Fish Sticks and Green Jello

Today I came home to find cat barf all over my new couch. Then as I was stripping off the couch covers to take them to the dry cleaner I came upon the dog who had just finished eating the large pile of cat barf on the floor. Ugh. I can't imagine how people are single parents. Being a single pet parent is hard enough sometimes.

I'm starting to plan my next trip to Paris. I was hesistant about going back to Paris versus going somewhere else but since I'm taking French and I'd like to relax a bit on my next big vacation it seems like the logical choice. I've already done most of the touristy stuff so this time around I can spend more time just hanging out in the city. It looks like two of my girl friends are going to be able to go next year (I hope!) so that will be really fun. We're planning on renting an apartment this time around which will save us a lot of money.

Other than that, nothing really new to report. I'm going to Chemical Brothers tomorrow night. That should be fun, even though I'm lazy and hate going out on a work night. I feel like so little of my time is my own so I relish the alone moments I get at home. Also I'm not sure when going to dinner and a movie became more fun then going out and party'ing all the time. The last time I went out and partied a bunch I thought I was going to die from alcohol poisoning the next day. I think I'm getting too old to party that hard. On that note, I should get my beauty rest.

Tonight I had dinner in Berkeley with an old friend from sfnet. It was great to see him and reconnect with someone I'd know years ago. He'd just gotten back to town and had just been through a very traumatic breakup to someone he'd been engaged to. I can imagine how painful it must be but I can't say anything that bad has every happened to me. Don't get me wrong... PLENTY of bad relationships have happened to me and plenty of bad things have happened in them. But I can't say I was ever engaged to someone who left me. That's got to be the worst feeling in the world.

He seemed to be holding it together pretty well though and I have high hopes that he'll be doing just fine in the future. How long, I don't know.... and even though I don't believe in God or any of that type of stuff I still think things happen for a reason. What that reason is may not be evident at the time but there's a reason! Okay so that's probably a pretty silly thing to believe in but it gets me through the day and so far it hasn't been a bad theory. Works for me so I'm keeping it.

Halloween is coming up here pretty quick and I picked out a Costume I want to rent from the Costume Bank. It's a little bo peep costume. I have to try and get there early on Friday to get it before someone else does since they don't start renting them until then. I'm not sure how I feel about dressing up this year, seems like a hassle. If I'm going to go as Bo Peep though I have to make Toby a sheep costume for our work costume party. That would be perfect. I doubt they'll let him into the cafeteria though since they don't let dogs in there.

I'm also not sure what I'm doing on Halloween. There's a lot to do though. I got invited to a party that's being held by someone I knew on sfnet. I might go to that since the friend I mentioned above will be going so I'll know someone else there at least. Also there's a play in Berkeley that my friend Amrah is inviting folks to go to that may be fun as well. I have some time to think about it at least.

This week another old friend that I've known for 13 years is coming up from SoCal for the weekend. She'll be arriving Thursday night so I'll be heading down to Santa Cruz to have dinner with her and then we'll both be staying over at Chris' house. Then on Friday I may hook up with another old friend from 12 years ago in SF. It will be great to see everyone! The key thing though is to try and maintain these friendships and not let years and years go by before I see people again. Its tough with people scattered all over the place but I know I've sure missed everyone.

The other day I was on friendster and I saw a bulletin board message from my friend Theo. He wanted to know if anyone else was interested in going to New Orleans with him, his friends Shawn, Danae and Mark. The catch was though that you had to buy your plane ticket by Midnight that night to get the special $99 each way deal.

Year before last I was invited to go on this trip in May. I did the usual "Oh I dunno if I can afford it" thing and never went. This year has been my year of just going for it. For example I've been wanting to go back to London and to Paris for years and years and this year I finally did it. So... I got ahold of Theo, talked my friend Virginia into going with and sharing a room and we bought our tickets!

So I'll be heading to the Big Easy for the first time on November 12th for four days! I can't wait. This is going to be such a great trip. Along the lines of the group trips I used to take when I went to Viva Las Vegas all the times I did. Party! I've been wanting to go to New Orleans for the last ten plus years so I'm really excited. I'm glad my friend Virginia is going as well since she never really gets the chance to cut loose, so this will be good for her.

I have my home page on my browser set to My Yahoo. I have a weather module that's been on this page for a very long time. In this module I list the places I generally go to, like, Richmond, Virginia or Seattle, Washington. Then I list all the local cities and lastly I list places I want to go. Namely London, Paris and New Orleans. This has really been my year as far as realizing my travel dreams. The key thing though is to keep it up. Like next year, I'm going back to Paris. I still want to go to Italy at some point and back to New York as well. I'm dying to go on a lazy cruise to the bahamas or something. I wish I was rich. All I'd do is jet around the world.

I miss traveling sometimes. I grew up all over the world, so I miss seeing some of the exotic things I used to see day to day. I miss incredible sunsets and tropical beaches. I miss green rainforests and amazing waterfalls. I miss exotic animals and cultures. Hrm, I should to go Thailand one of these days too. So much to see!

I created my first tribe on tribe.net devoted to Solitaire Showdown and other Launch games. Now let's see if anyone joins. The object is to find buddies for people to play with. Here's the URL: http://solitaireshowdown.tribe.net

I'm putting this in my blog so others may find it via Google while searching on Solitaire Showdown. If you've found your way here come join my tribe!

I eat up stories like this. Today's a bonanza day for Oddly Enough stories on Yahoo. My favorite source of weird news. Here's another one for you:

"British Man does 'Loch Ness Marathon'"

This reminds me of the exhibit I saw of Damien Hirst art in London at the Saatchi Gallery. It was sliced up cows, sharks and sheep in blue formaldehyde. This is similar, except it's humans! Why doesn't this tour through here?

Visit the Body Worlds site!

See selected works from the exhibition!

Read about the controversy over including an ape in the exhibition!

Oh and while you're at it, you might as well take a gander at this fun article: "Man Kills Friend, Drinks Blood".

Enjoy!

I present to you a shining example of Dave's thumb in one of my photos. This is me near the Eiffel Tower. This is me and Dave's THUMB near the Eiffel Tower. Please click on the THUMBnail, to see a larger version of the photo. I'd like to add that some friends of mine just got back from their two weeks in Europe and their photos are lovely. LOVELY. As opposed to our amateur photos. Truly bums me out. Plus it wasn't hot as hades when they went. Some people are lucky. Things just go smoothly for them. Then you have people like me where some things seem to be a real uphill battle.

Congratulations to my friend Amrah for winning First Place in the September Photo Contest at nerve.com. A $500 prize to her and her friend Liz. Great photo too!

I'm in the midst of reading Urban Tribes. So far so good. I'm hoping I find some kind of enlightenment from it or something. In the meantime I plan on renewing some old friendships and going that route for awhile. I miss my friends. Relationships tend to derail you a bit when it comes to hanging out with your friends on a regular basis. I found this Q&A with the author Ethan Watters on nerve.com. They even talk to him about Friendster in it.

About Friendster.... I'm so fed up with it. I'm hoping all my friends make the switch over to tribe.net. At tribe the mail isn' t slow and the mail count isn't inaccurate. It doesn't lose the email you just wrote and show you bulletin board postings from people ONLY in your friend list. You get to see posts from people within different degrees of you as you choose. Which in my opinion is a better way to get to know your friends, friends and so on. Also you can join "tribes" or community groups of people with similar interests where you can exchange recipes or talk about music or whatever else floats your boat. It's worth checking out at least.

Anyway, I've been up many a late night the last couple of weeks. Bad. I also can't decide if I'm going to dress up for Halloween this year. I haven't in years and I feel like it would be fun if I did but I can't think of anything. I thought about going as one of the Slytherin Students from Harry Potter but thats been done a million times. Although what costume HASN'T been done a million times? I don't know, what do you think? Prom Queen? Slytherin? Disco Chick? Actually I'd like to do the disco thing but I can't seem to find a really cool dress. I saw one online but it was already sold. Send me your suggestions for costumes if you have any. Also send me your suggestions for places to get a cool costume besides ebay. Thanks!

As my friend Dave said, "It's like watching a bad Saturday Night Live Skit". What's making me nuts right now is that none of my friends voted yes on the recall and none of them voted for Arnold, and none of their friends voted that way and so on... yet the recall and Arnold still won! UGH! Not that Gray Davis was a great Governor or anything but come on people! We now have an ACTOR as Governor of California! A Republican actor! (Anyone remember Ronald Reagan? HELLOOO?) A non gay marriage supporting ACTOR. A female groping, nazi supporting, AUSTRIAN ACTOR!

I'm so mad and bitter right now I can't stand it.

As a follow up to my last entry I present to you my friend Amrah's "Dating Tips". Bear in mind some of this is meant to be humorous but there's a basic underlying message here as well.

Also while you're there be sure to check out her rant about the response she got on her Dating Tips in her confessional. Look for the 8/29/03 entry. Good stuff.

So I have this friend, who's name I won't mention, who dates a lot of women in the bay area. So one time he was dating this woman for awhile who was okay but not really what he was looking for. They had fun together though I guess. I can't recall how long he said they dated but at some point he decided that he just wasn't really into her that much. This is of course after all the fooling around etc. So one day he stops returning her calls... and then she stops calling. He told me that it was cool of her to get the hint right away and not continue to push the envelope by calling.

I have another friend, a girl who's name I won't mention also, who dated a guy she met online for about 6 weeks, I believe. Then one day he stopped returning her calls. She kept trying to get ahold of him though and she eventually did. I think the gist of what he told her at that point was that he figured she would have gotten the message that he didn't want to see her anymore by the fact that he hadn't bothered to call her.

I think 9 out of 10 guys in the bay area want one thing, S-E-X. A girl friend of a friend has a rule where she won't go all the way with a guy until after 90 days. I think she has a 30 day and 60 day rule as well but I'm forgetting it right now. Now this is smart in my opinion. What better way to weed a player out then to make him wait 90 days for it. Of course in this day and age women are just as capable of loving and leaving as men are but I think it's a bit harder. I know I tend to get attached sometimes even when I don't want to or I know I shouldn't. Then again I've always loved a challenge.

What I don't get is why can't men just say, "look it was fun but I'm not interested" or just a plain old "hey, I'm not interested". I know men are afraid women are going to freak out on them but some contact would be nice, even a polite email would do. Although a brush off email, letter or phone call can suck too. Take the friend I mentioned in my first story... he went out with a girl for 6 months and fearing how much she would freak out on him proceeded to break up with her by mailing her a letter! He dropped her off with a bye see you later then went home, wrote a letter, mailed it to her and never talked to her again. I'm sure he's going to kill me for writing all this in my blog but hey, I didn't mention any names.

Another guy I knew that played women would excuse his behavior by saying that women in SF had "issues" so therefore they weren't worth having relationships with. My girl friend's retort to that was, "Who do you think caused us to have issues in the first place?!". I've had my own fair share of experiences with men like this. I liked a certain guy once a couple of years ago who stated often that he did not like to date and preferred to remain alone. Of course after we hooked up I found out he was dating up to two other women and none of them knew about each other. Ugh. I could go on forever with stories like this, but I think you get the point.

My friend Jenn recommended a book on her blog the other day that I've ordered from Amazon. It's called, Urban Tribes. Here's a brief caption: "If you're between 25 and 39, single and a college-educated city dweller, you have been identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as one of the fastest-growing groups in America – the "never marrieds". Upon realizing he and his friends had been labeled, Watters set out to investigate, finding that to fill the gap of time young people spend in between families, they have created a new type of community: urban tribes."

I'll be sure to post my thoughts on it once I've read it. Of course I have to finish reading the latest Harry Potter first. :)

I've been making a really horrifying discovery about myself over the last two months. I no longer like to shop in the Juniors section. Okay so I don't ALWAYS shop in the Juniors section but my staple clothes usually come from there. If I've had to pick up a nice dress I'd go splurge at Betsey Johnson or something.

I always looked at the nice pricey clothes online but I never seriously considered purchasing any of it. The closest I came to overspending was getting my jeans at Lucky Brand which isn't particularly cheap. Anyway I was at Nordstrom's and Macy's recently and I actually spent the whole time shopping on the "adult" floor. It was great too. I've realized over the years that you get what you pay for. Especially when it comes to clothes. You want something to fit well and make you look fabulous even when you're not so fabulous? You gotta pay for it. I just wish I had more money!

This brings me to another realization. It's time to clean out my closet. Sell those dresses I never wear. It's hard to sell clothes whether online on ebay or at a second hand shop. Just seems like no one's buying cause no one has a job. Recently I gave away an entire bag of clothes I had slated to sell at a thrift shop because I knew I couldn't get rid of it any other way and I was sick of it being in my car. Good sellable stuff too. It just wasn't worth going back to the thrift store again and again until they bought it all, or it was in season or whatever. Time is money and the money I'd have gotten from that was definitely not worth my time. My Betsey dresses and other such items should fetch a decent price I hope. Although you can get Betsey stuff pretty cheap on Ebay. Maybe if I had a big walk in closet this wouldn't be an issue. My closet space is very limited though.

So the biggest problem with adult shopping is finding places that carry enough of the brand name stuff you're looking for. Nordstrom's for example carries Paper, Denim and Cloth Jeans as well as Seven for all Mankind and Miss Sixty. BUT, they don't carry a wide enough variety of these items. They carry all the light faded wash jeans but none of the dark jeans. What's up with people not wanting dark jeans? Anyway, that means probably having to go up to SF which is a pain in the ass.

I don't know if you can tell but I think I might be a bit depressed or bored or something hence the new fixation on image. Plus I've spent the last two years not really caring and not going out. It's time to get out more and start looking good. Oh and I saw some really cute dresses at Bebe yesterday. A store I usually never go to but they have some cute stylish dresses there. I was impressed. I think I need to make a lot more money than I'm making. No, I know I need to make more money. Or marry rich or something. Oh wait, I'm never getting married, I'm supposed to die alone with too many pets. That's right. Silly me.