Friday, March 5, 2010

surf dudes with attitude

I've talked before about my love for a little show called "California Dreams". Any show that was basically "Saved by the Bell" + Music is fine by me. It was cheesy, it was mildly funny, it made my Saturday mornings fantastic.

Jimmy Fallon was on a mission to reunite the cast of "Saved by the Bell" which didn't work out, but he made my world when he reunited the cast of "California Dreams" last night. AND he got them to sing the theme song. Yes, Yes, YES!!!

My only question: what happened to Lorena and Mark who came in on Season 3?

Monday, February 1, 2010

just another day at borders

Today I was at Borders shopping for a planner when this conversation occurred:

Random Guy: "Hey, I've seen you here a few times before, you come here a lot."
Me: "Um, a few times, not that often."
Random Guy: "Well, I've been looking at you and you're really pretty, but I looked at your hand and it looks like you're married..."
Me: "You're right, I am."
Random Guy: "That's too bad, you're pretty."
Me: "Well, that's sweet. Thank you."
Random Guy: "Well, if you're ever unmarried, here's my card."
Me (looking at card): "Oh..."
Random Guy: "You never know, right?"
Me (super uncomfortable): "Right...so, you're a dog walker?"
Random Guy: "Yep. If you ever need one, give me a call. I'll give you the 'friends' discount."

Where do these people come from? And what kind of "friends" discount would I get? Matt came home and I told him this story and showed him the card and he said, laughing intensely, "well, we do need a dog walker..." Ahh my life.

In other news, the lovely Carissa at The Lovely Dove gave me an award. Thank you Carissa!



For this award I'm supposed to tell you 7 random things about myself that you may or may not know. Hmm...let's see:

1) It's not often that I get "typically" sick (flu, etc.) but I do get weird illnesses. When I was 9 I had Scarlet Fever with a temperature of 106. I sat in the examination room and heard "scarlet fever test in room 4" and said to my mom "wow, I feel bad for that kid..." When I found out it was me, I burst into tears and said "Helen Keller had scarlet fever. I don't want to go blind and deaf." The doctor laughed at me. I was also sick the first week of my sophomore year of college with Strep "G" which my doctor had never seen.

2) Even though I've had weird illnesses, I've never had chicken pox.

3) I'm crabby if I don't eat Lou Malnatis at least once every 3 or so months. This means my mom has to ship it out to me several times a year. But really, how could you not want to eat this?

4) As I'm sure all of you know, I love my shoes, particularly my peep toe heels. What you may not know is that I got my first pair of high heels when I was 9. My Godmother is from New York and loved sending me the latest styles. However, she failed to recognize that I was a little girl who wanted to dress like her friends instead of a girl twice her age. However, when I got my first pair of heels I was in love. They were 4 inches, cream colored with delicate embroidery. I used to wear them around the house begging my mom to let me wear them out of the house. I somehow convinced her to let me wear them to my brother's Confirmation ceremony. My friends were jealous and I felt glamorous...and then I burst into tears the moment I stepped outside because I was in so much pain.

5) I really hate wearing socks. I have no idea where it comes from, though I suspect it has to do with wearing knee socks for 13 years. The only time I wear them is when I'm going to the gym or if it's pouring outside/there's snow and I have to wear them with my boots.

6) Watching the Disney movie "Wish Upon a Star" is one of my guilty pleasures. The plot is silly and absolutely predictable, but I love it. I don't even want to think of how many times I've seen it...and yes, this 26 year old girl still watches it from time to time. Katherine Heigl was fabulous back in the day (also check her out in "My Father the Hero")

7) Being a choir brat in high school, I love to sing. Being a fan of pop culture, I can name random lyrics instantly. Put them together = my having a tendency to burst into song with a random lyric when the moment presents itself. For example: the other day Matt said "turn around". My response: "bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart..." And you know that went on for a good minute.


Voila! I know I'm supposed to pass this along to people but I'm terrible at picking, so everyone should do it!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Jon Hamm & Michael Buble? Yes Please

Saturday, January 16, 2010

you've got me wrapped around your little finger

A quick update on my family in Haiti: On Thursday night, my mother received a phone call from my uncle in NY. He received an email from my uncle in Haiti letting him know that he, my grandma, and my aunt were all ok. The phone lines are still spotty and my mom has spent the last few days trying to get through to them. I just got word that my uncle in NY managed to get on the phone with my grandma and she is calm and says she is ok. Info is slowly trickling in about some of my mother's friends and while not all the news has been pleasant, we are so relieved that our family is ok.

I want to say a huge thank you to all of you who either commented or sent me emails. I have spent much of the last few days feeling completely out of it, scared, and upset and you have no idea how wonderful and uplifting it was to hear your kind words and support. I started this blog as a place to ramble about ridiculous things I see on tv or about the stress that is law school, and in the process I've connected to some fantastic people. I am so grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Needing to get out of the house, today the boy took me out to a yummy dinner in the city and a movie. Since I didn't think I could handle "The Lovely Bones" right now (and I just finished Chapter 2...I need to hurry and finish it) and I'm still undecided if I want to see "Avatar", I finally got to see "An Education". I wasn't so sure how I was going to like the plot of a 16 year old girl who starts dating a man twice her age, but I absolutely loved it. Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard did an excellent job at making it "not creepy" because it could have easily gone there. 2 minutes into the movie Matt looks at me and says "well, this is the 1960s and this girl is obsessed with Paris...you're going to drool"..and I totally did. The clothes in this movie were beautiful and just reaffirmed my dream to someday own a closet full of dresses from the 1960's. Some of my favorites:




Swoon...someday my friends, someday.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

a small detour

I know that it has been a while since I've blogged but the last few months have been either 1) extremely boring or 2) extremely busy so I haven't had much to say. However, with the massive earthquake that just hit Haiti, I feel compelled to write. While I'm usually lighthearted, I'm going to take a small detour from the pop culture commentary and ridiculous ramblings to discuss something near and dear to my heart.

While some people reading this blog know me personally, those who do not may not know that I'm half-Haitian. While I have quite the mix (full breakdown: 1/2 Haitian, 1/4 Middle Eastern, 1/8 Irish, 1/8 German, my Haitian side is the part that I know the most about and feel the strongest connection to. My mother was born and raised in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was in her 20s. A lot of my family located in the United States and Canada were born in Haiti as well.

More importantly, my grandmother and several other relatives still live in Haiti.

Yesterday I sat on my couch shocked as the news unfolded about the earthquake that took place. I immediately called my mother to ask if she was able to get through to any of my family. As of right now, we're still unable to get through. Landlines, cell phones, texts...nothing. The phone lines to the country, especially my grandmother's town, have never been consistent and given the current situation, I have no idea when we'll hear anything. My entire family is sitting by their phones hoping to hear something, anything. I've turned CNN on and off all day, not being able to watch the news for more than 10 or so minutes without crying and feeling physically ill. As a country that has already suffered so much, I can't even begin to imagine what is going on over there. As a result of the political and social conflict that is happening over there, I've never been able to visit the country except for the 20 minutes I was able to cross the border from the Dominican Republic to Haiti while accompanied by UN officials. While people know Haiti only as an extremely poor country, the stories I've heard from family paint a picture of culture, excitement, and beauty. It has always been my dream to visit the country and take it all in. As I look at the pictures on TV, I'm devastated.

The situation has made me take a huge step back and think about everything. I've realized that I get so wrapped up in the most trivial things that I really don't take a step back once in a while to think about what's important. I think it's something we're all guilty of. So while I will continue read about celebrity gossip and watch "Jersey Shore", I think it's important that we all take little moments for ourselves to reflect about the important things in life and be thankful.

I'm sure most of you have seen the various ways you can help. Of course the American Red Cross and UNICEF and various other organizations are taking donations. But, many of you are like me and are poor students are unemployed law school graduates with insane debt who can barely afford to pay rent. For those of you like me, you can still help without having to dig crazy deep into your pockets:

Wyclef Jean's organization "Yele Haiti" has made is super easy to donate. If you text "Yele" to 501501, a $5 donation will be charged to your cell phone for earthquake relief. $5 is less than the fun drinks I enjoy at a bar. It seems small but the numbers add up. Read Here to See Other Ways You Can Help

And finally, I ask that you keep my family and the people in Haiti in your thoughts. I will update you guys as I hear info.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Sunday, November 22, 2009

friday was a good day

For the past few weeks I've been scared of November 20th so the boy decided to do everything in his power to make it enjoyable. On Friday I...

1) Saw "New Moon". I thought I was being clever by going in the morning and would only have to share the theater with 20 or so people. I was so wrong - it was packed full of college kids and moms. Fortunately there wasn't any screaming (except when Jacob took off his shirt because, let's be honest, how could you not). But I liked it more than "Twilight" and cannot wait to see "Eclipse".

2) Took my first SF cable car ride. I've lived in the Bay area for 8 years and never took one because the boy refused to be a tourist. But in the spirit of planning a day that that would keep me happy and distracted, we went. It was super cheesy and super fun.

3) Went to Musee Mecanique, an arcade with antique games, photo booths, and fortune tellers. Hoping to determine my fate, we definitely hit up all of the fortune tellers (including Zoltar). We followed that up with a trip to the "Ripley's Believe It or Not" museum which was more random artifacts than weird stuff, but still entertaining.

4) Pretended to be 10 years old by going to dinner at the Rainforest Cafe and laughing for 5 minutes straight during the "thunderstorm".

and finally...

5) At 6:20 p.m. I found out that I PASSED THE BAR EXAM!!!

I've been on Cloud 9 all weekend and could not be more excited. Thanks to all of you who have sat through my law school rantings about studying/stress/ridiculousness - it's over!!!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

getting rid of your oldies but goodies

For the past week or so I've been doing a major sweep of my house. A little background:

The boy and I moved in together right after college graduation. Our first home was a little apartment which we loved, but it wasn't vary spacious and we knew that we wouldn't stay there for more than a year and didn't feel the need to unpack things we didn't need. Because our college makes seniors move out of the campus apartments the day after graduation (mean, I know), we didn't have a chance to do a thorough investigation of what we were taking and leaving and a lot of stuff followed us to the apartment. A year after living in the apartment I got into law school and had to move to be closer to my campus. After discussing our options, we decided to buy a house which was an exciting but daunting task and we found a home we loved and were ecstatic that it was ours. Unfortunately, we couldn't move in until the week before first year orientation which left enough time to unpack all of the essentials. The remainder of boxes/bags/suitcases full of random junk went into the basement or one of the spare rooms and we promised that we would go through it a weekend at a time until we either unpacked or gave away what we didn't want.

That was 3 years ago.

Now that I sit around the house all day and have spent the last week and a half watching the first 5 seasons of "The Office" (which, I'm sorry I ever said that show was bad. It's genius), I finally decided that the time has come to go through everything. I thought it would be easy because I would want to get rid of everything. Here I am sitting in our office, surrounded by stuff, and I don't want to let go of anything.

A few examples:

1) I really started to love clothes when I was 15. Ok, I've loved them for my entire life, but I got my first job when I was 15 and could actually buy my own stuff. In the boxes I found a bunch of slip dresses that I bought from Contempo Casuals (and had to hide from my mom) as well as some cute dresses that my grandma who I only see once a year gave me. I stopped wearing them in college because of my love of Mother's Frosted Animal Cookies and other late night snacks, but due to my recent weight loss, they fit me again. I know that chances are slim that I'll ever wear these again, but I have so many memories attached to them that it kills me to put them in a box to give away. I feel really selfish about this.

2) As a political science and sociology major, I was always really proud of the notes and outlines that I made for every test or paper. Apparently I had so much pride that I didn't feel the need to throw them away when the class was over. I think I convinced myself that some day I would need them. I have no idea when that day will come. I spent time going through those notebooks and laughing at things I wrote in the margins (example from undergrad ethics: wow, that girl really answered her phone in the middle of class and left the room. She thinks she's the shit. I really don't like her...) I managed to part with these notebooks as well as the insane number of handouts/cases from law school, but I couldn't get rid of the outlines. Yes, I have them on my computer but I scribbled in the margins in marker while I studied and somehow I think they're important. I did put them in binders though, so I guess that's an accomplishment.

3) I love girlie magazines (Glamour, Elle, Allure, etc) and one of the best ways for me to relax is to chill in bed reading them and marking the pages of outfits that I love but can't afford but will find a way to recreate. This is all well and good, but then I save them in case I want to reference them later on. Does this happen? Of course not. I know they need to go because they take up a ridiculous amount of space, but I wonder if I should rip out those pages I marked. Will I really look at them? I have no idea. I guess if I'm questioning it, the answer is no.

4) I've gone to a ridiculous number of concerts and back in high school and early college, a large portion of my wardrobe consisted of band tshirts. When seeing a band that I really loved, I always bought a shirt. I have 6 Blink 182 shirts...and that's just the beginning. I decided that I can't part with these. When I was younger I loved looking at my dad's band merch and I'm hoping the some day my kids will do the same. Or think I'm silly. Either way I'm ok with it.

5) Being in a sorority = more tshirts/pins/pictures/pens than I could ever need. They're all in a box on a shelf in my closet next to the band shirts. Don't think I can part with them either.

6) We've managed to acquire a lot of random trinkets in the past 8 years from various holidays or just because. I definitely have memories associated with 80% of them, but I'll never use/look at them, but I feel guilty giving them away.

Am I the only one with this problem? I've actually parted with a lot of stuff, but I know I can get rid of a lot more. What to do, what to do...