I got spills, they're multiplyin...

About a month ago I attended the Bris of my best friend’s new baby boy. When I arrived I was so excited to see him that I didn’t bother taking off my coat and placing it in her room, instead I just marched upstairs and left my coat on the floor of the babies room next to my bag. A couple minutes later another friend of ours entered the room with her baby, who promptly spit up all over the floor… and my coat. I never blogged about this story because admittedly at the time I was super annoyed, but in hindsight it really was not a big deal. It could have been worse… he could have spit up into my $800 Louis Vuitton bag sitting just inches from my jacket.

I bring this up now however, because the other night at my friend Melissa’s birthday dinner at Tony DiNapoli’s I got spilled on again. Why am I some kind of magnet for this? Maybe I should carry around a roll of freaking Bounty with me everywhere I go. We were sitting at our table watching in awe as the busboys constructed these towering circus displays of cups and plates. It was amazing how quickly and with such ease they built their precarious structures and went on their way. Amazing, until at the table behind us, as the appetizer plates were being bussed and towers built, a huge wad of tomato sauce flew off the plate and onto my back. Are you kidding me?? Usually when you go to a restaurant you needn’t be concerned that while they’re clearing someone else’s table, you’ll end up as collateral damage and get hit with projectile tomato sauce. I mean really, these plate towers are quite impressive and efficient, but if that means I have to wear food… I seriously would recommend you lose the towers and make ANOTHER FUCKING TRIP to get the rest of the plates. Basically for the rest of the night, every time I saw them clearing a table within 10 feet of me, I wore my napkin on my back… like a cape. Next time I go there, I’m fully going to sport the full body saran wrap outfit I designed for my next run-in with Courtney’s baby...

I NEED this T

A couple of weeks ago when I attended the Syracuse vs. St. Johns basketball game at MSG, my friends and I noticed a few girls wearing the seriously most awesome t-shirt. It said “I orange SU” like the I heart NY shirts. I had never seen it before and immediately realized that I must own it... Now. We asked her where she obtained the shirt and she said she got it up at school on Marshall St. Luckily my friend Mara’s boss travels frequently up to Syracuse for business, so she sent him on a mission to find the shirts for us. An unsuccessful mission. The shirts were nowhere to be found. So I decided to do an internet search. You can find anything on the internet... Except these shirts. I spent a good 2 hours googling “I orange SU tshirt”, “I picture of orange SU tshirt”, “I fruit orange SU tshirt”, and every school fan gear website under the sun and still came up dry. Apparently these are like the holy grail of tshirts...

Yesterday we were out watching the tourney game at an SU bar and realized that everyone there was really young. At the end of the game, with only a couple seconds left, they all started singing this odd cheer that none of us had ever heard before and was clearly from after our time. We decided to ask one of the girls what year she graduated. 2008. Good god you are 5. She of course asked us the same question and we were like... Uhhh 2002. To which she said, ohh it’s so nice that you guys still come out. What!?? We’re 28, not DEAD. Of course one of the chicks was wearing the shirt that I have made it my life’s mission to have, and I seriously considered making her an offer to purchase it off her back... Maybe she’d even give me the senior citizen discount...

How many idiots does it take?

We are so spoiled. Many of us cannot remember what it was like before Blackberrys, Facebook, or cell phones. Imagine what it was like before televisions, or worse before light bulbs. Unfortunately I had to do just that this past week and I learned that boy am I glad someone invented the TV because that puppy actually throws quite a bit of light into a room.

When I came home, drunk, last Saturday night and turned on the light in my apartment, the bulb blew. I basically spent all day Sunday in my bed recovering from my drunken Saturday night, clearly deeming it unnecessary to deal with the lighting situation. Monday was a horrifically busy day at work, and only when I arrived home tired and beaten down did I remember that I might have wanted to make getting a new light bulb more of a priority. On Tuesday I finally dragged my butt to Duane Reade and purchased a new bulb. However when I got home and screwed it in, nothing happened. I flipped the switch, I checked to ensure it was plugged in, I turned the knob... Nothing. Sadly, my first thought was that the new light bulb I purchased was a dud... Not that my lamp may instead be broken. How dumb am I...? Yet I took the bulbs out of every other lamp in my apartment and tried them, and still nothing. Shit. My lamp is broken.

I need a new lamp. And I need to get around to that ASAP, because in the meantime, I think you all should know that candles should in no way be considered a viable light source. I really don't know how they did it back in the dark ages...

Posting from the RTW archives

It's that time again. I'm not participating in a pool this year, but I decided to fill out a bracket just for fun. It makes following the games a bit more exciting. However, once again, I can't make any damn decisions. I consulted my bro...

Andy: might as well go with cuse
Andy: they won the national championship from a 3 seed
Jess: YESSSSSSSSS sir indeedy they did
Jess: wow i said indeedy
Andy: indeedy u did

and yet, I still couldn't fill in that last box. Just like every other year...

Volume CCLXVII - Mad about March

Ah March. The month that always feels as if it goes on forever. Hands down winner of the most drawn out month of the year award. 31 long days of waiting for spring with no holidays and the lingering feeling that years past you were on the beach in Cancun getting plastered at 2 pm on drinks with little umbrellas while covered in Banana Boat tanning oil. Yo quiero la playa. Por favor? Oh how I miss that. The beach part, not the mangled Spanish language part. Doesn't the memory of spring break make you feel old? Especially since instead of being at Senor Frogs, you are cooped up in your office building with nothing else to do but stare at a printout begging you to make 61 separate yet binding decisions. You know what that means! It's that time again. One reason to look forward to March. All hail the madness! We've talked on a prior occasion about how a NCAA bracket is unquestionably the last thing I should be doing considering my inherent decision making obstacles, yet I just cannot seem to control myself. How could I not participate? Besides, there's really nothing else to do, other than join an American Idol pool which we all know I will never do even seeing as this year I have actually been solicited to do exactly that. Although it would have totally helped me out if I could've put Syracuse on re-dial and my voting would've made them win. Sadly it is not carried out that way in the tournament and I had to step up to the plate and make my decisions. Even if I were to not join an office pool and bet money on my picks, I think I would still agonize over them just for my own internal competitiveness... With myself...

I read something the other day that deeply resonated with me. The author wrote "Grown people never ask you what they should do until they've already decided for themselves. They don't tell you that, of course, but they stand there and wait for you to either confirm their good judgment or reveal yourself as not as smart as they thought you were by advising them in the other direction." That could not be closer to the truth nine out of ten times. Which is why whenever I give advice, I always follow it up with "but in the end, do what you want to do" because you know they're going to anyway. It still never hurts to ask for advice though. So as I do every year, I consulted a select few people I deemed to be more sports informed than myself to see if their selections jived with my thinking. Then I erased a few of my choices. Was feeling mostly content with my new picks for about an hour, until I sat and stewed a while longer, then erased again and went back to my original choices. This is like torture! A bad decision maker's worst nightmare. Torture over 10 dollars and the glory of winning or the agony of defeat. At this rate pretty soon I will erase right through the paper and all that will be left is a crater of complete and utter indecision. I wonder if it was named the "madness" because it literally drove some people mad. That may just happen to me by March's end. But if there's anything redeeming about this month, it's the one time of year when I can go around saying my favorite nonsense sounding word... Gon-ZAGA!!... And not be thought of as a lunatic. I need to get myself some Gon-ZAGA gear, so if anyone is near the bookstore... Or if anyone even knows where that school is, let me know...

RTW © 2006

Are they real or fake?

At the place where I begrudgingly obtain my salads for lunch (after 6 months and repeated discussions they finally have grasped that by egg white, I meant please do not put the yolk in my salad), they have plates of breakfast food on display on the countertop. Every time I am in there, I become more and more desperate to find out if it’s actually real food. It looks like real food. Could it be plastic food? Does everyone else know what it is and I’m the only stupid one? I’m about this close to poking it to find out.

There are about 5 plates up there. Pancakes, waffles, eggs and toast, sunnyside up with homefries. It’s a shitload of food. Why would they waste real food by putting it out on display? And how often are they doing this? Is that new real display food everyday? WTF is the point of that? If I don’t know what a freaking waffle looks like, I’ve got some issues. It has to be plastic food, right? Please someone tell meeeeeee....

Sometimes I miss my VCR

Apparently my DVR has staged a coup and refused to tape any of the new Daily Show episodes last week. What the Pfuck??!! Also sadly, I was too dense to notice this glaring omission until just now and was forced to catch up online. How could I have missed these gems?? Oh Jon... why must you torment me like this? I feel like I'm in one of those movies where the machines rebel and take over the world. DAMN YOU DVR!!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

In Cramer We Trust

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Arctic AM Exercise

Last Sunday was a beautiful day so I went running in Central Park with my friend Gil. Running and I are usually not friends, probably because I pretty much suck at it... But I was able to keep up and actually had a great time. Based on this success Gil wanted to go more often, maybe in the mornings, so initially I agreed to Tuesday morning at 6am. Then my friend Katie reminded me that it will very much be pitch black and cold and I started having second thoughts. Honestly, my gym is light and warm. So, I canceled on Gil. He didn't take it well, but I stuck to my party line... Dark and cold, and just kept repeating it until he gil-ted me into Friday morning a little bit later, 6:45am. It'll be light by then...

Oh and it was, light-er by then... However it was still cold. 25 degrees of cold. The second I left my apartment, dressed in running pants, a tank, a long sleeve shirt, and a hoodie, bleary eyed from the INSANE Cuse game that ended mere hours earlier, I knew this was all kinds of a bad idea. It was so cold that my eardrums hurt. It was like being in Cuse, wearing a skirt and no coat and going to the bars cold. Except at least then I was going to drink instead of run. Maybe when I started running I'd warm up? The voice in my head kept screaming, this is CRAP, go home... But I hadn't brought my phone, so I figured I'd meet Gil and tell him this was in no way happening. He tried cajoling me. Do I want his gloves?, it’ll be fine once we get going. Why wasn’t I wearing a hat? Because I don’t want to wear a hat!! I don’t want to be out here, I want to go home. Basically, I am almost 29 years old... I need not do things that I don't want to do anymore. And I do not want to run outside when it's 25 degrees out. That seems fair does it not? He definitely thought I was either going to cry or brutally attack him, so he just apologized and I ran, home...

Boozin & BBM'n

I had quite a bit to drink Friday night. My charge after ingesting all of this liquor was to make it to my friend Katie's apartment in Hoboken. This didn't seem like a difficult task at the time, until I realized the many obstacles this would entail. Besides being ridiculously shitfaced, the first one being finding my way to the PATH station, which ended with me getting on going in the wrong direction and trying to wrap my drunk brain around why I was at 33rd street instead of Hoboken. However the worst part by far, was trying to communicate with Katie and let her know my status and my ETA. I was so determined to prove to myself that I wasn't wasted, that it was taking literally all of the concentration I could muster to type in actual words to her and not accept any typos whatsoever.

Have you ever tried drunk texting? I don't mean like booty calling, I mean to communicate necessary information with someone while you are completely annihilated. I am a serious disaster when it comes to this. One night in Atlantic City after my friend Meredith and I bonded with the bathroom floor in the Borgata, I tried to text my friend Leah to tell her that we'd lost the keys to the rented house and find out where she was and when she was coming back. We really needed to know this. As you can imagine, it was pretty pertinent to the outcome of our evening... while we waited (and subsequently continued drinking) in a nearby dive bar. Basically my conversation with her looked like this... Ywr loshn ineys hybose, j vyne nsfh suub?? I really wish that I was kidding or even slightly exaggerating. There was definitely not one english word in what I sent her. When I saw our conversation the next morning, I couldn't believe it. Was I actually trying to make words or had I just sat on my phone keyboard??? I love drinking...

Mind Your Own Screen

When I first started at my company almost 4 years ago (4 year anniversary in 4 days!), I was slightly concerned about the open nature of the loft office space. At my previous employment, my first job out of college, I didn’t have very intense responsibility and particularly excelled at reading msnbc.com and IM’ing with my other friends who also had dead end positions. But now, everyone could easily witness what I did all day. Luckily I quickly proved myself to be a conscientious team member who always met deadlines and didn’t need to be constantly monitored for productivity. Luckily. Because I still sometimes resent the fact that everyone can see my screen.

4 particular times this happened today. First while I was attending the Full CD listening party on AOL.com for the new Kelly Clarkson release, and someone wanted to have a meeting. Second while my curiosity was getting the best of me and I was watching a clip of Melissa Rycroft on Dancing with the Stars, and someone wanted to ask me a question. He then foolishly exacerbated the situation by making some sarcastic comment about “interrupting me,” which really made me want to smack him. Thirdly while I was attempting to write my yearly job review self-assessment and multiple people walked by and gawked at my word document. And lastly, while I was looking up a word on Dictionary.com and someone realized that I cannot possibly know the definition of every word under the sun. Don’t judge people... Like you don’t surf Facebook all day long and occasionally check your email. Like you’d want someone sneaking up behind you and reading your IM’s over your shoulder? Can you please do me a favor from now on and try to walk by and not invade my private work computer biznass...

Creating a coffee demon

Having a routine is great. It keeps everything orderly and running smoothly with very few surprises. It also can become exceedingly boring and cause you to rebel. I drink coffee everyday. I’m not even sure if I like it, need it, or actually believe that caffeine can reverse skin damage from UV exposure (I truly read that somewhere), but I do know that I can’t come to my desk every morning without it. It’s a routine. I need to have a hot beverage. Sometimes, though, I want a cold beverage, or a beverage from a different place. That’s when the routine starts to suck. I get my coffee every morning from the same coffee cart man on the corner by my office. As would be expected after 4 years, when he sees me coming, he’s already preparing my coffee, because he knows what I want... because I get the same thing every day. Here are my problems with this current situation:

What if I want something else? I should be afforded the right to change my mind every once in a while, right? Do I run ahead and try to tell him really quickly that I want something else before he’s already making my drink? Do I hide behind another person as I approach his cart and attempt to catch him offguard? Or do I just go elsewhere, where they don’t already know my drink order before I speak...?

What if I want to go elsewhere? Sometimes Dunkin Donuts, sometimes Starbucks, sometimes I’m just in the mood to mix it up a bit. Until I see his cart. The second he sees me walking down the street, he’s going to make my drink... Which is an issue, since I’ve already purchased a drink, elsewhere. I have to avoid the cart. Meaning, I have to walk on the other side of the street and blend in or wear a disguise so he doesn’t spot me. One morning he fully saw me walking across the street and went to make my coffee. It made me so angry I decided to teach him a lesson and not go get it... That made him mad.

He gets mad. If I don’t patronize his cart for even one day, when I return, I get an evil stare and a “where were you?” Dood, chill out. It’s just coffee. It’s $1.25, I doubt my not showing up for one day is severely impacting your revenue. One week, I decided to try to save money and make my own hot cocoa at the office. The next Monday, I ran into a co-worker who told me that the coffee man was asking about me and why I wasn’t coming anymore. REALLY??

The same doesn’t apply to him. This morning, snow blowing everywhere... I really coulda used a coffee that was on my way to work. Yet that familiar stretch of block was sans coffee man. WTF? I had to come to work, and you don’t! I am so going to relish in my “where were you?” tomorrow morning... I am actually counting down the minutes til I can see his face. I hope he tells me he was at Dunkin Donuts...