Currently Chasing: A First Place Win

I’ve tried to teach my daughter a valuable lesson when it comes to being a good sport. When we play tic-tac-toe and she wins, she jumps all over the table, does a victory dance, tells me it’s ok that I lost and continues to gloat. When I beat her she begins to pout, complain, shove the paper away and call me a cheater. She’s a bad sport. But she learned it by watching me alright! She learned it by watching me.

You see, I’m a bad sport. I don’t mean to be, I just am. And I know this about myself so I take measures to prevent it from happening. One of these measures being that I only compete in things I know I can win. I’ll enter a talent show, a karaoke contest, a rollerblading race and a poetry contest without blinking an eye. These are areas in which I excel. These are things I know I’m good at. Even if I don’t win, I’m not super disappointed. I know I’ll get second or third place, or I’ll at least go down knowing that despite someone being better than me, I was still pretty damn good. However, if I'm playing a friend in iphone Scrabble and she starts to beat me by more than 100 points, I'll simply forfeit the game.

I’m not going to enter a ‘who can be on time to work competition, a ‘who can stop texting while they drive’ competition, a math competition of any sort, a ‘who knows states and capitals’ showdown or a ‘where is this country/state located on the map’ party.

I just don’t like losing. But for some reason, being a girl means being in constant competition. Whether you like it or not. My friend and I are victims of this. If she has a lip gloss, I want it. It may look like shit on me, but she has it and I want it. If I go to the store and I can’t find the exact color she had, I’ll buy a slightly different color. She will see that slightly different color, determine without even applying it that it will look better than the one she currently has, and lose sleep until she can make the purchase. It’s crazy, it’s a neurosis, it’s a psychosis and it’s my life.

But when she decided to run the Marine Corps Marathon this weekend, well, I just had to give it to her. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I did work out this weekend as well. I did a very intense 15 minutes on the elliptical machine. But I’m just going to have to admit, in the case of who can run further, faster, and without puking and passing out in their own vomit, the answer is clear.

However, I was too busy to eat much yesterday, so I’m down two pounds since last week. Every woman reading this is already on the scale and ready to send me a text telling me they lost three. It’s a woman thing, and trust me, you don’t want to understand.

Currently Chasing: What I seem to be

I went out last night. Basically my last hurrah before Dev comes back from visiting her Auntie and Grandma. First stop, a Third Thursday event where local PA professionals gather and mingle and discuss what’s new in the community; next stop, a fabulous party where I almost suffocated and died.

We took a cab to this party. Karaoke Cab DC! Who knew. This man has his cab totally set up for Karaoke. He films his singers, while also driving...(very safe to do in DC traffic, because essentially you never move.) He then, with permission of course, posts those vidoes on youtube...Look em' up.

Anyway, J took me to a blog anniversary party. Only in DC are there formal parties introducing, re-introducing or refurbishing a blog. The dress code was ‘fashion forward’ so I spent the entire night leaning forward. I was the only one. Obviously these people do not follow codes.

The thing about it is that the thermostat for the room read 80, and my iphone told me that the temp outside was 76. Someone might have wanted to open a window, but there was a fear of someone ‘not on the list’ getting in. Thank God the cupcakes didn’t melt. DeeLish!

What did melt? Faces. Once fresh faces. One man spent the entire night looking like he had jumped into a pool. Meanwhile, I could literally feel each bead of sweat make its way down the back of my legs and right into my very high, very uncomfortable, shoes. The shoes were a must though, they gave me that forward lean I mentioned earlier.

The party was held in a boutique of some sort. I almost knocked a $900 bookshelf down a flight of stairs. There was a scary Styrofoam-ish lamp available for $700. It looked like a glowing alien of sorts. It would surely scare the crap out of you in the middle of the night. Clothes were for sale in the back, and at a very reasonable price. I saw a beautiful coat and at first I thought it cost $0, but that was the size…it was merely a mortgage payment away from being mine!

I spent most of the evening talking to a great local photographer. He was very impressed with my Iphone picture taking skills. We were both taking pictures of a drunk guy laying over all the furniture, eating the fake fruit on the tables, who only had a few buttons left on his shirt. I think his extreme amount of frontal body hair must have popped the others.

And then I saw the most confusing thing of the night. A sign on the wall that read, “Be what you seem to be.” Hmmm. This place seemed to be a very ventilated and air conditioned boutique, but actually was a lava pit of death. Not as easy as it seems to be, to be what you seem to be. And shouldn’t it say, be who you seem to be?

After that, J and I seemed to be two hungry thirty somethings in crazy high shoes, walking down a cobblestone sidewalk (not a good combination) searching for some popular DC hangout called Me and You. We ended up at Johnny Rockets. Good or bad, that place is always what it seems to be.

Best conversation of the night…

Me: He used to date a blind girl.
Someone else: I thought you said she was Asian.
Me: Are the two mutually exclusive?

Atlantic City Baby

(Original Post: June 20, 2005 - Monday)

So this weekend me and my good friend went to AC. The hotel was only 75 bucks a night courtesy of an old, (real old) friend. We got there on Friday night, partied till about 3, and then got some sleep. First let me say, men in NJ are shorter than most men in the United States. We stand about 5'7 and we towered them. Next let me let people know, walking up to two girls and saying, "hello ladies, you two look like Jersey girls"...is not a compliment unless you ARE actually FROM jersey. We sang karaoke but it cost 2 bucks a song. Drinks were around 10 bucks a piece, and there were cover charges. Every girl in NJ must buy stock in sequins....they were everywhere all over everything. Saturday was amazing. We got up, sat on the beach, walked the boardwalk, relaxed all day. The only annoying part was the people sitting next to us with a bag of chips. Birds were circling the area for hours trying to get these chips, and they were steady crunching them up and making a day of it. At one point they covered the youngest member of their group with chip crumbs and let the birds circle him for a few minutes. They were laughing the whole time, and between that and the sound the birds were making, I thought for sure we were on that MTV show where they pay people who have patience. Only we never got paid. And we weren't on TV. We finally went back to the hotel room around 5, got ready for dinner, came back downstairs to meet (the old friend) and let him buy us dinner. Then off to the casino....spent a little, won a little, checked out some more clubs, Ran into a group of men pissing on a wall, and decided to tag along on the end of their bachelor party for a second, met back up with the old friend and watched him win money. And you know he slipped us a couple chips. He gave us around 150 bucks that night...It pays to smile I guess. Damn, I've been smiling for free all this time. . . Sunday we got breakfast, went to the boardwalk for massages, (no happy endings...) got a few gifts for those in life we care most about, then of course put a few more nickels in the slot machines....lost. Then back home. I left with 200 bucks. The entire weekend, including gas, hotel, gambling, food, gifts, massage, (when you include my winnings on the slot machines, and the fifty bucks pop slipped me) only cost me 140 bucks. Not too shabby. I would have spent that on something a lot less memorable for sure. Weekend = Successful

Just a typical Saturday

(Original Post: November 27, 2005 - Sunday)

Karaoke on Saturday seems to be a tradition in the Crazy Town household. So, My friend quit her new job at the tattoo parlor (a job she had for a total of three days, but who's counting, and who wants to spend the whole f'n weekend answering phones...not My friend) and we headed out. The band of characters we saw throughout the night caused me to take notes, literally.
Barney: A girl who wore the tiniest skirt and a purple shirt that barely came below her tits, and knee high boots. This is the perfect outfit for someone with a killer body who is getting ready to go onstage and sing any song by Cher. But no. She had rolls for miles and enough craters in her ass to be declared a moon. Geezus, I couldn't stop staring.
Double Helix: The pool shark with the crazy skirt. Her skirt looked like a bunch of DNA exploded onto it. And she wore the highest heels I've ever seen. Pretty girl though, so she had that going for her. My eyes shifted between her and Barney.
FOL girl: AKA Fruit of the Loom girl. A heavy girl who couldn't manage to hide her underwear from the world. (I'm probably going to hell for this one. I'm definitly not going to become a wizard any time soon, because in order to do that you have to lose all judgement...not happening.) She was berthed in between Helix and Barney, so there was no relief for my eyes.
Hoopie: A girl with the biggest damn hoops in her ears. My goodness. They were bigger than her head. Most likely a great place for ankles, but I'm only guessing.
And one more thing, if you are coming out and you want to match your clothes, that is fine. Really, we all like to match on occasion. But when you wear jeans with a tan suede sylvester the cat up the leg (which I originally thought was a Komodo dragon) and a matching shirt with the same cat, and tan suede shoes, and a matching hat, and jacket. Well come on, you are just asking to be part of a typical Saturday blog. Some guy sang a song called Man. Just look up the lyrics to this song and you'll know dude. You'll know.I should say, it was during this song that My friend turned to me and said, "Seriously, I'm waiting for the hidden cameras to reveal themselves and for someone to jump out and say, just kidding girls. It didn't happen.