimed, loudly (louder than necessary, really), "girl, you are burned!" and i could not argue. it was the kind of sunburn i got years and years ago, when tanning sans sunblock was all the rage (thanks, 1980s).

and speaking of the 1980s, we revisited valley girl on friday night. the highlights:

• nicholas cage's eagle-shaped chest hair!
• the soundtrack - hello the Plimsouls and Josie Cotton!
  
• the clothes - tight jeans, skinny headbands worn on foreheads, stripes!
  
• the vocab - like totally for sure! gag me!
  

and, sadly, those highlights? totally the lowlights, too. here, the tag lines:

• She's cool. He's hot. She's from the Valley. He's not.
• Life in the valley: Hair, clothes, and attitude.

the original snark.

i'm reading the portable dorothy parker and am much in love. to wit:

little words
when you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,
nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;
and i can only stare, and shape my grief
in little words

i cannot conjure loveliness, to drown
the bitter woe that racks my cords apart.
the weary pen that sets my sorrow down
feeds at my heart.

there is no mercy in the shifting year,
no beauty wraps me tenderly about.
i turn to little words - so you, my dear,
can spell them out.

finally...i hope.

yay. honestly, can we just move forward now? the longer mccain doesn't have an opponent, the bigger chance we have of losing it all. yay, obama!

but i'm a grown up. honest.

so I'm at a bit of a standstill right now, so to speak. I'm waiting to transition to a new position at _________. It's a position I'm super excited about and, frankly, can't wait to start. But at ________, things like initial hiring and internal transfers can take decades. so on I wait. And in the meantime, get irritated by little things that should not irritate me in my current position, which I actually like very much [it's just that the new position will be gobs better].

among the minor irritations these day (some work related, but annoyingly, some not):

i am an adult. i have been for a really long time. for instance, i've been drinking wine long enough to kind of be somewhat of an expert in it [well...okay, that actually might have more to do with having worked at a wine bar for several years. and as for the 'expert' maybe i just really mean 'expert' as in 'i've had a lot of wine to drink over the years'].

another example is i've voted in several presidential elections [1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and of course, coming up, 2008]. what's the point of these examples, you ask? my boss ladies, apparently, do not understand that i'm a certified grown up who eats her veggies as she pleases (which is quite often), who pays her bills on time, who has bought her second house. please boss-type ladies, don't treat me like i'm 11. it doesn't matter you're both married with children and i am not [esp. since one of you is younger than me!].

i have a mother. she's lovely and frustrating and funny and our relationship is at time tenuous. but the point is [a] i'm a grown up and [b] i have a mother and, finally, [c] the very last thing i need at work are people acting like my mother. seriously.

also on the annoyance front these days: my skin tone.

as a former-inga, it's clear my heritage is scandinavian. i've got the blonde hair & blue eyes to prove it...and the pink-tinged skin. i'm pink, there's no way around it. my skin has a decidedly pink hue to it ~ my arms, my legs, my cheeks. eventually, i can tan. sort of. but in general i'm pink.

look closely during the fall/winter months, and you'll see it's true, i have a pink hue while others turn kind of pasty. as spring/summer months hit, it beings. people deluged me with 'oh, man, you've got some sun' or 'ouch, look at that sunburn!' or 'you should really cut down on the time you spend in the sun.' yes, yes, yes. i know. i'm old enough to know i need to slather on the sunblock. i'm not longer a teenage lifeguard convinced sunscreen is my enemy. i'd like to grow old gracefully and with a minimum of wrinkles. i get. it.

at softball [yes, softball. that's another post for another day] practice recently, on a sunny day that hit the lower-90s, everyone, and i mean EVERYONE, kept inferring i was burning myself to a crisp. i put on my sunblock. i promise. i just get even more pink in the heat and/or sun. but after i cool down or go inside or jump into a pool or sit in a dark bar for awhile drinking beer, the pink tones down. promise.

really?

yesterday, because i am a good friend, i went with ansley to see the sex and the city movie. this blog isn't really about the movie. it's about the movie theater. and the movie patrons.

we had to stand in line to buy tickets. that was fine. true, i haven't actually had to stand in a longish line for movie tix in a long time, but whatever. we buy our tickets, we get a pretzel and some popcorn. we walk into the theater and it's packed. packed. like so packed we can barely find two seats together. and when we do, we're told time and again 'these are saved.' most of the saved seats had a bag or a sweater marking them.

then we spy two sets of two-seats together. one in the front row. one in the second row. both rows essentially suck for seating, right? i mean, who wants to be that close to the screen - ever? so i make my way to the two-seats in the second row. i stand there for, like, three minutes while ansley scours the higher-up seats for more decent seating.

'nothing together,' she says. i scoot into the second row aisle to sit down. ansley makes her way through the darkened theater to join me.

'0h, gosh,' says a girl four seats in. 'we're saving those.'

'you're saving these?' ansley asks, about the time the previews gear up to start.

'yeah.'

'are your friends here?' she asks.

'they're in line.'

'for food?'

'no, they're still getting their tickets.'

at this point, i chime in. 'well, the movie is starting.'

and ansley says, 'and we have our tickets already and we're in here. can't we just go ahead and sit down? i'm sorry your friends aren't technically here yet, but...'

'we are,' i say. 'and the movie is starting. and we don't really want to sit in the front row.'

'gosh,' the girl seat-saver says. 'i mean, they're in line...'

'but -' ansley starts, then stops. we shake our heads. we go around to the front row and sit in our shitty seats.

so here's my beef. we all want to save seats for our friends, esp. for an [apparently] big movie opening weekend. but if (a) the movie is STARTING, (b) your friends are still in the TICKET LINE, (c) people who bought their tickets and are IN THE THEATER as the MOVIE IS STARTING while your lame-ass friends who can't show up in time ARE STILL IN LINE FOR TICKETS, well, obviously the folks in the theater when the MOVIE IS STARTING should just be able to freaking sit down in the not-so-lame seats in the second row, right? i mean, i'm not being unreasonable, am i?

quick thoughts on the movie

• i liked the fashion
• i love sarah jessica parker
• the smith jerrod guy is a hottie
• too much story, too short an amount of time
• miranda said it all with 'oh, i thought it was feathers' when it was apparently a bird