karmaconniption

Of course on a Friday, when I am already motivated to do far less than I should, it's royally dark and stormy and cold out. I woke up this morning and realized that this was a day for boots and wool, so I am wearing my new wool skirt and a sweater and my heavy brown boots. This actually makes me happy, as it's the first time in 3 years that I have been able to comfortably wear such an outfit.

I am actually loving the cold. It makes my body feel right, as if everything's been re-set after three years in the sub-tropics. I like warm drinks, red wine, heavy coats, gloves and scarves. And I'm endlessly happy that poetry-chic is in this fall (plaids, tailored wools, classic private-school uniform gear) because I can finally pay attention to trends that change with the seasons. I've essentially been wearing the same summer clothes for 3 years (not THE SAME clothes, but THE SAME styles) and I couldn't tell you the last time I wore a pair of socks except for work and working out.

Anyway...so Jenn was off today as her daughter is sick (boo), but I did get a lot done and am looking forward to my date tonight. The aquarium does "fridays after five" for $8, and so we are going to get some Chinese food and go look at fish. Delicious.

Tomorrow I get a trim in the morning (yay!), then brunch with the Fed Hill gang, and then the Salisbury vs. Frostburg Regent's Cup down in Annapolis in the afternoon. I am endlessly happy to have this type of social schedule. It still feels new to me after years of: paper due, grading due, lesson plan due, Friday night shift, Saturday night shift, Sunday double, etc. etc. etc.

And it's COOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLD!! Yay!

And my boots are hella cute.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

My FAVORITE time of year!!

So of course the day after the wedding, I woke up with a horrific head cold and sore throat.

OF COURSE.

I also got 2 parking tickets from USF (we were there for a grand total of 35 minutes), Gabe locked the keys in the trunk of the rental car and we incurred a $140 bill from the locksmith, the makeup for the wedding ended up costing me $75 (for some gray eyeshadow and foundation, mind you), and it rained pretty much the whole time we were there.

The Vinoy was as beautiful as ever. I was so pissed to be sick during all of that.

Work crazy. Head cold worsening.

But at least that godforsaken wedding is over.

I am be-yond exhausted.

My job is kicking my ass.

I was so brain-dead by yesterday afternoon that someone called to ask me a question and I literally said, "Ahhhh-uhhhh-ummmm...ahhhh..." Just total, incapacitating brain fart. No thoughts at all, just my brain muscles pushing through endless empty sludge. Uhhhh, ahhhhh, ummm.... She must have thought I was drunk.

Even worse- I think I stuttered on the "Uhhhhhh" part.

On October 3, my landlord reminded me that he needs to know by February 1 if we will be staying or moving. Our lease ends April 1.

I'm thinking this is an indication that he wants us out.

Ugh, I have to think about moving AGAIN? The mere thought exhausts me. After the last move, I hammered the posters up on the walls and said, "And there they will stay until we can afford a sprawling 4-bedroom row house with its own parking lot in Federal Hill."

Maybe not?

At this point, I'm actually weighing the pros and cons of taking on additional roomates. We could afford a bigger house if we had more people there, and I am damn sick and tired of sitting at home by myself every night because Gabe is at work.

Ugh.....but moving....and roommates....

...I'm swooning, and not in a good sense.

Banquet last night was awesome. Open bar, excellent (though slightly over-cooked) salmon, great appetizers. My dress turned out wonderful, and one girl from Romania even remarked that it "looks like something Audrey Hepburn would wear." I win.

Exhausted at work. Made a bajillion weekend plans by accident, now have to sift through and see what's actually feasible.

Ugh, moving.

"I'm partial to yarns involving booze and southern gentry. That, or zombies. Just some ideas.- Biscuit"

That is not a bad idea, my friend. Not at all! As long as it's something glamorous, like bathtub gin or bitchy comments with a sweet southern veneer. I love those.

So I forked over $27 of my hard-earned money today to the city of Baltimore for a parking ticket. It really makes me angry. I received the ticket for apparantly parking in a "No Stopping" zone, but I wanted to argue the case that only 3/5 of my car was actually in the "No Stopping" zone. Therefore, I should only have to pay $16.20 of the parking fine! I think that's only fair. So, in the last 2 weeks, I have paid a grand total of $67 to the city of Baltimore for parking-related issues including a new parking pass and $20 for a guest pass. I'm just saying, I really should charge my friends/family for using that pass. I mean, it cost me 20 bucks that I didn't have. And, I think it's ludicrous that you have to pay that $20 IN ADDITION to the $20 permit you ALREADY PURCHASED. And if THAT wasn't bad enough, all parking permits expire in December of each year. So my $20 pass is only good for 3 months, and then I have to fork over another $40 for a pass and guest permit. Ridiculous. Where is all this money going? I bet it's going to the meter maids' salary. Those bitches.

Had trouble sleeping last night. Big honking surprise. Maybe someday I'll see a doctor about this insomnia, but the fact is that I've dealt with it my entire life. I can't turn my brain off. It usually indicates that my mind is trying to work through something, and that I need to be more attentive during the day to exhausted myself.

Tonight is Gabe's black tie Marriott awards banquet. I get to leave work at 4:30 to hurriedly rush home, get all gussied up, and we have to be there by 6pm. Open bar, great food, fancy clothes I'm in! I finally decided to wear the cream satin cocktail dress. It's short, and so not as formal as the evening gowns some people will wear, but it looks great and I feel pretty in it. Now if only my skin would stop breaking out in hives, I'd be all set....

Anyhoo. Is it bad that I want to quit volunteering on Thursday nights because I want to watch "The Office?"

I did it. I signed up for NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org). National Novel Writing Month. No excuses, I've got to churn out 50,000 words in the month of November. It's about 1,600 words per day, which is ambitious but doable. No idea yet what I'll write about. I'd like to try and get an outline together, but I might end up just winging it, as it seems most people do.

I'm working really hard on enjoying the little things in life.

I thought it was helping.

And then.............

Again.





You got shopped.

If you click "Find > By Region" on the upper bar on your LJ homepage, you can search millions of live journals based on region. I (of course, being a Britophile) clicked on "UK" and also "Ireland" for kicks and spent some time this afternoon purusing other peoples' journals.

I would like to point out that Livejournal users must be singlehandedly supporting the Anime/Odakon industry, because I saw shit ton of icons with elfen ears and ginormous eyes. This bothers me. There's also a disconcerting amount of references to Red Dwarf and Dr. Who. Now don't misunderstand, I love my MST3K just like anyone else...but seriously. When I am purusing the livejournals of other people, I don't want to read about your new box set of Red Dwarf. I want to read the nitty gritty details of your life.

Anyway, so the journals that interested me the most were the most basic ones. The ones that talked about their "boring lives" and described their days, from waking up hung over to fighting with friends to arguing with bosses/professors. Somehow, these stories of infinitely normality set against a backdrop of a few cultural references dropped in here and there to remind me that it's someone from another country writing this are completely addictive. I absolutely loved reading about one girl living in Chicago and missing her bedroom back in a rural part of England. I liked reading about how a girl in Ireland went out and got tanked, and then woke up at 6am unable to get back to sleep. So simple! But I loved it!

Maybe I should study more anthropology and start indexing these things.

And in case there's someone out there like me searching journals:

My Diet Coke has gone warm, but I'm still sipping it, and I'm sick of the 85-degree weather in October. I want cold weather. Also, I just ate a giant cookie that I meant to save for Gabe, but since I didn't tell him I saved it for him I ate it anyway and he'll never know that a giant chocolate chip cookie could have been a part of his evening. Also, tonight I'm volunteering at the Visionary Art Museum's big exhibit opening and I secrely hope that they'll have free champagne.

Also the salad I ate for lunch has been in my office fridge for 2 days. It still looked/smelled okay, but in the last hour I have been second-guessing my decision to conserve food and eat leftover leftovers.

The End.

Working at J. Alexanders was nightmarish on the best of days. It was the most high-stress work environment I've ever encountered, and that tops "Agrilotta" back in the days when I was bartending at Mangia's in downtown Annapolis. I believe if you check the archives of this journal, you'll find an entry in which I shattered a frozen pint glass with my bare hands from squeezing it too hard. That's high-strung job stress for you.

But J. Alexander's employed a particularly painful and horrific system that was built in order to keep servers in check. Ideally, the system was established to make sure that each guest that comes into the restaurant is receiving the VIP treatment that J's so forecefully espouses.

It was lovingly referred to as "being shopped."

You almost never knew that it was happening. Sometimes you did. There was a formula of sorts. Always two guests, always quieter. They'd ask you a very random and strange question about the menu. ("How many ounces of chicken stock is utilized in your black bean soup, and what is the percentage of sodium in your mango papaya salsa?") They almost always ordered liquor drinks, which also set you up to card them. (Because of this, and also nasty stings set up by Tampa police, I got into the habit of carding everyone. I've carded 75-year-olds.)

But usually you didn't know. And you found out about 48 hours later, when a fax would come into the office with your name on it and a "score." They would take off points for anything from, "Did not offer coffee," to "There were crumbs on the table." Rarely did anyone ever get 100 points (the top award).

It was always a nasty surprise to come into work and discover that you'd been "shopped." My unfortunate experience occurred on a busy Friday night when we'd run out of just about everything in the kitchen and a server had walked out, leaving me with two sections to run. I was barely able to even keep everything together, and I fucking got shopped and failed miserably. Horribly. I was screamed at by four different managers, and was THISCLOSE to just tearing off my apron and quitting. But it happened last February, so close to the time that I knew I'd be leaving anyway, and I needed the money. Two years I worked there, and I got shopped a month before I quit.

Anyway, lately I've been feeling as though my life has been one big moment of "YOU GOT SHOPPED." It's gotten so that I don't want to answer my phone, check my email, look in my mailbox. If it's not bills, it's people. If it's not people, it's work. The universe is shopping me right and left, catching me not working up to my potential. And the thing is, like being truly "shopped," it's not even that you're a shitty individual or a terrible server, it's just that the one moment you fuck up is the moment that everyone is watching. And you get thrown under the bus.

So I'm just sort of constantly waiting to be "shopped" now. I'm working as hard as I can, but the second I give myself a bit of a break, SURPRISE, YOU GOT SHOPPED.

I'll fucking never get that 100.

If I do not eat, drink, use electricity, and go without purchasing any winter clothes for the next six months, I JUST MIGHT be able to get myself out of this financial mess.

At least skinny and frail is in.

It's Monday, and I feel as though I have done nothing but eat/drink/dance/look pretty/stress for the past 4 days. I am completely exhausted. Last night, I laid on the couch for about 6 hours and watched "Office Space" and "Zoolander" back to back on Comedy Central. I'd like to thank Comedy Central for providing me with such entertaining programming, as I did not have the energy required to find and/or utilize the remote.

Work is apeshit crazy. I am bouncing between locations every other day now, which is almost worse than the two-days-here two-days-there schedule I was on before.

GABE MADE BALTIMORE IMPROV! This is extremely exciting, and he is totally deserving. He hasn't been a part of a troupe since we founded No MSG in Tampa back in 2005-2006, and even that only lasted for a brief 4-month season. He hasn't been a part of a professional troupe since before we started dating, which I know has been bothering him. He needs to get back into comedy and have an outlet. I need to get back to writing.

So now that one wedding is down and the other is in Florida at the end of the month, I have a few weeks now to buckle down and refocus. I feel like a lot of things got put by the wayside, both in the confusion with my job and with the hubbub of the wedding. It was absolutely beautiful by the way, and was so much fun. My only regret is that it was a complete blur. It felt like I was walking down the aisle with the other bridesmaids, and the next thing I knew Kristina and Evan were leaving in our crossed sparklers as we bade them farewell. But the rehearsal dinner and post-wedding BBQ were amazing and wonderful, and I am so glad that I was a part of it.

Phew. Back to the grind.

So Evan and Kristina are getting married tomorrow.

Um, yeah.

Tomorrow.

This is the first wedding in my group of friends. I know that it will swiftly be followed by about twenty seven more, but this one has the honor of being the first. I've known Evan since we used to pass notes between classes at Annapolis High School in 1999. I've known Kristina since we worked together at Bagel Bakery in 2001.

It's more than a little overwhelming. My head is spinning with all of the things that need to be done today and tomorrow. I don't think I'll be ready to get married anytime soon, primarily because I don't think I could handle all the ridiculous amounts of shit that need to be done to put together a wedding. Well, that's not entirely true, since my entire career right now revolves around event planning. But still. Life is tumultuous enough as it is at the moment. I don't know how they managed to do this.

In other news: (in case you haven't yet seen it plastered all over my Facebook and MySpace pages) I met Duff Goldman of "Ace of Cakes" last night. I can't stress enough how nice he was. He talked very openly about the show, and told us all about filming, and we thanked him for marketing Baltimore in such an anti-The Wire sort of way. He received an award last night for doing just that, and even agreed to have pictures taken with us. Such a nice guy. (Short, though- only about 5'4". Not that that matters.)

So, um yeah. My head is spinning. I'm leaving work at 2:00 today to run home, finish packing up all my shit, pick up Erin and Jason at the bus stop, pick up Jen, somehow get five people and three bridesmaids dresses into the car, get to the rehearsal, get to the hotel, get to the rehearsal dinner.....

Oh, and I'm trying NOT to freak out about the fact that my dress is 3 inches too long. I was supposed to have gotten it hemmed, but honestly, I didn't realize it at first, and by the time I did it was too late to do anything about it. I better not fucking trip. Although, if anyone has to trip, I suppose it should be me and not Kristina.

I feel like, despite my rigidness of getting AT LEAST 7 hours of sleep a night, I cannot seem to sleep enough. I am exhausted all day long. I did make it to the gym last night and had a nice long workout, which I thought would refresh me, but I felt even more tired today. Perhaps it's all of this back-and-forth.

New topic of conversation: For awhile there, I was reading about six different news sites a day. China Daily, BBC, Times Online UK, NY Times, Baltimore Sun, and (of course) Perez Hilton/TMZ/popsugar/Page Six (I consider those one entity). At first, I noticed that my level of what I like to call "Cocktail Conversation" had increased dramatically. These are the sound bites that you can regurgitate over a few glasses of wine to keep conversation sparkling and witty.

But this quickly progressed into Random Trivia territory. Cocktail Conversations always have the potential to be rather exclusive and can even border on pompousity. And I found myself reading so much, that I was frequently referencing things that no one had even heard of yet. It takes time for tidbits to trickle down from news sources into popular culture, and I got tired of asking people, "Oh my God, did you hear about how they found an underground lake in Darfur, and how they think it's going to end all of the conflict now that there will be a viable water source?!"

So, I've cut down on my incessant Internet research. Is it really necessary for me to know the ins and outs of Gordon Brown? And I'm pretty sure Gabe is tired of my "updates" concerning the Britney Spears-Kevin Federline custody case.

But now I'm bored. I want information. I just have nowhere to put it. It doesn't belong in casual conversation, at least not to the extent that I've been inserting it. Maybe I'll read it and then post updates that I think are interesting here. I think I'm starting to bore people around me with my extensive knowledge of Chinese current events and the latest diet trends in Europe.

Maybe I'll start my own website. "Cocktail-Conversations-dot-com." Interesting. You could click on a heading, like "Pop Culture," "Random Trivia," "Asia-Pacific Current Events," and I would provide witty soundbites to casually drop into your next conversation. Amazing. I could make a basquillion dollars.

God, I'm fucking tired.

....getting a phone call to come and retrieve your boyfriend from a bar at 9:30pm because he's so drunk, he does not know what year it is and is physically unable to stand in one spot for longer than 1.2 seconds.

Yeah. Nothing like that. I could have killed him.

I'm so confused by this time of year. I watch the news at night to see what the weather's going to be like the next day. And I dress accordingly. When the weatherman says, consistantly, that it's going to be 80 degrees, I'm wearing my knee-length pleated pants and my short-sleeved bolero jacket with black cami underneath.

Instead, it's overcast and I swear it can't be above 70 degrees outside. I have my heater on at my desk at work. I am going to need to invest in layers.

Getting my hair cut tomorrow, THANK GOD. It's long enough to be pulled back into a tiny, stubby ponytail, which I HATE. Chop that shit off.

Random musings....should I go for a PhD in English literature? Or is that just the ennui of my soul talking?

Tonight: volunteer group with South Baltimore youth. The head of the rec center in Fed Hill wants to do a rap vs. hip hop debate, focusing on how it's transformed itself from its roots as working-class anthems to billionaire status with bling and cars and drug references. I remember people doing a lot of research in my race classes in grad school, but I don't really know enough pop culture references to support the theories, so I'll probably just be refereeing. Then, at 10 tonight, I have a Skype date with Jenny in China.

Gabe didn't get home until 7am. I would say he has some kind of secret lover, if it weren't for the fact that he called me about six times from work last night, railing about how they were planning to keep him there for 15 hours straight. He is a work horse. I couldn't do it. Working 2pm to 7am doing event planning and set-up would kill me. He better get that damn promotion so he can work normal hours and we can have a normal life. I can't remember the last time we were on any kind of regular schedule. We don't even eat at the same times. Not okay. But necessary for now.

Back downtown today....I really liked Columbia, so we'll see what happens.

Lunch time. Yay Lean Cuisine.

Sorry this is so boring. You know why.

Nothing new to report. Ear still feeling full of crap. Gabe still working nights. I still can't sleep.

Blah.

Dr's appointment this evening. I managed to finagle one at a walk-in in Glen Burnie, the clinic in Baltimore apparantly having shut its doors sometime in the past 3 weeks.

Of course, now that I've made the appointment, the ear pain has subsided to a dull ache instead of a piercing pain. This could also be due to the Ibuprofen I took at lunch.

I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate going to the doctor's. As a hypochondriac, I always assume it's going to be something terrible (cancer, tumors, incurable rare disease), and it usually turns out to be nothing and I'm embarrassed for having made a fuss.

So, ear tumor it is, eh?

(I just touched my ear by accident and was rewarded with a bee sting somewhere deep in my ear canal. That can't be right.)

I was up all last night with a weird earache.

I'm pretty sure it's something serious, like cancer.