the best holiday (pageant) ever

the fourth of july is my favorite holiday. in case you were wondering. and what better way to spend it than hangin in our nation's capitol? it started with a huge pancake breakfast at a friend's house, complete with fun run and patriotic costume contest. bonus points for wearing costume the whole 6 blocks.

quinn and adri

of course, no holiday would be complete without a trip to the container store where melanie, melinda and i found some fabulous luggage tags. my personal favorite: "i'm pretty sure this isn't your bag." and then i took a nap. but not at the container store. i went home.

now. how to watch fireworks in our nation's capitol? becuase you must watch fireworks on the fourth. it's the law. i decided. well, you could leave at 2pm and fight for a spot on the mall OR you could make a split second decision in june to go on a cruise and watch them from the potomac with the washington and lincoln memorials as a backdrop. you can also pretend like you're jack and rose on the titanic while your friends play art director and other friends and random people you don't know take pictures. yes. this is a good idea.

joe, if we're ever stranded

in the middle of a frigid ocean

(or the potomac)

i'll share my door with you.

of course, there's always an after party, where many people pile onto a couch and watch a random movie and eat ice cream. i think we watched maverick because it's clearly patriotic. i'm not sure, though. i had to go to bed because the fine holiday fun continued on the fifth, too! i know, right? it's totally blowing your mind.

from the left: sam, kim, annie, cool girl, jim, kyle, chareese, tim

so. i'm a pretty lucky girl. or as manda used to say, i'm a yucky girl. speaking of manda, i had to catch my bus early early in the morning to meet said sister and friends in nyc. this was a delightful extension of her and her friend abby's trip to see me in dc. first stop was mcdonalds. i needed some o' that sweet sweet nectar of the gods, which is really the only acceptable reason to go to micky-d's. that and to use the restroom. diet coke in hand and properly relieved, we went to see grease. one of manda's friend's sisters played cha-cha (the best dancer at st. bernadette...with the worst reputation) so that made the production even more enjoyable. i parted with manda and co for a few short hours to meet up with my friend mary, who'd come up from dc the night before with her mom, niece and cousin. we went to a touristy pizza place just off times square and my lovely roommate from undergrad met us there. i hadn't seen jessamine in FIVE YEARS. that's a lot.

while in new york, one must visit the hard rock cafe. i think it might be a law. actually, the law is to go to serendipity, but i'd already missed that momentous event, so manda, et. al., jess and i rocked hard and annoyed the waitress. actually she annoyed us. she wasn't very good and messed up everyone's orders. and she was slow. but we gave her a good tip anyway.

from the left: jess, lauren, hannah, tatem, abby, amanda, annie

jess' ride back to brooklyn overlapped with ours back to the girls' hotel, so we got to hang out a little longer. i chilled with the girls for a few minutes and then manda hailed me a cab to penn station. my cabbie wasn't too pleased to find that he only had 20 minutes to get me across town and that i still had to buy a ticket. mary called wanting to know if i was going to make it. i had about 7 minutes. the cabbie's update: we're about 2 minutes out. mary offered to buy my ticket and hold it for me on the train so i'd just have to find her. unfortunately, the cabbie dropped me at the WRONG STATION. officially late and certain the train had already left, i sprinted the couple of blocks to penn station anyway. i jumped onto the train, praying it was the right one, just as the doors shut behind me and it started chugging away from the platform. but i couldn't find mary. she wasn't in the car i'd jumped on. but the conductor was. and he was punching tickets. crap. while he was on the upper floor, i walked through the lower floor, hoping to spot mary. my cell didn't get service. curse T-mobile! so i waited in the hallway, hands shaking and heart fluttering, hoping the conductor wouldn't a) throw me off the train, b) give me a citation for not having a ticket or c) all of the above. i didn't have to wait long; the next stop was only a few minutes away. and i had service! (oh blessed bars!) i called mary and we both ran out on the platform. she was in the next car over. i sat down, exhausted and shaking with adrenaline. we stayed that night at a friend's house in jersey and drove home to dc the next morning. i was supposed to prep my sunday school lesson in the car...but i slept instead.

the end.

ps. why the fourth of july post in the middle of october? it came from this list and was renamed by sherry carpet. now vote!

suckfest 2008

this post is dedicated to sherry carpet, who is the only one who's voted as of 10:48 pm est.

ok. i'm not sure who the andersons are, or why they suck, but apparently they do. another friend of mine joined the revolution; apparently it's cool. and since i rock, here are 20 reasons why i suck. keep in mind, this is not an attempt to get you to tell me how wonderful i am (i already know that i rock - try to listen), just an attempt at being real.

1 - i really dislike judgemental people. sometimes i really don't like people at all. especially when said people are a large mob of lds singles. they give me anxiety.
2 - i am very judgemental, particularly of judgemental people.
3 - i pretty much always think i'm right.
4 - i'm very selfish. i talk a lot about myself, but don't always bother to ask the other person about him/herself. i suck at turning off lights, doing my dishes, not leaving my stuff lying around, locking the top bolt on the door, taking out the trash, cleaning in general...i have become THAT roommate (my excuse...see #12).
5 - i don't sleep enough, and then complain that i'm tired all the time.
6 - i am over indulgent and/or have no self control. i can't go a day without chocolate and diet coke.* in fact, i think my diet consists of 2 parts diet coke, 1 part sugar, 1 part whatever i can scrounge out of the fridge/cupboard, with a healthy dose of tv. not that i have time to watch tv.
7 - i have major pack-rat tendancies. i don't clean up after myself and thus can't find anything...the stamp i KNOW i've seen in the recent past, the black tablecloth i want to use in my studio, my keys, my phone...yesterday i left them in the studio bathroom and a fellow artist returned them to me. she washed her hands first.
8 - i procrastinate everything. even things that will make me happy, like scheduling a massage. "i'll do it tomorrow..."
9 - i'm very easily distracted.
10 -
11 - i rarely finish projects that i start. i like to plan them, but not finish them. it takes too long. (see #9)
12 - i always think i can do more in a day than is humanly possible, even for superwoman. thus, the boring parts of my extensive don't get completed. as a result, i have not been grocery shopping in a month nor done laundry, but know who won project runway (see #6), went dancing, caught up with a friend, and applied for a job.
13 - i play devil's advocate even if i disagree what i'm advocating, particularly if i think the person is misinformed, or i think they're giving a knee-jerk response or if i just don't like their tone.
14 - as my childhood friend laura used to tell me, i think i'm funny when i'm not. but even when i'm not, i still think i am. and sometimes i think being mean is funny.
15 - i'm over-sensitive and pick apart every insult, slight and backhanded comment, but don't necessarily think twice about the ones i've handed out over the years.
16 - i speak in absolutes even though it annoys me when other people (like newscasters) do it.
17 - i correct people's grammar. and grammar/spelling errors in ads. i mean, seriously, people...if you're going to publish something to millions of people, do you really want to look like an idiot?
18 - i eat baby animals. and i don't really feel bad. maybe a little bit. but really, is it any worse to eat a baby than it is to eat its mother? i submit to you that it is not. also, i saw a t-shirt once that said, "meat is murder...tasty tasty murder" and i thought it was funny.
19 - i stress out about driving anywhere/anyplace i'm unfamiliar. my least favorite thing to do is drive around in an unfamiliar area, in an unfamiliar car (like a rental) looking for someplace i'm not sure exits, particularly using googlemaps. once i took a classmate's head off when i was driving for a school trip. not literally.
20 - i suck at moderation. yesterday i ate a half bag of dove dark chocolates before noon. today i ate the rest. before 10am. i cannot limit my intake of anything. as soon as i tell myself i'm setting a limit, i immediately want more. so when i tell myself, only 20 oz of dc today, i, of course drink 60, even though the past few days i've only had as much as 24 oz.

so that's it for now. there are more. probably some you're thinking of right now...i just won't admit to them. :P

*I have given up diet coke and all other forms of caffeine (except maybe excedrin) see counter below...**


**update: i couldn't find a counter that starts at a particular date and counts up the number of days/hours/seconds i've been without caffeine. so. i will just tell you. i have been caffeine free as of sunday october 19 at approximately 11am. we're excluding chocolate from this particular endeavor.

indecision 2008

ok this has nothing to do with politics. sorry.*

i have done so much recently (seriously, i'm so blessed), and am so far behind on blogging i don't know where to start. so pick a post below and i'll start there.

memorial day duck
my heart will go on (the best holiday ever)
i'm an artist. no, really.
suckfest 2008
bleeding love. keep keep bleeding love.
run. drive. sleep? repeat.
dc spy hunt
dutch bike dutch
early birds in NYC
don't stop believing

ok readyyyyyyyyy....GO!


*but really i'm not

i rock

mary and i went country dancing last week. i spent a long time talking to a construction worker* covered in tattoos, who was married, with 5 kids and proclaimed himself incapable of love because the girlfriend he had at 14 was brutally stabbed with a pair of scissors 37 times with "I heart ?" carved on her chest. he told mary that he was incredulous that i don't have a boyfriend and that if he weren't married, he'd snatch me up in an instant. ignoring the fact that i would probably not actually date him for a myriad of reasons, i really needed that.

i will tell you, though, why i don't have a boyfriend. it's because i'm awesome. i grew up an awesome fish in a pretty decent sized pond. and then went to college as an awesome fish in a decent-sized lake. and in grad school, i was one of the few awesome lds girls. yes. i rock. but, so do the other zillion women in the dc metropolitan area. and with a male-to-female ratio of 1:2.3 (the actual statistic from ward conference last year), being just another awesome fish in the sea is equivalent to being just another fish in the sea. not so advantageous. so, men - single men of the mormon persuasion - you should move out here. there are plenty of big fish for you to catch. whether you prefer to cast a fly, bait a hook or set your net, i promise, you'll catch something awesome.


*despite what the rest of the sentence may lead you to believe, he was a great conversationalist and was very interesting to talk to.

happy anniversary!

to me. i started working at sidley exactly one year ago. ahhh...those were the innocent days of 35-hour workweeks with leisurely lunches and actually asking partners for work to do. funny how much a year can change your perspective.

can i quit now?

please?