A Tale of Two Job Offers

At the end of January my boss told me that my job was being eliminated at the end of June.

"You'll be fine," she told me. "You have 5 months to find something new."

"You don't understand," I replied. "I was unemployed for an entire year just a little over a year ago. 5 months is nothing."

And then, after being told I was taking the news very graciously, I couldn't hold back anymore. For the first time in my life, I cried at work. Hard. I went home early, stopping briefly in my coworker's office to give her my puffy-eyed, sniffly 30-second version of the news and explain why I wouldn't be joining everyone for lunch.

Unemployment sucks, as I have chronicled here and sort of also here. Just when I thought I had settled into a nice cozy spot for awhile, the big U was looming, again (I also got laid off at the end of 2011, for those that are not intimately keeping track of the details of my life).

I gave myself 24 hours to wallow, and then got to work. I updated my resume. I asked friends and friends-of-friends and friends-of-friends-of-friends to let me know if they heard about anything. I contacted headhunters. I bought a new suit. I wrote cover letters.

Oh, did I write cover letters.

When I used to work in banks, cover letters weren't necessary. They aren't necessary at most for-profit companies, as is the quasi-general rule I've learned through my many bouts of job hunting. But I'm in the non-profit land now, and every non-profit wants a "thoughtful cover letter." Some also want writing samples, references up front, test scores and probably a DNA swab, but the cover letter was non-negotiable. So I wrote them.

I wrote cover letters at every free moment. Evenings, weekends, sometimes early mornings. I said no to weekend plans so I could write cover letters. For months, that's all I did, with the occasional interview thrown in, if I was lucky.

And then, a few weeks ago, I had two job offers.

Having not one but TWO organizations that wanted to hire me was the craziest and most unanticipated thing to ever happen to me. I got to actually compare and contrast the jobs and CHOOSE which one I wanted and I GOT TO SAY NO. For the first time, it wasn't the company rejecting me. It was the other way around. It was beautiful. I would like to say that I cried at some point because that makes it sound more emotional, but I'm not typically a crier and so I didn't. But believe me, I was all punching my fist triumphantly in the air like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club.

At this point, I feel like I'm supposed to say something like, "I felt so blessed to have two offers." But I don't feel blessed. In order to feel blessed you have to believe in an entity that can bless you which is a discussion for another day, but mostly, to feel blessed you have to feel like something was sort of unworthily bestowed upon you. And I do not feel unworthy, because I worked my ass off. I wrote countless versions of my resume and worked briefly with a career coach and networked in ways that are way outside my comfort zone and feverishly researched companies and took all sorts of crazy notes in my interview notebook and when I wasn't doing all those things, I was writing cover letters.

On July 1st, I start an amazing new job that I'm insanely excited about. Not because I was blessed, but because I worked for it. And even though there was never a competition, I feel like I've won.

Why I Should Officiate Your Wedding

A month or so ago I was sitting around with some friends from high school, talking, as women our age are wont to do, about weddings.

"One of my life goals is to officiate a wedding," I said.

My friend turned to me and goes, "You'd be really good at that."

"I KNOW!" I replied. And then I proceeded to intensely stare down everyone at the table, as if to say, "When you get married LET ME OFFICIATE YOUR WEDDING." Everyone got the message. And was also pretty creeped out by my stare-down.

I don't have a ton of big life goals, but I really want to officiate a friend's wedding in a major way. Are you reading this? Are you my friend? Are you not yet married? Great. Here's why you should let me officiate your wedding.

1) I'll do it for free! And free is always better than not free. If you aren't planning on having an open bar at your wedding, we may need to discuss some payment in the form of vodka. But otherwise, totally gratis!

2) I am more than willing to become one of those ordained-via-the-internet ministers if you insist on having some kind of official religious person run your wedding. This should show you my full and total commitment to the cause, because if a Jewish girl who works for a Jewish organization is willing to become a minister for you, that's love, friends.

3) Everyone will think you're cool for having a friend officiate your wedding. Weddings are all about showing off how awesome and unique you are, and having a friend perform the ceremony says to everyone, "I have the coolest friends in the world because I'm willing to let one of them have a pretty big role in one of the most important days of my life," and also, "Look how alternative and fun and young I am! The person officiating this wedding is my age!"

4) By far the most important reason - I will write a seriously amazing ceremony. It will be personalized but not inside joke-y so as to alienate your friends and family. It will be poignant but not cheesy. It will be funny but not tasteless (see: most best man speeches that recite a laundry list of the groom's most embarrassing moments, making everyone uncomfortable). I've given 2 speeches at weddings and both got really good feedback. After the most recent one last September, I was approached by a family member who told me how great my speech was, and then said, "It was one of the best wedding speeches I've ever heard. And I'm a wedding planner, so I've heard a lot."

If you think I'm telling this story just to brag, then I mean DUH that's obviously why I'm telling this story. If a positive review from a person who plans weddings for a living isn't a kickass reference, then I don't know what is.

Got it? Awesome. Now, someone go get engaged, pronto.

Happy Galentine's Day!

Last week I threw my first annual Galentine's Day party.

Galentine's Day, for those of you who don't watch Parks and Rec (I know I said I hated it but good god am I glad I got over that), is a Leslie Knope-created holiday. Every February 13th, she gathers her lady friends for brunch and...celebrates them! She does thoughtful things like create a mosaic of each attendee's face made out of crushed bottles of her favorite diet soda, and everyone pretty much hangs out sans significant others.

My Galentine's Day was a little different, but no less awesome. I had 20 awesome women in a private room at a bar, drinking and snacking and being merry.

I put together super cute goody bags, which contained fun things like bubbles, heart-shaped straws, and flavored condoms. They also contained candy and cards, a few examples of which you can see below.

And yes, I did write a haiku for everyone.

We had decorations, my friend made waffle cupcakes in honor of Leslie Knope's obsession with waffles, and everyone brought gifts for a Yankee swap.

It was kind of amazing. And I'm so excited to do it again next year.

Adventures in Boredom

I don't really need words to tell you what I've been up to the past few days. Just see for yourselves!

This is not a toy

A year ago, I wrote this post about going to a shooting range in Manhattan. Learning to shoot a rifle was pretty fun, even if we were required to sit through nearly 2 hours of education before doing it.

This past weekend, though, my friend and I upped the ante. And by that I mean we went to Pennsylvania, where all the restrictions we faced in New York around what guns you can shoot without a license are apparently nonexistent.

Each party is assigned an instructor, and they take you around and do everything for you - so while at the rifle range in NYC I had to load my own gun, here we had a guy set it up and pretty much hand it over. Which frankly is fine with me because I never plan on owning a gun.

So instructor man starts out by saying, "Do you guys want to try pistols, rifles, or shotguns?" at which point I got too excited and yelled "PISTOLS" because seriously, all I've wanted to do since shooting a rifle is shoot a handgun.

My wish was granted.

I was shooting a nine millimeter in this second picture, which my friend Lauren and I were pretty excited about because rap songs always talk about "ninas" and now we feel all sorts of gangster and shit. Also gangster - the fact that as I looked through all these pictures that Lauren took of me, I couldn't help but think about how good my hair looks. I mean, LOOK AT IT. So pretty. For once.

The last gun we shot - the "grand finale," as our instructor called it, was this bad boy.

This is some badass assault rifle that, I have to be honest, was a little intense for me because the gun kicks back straight into your cheekbone. But it looks cool.

I don't know when I'll ever shoot a gun again (unless we go back to this place in the future, which...we very well may), but this was an entertaining way to spend an afternoon, for sure. And, just throwing it out there, my paper target guy had a ton of holes through his head and heart. POW.

Easily amused

I like to think that I make apartment living a little more interesting. I am very easily amused, and so doing simple things that are too dumb to even be called pranks brings me endless entertainment. First, roommate #1 came home to this:

If you don't know who or what that is, don't look into it. Watching a video of this guy was the most frightening 10 minutes of my life.

I thought my other roomies would feel left out, so I gave them this gift:

I'm sure everyone who is committed to watching good TV knows this guy.

And then I had some fun with our spice rack. Look closely.

In preparation for our holiday party, I spent an hour or so at work on this bad boy. Sadly you can't see the part where I wrote about strippers. I was very proud of it.

The most recent addition to my repertoire of stupid antics has been labeling non-bacon things as bacon.

Now that I am jobless, I really need entertainment so I welcome any and all suggestions as to other dumb-yet-amusing things to do around the house.

Sharp shooter

Today my friend and I went to the shooting range to shoot rifles for the first time. As much as I'm liberal and all in favor of all sorts of gun control legislation...it was fucking awesome.

POW

Both of us are right-handed, and apparently we are ALSO left eye dominant. Since you're supposed to use the same eye as your dominant hand, they provided us with these lovely glasses that fogged out our left eyes. Nice.

Pretty good for my first time

Life is good

Did you guys know that I have a boyfriend? Well, I do. And he's hot. Proof:

No, I am not behind this Twitter account and so no, this is not like Clueless where Cher sends herself flowers to make herself look and feel loved. This is my real Twitter boyfriend who is hot and tall and Jewish and never says "LOL" and who tweets about things like making me hangover breakfast. It's true love, y'all. And look at those abs! Swoon.

Anyway.

Friday night - The Lion King in 3D with Lacey. Then the weirdest play you will ever see in your whole life.

Saturday - fun times getting an airbrush demo at Sephora, followed by a lightsaber battle and an 80s party. Yup.

I have no idea why this picture refuses to upload the right way seeing as it's saved on my hard drive correctly but WHATEVER BLOGGER THANKS FOR SUCKING.

Today I did next to nothing. I watched a lot of TV and ordered in both of my meals which makes the grand total of times I have ordered food in to this apartment...2. Nice.

Kickball round-up

I don't have a lot of natural talents, but one good thing about me is that I'm naturally athletic. I enjoy being active and I tend to pick up on new skills pretty quickly. However, growing up as a competitive gymnast means that I was never trained in any sport that people still commonly play as adults - softball, soccer, basketball, etc. I can still do a perfect cartwheel, but I'm terrible at all of those other sports because no one ever taught me how to play them.

This is why I really enjoy playing kickball. NO ONE is trained in kickball. All you really need is some mild athleticism.

I just finished a kickball season as part of a team of fellow Tufts alums, and we kept up the Jumbo tradition of being terrible at sports by losing every single one of our games. Despite this, the kickball season overall was a huge ego boost for me. Since I've been feeling pretty low in confidence recently (more on that in a different post, or not at all), I'm going to spend the rest of this blog post tooting my own horn by writing some kickball stats.

Here are the number of times that the following happened:
- A guy on my team told me, during our last game yesterday, that I'm the best girl fielder on our team: 1
- A different guy told me, during our last game yesterday, that I'm the best girl kicker on our team: 2
- Despite the above, number of times I got on base all season (5 games): 1 (note to self: learn to not pop the ball up in the air)
- I pegged a bitch and got her out: 2 (the ref called the girl safe on one of these because he said I nailed her in the head (illegal) even though IT WAS IN THE SHOULDERS #bitter)
- Any other girl on the team pegged anyone: 0
- Caught a fly ball to get the kicker out: about 10
- Any other girl on the team caught a fly ball: maybe 2
- The best guy on our team caught a fly ball: 100 million
- People told me I was awesome when I stepped in to pitch: a lot
- The ref stopped the game when I was playing catcher to tell everyone that I was no longer allowed to play catcher because I was making him laugh too much: 1

Okay this isn't actually as fun as I thought it would be. Suffice to say I enjoy kickball and despite getting on base ONCE THE WHOLE SEASON I think I'm pretty good at it. Too bad everyone wants to change in future seasons to soccer or some other sport that I am going to be god awful at.

Pompous post over!

Home sweet new home!

This is a brief post brought to you by my brand new home in Brooklyn. I am totally not done unpacking but at least I've unearthed all the essentials. The first few things I managed to find were my boxing gloves and my lace leggings, and while I'm not exactly a well-dressed person, even I know better than to leave the house in an outfit like that. So...I'm glad I now have work appropriate clothes.

Moving day on Saturday was preceded by the long-awaited Lady Gaga day. And by long-awaited I mean my friend Lauren and I bought these concert tickets 7 months ago. So of course we had to go all out, hence the picture above. And these.

Wham.
Bam.

Yes, moustache necklaces were, for some reason, highly necessary. My friend had gone to Lady Gaga a few months earlier, and she was all, "Dude, don't dress up when you go because everyone is going to be so intense and you won't be able to compete." You know what? We were hands down the best dressed girls there. Outdone only by the gays. EAT IT.

And if dressing up for Gaga wasn't enough, the weekend prior, Lauren and I had gangsta night, where we made our own crunk cups and Nintendo-themed wifebeaters, dressed like rappers, drank 40s, and played Rapstar on the Wii. DON'T PRETEND YOU DON'T WANT TO BE US BECAUSE WE ARE SO MATURE AND COOL.


Okay. Awesomeness over.

My favorite tweets of the past year (ish)

Don’t ask me why I felt compelled to write a post about my favorite tweets. I just did. So here are my 10 favorite maximum-of-140-character-length thoughts from January 1, 2010 until now. Reading them over, I think they do an eerily good job of summing up everything you might ever need to know about me as a person, aside from the fact that none of my many Glee-related tweets made this list. You can find my twitter here.

Currently reading the billionaires issue of Forbes. Bruno Mars noticeably absent. Better luck next year buddy.

I just realized that in Monster, Nicki Minaj rhymes “climb it” with “climate.” Can’t decide if that’s genius or cheating.

To everyone who may have inadvertently seen me with my hand down my shirt as I tried to rescue a raisin that fell down there: sorry.

I just responded to an evite without adding a witty comment. I don’t even know who I am anymore. In other news, people still use evite.

When I looked at the weather forecast for Chicago this weekend and saw that it said, “Windy,” I just started cracking up. Because, duh.

A crossword puzzle clue was “the study of plants.” What immediately came to mind? Herbology. #harrypotternerd4life

Sooo apparently Joseph Gordon-Levitt is filming a movie outside my apartment. Time to go see if I can somehow give him my number.

Just gave out the first of my new business cards. To the “win a free burger” jar. #notashamed

There are not nearly enough curtains in my bedroom for me to be walking around with this pore cleansing charcoal mask on.

Spending my Friday night ironing and baking. Because apparently I have morphed into a 1950’s housewife.

Arielle's dictionary

As you all know, I recently joined seemingly everyone else in the world and got a smartphone. I occasionally like to go through the user dictionary on my phone and delete all the words that I typed by accident when I was either drunk or just too lazy to correct my typos. I see this as maintenance and a way of ensuring that these words have a lower chance of popping up in further emails/texts/etc.

I noticed that, in only 2 months, I have amassed quite a personal dictionary of words I've taught my little Droid to know. Here are some examples. They typically fall into a few categories:

Words Where I Choose to Extend One Letter For Entirely Too Long
Amazinggg
Awesomeeeee
Babyyyy
Craaaazy
Everrrr
Hoorayyyyy
Lataaaaa
Nerdddd
Noooooo
Wtfffff

Words Related to Drinking and/or Generally Going Out
Bev
Bouncer
Hungover
Loko
LOKOOOOOO (some overlap in the categories, it seems)
Margaritas
Partaytay
Pregaming
Shithoused
Whipahol

Words That Are Just Flat Out Not Real Dictionary Words
Awk
Badass
Barf
Bihotch
Cougartown
Deets
Frowny
Hobos
Inappropes
Totes

I also could probably dedicate entire sections to variations on curse words (Fuck vs. fucking vs. FUCKING) and offshoots of the word "haha" (ahaha, hahahaha, HAHA).

Essentially what this boils down to is that...I have the vocabulary of a 15 year old girl. Nice.

Arielle's Halloween rules

Happy November, everyone! As you are all aware, the end of October means Halloween, and even though I rarely celebrated as a child (Jew school frowns upon that sort of thing), as an adult it quickly became one of my favorite holidays. Candy? Parades? Parties? Costumes? Parties in costumes? FOR. THE. WIN.

This brings me to my few very simple rules for partaking in the wonder that is dressing up on Halloween:

1. If you are going to dress up, DRESS UP. If you're not dressing up, own it. To the person who walked into the party on Friday night in totally normal clothes and devil horns: I hate you. Don't even bother with the damn horns. Just tell people you're too lame or too lazy or just hate costumes. Go big or go home!

2. If you're going to bother putting effort into a costume, you should probably do something that will be recognized by...someone. If someone out there doesn't watch Jersey Shore and thus has no idea who you are with your poof and fuzzy slippers, that's cool. But if your costume is too conceptual, no one is going to be impressed. And by "no one" I refer to myself. I am not impressed.

In any case, repeating Halloween costumes is thankfully NOT against my rules, since this year was the second time I repeated a costume. I recycled 2004's mildly slutty Santa Claus outfit in 2005, and on Saturday and Sunday I revisited last year's Little Mermaid outfit. For Friday night, though, Lacey and I did this:


BLUE BARRACUDAS! Freaking amazing. We even had homemade name tags and pendants of life! We are so insanely excited about these costumes that we're going to try to find some scavenger hunts to do in NYC (I did 2 this summer/fall) where we can wear these again. Because Legends of the Hidden Temple is SO worthy of recycling.

Margaritas and Kendra, 2 of my favorite things

This email to my peeps yesterday pretty much sums up my life perfectly right now:

Hello wonderful friends!

As all of you know, my summer of leisure, AKA daytime drinking, buying new dresses and hunting down every free food deal in Manhattan, is every so often interspersed with this thing called "job hunting."

I am proud to announce what a few of you already know, which is that I will soon reach a major milestone in my job search. No, not a job offer. Not even the interview of a lifetime. Tomorrow, I expect to reach 100 job applications.

While most people might find this milestone to represent a failure of epic proportions, I think it represents a time to ask a number of questions. Why doesn't anyone want to hire me? What exactly did I get myself into my desired salary's worth of student loan debt for? How many different versions of the same resume can one person possibly create? And most importantly - how many happy hour margaritas can I drink in 3 hours?

Which is why tomorrow I will be downing margaritas like it's my job (because there certainly isn't anything else that's my job right now) in CANCUN BABYYYYYY. That's Cancun, on 8th Ave. between 55th and 56th. Kind of like the real Cancun, only...not.

Happy hour is from 4 to 7. If you would like to join me, please do. And if you would like to bring anyone, please do. Because even if you don't have a reason to celebrate, however fake that reason is, everyone likes margaritas. At least everyone important does.

First 10 people to show up get a free stack of copies of my resume.

With love and tequila,
AJ

Happy hour was fab. I am margarita-ed out. And OMG I forgot to mention how Lacey sent me an email from Berlin or Amsterdam or wherever she was at the time on her whole "honeymoon" thing being like, "Kendra Wilkinson is going to be at Borders signing books." And of course I wrote her back saying "YOU ARE MY FAVORITE" because Lacey knows how much I love Kendra. And Hank Baskett. And Baby Hank Baskett. And then I went with Crapface, a fellow lover of all things Wilkinson/Baskett, and people weren't allowed to take pictures with her but it was all good because I got to see her and Hank (sadly, no mini Hank) and if you think I paid $25 for that book just so I could get her to sign it...you're wrong. I'm not that crazy.

Then over dinner I told Crapface the story of how I ended up being written about (not by name) in one of Jen Lancaster's books all because Lacey was making fun of me because I had never seen Footloose. Maybe one day I'll repost that story from ye olde blog.

How did this post get so rambly? Oy.

My last post about b school!

Maybe. Actually probably not seeing as I haven't even graduated yet, though I did pick up my cap and gown and fancy Master's hood today and they're sitting in a bag on my bed and one day when I'm not lazy I'll try them on and that day might not be until Monday when I actually graduate.

Mostly though I'm here to share with the world that my grades are finally FINALLY in and my GPA this semester is a 3.9. THREE POINT NINE.

And yes I'm bragging and I'm sorry if that's rude but this is my blog and I do what I want and also I've never had a GPA that ridiculous at any point in time, ever. And my overall GPA is clearly not a 3.9 so it's not like I can put that on my resume. But still. I entered business school with the goal of beating my undergraduate GPA and I did that so even though my GPA isn't really a 3.9 it's still a W for me.

I thought that maybe I'd get an A- in my Negotiations class instead of an A, but then I remembered that my prof gives extra participation points for people who agree to negotiate in front of the class, and not only did I negotiate in front of the class once but I also negotiated once AGAINST THE ENTIRE CLASS who he deliberately told to yell and scream and act like jerks except I didn't know that part until I walked in the room and it was like everyone had taken their angry pills that day. I was going to blog about it at the time but I couldn't because I was so worked up from having 30 people yell at me for an hour. Anyway, so I got my A, and I'm pumped. And if you think anyone else in the class ever negotiated against the rest of the class, you'd be wrong. Just me. And for the record, I was asked to do that because I had missed class the week before because I was puking my brains out from a stomach virus. But whatever, worth it in the end. The negotiating, not the stomach virus. That still sucked.

And finally, I got a pretty hilarious graduation card in the mail yesterday from Lacey's parents and I wanted to share it because it's awesome.

On the front it shows 2 girls in cap and gown, and the first one says, "Where's your graduation party at?" and the other one replies, "Don't end a sentence with a preposition."

Then you open the card and the first one says, "Where's your graduation party at, bitch?"

HAHA, I love it.

The end.

This post brought to you by my ability to write run-on sentences.

My new life goal

Being in wedding mode for all of last weekend meant that a lot of the conversation revolved around, well, weddings. And things related to weddings. We talked about how I hope to never catch a bouquet because, among other reasons, I don't want some random dude who was lucky enough to catch the garter sticking his hand up my dress. We talked about flowers and dresses and shoes and this, that and the other thing.

And then we talked about the changing of the last name.

I am personally in the "I don't want to change my name" camp, mostly because I like my name the way it is and seeing as a name is a pretty big part of an identity, I don't want to have to just readjust to something new (unless my new last name were something really awesome, but I can't think of any examples that would satisfy that).

The thing is, I don't want to give my unborn children (who will hopefully stay unborn for A LONG TIME) a hyphenated name, nor do I want to give them my husband's name and then have to deal with all the problems that come along with a mother having a completely different last name from her children (there are a lot of these problems, so I hear).

This may seem like somewhat of a conundrum, but I realized recently that there is a perfect solution to my problem. And I have made it my new goal in life.

Friends, I am going to marry someone who has the same last name as I do.

IT IS A PERFECT ASS PLAN.

No name change, no paperwork, no hyphenating and no different last name from the mini-Arielles.

Okay, I am anticipating your questions. Here we go.

Q: Do you think this is realistic?
A: I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen, but my last name is hardly obscure.

Q: Aren't you afraid that you're going to end up marrying some long lost cousin or something?
A: No. My grandparents had their last name changed to my current last name when they came to the U.S. Thus we are well aware of who is in our family and who is not.

Q: What if you date someone with the same last name and you decide to be in a Facebook relationship and people who don't really know your situation either think that you're a) already married or b) dating a brother or cousin?
A: Fictitious person, you are weird for even thinking of these things.

Q: Arielle, you are ridiculous.
A: I prefer to call it awesome.

There you have it. My perfect plan. For those of you who know my last name (which I'm pretty sure is...most of you), if you find any single guys who fit this description, please pass them along.

Eskimo/lion/celebrity

While I was home for winter break, my mom and I decided that it was time for me to get a new winter coat since my old one was a piece o' crap. We went shopping and happily found an awesome puffy coat on super sale.


I hope you also like the snowflake pajamas that I have mentioned here before.

I really wanted a coat with a hood, and this one happened to have one of those faux fur-lined hoods that sort of make you feel like you're in a cocoon. Perfect.

Now that I've had the coat for a few weeks, I realize that, while I never thought anyone else looked particularly foolish with their fur-lined hood up, when I wear mine I sort of feel like a weird eskimo/lion combo. I'm sure the fuzz on my jacket is not any poofier than anyone else's, but it damn sure feels like it.


I mean, how can you NOT feel like an eskimo/lion looking like this? POOF!

Because my eyes are super photosensitive, I pretty much need to wear sunglasses anytime I'm outdoors and it is even remotely bright out. I was on yet another winter break shopping excursion with my mom when she asked if I needed new sunglasses. Since my thrift store Dior sunglasses are pretty scratched, and since we were at the same thrift store and all the sunglasses were a dollar, I decided to get some new ones. I'm not sure if the oversized sunglasses are still cool or not, but I love them because a) they block out more light and b) they're so big that they dwarf the size of my huge face.


See? Huge face. This is from Lacey's 24th birthday party. Aw.

So sometimes now I walk around with my hood up and my sunglasses on, because it is both cold and sunny out. And I still feel like an eskimo/lion, except now I also feel like a celebrity who is trying to be incognito. I also feel like one of those people who I would snicker at as I passed them on the street and think to myself about how ridiculous they looked.


This is not normal. Luckily for me, I have no shame.

Dying the dryer (say that 10 times fast)

On Friday, I decided it was time to finally use one of the free jeans coupons that I've had sitting around since Lacey's pants party over the summer. I went to the Gap, found an awesome pair of Curvy jeans, and was on my way.

I arrived home and began cutting off the tags when I saw a tag instructing me to flip my jeans inside out and wash them before wearing them to avoid the fabric bleeding all over everything. Because the jeans are super dark, and mostly because we have a washer/dryer in the apartment, I obliged.

I opened the dryer to take out my jeans and saw that the dryer sheets had turned blue, and thought, "Damn, these are some bloody jeans." And as I reached in to take them out, another thought struck me:

"Hey....has the inside of our dryer always been blue?"

The blueness all over the inside of the dryer was incredibly even, and looked quite pretty. It didn't come off on my finger and for about 10 minutes I legitimately thought the dryer had always been blue. Until I stopped being a moron and realized that I JUST DYED THE DRYER BLUE.

Did you hear me? I DYED MY FUCKING DRYER BLUE. Or should I say, my roommate's dryer. I flipped out to Crapface on Gchat the entire time, and she interspersed her laughter with some attempts at helpful comments that ranged from "Try wetting some towels and drying them to see if the blue comes out" to "Your roommate probably won't notice." (My response: "Well...I noticed.") Crapface also suggested googling it to see if anyone on the great internet had any suggestions, and lo and behold it took me at least 5 different google attempts to find anything related because THIS IS NOT NORMAL.

I was rather worked up about the whole thing because even though a blue dryer doesn't really affect anyone, I felt pretty awful because if my roommate wanted a blue dryer instead of a white one, she would have purchased it that way. And this is TOTALLY TYPICAL of something that would happen to me, so I couldn't help but laugh because even though it sort of sucked, I would much rather have this than a "real" problem. Like the other day when I couldn't decide whether to bring my Little Mermaid costume or my slutty police officer costume to Mardi Gras and I was all "GOD WHY IS MY LIFE SO FULL OF HARD DECISIONS!?!"

Anyway, I had to leave the house before the issue was resolved, which DRIVES ME ABSOLUTELY NUTS because I cannot stand to leave when I'm in the middle of anything, but my iPod was acting up and I had an appointment with a genius and there was no way I was about to leave on a 9 day trip without a fully functioning iPod.

I came back home and opened the dryer to see the results of the wet towel experiment, and...the dryer was white again. So I did not have to explain to my roommate how I managed to dye her dryer. Though..that would have been hilarious.

And hey, new jeans! Always exciting.

Latke time! (take 2)

Because I'm headed to a holiday party tonight, I had to fulfill my promise of making latkes. So, despite the PAIN and SUFFERING involved in the last bout of latke-tasticness, I went at it again. And liveblogged it.

10:00 AM - Begin peeling potatoes
10:04 AM - Peel off a part of my finger. Stop operations to apply bandaid
10:05 AM - Decide to liveblog latke making. Return to kitchen with computer so as to listen to awesome Glee Pandora station while cooking (can we talk about how much I love Pandora? Just saying)
10:06 AM - On way back to kitchen, step on a sharp f'ing clip on the floor holding internet cords in place (which I always do). This time, it breaks the skin and my foot bleeds. Return for another bandaid. OH THE IRONY of getting injured at the hand of something put in place to avoid people getting injured.
10:08 AM - Resume peeling
10:16 AM - I don't know what version of Under the Sea this is, but this is NOT the real Sebastian.
10:17 AM - If you thought I wasn't going to peel off any more fingertips, you thought wrong. Good thing I didnt put away the bandaids.
10:44 AM - Everything else is done. I cant avoid the dreaded onions any longer. But...I have a plan!

Yes, this was my plan. To grate onions using my ear warmer as a way to keep the burning sensation to a minimum. And yes, in the process I obviously had to do this without being able to see. It's a sacrifice I realized I was willing to make.
10:53 AM - Plan is a success, more or less. Minimal crying.
11:21 AM - Latkes are cooking and are delicious. Except...i have to be at work in an hour and im not going to finish making these. Blargggg.

In order to avoid hot oil splashing in my eyes, I decided that cooking in shades was advisable. Scientists wear safety goggles, I wear Dior sunglasses. "You know the difference between you and me? I make this look good." NAME THAT HORRIFICALLY OUTDATED REFERENCE!
11:23 AM - This pandora station LOVES Defying Gravity. Good lord.
7:30 PM - Home from work and ready to continue. Goooo Chanukah!

The end.

P.S. Defying Gravity just came on again. I swear, this station plays the same 8 non-Glee songs over and over again.

A different anniversary

Today is the 10th anniversary of when I got my knee surgery.

I have no idea why I remember things like this yet I can't tell you what happened in the last book I read, but there you have it.

For 10 years I've had a pretty big scar on my knee that for a few months caused me to be pretty self-conscious. After another few months I grew into accepting the scar, and now I flat out just don't notice it until people point it out and ask me about it (which, for the record, I am totally cool with). I do notice other peoples' scars, though, and then we bond over being ACL buddies. 4life.

When the surgeon went in to repair my torn ligament, he saw that the cartilage was so messed up that it was beyond repair. And so he took it out. I now have no cartilage in my right knee, which means I am strictly forbidden from running and taking stairs unless I want to have arthritis at 30. I don't. This, along with the fact that there is a tiny spot on my knee that never regained feeling after the operation, and the thankfully very rare bout of pain, are really the only ways in which the surgery affected me. So hip hip to that. Plus, I like to think that the scar gives me character.

If I'm going to have an "injury" for 10 years (as I am forever saying I have a bad knee, because it's sort of, kind of technically true), this is a pretty good one to have.

And in case anyone cares, I tore my ACL doing hurdles at a high school track meet. After I hobbled off the track, I started crying. Not from the pain, but because I was in the lead when I fell and I would have won. Not that it really mattered, since even though I had only competed in one meet, I did well enough (i.e. I came in first out of all 3 schools competing) that I still lettered in track that year. God I'm awesome.