Opposites Attract

             I’ve been dating Boyfriend for, by my unsentimental calculations, just over a year and a half. But since neither one of us took note of when exactly we introduced ourselves to one another – nor do we care – I just know it’s been a while. I do know we met in June because I asked him to join me for my birthday dinner that July (he refused).  

After our first 'date' he confirmed two things with me –  I cheer for the New York Yankees and I do not vote Democrat.  Check and check.  Aside from that we have few things in common.

 

             Boyfriend loves Dobermen.        I love English Bulldogs.

              He likes all things Hip-Hop.       I love all things not Hip-Hop.  

                                                  Except Eminem.  I do love Eminem.

 

Boyfriend enjoys reality TV.                 Jersey Shore raises my blood 

                                                          pressure to an unhealthy level.

 

He wishes Facebook was never invented.       I love stalking.

 

When I met him he had this                Per the above,

                               Zack Morris phone.                   I must have portable Facebook.

...In his defense, he has a different phone now and is currently waiting on the next version of the Verizon iPhone.  I'm totally jealous that he's going to have a cooler phone than me. 

But the best things about being opposites??

 

                He eats the round ones.           I eat the flat ones. 

HOT and extra crispy for both.  Please and Thanks.

To Tan or Not To Tan

                Being that it’s February.  And that it’s been a brutally cold winter thus far.  And that the first day of spring is still weeks away.  And my lighter “winter shade” of makeup is now too dark for my skin. And that my skin is mostly translucent making me look like a True Blood vampire.  Or like Boyfriend did when he passed out that one time he bumped his ankle.  (He thinks, after thorough internet research, it was a pretty significant ankle injury.  Considering it’s been months and there is still a huge bump where his ankle used to be I might have to agree that it was more serious than I might lead you to believe.  He also thinks I do this kind of thing quite frequently – ya know make his life sound less serious and mine sound WAY  more dramatic.  I’m not convinced.  That sounds like nothing I would ever do.  And also he plays hours of basketball a week on it now.  So it seems to be fine.)   All these things have persuaded me to consider tanning.  

                Financial responsibility pretty much forced me to give up tanning post college.  Well that and the threat of skin cancer.  But I managed to find a sweet internet tanning deal for my preferred salon yesterday.  I’m an amazing internet shopper.  I could spend hours finding things for the cheapest price possible.  This does not mean I am frugal.  (Can a girl who went to private college twice, on purpose, even use the word frugal?)   This means I still spend all my money and just get more things.  This also results in a pile of packaging boxes taking over the spare bedroom b/c we don’t have a recycle bin and I feel guilty throwing them out.  

                Anyway, my sister used to tell me that tanning would also help to cheer me up and since this whole week I’ve been all …

“I hate work”

“I hate school”

“I hate people who drive on the same roads as me”

“I hate my micro-lunch I packed”

“I hate people who sit in the chair next to me in class”

“Why can’t I eat only pop-tarts all day every day?”

…it just may be time for an attitude adjustment.

                 I’m not hoping to look all Jersey Shore, Oompa-Loompa, just spent a year on an African safari kind of tan.  I just need to look more sun-kissed and less walking-dead.    And since I managed to get $30 worth of tanning for $4 I’m going to take that as a sign from above that I should take a few minutes this next week for some fake sun.   

Here’s to the Groundhog being right this year.  Spring please come quickly.

No, he's not mine.  But it looks like we would be good buddies.

Writing Prompts

 

                Being the truly enthusiastic blogger I have been, of late, I Googled ‘writing prompts’ this afternoon, in hopes of coming up with something amusing to blog about. After a few random topic generators failed to inspire I came across a site that suggested this:

Find pictures of yourself as a child. Imagine your child self asking your present self to tell a story. What story to you make up?

           I instantly recalled a picture of myself that resurfaced this past Thanksgiving, much to the amusement of my younger sisters, and my friends, but not my boyfriend.  Boyfriend seems to think the fewer people who are aware of this picture the better the world will be.  I say.  Whatev.  I do, however, apologize for the poor picture quality - but it is a picture of a picture.  And a not well preserved original at that.

Circa 1985

                  

                   While I'm not going to tell my poor child self a story, I will tell you that my very beautiful younger sister nearly fell out of her chair laughing when I pulled this beauty out of the pile of pictures we were sorting.  I also asked my mother why she continued having babies after me.  I am confident I would have just thrown in the towel with a "well we tried."   She insisted, as all mothers must, that she thought I was beautiful and showed me off to anyone who would stand still long enough.  

 

                   Some of my friends, when they recover from their laughing fit resulting from this picture, have commented that it's not that bad.  Oh yes it is.  And it better not show up in some slide show years from now at a rehearsal dinner or at my funeral.  Some have confiscated the blackberry so they can send themselves personal copies.  And my friend Emily announced to our table that I look like the baby Grinch.  The iPhone confirmed it.  I do, in fact, look like the Grinch.  I mean even the hair is similar.

What do you think?

             

             I wish I could say the next baby pictures we found over Thanksgiving was a significant improvement but that one was probably from 1987.  My sister (who was a gorgeous baby per all her baby pictures) was dressed to match me and were both work lilac purple dresses with smocking and collars that made us look more like iguanas than anything else. And the picture was one of those classic eighties poses, edited to look like I was a floating head in the background.  I should tell you, I did grow into my cheeks as a toddler and those pictures are much less embarrassing.  Also, my bangs started at the back of my skull.  Ahh the 80's.  

                  I think we can all just agree on one thing - thankfully I didn't turn out looking like this:

                

                  

AIM

Do you remember what stalking people was like before Facebook?  Mid-chat with friends this week, on a grown up Instant Messaging application, g-chat – the Google IM function – my friend asked me about my AIM screen name.  (Ha.)  We discussed how our ingenious and inspired pseudo internet identifiers from middle school, managed to follow us around right through our early 20’s.   I obviously had to try to log in to my AIM account to see if I still remembered a.) What the password is, b.) Who anyone on my buddy list is in real life.

                I was thats upsetting.  My best friend from middle school set up my account for me.  She was thats depressing.  Don’t we sound like a fun pair?  I think the inspiration came from our favorite phrases at the time.  Later she cheered up and became to thats enjoyable.  I stuck with the original and my screen name turned into my nickname in the dorms.  Apparently it has a better ring to it than Rachel?

            The best part of AIM was the away msg.  You remember, insight into the depths of your soul- bolded, highlighted, and italicized so all your friends could spend a few minutes trying to decipher what exactly you must be trying to convey to the world.  Certainly the best Away Msg to find was a copy and pasted conversation – with a screen name you didn’t recognize.  I truly enjoyed adding these unidentified people to my buddy list and studying their profiles to figure out who they were.  (Or was I the only AIM stalker?)

            Profiles were important.  Girl’s profiles pretty much had a standardized format.  Your college, graduation year, some song lyrics, a shout out to your friends – cryptically identified with code names or initials, and they your obligatory kissy emoticon to the significant other.  And if you were a lucky stalker – people would link in their webshots.  That was the real jackpot. 

But that’s why I love Facebook.  It completely eliminated the convoluted process of determining my friends activities by making everything easily available for me to see whenever I so choose.  Not that we've evolved much really - I mean aren't statuses the exact same thing as an away msg?  But I must say thank you to Facebook for consolidating my friends updates so I don't have to open individual windows to see where everyone is.

 

AIM was a great tool in college though.  (This was the early 2000’s after all – we weren’t all texting yet.)  Some conversations were just better written out.  Left room for interpretation.  Gave us time to consult with the roommate to devise the most appropriate response to a boyfriend’s or not-yet boyfriend’s statement.  But most importantly it introduced me to the world of electronic communication – my one true love.