a small list

Things I love tonight:

• How short Katt Williams is
• How short the new models on ANTM are and sub-list:
  • The fact that there is fantasy Top Model competition and that I didn’t know about it until this year.
  • The recaps on fourfour.
• Stripping all the nail polish off of my toes, clipping the nails and lotioning up my feet.
• The makeshift ace bandage I made for my aching wrist out of a blue polka-dotted scarf.
• My working staycation.
  • Hating on the word “staycation.”
• New electronic music.
• Hating on bad television commercials.  How is giving a hotel to your little brother in a game of Monopoly a sign of growing up?  It’s not!  It’s a sign of being a really terrible Monopoly player!  As generally bleeding as my heart is in real life, it can get really cold around the board game table.
• My long, lush, luxurious hair.

note-able

It is 2/3 of the way through a three-day weekend.  My housemate and a bunch of his far-flung friends have reunited in order to shoot a loud and raucous movie in our house.  It involves a wig, some 40 oz.s, and Yosemite Sammin’.  It also involves something described as “Myrtle Beach Style.”  At this point, you guys know just about as much about this movie as I do.  O and I got stuck in the hallway and kitchen, respectively, while they filmed a dance scene in Lulu’s room.

I like today.  I just had a float, as I’ve had fairly regularly lately, with vanilla ice cream and Boylan’s black cherry soda.  We went to Raleigh for antique clothing and nice bloody Marys.  We played catch in the living room with a bobo-Nerf football for like 25 minutes.  Now I will embrace the cap-gun violence happening on the patio, watch Pineapple Express with O and Jesse, who just walked in, and relish in the fact that I don’t have to work tomorrow.

blip

I’m stoked on this song today.

I finished a neck warmer last night, using an easy pattern that I made up that looks cool and I didn’t mess up.  It took me 3 days.  I keep getting frustrated with myself about other things, like traffic violations and not understanding how to make thumb holes for mittens right away (or being able to read other people’s patterns at all, which is a pretty big stumbling block keeping me from calling myself a knitter).  I’m brainstorming work-arounds for both.

This long weekend I will either make an effort to wean myself off of excessive caffeine, or just go whole hog and drink all the coffee.  Either option seems like a good one.

undercurrent

What’s up, posting delays?  I’ve been trying to be on the internet less outside of work.  I guess it’s working.  I finished the baby blanket I was knitting right on time for Becky’s baby shower.  Phew!  I was kind of worried about that, but I’ve been getting better about meeting crafting deadlines.  I went to a ladies’ craft night last night and got simultaneously inspired and totally intimidated by this one girl’s incredible knitting skills.  Oh man, I’m a n00b.

This weekend, O and I went to the beach.  I got a speeding ticket on the way there.  Automatic frowns.  But once I got past that and decided I still wanted to go to the beach, we had a really great time.  We went to Carolina Beach and Kure (pronounced Curie) Beach.  O got this incredible shirt:

We walked up on someone else’s beach wedding, so I’m sure they appreciated the shirt.  We also got beach-themed nick-nacks for some of O’s coworkers and a decent meal with some chatty restaurant folks.  I got an iced esspresso and the ice cubes were made out of frozen coffee, which was kind of weird, but I appreciated the thought.  We considered paddle boating around a lake, but they’d drained it that day and the girl at the booth told us it was a terrible idea.  Good work, saleslady.  After all that, I drove slowly all the way back to Chapel Hill and made it home without incident.

The next day, I got drunk off of Yuengling and white wine at the baby shower and pretended to try to learn the guitar.  Matt V. was very patient with me, but I was borderline bumbling.  Oh well.  Next time will be better.

summer birthdays

We get along, you know?  I am satisfied.

absolutes

This video is always at least a little bit in my head.  Or at the most least, what’s in my head closely resembles this video.

Though really, it’s actually more like this all around:

Fate and all that.  I’ve got some serious work to do.

Neverending

If you’ve talked to me or Osiris any time since Monday, you’ve heard us talking about Maxwell.  Specifically his new album, BLACKsummers’night.  Even more specifically, Pretty Wings, which youtube won’t let me embed (fascists! — it’s a shame, really, Maxwell is looking his Obamaest).  He played that song on the BET Awards and also in my head every second of the last 3 days.  Osiris thinks Prince wishes he wrote that song.  I’m just glad that someone did.

I was feeling kind of bad for not posting a whole lot recently.  I’ve been in post-vacation stressball mode.  The upside of this (and Operation: Save All The Money) is that I’ve been feeling a lot more crafty.  I started knitting a baby blanket for miss Becky’s gestating little one, but last night I slipped a stitch watching So You Think You Can Dance and had to unravel the whole thing.  That’s alright, though, because it was too narrow anyway (Coworker D joked that I was knitting a baby napkin), so I’ll take this fresh start.

Also, Grizzly Bear (obviously).

Bummer Update: Maxwell played a sold-out show at the Durham Performing Arts Center last night.  Seriously?  Way to fall down on the job, Alison.

sleeep it off

I turned 26 yesterday!  This week has been pretty filled with friends and demi-adventures.  We went to a White Sox game 3 days before one of their pitchers threw a perfect game.  We got terrible directions basically all over Chicago.  Hey Chicagoans!  Quit assuming everyone walks around with a compass!  I ain’t no boy scout!

Other than that, we fiercely spectated at the Warrior Dash out in Joliet.  It was the second time I’ve stayed with good friends in a town that houses a federal prison.  Fitting, since Doug is such a miscreant.

We basically ran through room after room of taxidermied animals at the Field Museum and came home exhausted, which is the only way to come home from vacation, really.  Good thing I took the whole week off.

Yesterday for my birthday I hung out all day, bought the The State DVDs and a couple of CDs and played Settlers of Catan with Kyler and Jesse and Osiris.  I won.  Today actually marks the third day in a row I’ve played that game.  I’ve won 3 out of 5 games, I think, which basically makse me the Biggest Dog.  At least at a nerdy game about sheep and ore.

All in all, vacation is good and I love birthdays in general but especially my own.  This has been a good one.

birthday times

It figures Tai Shan’s a Cancer.

chickens are stupid

I had to stop short for a chicken on my drive home from work this evening.  Any other day it would’ve cracked me up, but I was having a bad day today so it just pissed me off instead.  I’d seen this chicken and a few others hanging out in someone’s front yard which faces Erwin Rd., which is a pretty country road that bumps and winds through Durham and Chapel Hill.  The speed limit is 45.  I’ve thought, “I hope those damn chickens don’t walk out in the road.  What is their owner thinking?” at least 5 times.

Well today, of all days, one of the chickens decided it would just be a perfect time to take a stroll out into the middle of the road and then just chill.  I didn’t realize there was a chicken in the middle of the road until the SUV in front of me just barely didn’t kill it because it is an SUV and has about 3 feet of clearance for no reason.  That chicken wouldn’t have been so lucky if I weren’t so quick on my feet.  The Yaris would’ve knocked that chicken right the fuck out.  But I was able to stop short about 3 feet from the chicken and honk at it for a full minute before the people behind me were able to scoot around me and give me enough space to back up and drive around the chicken, who decided that was probably the best time to get out of the road.

Like I said, I’d had a pretty bad day, so when I picked Osiris up in the neighborhood and took him to the bank, he imitated the chicken dancing to Notorious Thugs, which made me laugh.  It involved flipping the bird.  A lot.