1. I am so sick of sewing. I’ve been sewing this damned costume since November and I am totally running out of steam. I didn’t graduate with a degree in Costume Arts for a reason! Luckily, Burning Man is at the end of this month so that will be the end of that. I miss drawing stuff. I haven’t been able to draw anything since I started this project. It will be nice to get back to that. I want to make a portrait of a jumping spider and I have a co-worker with a cool last name that sounds like a dinosaur, so I want to make a drawing of her as a dinosaur. Being my friend has its benefits (like dinosaur drawings of yourself).
2. The security guard at my job told me that if you mix Cherry Pepsi with the new Marshmallow Smirnoff Vodka, it makes a drink that tastes exactly like birthday cake. If I drank soda or vodka, that would be useful to me, but I do not. However, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share that vital information with you. Also, the IT guy says if you put a small amount of good-quality balsamic vinegar into Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, it tastes delicious, but more importantly, the drink has a sassy name (The Hipster Douche). What I have learned from this: the people I work with drink weird things.
3. I’m watching the Olympics like a crazy person. Cricket finds it endlessly amusing that I, the least sports-oriented human being ever, am obsessed with an entirely sports-related thing, but I think I figured out why I like it so much. I like to watch people who are the best at something do that thing. Everyone there works very, very hard and is very, very good at this thing, and I like to see them do that thing even if that thing is, in my opinion, kind of stupid (“I’m going to jump over this stick better than anyone’s ever jumped over this stick before!”).
4. In a related Olympics note, did you know that the divers who are jumping from a great height hit the water with their hands flat against the water, as opposed to pointing them as you would expect? That’s so their hands punch a hole for their bodies to go through which minimizes splash. Huh. Good to know.
5. Movies I Have Seen Lately:
Black Swan. What the hell was that? No, seriously. That chick needed a sandwich and a anti-anxiety drug regimen STAT. Also, fun fact, almost that entire movie was filmed at my college, SUNY Purchase, in the theaters and the cement tunnels that connect them. When she’s in the dressing rooms and the utterly depressing cement tunnels? I lived in there like a star-nosed mole rat for four years. Four years, people! Two fun stories about my college-theater experience there. One winter day I went into the tunnels and before the sun had risen. I came out later after the sun had gone down. People talked about the day and I had no knowledge of this “day” everyone had spoken about. The tunnels are like a casino. There’s no windows. Time becomes a foreign concept. The other story is when we all went into the theater before the sun had risen and we came out around 2:00 in the afternoon when the sun was a-shinin’. We reacted like vampires (hissing, covering our faces) and someone said, “The gods are angry, they have set the moon on fire!” To this day, I use that phrase. Use it yourself, it’s very handy.
Cedar Rapids. I really liked this movie. It’s a small-budget film, and it has a sweet small-budget vibe. I did not care for The Hangover and I don’t watch The Office, so this was my first real exposure to Ed Helms and I loved him. He’s a great actor and apparently a great banjo player, so that’s nice.
Bridesmaids. I truly, truly hate bodily function jokes in movies, so that one scene was rough for me. A lot of pooping, a lot of barfing. But other than that, I liked it a great deal. I have always loved Kristen Wiig, and not just because she has two “i”s in her name. She is a hoot. The airplane scene hit home for me. I have also taken medication to fly, and it has also worked out not-so-well for me. I wasn’t escorted off the plane in Wyoming or anything, but I probably made some enemies for life. It also looked like the actors were having a great time, which is always a pleasure to see.
