My Thirties so far (as reviewed in tweets)

In January 2011, I turned 30, and man was I pumped about it. My twenties as a whole were a rough decade and I was going to take my thirties by storm. I was ready! And then all of a sudden it was January 2012 and I was turning 31…

And I was not happy about it. AT. ALL. A funny thing happened, I believed that taking my thirties by storm meant everything had to happen in one year. I was sad, I was disappointed. Thirty had not been as amazing as I had planned. It’s been a few months and I’ve lightened up some, but I still have dark moments. Moments thinking, what if the next 9 years  are the same and nothing changes and nothing is amazing and then I’m 40. FORTY. OMG. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!?!?!?!

Last night I got a nice dose of perspective as I was randomly scrolling through my old tweets. I guess Thirty wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, it was a pretty great year. I needed this.

“Hello from the 20! That’s right – we got field access ” – Feb 6, 2011 @ Dallas Stadium for the Superbowl

“So if you buy 6 bottles you get 10% off. But if you buy 10, you get the 10% off plus a look that silently asks if you are okay.” – 2/26/11 @ Total Wine buying the wine for book club at my place.

“Totally copping out by sending an email to tell a guy that I didn’t want to see him again. Avoiding his texts got too exhausting.” “Also… if @elizabeth_cw is much later to BSP, I may have to break up with her too” – 3/18/11 at BSP with EW (eventually)

“Poolside with a mimosa. Not a bad way to start the afternoon.” 3/26/11 in Clearwater, Florida on a station trip.

“‘Mickey Mouse You too!’ – SW #disneyappropriatecurses” – 4/3/2011 @ Disneyworld for a wedding.

“Got my new passport in the mail today, so… The govt has my permission to shutdown if they are so inclined.” – 4/8/11 @ home.

“He said, “I’ll wear you down eventually, even if it takes 2 years. We have all the same friends” I said, “I’ll make new friends” – 4/9/11

“Is it bad that I said yes when the Party City lady asked if the Princess Tiara was for my daughter” – 4/29/11 @ Party City buying a tiara for a Royal Wedding Party.

“Excited for Six Flags Today!” – 6/18/11 on my way to Six Flags for the first time since I moved to Atlanta.

“Walking Rusty after a couple margaritas is no easy task. I mean, the poor guy is stumbling all over the place”  - 6/24/11 after walking Rusty after having a few drinks at a summer work happy hour.

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just gave Keanu Reeves the job and ended this whole lock out think. Just Saying #badjoke #thereplacements” – 6/28/11

“In case anyone needs a unique compliment someday… my grandpa just told me I’m as handy as a pocket in a shirt” – 7/3/11 in Missouri visiting my grandpa.

“Cruising past Canada. Can’t wait to hit Alaska tomorrow!” – 7/9/11

“Taking tequila shots at Old Decatur Courthouse. I’d say it’s time to hit the dance floor…” – 7/23/11 at K&N’s wedding reception

“You know it’s a good night when you get home from book club and it’s technically the next day ” – 8/9/11 @ home after a super-sized book club.

“Wine & Cheese Happy Hour at work is the perfect precursor to Shade & Shots at the Botanical Gardens!” – 8/18/11 sometime in between the two…

‘Somali Pirates sentenced to life. Really? Couldn’t we have been more creative with that. Gang Plank over sharks or something…” – 8/23/11 and I still wholeheartedly stand behind this statement.

“Ready to dance to Yacht Rock at Park Tavern with Jools:)” – 9/2/11 @ Park Tavern

” ‘This is not Camp Hell, This is Camp Boring Ass Movie’ – me. ‘Yeah, when’s the murdering going to start’ – LH” – 10/12/11 @ my place for scary movie night with the girls.

“LH, Don’t you mean “The Orchestra – starring former members of ELO” Good Times at Epcot!” 10/21/11 in Orlando for Horror Nights and Epcot Food and Wine Festival

“If my mom had invented SIRI, then she would have been programmed to tell me to enunciate after everything I say” – 11/10/11 after getting my very first (and so far only) iPhone

and finally…

“I kind of want to get blue solo cups for Saturday just as a joke for AB. I think she’d appreciate it.” – 1/11/12, or as I like to call it 31 years after the most amazing person on the planet was born.

Special mention to a couple of my favorite tweets written by someone else when I was thirty.

” Given our current economic status, I wonder if LFO would now settle for girls who wear Aeropostale” – @jscottmoore
“When a server asks, ‘Diet Pepsi okay?’ The proper response is ‘Do I look like a murderer?!’”  @kellyoxford

OMG, can you believe it…

I’ve actually found a minute to post on my blog. Technically I should be inputting TV rates right now, but I need a break.

Some random stuff’s been happening lately – mostly great stuff.  Sorry I haven’t been writing as frequently. My life has been mostly work and Rusty so I haven’t had much to say. I’m really going to try to get better. To start, here’s an update.

* I turned 30 this month. I’m okay with it. My 20′s weren’t great as a decade, so I’m thinking my 30′s are going to kick some A. To celebrate I had a real grown up party at a bar and paid for appetizers and everything.  Then I went to Vegas over MLK weekend with my sister to drink all day and see some shows.

* I got a promotion at work, one I’ve been waiting for since 2009. Super pumped about the raise and the “Senior” now in front of my title.

* I’ve had Rusty for 5 months now, which is longer than he was with his foster family so I’m hoping that now  he knows I’m going to keep him forever and ever and ever.

* David Berkeley’s new album, “Some Kind of Cure” that came out this week is Awesome. You should definitely buy it.

* I’m going to the Superbowl! One of my FOX stations invited me, so I’m taking my brother and heading to Dallas next week. It would have been nice if the Falcons or Chiefs made it, but oh well, it should be a blast anyways. There is a party Saturday and pre/post game reception things that we get to go to. I don’t know if stars go to the network stuff or the Superbowl in general, but I’m just going to go ahead and throw this out there. If, by any chance I meet Jesse Spencer at any of these FOX events, I may not come back to Atlanta, because he will definitely fall in love with me & I’ll have to move to LA. Just Saying.

* Last weekend I went out with a couple of friends and KD’s little sis, who is 22. There was another young girl dancing at the bar and she was wearing the UGLIEST outfit I’ve ever seen. I really tried to be sneaky and get a picture but it didn’t work out so I’m going to try to describe it… She was wearing a buttoned-up red plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to about mid fore-arm. The shirt itself was ok, but she had it tucked into a white/cream-colored skirt that can only be described as a cross between a tablecloth and a diaper. All of her friends were dressed relatively normal so she really stood out. I asked KD’s little sis if that is what people her age dressed like and she said no, so I don’t think it’s some new trend I don’t know about. It was just hideous and my description probably doesn’t make it sound hideous enough, but it’s all I’ve got.

All right, I better get back to it.

Thursday Thoughts

* Went to Orlando a couple of weeks ago for Horror Nights at Universal, Islands of Adventure, and the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot. I’m a wuss. I pretty much screamed at everything that jumped out at me in the haunted houses. Add that to a day of screaming for fun on the roller coasters at Islands of Adventure and my voice sounded pretty awesome by the end of the trip.

* For Halloween, I stole my costume idea from an 11-year-old. I’m okay with that.

* I’ve spent entirely too much time following the #tweetyour16yearoldself hash tag on twitter today. Realized that I don’t really have anything to say to my 16-yr-old self (at least nothing twitter appropriate)

* I’m currently going through sugar withdrawals because our office Halloween candy is down to only yucky stuff.

* I’ve got a Beers of the World party to go to this weekend where I need to bring an import or microbrew. Any suggestions? I’m not very good at picking out good beers so I probably won’t win.

* Rusty has pretty much become ruler of my house. Not sure how I feel about that, but I’m such a sucker that now he’s sleeping on the bed more and more. I can’t help it.

Technology is great… now.

I wonder how much trouble I would have been in growing up if all the technology we have at our fingertips would have been available when I was  in high school.

Basically, I was watching Gossip Girl last night and Jenny got called out for drug dealing and then got in trouble with her dad. This made me think how much trouble I would have gotten in if information was sooooooo available. Some people probably watch this show and think, this is nothing like my high school. Not me, minus the price tags, this was exactly like my high school experience. Drinking, partying, sex, backstabbing – it was all there

Don’t get me wrong, I never dealt drugs or anything quite so illegal, but I did get up to some things that I’m glad weren’t on the Internet minutes later. The most technological advancement that ever busted me was *69.

I just know that if they were available my Mom would have been all over Facebook and texting and anything else that came along. I don’t know if I would have been able to stop her.

So while, I really enjoy everything we have now, I’m really glad that when I was in high school all we had were pagers and pay phones.

In case you’ve ever questioned my organization skills*

This weekend was pretty relaxing – which is funny if you consider I didn’t really relax at any point.

Like most of the weekends since the beginning of the year, there was a 30th birthday to celebrate. This weekend, it was Nate’s turn, so Friday night I headed to his place for a surprise party – unfortunately one of his out-of-town friends spoiled the surprise by sending him a text 30 minutes early.The party was the extent of my social interactions this weekend.

Saturday I caught up on some TV in the morning and then eventually got dressed and headed to Home Depot to discuss painting some rooms in my house – main questions were what kind of paint to use that is washable if the stairwell gets scuffed up and what do I do about the wall paper in the extra bathroom – paint over it, take it down. In about 5 minutes flat the guy at Home Depot talked me out of doing any of it myself  (kind of the anti-salesman if you ask me) so painting will have to hold off a bit until I can schedule someone to come do all the rooms at once.

Next up, in the process of vacuuming and mopping, I also decided to dust everything in my place – it’s been ages and was starting to annoy me. In the process of dusting the desk in my room, I looked at it and decided that instead of just swiffering everything I actually needed to pull out the Old English and do it right. While in the process of then going around the house and putting everything back where it belongs, I decided I wanted to move stuff around here and there. I’m not lying when I say this, it took me about an hour to get this how I wanted it…

The sad thing is, that even if you’ve been to my house, you probably can’t tell me what changed. But I know. I KNOW. For the record there are only 7 things out of the 17 things that are in the same place they were before. Counting the books as one thing, there are 3 new things and 8 things I took away. If I ignore the fact that the silver pieces really need to be polished, I’m pretty happy with this set up.

After I finished putting everything back where I wanted it, I was pretty over cleaning and just ready to read a little bit and go to bed.

Sunday, I got up intent on starting and finishing The Help for book club tonight. That did not happen. Instead I decided that I need to buy some clear shoe boxes for my closet so I went to The Container Store bought a case of 20 and went to town on my closet..

For the record, the 16 boxes showing replaced about 30 shoe boxes of varying sizes, colors, and shapes, but all labeled with tape and magic marker. (All of which I broke down to recycle causing about a bazillion paper cuts)Anyways, really I’m saving a ton of space by having clear unlabeled boxes because now I only need enough for the out of season half of my shoes – Brilliant. After I did this, all my purses on the second shelf got jealous of my shoes, so…

I went back to The Container Store and bought a few more boxes for my purses. There were a couple nice purses that I’ve been keeping in the cloth bags they came with, so I always forget I have them – that won’t be a problem anymore now that I can see them all.

I also decided that I needed to work on clearing out my DVR since I switch to AT&T this week so I watched all the backlogged episodes of House Hunters, Ellen and Jeopardy while doing a few hours of work stuff.

In the end, I did not read a single page of The Help all weekend, but I did finish Tyler Stanton’s Everyday Absurdities.

*ha, like that would ever happen.

Remind me of this post…

if I ever tell you I want bangs.

Blondie turned 30 last week. To celebrate she had an alter ego party. At first I was digging the wig with bangs and all. I was even thinking, hmmm, maybe I should get bangs. But a few hours later and I was all like, man, these bangs are driving me nuts. I guess it’s a good thing I had a test run…

What’s so tacky about Christmas?

First let me apologize for my recent lack of writing. I know you are all dying without me, but work has been busy. Second, this isn’t a serious post, so if that’s what you’re expecting from the title, sorry to disappoint.

Somehow, I have ended up with three different tacky Christmas parties to go to this weekend with my friends. I don’t know if this is just a trend of the last few years or if this has always been a trend people follow at Christmastime and I was just too young to notice. Whatever the reason, it puzzles me.

I get that there are tacky sweaters out there and I get that some people actually wear them, but to actually have to go buy one just to go to a party and have people tell me it’s tacky. I don’t understand. I’m not such a big fan of dressing up anyways and now I have to dress up for Christmas. What happened to just having a party and looking nice. Someone someday is going to look at pictures from the 2000′s and wonder why we were all such lame holiday dressers.

My family has never been a tacky Christmas kind of family. We are a list making, buy you what you want kind of family (favorite presents include a TV in my room, my own phone and a Cabbage Patch Kid who still resides in my guest room) So except for a dozen or so matching jewelry boxes that my sister and I received each year from an aunt, I’ve never really gotten a tacky Christmas present. If for some only God knows why reason I actually asked for clothes, my mom would take my sister shopping with her as a tacky buffer or vice versa.

The only time I can remember receiving clothes that I thought at the time were tacky*, was actually on my sister’s birthday and it was my own fault. My grandma took me shopping with her for sis’s bday and for whatever reason I was really mad at my sister that day. There were these two matchy navy and white outfits – one with a skirt and one with shorts. the one with a skirt was really super cute. The one with shorts, not so much. My grandma asked me which one she should get my sister and me being a vindictive little 7-year-old** I said the one with shorts. To this day I don’t know if my grandma read my mind and was punishing me or if she was just being nice, but she decided that she was going to get outfits for both of us, so she got my sister the one with a skirt and me the one with shorts. Touche Grandma, touche.

On that note, I have successfully avoided tacky holiday outfits for almost 29 years*** but I think I’m going to give in this year and head to Wal-Mart**** after work to find something to wear this weekend. I think I should get bonus tacky points for wearing whatever I find three times in one weekend also. If that’s not tacky, I’m not sure what is.

* Looking back, a lot of my clothes were tacky, but at the time I really really liked them.
**Guessing on the age, but 7 sounds about right.
***My birthday’s in less than a month – get excited, and if you need a list of what to get me, I’ve got it covered.
****Because surely I can find something tacky there.

Weekend Re-do

This weekend was great – partly because it included today…

Friday night, Blondie and I went to a friends Halloween party. I played a pathetic game of beer pong, but it was okay because I somehow managed to convince my partner to drink all the beer, so really I just threw the ping-pong ball in the right direction a few times. The only one I actually made bounced off the competitor’s hand and into the cup.

Since Saturday was so yucky I spent most of it inside until a last-minute shopping spree to help my brother finish his costume. Saturday night, I met up with some friends at B&LH’s house. We watched a little bit of some special on the scariest movie scenes and the beginning of Hellraiser, and finally headed out around midnight. We headed down to L5P for Halloween and listened to a band named The Howlies at Star Bar and then the boys wanted to hit up The Porter for last call. Somewhere along the way we came across a discarded doll in the street and spent our time at The Porter using LH’s plastic knife to kill the baby over and over again.

We left when they kicked us out and then hit up the dance floor at Corner Tavern. They closed down at 3 and we thought the night was over, but lo and behold Star Bar decided to give us the extra hour so we went in there and danced until 4 (or 3 depending on how you look at it). The boys were pretty patient with us girls. By the time I got home it was 5. I’m pretty sure the last time I stayed out that late I was probably 19 or 20. I paid for it yesterday though with a complete lack of motivation to do anything productive. The only time I changed out of my pj’s was when I went to get the last week’s worth of mail, so…

Today I didn’t go to work. I felt like I needed to have a do-over for Sunday, so I spent the day running some errands including finally getting new tennis shoes. Then because it was such a pretty day I decided to take a nice afternoon run since I had some daylight; did some household chores and made spaghetti for dinner. Now I’m just waiting for Gossip Girl to come on. It’s been a nice day. I guess I’ll have to go back to the real world tomorrow…