about this funny thing that happened . . .

Hokay.

So, this thing happened wherein my lovely bank, the bastards, decided that my debit purchase at Pitaya was unusualy for my account and they put an effing hold on my card. During this hold my domain name was set to automatically renew . . . . which it could not do because it could not charge my card. As such, my domain has now lapsed and I have been returned unceremoniously to the blogspot world.

The address here will be: www.ordinarycircus.blogspot.com for the foreseeable future.

Dammnit it all anyways.

nip/tuck, boot camps and more!

Still working on that getting healthy thing. So far, so good. I feel like I'm eating in a more healthy fashion - at least, I'm more aware of my hunger and I tend to over-eat less. However, I did have a huge plate of nachos last night - you win some, you lose some.

I'm watching nip/tuck obsessively and have come to the conclusion that plastic surgery rarely looks as good as its meant to. And so, to ward off any lingering fantasies of a lipo-fixing everything-lunchtime procedure I've signed up for a boot camp. Of course, the pre-req is being able to run a mile so. . . . . you know, it'll be awhile before I attend class.

Speaking of class! I haven't given up on writing, those programs are still waiting and Boston is still calling, but! to pass the time, I've signed up for an entrepreneurial class. I avoided all business/math/accounting/economic-esque classes my entire life; however, the older I get the more I think it's probably smart of have a small idea of what it takes to run my own life.

This post is extraordinarily boring, maybe because I just finished an awful book about an amazing kid: Dove.

This kid, at 16, circumnavigated the world in an abysmally small sailboat, got married, had a kid and moved to Montana. In 6 years. Pretty outstanding, except that the book was horrid. Boring, cliched and written as if dictated by one of my mother's third graders. I was more entertained by the Wiki article about the same boy than the book which I finished in two evenings. Back to Bill Bryson, I guess.

A Non-Milestone

This is my 100th blog on this site and to celebrate I am going to write about the Gap. Or rather, about how the Gap online store is closed and how stupid I think that is on a Sunday afternoon when everyone AND their mother is at home and too lazy to go to an actual store. "We're sorry, our site is temporarily unavailable," is just NOT the message I want to read when I'm coming down from an argument-cum-panic attack. Hello, shop therapy anyone? Gap, you are contributing to my psychoses by withholding my prescription.

Also, withholding has two "h"s. Who knew?

HGTV . . . again.

Okay, so I promised myself I would stop with the HGTV-nesting thing. But, BUT I'm annoyed. So, here it goes. It is no secret that I watch My First Place and House Hunters as obsessively as some certain people watch football (I'm looking at you, you crazy fantasy footballers). After several hundred-million episodes I have developed one serious tic. I hate, yes hate, when people walk into a home and go: oh, but I hate this paint color. . . really? I mean. REALLY?

The paint color?

It drives me crazy.

There's no dishwasher, the bathroom is tiny, the master is cramped but it's the PAINT that you're worried about? Please, take your $500,000 elsewhere you design-dumb douchebag.

Body Image Issues

I have a serious issue with the way my body looks. Regardless of how active I am (or aren't), how thin I am (or aren't) I always see the same flabby body in the mirror. I am super self-conscious and self-degrading.

In an effort to fix this, because logically I know it's ridiculous, I did a Juice Cleanse last weekend (which was a disaster, basically) and now I've started on a regimen that Glamour (yes Glamour, the magazine) has put together.

It's a twelve week program that regulates my diet, creates work out plans and forces me to blog (there and here) which keeps me honest and hopefully active.

This will hopefully get me on track to be HEALTHY (versus thin) and hopefully, happy. I'll be eating better! Working on my strength (which is important, especially because my knee has been hurting)! and Getting me moving!

Day 1 is tomorrow at 9 am. Wish me luck!

The ZOO

This is a zoo post. Seriously, I am posting about a trip to the zoo. A trip that I took.

I am twelve years old and this is show and tell.

All pictures were taken with my iPhone at the Tacoma Point Defiance Zoo. My last memory of this particular zoo were pretty dim; I think there was construction, the animals were subdued.

Today, the weather was cool-ish and we (my mom and I) went during feeding/play time. It was probably one of the better zoo experiences I've had recently or ever. There were baby tigers feeding with their mama and NEW! clouded leopards which are extremely rare. The keeper was playing with one of the leopards which acted exactly like a puppy except, you know, lethal. The Polar Bears were pretty frisky and crowds were decently low. I was able to snag a front row view at every habitat.

Rare Clouded Leopards




Leeeeeeeeeeemurs




Fighting Polar Bears. I am an awesome photographer. This was totally planned. . .

??

Um, an egg recall because of a salmonella scare?

. . . wait, what?

WTF, Nebraska!

speaking of saving money

Ok, so, even though I'm making more money this summer and spending less than I originally budgeted I'm still all about a good coupon.

I introduce: GROUPONS!

I got $50 dollars worth of GAP clothing for TWENTY-FIVE bucks, yo.

The deals range from Zoo memberships to cheap-as-heck haircuts. Just recently a top-salon featured a haircut and styling for on 30 bucks. They have everything from restaurants to bars to mani-pedi packages.

It's sweet, really. I hear-by recommend.

Rent the Runway, juice cleanses . . . wait, what??

Two things that are absolutely girly of me:

1)I'm starting a Juice Cleanse similar to the BluePrint Cleanse lauded by all celebrities except that I'll be making and/or buying all my own juices rather than having a company ship me my menu. I've already started by eliminating caffeine, albeit slowly, avoiding meat and eating more veggies. I'm only going to do it for 3 days, days during which I won't be working because I'm little worried that the all liquid diet will leave me a little weak-kneed.
I'm excited because I've been filling up on crap - working at a sausage restaurant will do that for you - and I've been feeling sick for awhile. Hopefully, I can stick with it.

2)OMG! I'm in LOVE with Rent the Runway. For serious, it's about the coolest thing I've ever heard of. Girls, you can get thousand dollar dresses for a simple rental fee of 100 dollars. You get the dress for 4 days, you can spill wine; stick the zipper; lose a jewel from the fabric - no harm, no foul! It's perfect for those weddings, high school reunions or meeting-the-parents situations where you want to look on-of-a-kind snazzy but don't or, these days, can't drop the cash. WELL worth signing up, even just to window shop all the gorgeous designs.

Check it out!




It's strange for me to find this inner-girl, but refreshing too. My inner mean-steak has been peaking a lot lately so I'm hoping the cleanse plus this opportunity to save money are going to help me calm down, and get nice again. Not that I was very nice to begin with, but you know. If wishes were kisses...

pick-me-up

So. Yo. I had a bad day. BUT then MTV lovingly provided me with a rerun of Real World: New Orleans.

The scene: A street in front of their house, late evening.

RW Boy 1: Did you put my toothbrush in the toilet?

RW Boy 2: Oh, yeah, I totally did that. (And, I'm not kidding. He actually KNOWINGLY used the other guys toothbrush to clean the toilet - like that's not psychopathic.)

(Fighting obviously ensues. Let it be known that this fighting was pretty lame by MTV standards.)

RW girl: Guys, this is embarrassing.

Boys continue fighting.

RW girl cont.: There are people filming from that balcony. Do you want this caught on camera?

She strikes a chord. Boys suddenly stop fighting.
Obviously, they don't want this on YouTube. HD ONLY, bitches.



I mean. Does anyone else find it hilarious that a reality star (DURING the taping of THEIR reality show) is worried about being "caught" on camera???? Seriously.

Children's Books

I was having one of those tangent conversations the other day - you know the kind where you start in one alley and then all of a sudden you're on 5th avenue and then your back at the alley but not before you make fifteen stops along the way. Does this make sense? I mean, we just kept talking and it was very meander-y.

Somehow, a memory of a mouse who was a dentist and who helped a fox and didn't he remember? I mean, he had to remember? Except, he didn't and I'm talking about Dr. De Soto!

The conversation took a sharp left from there and we started talking about our favorite children's stories and I remembered the one about the donkey and the rock and then he turns into a rock and I'm talking about Sylvester and the Magic Pebble! Which, he also didn't remember.

Then, you must remember the one about the monsters and their ugly, ugly island and the pretty, pretty flower? Well, he didn't. And, I was so indignant! So, I googled the last one (whose title I couldn't remember) and then, and then, and then: Rotten Island!!!

A few more right turns later and I realized all those books which meant so much to me as a child - so much, that I was happy to snap and snarl at my friend for never having read them - all those books? Were written by the same man.

William Steig.

He also created Shrek.

I mean, seriously.

hipster-shmipster

I'm suffering through an insufferable HGTV obsession which inevitably leads me to online design websites such as: design*sponge or apartment therapy and this last one lead me on a tangent to nameberry. And all this combined got me thinking about all the things that hipsters have ruined for me.

Cool Baby Names
See: Hugo, Oliver, Lola, Theo, and Roman

Bicycles, leggings, FLANNEL, The Decemberists, etc., etc., etc..

Hipster, I think, has become the new WASP with all the negative connotations.

However, damn the man. Be I ever pregnant, I will happily raise my kids, Hugo and Lola, while wearing flannel and jamming to the Decemberists. I will live in my converted industrial-style loft with my hodge-podge coffee mugs and my vintage art and I will be happy, damn it.

Also, I want to live here:



(click here: Arielle's Carnevale House for a tour via apartment therapy).

Um?

I think this is totally cool and totally fucking weird.

She is having TWO babies, at once, but they're NOT twins. WTF?

Favorite "under the influence" memory . . .

Yo, okay, so I have a lot of memories from nights during which I consumed alcohol. Some good, some bad. However, this one memory popped into my head today and it is very innocent and therefore one of my favorites.

Me. Walking home from Finn MacCool's. Alone.

I remember the night - ish. I had had a tough day at work (who hasn't?) and had recently made some pretty big life changes. I was with my roommate T and after a couple G&T's we decided to continue drinking as quickly and as heavily as we could manage. Wise decision, I know. After a little Crown Royal, a free t-shirt, and a tear filled confession-esque conversation I left the bar.

This is the good part.

I popped in my headphones and cranked Kansas as loud as I could. (Loud enough that the next afternoon while crawling to work I actually yelped when the music first started blaring . . . yes, yelped.) And then? Then I started singing. Lil' ol' me. Walking down University Avenue at 1 or so A.M. singing top. of. my. lungs. To Kansas and I sang all the way home.

In retrospect I should be embarrassed but in reality I am so in love with the person who did that.

I mean, really, of all the things I could have done that night - all the directions I could have taken that last Whisky shot - I sang Carry on my Wayward Son for 10 blocks?

I'm, like, totally awesome.

Oh, so that's what they mean by too much alcohol. . .

Off to my cousin's wedding (the younger one's are getting hitched, y'all - this does not bode well) and then to Oregon for FOUR days. I have never been so silly-stupid excited for a mini-vacation. World Cup drained me and then some - ask me about it sometime; after I put my brain back in my skull I'll have some great stories. But for now, VIVA ESPAÑA.


Also, double-fisting coffee and water at 10:42 AM is a sure sign I was over-served last night. Shame on you, Big Time, shame.


(There is an overabundance of hyphens in this post, for this I apologize.)

Baskin Robbins is crazier than I am

They're getting rid of, get this, French Vanilla as a flavor. Let that sit for a minute.

They are, no seriously, they are getting. rid. of VANILLA as a FLAVOR.

Lame, Baskin Robbins, really, really lame.

Not surprisingly, French Vanilla is still America’s favorite ice cream.

Blindness

This started as a post about a book Blindness by José Saramago and now I'm not sure what it is. I think it's still a post about said book but it's also a total and complete ramble so . . . this is how my mind works these days. (It is especially how it works post-blogging craze of last summer.)

First, let me try and say something about the book. I'm almost done with it and people keep seeing me with it and asking the inevitable: How do you like it? This is almost always preceded by one of two things: 1) I heard about that book! So-and-so loved it. or (and more gruesome) 2: Oh that book, you know that guy just died.

The book, if you haven't heard about it (the author just died, you know), is about this society that's hit by an epidemic of blindness. Literally, people start going blind and well, shit gets crazy.

So, people keep asking me how I like it and I find myself saying over and over: OMG, I like, totally, like love it! And, then I add some frivolous comment about him being a good writer (which, seriously? He won the Nobel Prize for literature, obviously he can put a pen to paper) or about which line I liked best.

The thing is, I don't actually love this book and I keep trying to figure out why I say I do and why I say so, so automatically. I think this book is important; it has something important to teach us and I think that I keep telling people I love it because I want them to go out and get a copy and read it. Which got me thinking about False Advertising but that is a whole 'nother topic for a whole 'nother day.

Basically, my opinion about this book is super complicated and definitely does not fit into any one category. What I'm saying is, please read this book. It is such a cold and calculated look at our society, any society and how we act, how we would act under such strenuous circumstances. It is a rough read, and I have taken many breaks between chapters, but it is worth it. I promise.

progress is what we call it.

Mostly, this a music post.

First though a tiny update: I am still working at a restaurant in the University District and despite many complaints I love it. In fact, if you see me out and about complaining just smack me. I love my job. I still live with two bat-sh*t crazy girls (whom I love) and I still drink way more gin than is healthy or strictly necessary. Also, I've recently fallen back in love with College Athletics. Western zapped a lot of my fan-ish tendencies, mostly because we had no teams to speak of. . .at all, but now, working near UW and living with K I have re-learned to appreciate the absolute pleasure that comes from being a fan and watching your team win.

MUSIC.

I am on such a roller-coaster these days, kids.

FIRST: I. LOVE. KINGS OF LEON.







also, GIRL TALK



also, (and this is a rec from a friend . . . credit where credit is due) AYATOLLAH





also, NAUGHTY BY NATURE (OK. I know, I know, I KNOW I'm late to the party. Whatever, the 90s were fucking sweet and whenever I have top open at work I definitely tune our radio to the 90s station.)





See how I'm growing? I even went dancing TWICE last week. What? Also, I went to a classy bar AND I didn't submit to my G&T craving until well past midnight. Progress is what we call it kids.