DPF: KENYANS!

Not much to say about this Dance Party Friday. Except we should all go to Kenya.

I expect Laura and Chrissy late this evening. I'm excited to spend the weekend finishing the invitations and I'm hoping we'll have a good time and not want to throw our heads against the wall.

Erfday / Brfday

First off. It's Earth Day. However much I love the Earth I dislike Earth Day. Similarly however much I love Love, I dislike Valentine's Day.

I'm not a big fan of one day out of the year to say I Love You or to Recycle. I think those are things we should be doing every day of the year.

On a completely different topic, I've been watching Season 1 of Dollhouse on Netflix and just yesterday there was a moment in the episode Briar Rose where Alan Tudyk has a ridiculously appropriate line rant.

Earth gets one day, alright, the other 364 we're-we're-we're cranking the AC in our Hummer and then one day a year, ooh we separate the plastic. You know what I think? I think that once we die out, a couple hundred years, Earth is gonna have a people day, you know, to remember us. One day a year she is gonna laugh and laugh and shake our bones.

Basically, that's how I feel. Thank you ever so much Joss Weadon (or whoever wrote the script for that show) for putting it so well.

Anyway. Be a Planeteer and Save the Planet...but do it legit-like and make it a full time thing all year round.


So it has come to my attention that my sister is throwing me a birthday party the weekend we're at the beach house. This is exciting and I wasn't really expecting it. I figured a bunch of us would get together (who? I'm not sure) and we'd go to the beach house, Jason would drive up to meet us, we'd have cake, have some beer, go to the beach, maybe hit up the General's or Big Pecker's and that would be it.

Since she can't keep a secret very well Julibean let slip that "shh, some of your friends are coming" ... ... ... huh?

All of my friends are very busy and important people. We don't all have time to travel willy nilly around the east coast so this was a shock. I have NO idea who will be coming, but I'm excited none the less to see who loves me enough to make the trip.

Then the Beaner asked me if we wanted a theme for our birthday party. I know Jason doesn't care so I racked my brain and shot out a few ideas here and there. Finally I came up with a ridiculous interpretation to celebrate Memorial Day (which is the following weekend) and also stupidity and frivolity.

Our birthday will be a Party in the USA!

Yeah, that's right. Everyone will wear the most outrageous combination of red, white and blue clothing they can pull from their closet and we will have a party and dance around the kitchen to Miley Cyrus until we're exhausted.

Here's my list of demands for birthday presents:

1. Five hundred thousand dollars all in fifties.
2. A Shetland pony died pony blue to match my eyes.
3. Powder Blue Eyes.
   

Alright, alright. I'm kidding. I don't expect any presents, I'm just happy people want to travel to celebrate Jason and my Quarter Century...but I wouldn't mind a Nike+ sportsband, an Esther Williams bathing suit, or a gift card to Old Navy.

I Could Color All Day

I literally just had a very Carrie Bradshaw Moment...

Remember these?

The shoes I WANT TO MARRY?!

Well I was looking at flapper costumes (no, you're not going to get an explanation for that one, so don't ask) and I came across these:

And literally I said out loud, "Hello lover."

These shoes, although still ridiculously expensive are slightly more in my "price range" at only $150, you know instead of the Christian Louboutin pair which are easily $2k+ and I could never dream of purchasing...or rather I can only dream of purchasing.

All I'm saying is that if I have a reason to purchase wedding shoes in the next errr, six months, THESE will be contenders.

Thank you Unique-Vintage for making my dream come true. And pleeeease don't discontinue them, they're gorgeous and come in many different colors!

Cake-tastic!

I've been waiting for it for awhile now.

A few weeks back Ashley and her roommate Mel decided that pie had it's day in the sun (3/14) but cake was always sad and alone in the rain. But no longer! We would have a celebration of cakes! And it would be marvelous!

At first they had scheduled the Cake Party for a day I was going to be in Virginia. Then it was rescheduled and suddenly I was actually home that weekend!

I asked ahead of time if they would prefer a strawberry cake or a chocolate Nutella cake since I already had those cakes made and chilling in my freezer from my Wilton Course 1 classes that I missed.

So I spent most of Saturday morning frosting my chocolate Nutella cake while watching Fly Away Home. Let me just go on the record saying I heart Anna Paquin and the movie still totally makes me cry at the end when all the geese land in their new safe happy home.

Anyway, drove into Manhattan (which is always a joy) and got to Ashley's apartment near Inwood more or less around the time I meant to. She knew most of her friends would be on the late side but assumed correctly that I'd leave to make it on time but get stuck in traffic. How well people know my punctuality.

Let me just say, when the cakes started pouring in we all got more and more excited. We started off with meatloaf cupcakes with sweet potato frosting. Sounds disgusting but is actually quite delicious. Ash's sweet potatoes were amaaaaazing.

Then we munched on mini pancake muffins which you could chose to dip in syrup. Greatest idea ever for a brunch or something with friends. They taste good even if they're not hot and right out of the oven and they're all ready at once instead of actual pancakes which take forever to cook and some will be cold and you don't get to eat together.

We had quite the selection of cakes to gorge ourselves on. Also, cake shots, need I say more on how enjoyable the evening was? I think I do...

Courtney (my fellow EMACer who I haven't seen since graduation in 2007) brought a 7-layer rainbow cake. Of course the nerd in her (which we all appreciated) had the layers in ROYGBIV order. It was beautiful to cut into.

I'm awful with names but another one of Ash's friends brought a giant cupcake cake. Another brought a fruit cake (aka a fruit torte) and someone else brought some gourmet cupcakes from a famous bakery in NYC that I can't recall the name of but my Dad managed to guess. Mel also made a delicious applesauce cake with cream cheese frosting.

Holy crap I love cake. And it was so great to catch up with Courtney and her manfriend James and meet all of Ashley's friends who I can now put a face to their names when she tells me stories.

Cake Party = Success!

I decided we needed to take this picture. Allow me to explain. Senior year the three of us must have had about 5 different classes together. It makes sense we were all the same major with the same concentration. So to celebrate our last day as seniors and our last EMAC class together, we decided to all gather in my apartment and have a power hour.

So here we were, all in the same place for the first time in three years and slightly intoxicated. I think we've grown as people...

Sunday morning Ashley and I may or may not have woken up, eaten cake leftovers and watched The Lion King.

c25k: week 1, day 4

This morning I frosted my cake for tomorrow's cake party and headed out to the gym.

Still sticking with Week 1 for now. I want to be able to keep my pace up at 5.5 for jogging and 3.5 for walking before I move on. I'm thinking this week will be another few Week 1 workouts and then I'll move onto Week 2.

This time around it really was painful. I'm starting to get shin splints. They aren't fun. I didn't do the last running interval and I'm glad I didn't push myself through it because my ankle was bothering me during my cool down.

I'll have to be careful with my ankle and maybe even wrap it the next time I run. We'll see.

DPF: Scarily Biographical

For those of you who don't already know, my Dad and I have a very special relationship which often involves him forcing me to sit through movies which he has deemed "classics."

I'm pretty sure most of these movies are really only classics to my father and no one else, but every once in awhile he comes up with a doosey.

A few I actually love that he's made me sit through include the Christopher Guest Mock-umentaries: Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. Guest is also famous for Spinal Tap but I'm more of a fan of the ridiculousness that are his other works.

A Might Wind is very special for a few added reasons other than the quality entertainment the movie provides. My father's friend Steve is a folk musician and he's said on numerous occasions that A Might Wind is oddly biographical and it is in some cases very true to the folk music scene. This connection just adds to the ridiculousness factor in my mind...

Some of my favorite instances in these movies include Jane Lynch. Especially the whole entire story line in Best in Show with her and Jennifer Coolidge. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, what are you waiting for? Get thee to your NetFlix or Blockbuster and check it out!

In the meantime please enjoy today's Dance Party Friday!

A-One SoCo, One Mojito, and One Beer

Yesterday was Shawn's birthday.

Shawn is a friend of Jason's from the Shire who I'm pretty sure is one of his oldest friends. They grew up together and I believe lived down the road from each other.

He's a super sweet guy and I'm glad I've gotten to know him over the years because if I know one thing it's good to befriend mother's and best buds if you want to make any relationship long-lasting and easy.

Shawn is what I like to call Jason's homeless friend. Not in the sense that he lacks a place to live, more in the sense that he travels a lot for work and his parents have moved away from NH so he has no "home" to go back to on the holidays.

There are many times when he winds up staying with Jason's family when he's in town visiting friends (even if Jason or Amanda aren't home) because that's just the way things work in the Shire. So when I found out that Shawn was going to be in town (away from home and friends and family) for his birthday I took it upon myself to make sure he didn't spend it alone.

Jason's only request for this mission of mine was to A) remind him which day was Shawn's birthday and B) make sure Casey came along so Shawn could "experience" her.

After a fun-filled day of being blind (Casey drove me to and from my eye doctor who decided to dilate my pupils, I hate that), and sitting at work with my shades closed and my computer screens' brightness turned all the way down...we picked up Shawn and brought him over to G-Town.

A few years ago Casey found this great little Greek Restaurant called Greek Town in Rockville Centre. They are delicious. And inexpensive. And can I tell you their tzatziki sauce is drool worthy. This soon became "our place" and whenever Casey and I just needed to get out of the house we'd go over to G-Town and sit and relax and rant and ramble over Greek Salads and Pitas.

So since Shawn hadn't ventured there yet, we took him for dinner last night to our favorite little place. It was hopping last night, usually there's no wait but I guess it was prime G-Town time when we walked in. The food is always totally fresh and prepared to order, the place is always really clean and the wait-staff is extremely friendly and attentive enough. Sometimes over-attentive waitresses irk me, but the ladies at Greek Town are friendly and get the job done without a lot of frou-frou-ness.

After dinner (which was predominately a story about Casey getting tasered), we headed over to RJ's.

RJ Daniel's is what we lovingly call "our bar". And by "our bar" I mean Casey's parents go to happy hour there and hang out with their friends so often that the bar tenders know us by sight and can have Casey's shot of SoCo and Blue Moon up on the bar by the time she's done saying hi to everyone.

By the time we got there last night it was a few hours past happy hour. One or two of Momz's crew were still sitting around so we said hi and had a few drinks.

Cue more stories from Casey, including a baby pool in the living room and a door kicked in in Bronxville.

All in all, a good night. Shawn was happy to get out and it was good food, good company and good drinks.

Hoping we'll catch him again before he's done with work in town and leaves.