Monday, November 22, 2010

Jordan!!!! Where the F are you?

Recently, Jen posted a video on my FB page that had me laughing so hard, I'll include that clip below but it got me thinking about all the stuff that we used to do to our parents and our grandparents just to annoy them.  See Jen's clip below:




It was later revealed that her granddaughter had actually took her Jesus statue and held it for ransom as a joke. But before she could let the cat out of the bag, the Grandma called the news. Anyway, case in point, one day, Jen and I were bored and we decided to change our parents answering machine greeting to something funny. So we got online and started googling for ideas. We decided, since my Mom is rather religious that a Satan greeting would be the most hilarious and get her the most riled up. So we began recording. Jen used this really creepy, slithery voice and when the answering machine turned on, it went something like this, "Oh, hello Lucifer speaking. What in hell do you want?" {chuckles} "Please leave me a message." Then in the background I start screaming bloody murder, and then shriek, "We'll call you baaaack." It was ridiculous, and we did it while my parents were gone so they would have no idea until someone called, and then left a very confused message on their machine. Unfortunately, our grandmother foiled our plans by calling, several times that day while we were recording the message and then when we finished. She got to hear the whole thing, and promptly called my Dad in a very confused tone, "Um....I just called your house....I think, Kali and Jenna were messing with your machine." I don't think anyone thought this was hilarious except Jenna and myself. My Dad called and I answered, "What'd you do to the answering machine?"
"Nothing," I tried to answer innocently.
"Hang up and don't answer, I want to hear this new message."
My Mom called me back, "That's disgusting."

We changed it promptly that evening when my parents got home and listened to it. However, it was funny and it also got me thinking about how little people actually pay attention to voice mail greetings before leaving messages. Case in point, I remember through out high school, there was an old woman that frequently left messages on my parents answering machine (dang it, she didn't hear the Lucifer greeting, however, I'm sure it would not have phased her) regardless of being told frequently when we were home, that she had the wrong number. I remember hearing messages like, "Gladys, I can't find my glasses. Did I leave them at your place?" and message number two, "Found my glasses Gladys. See you tomorrow." Really? This went on for quite a while until it suddenly stopped, and I remember wondering sadly if she had died because even though her messages and calls were annoying, she was obviously living alone and only had a few friends that she spent time with. Hopefully, Gladys just finally wrote down her number correctly. :)

My phone number is a local number from the my hometown (I haven't gotten it changed, but I will) and unfortunately it is only one digit different than someone else's number back home, and I frequently get phone calls from back home asking for electric companies, or Bill, George, or some other name. I even get left voice mails, again, if you listened to the voice mail greeting which clearly states, "Hey guys this is KALI, leave me a message." You would know to hang up, not leave me voice mails at 3 a.m. saying, "JORDAN!!!!! [yes, he was yelling that] You need to call me back. A.S.A.P." Really? You just left that message for Jordan with me? I also get random texts from high school girls asking, "Who is this?" "Answer me." "Who is this?"  With little signatures underneath like this reading **CaItLyN**. No, Caitlyn I am not trying to steal your boyfriend, I am 25, married and no longer even live in Montana.

Anyway, my point is, I need to change my number, and two, regardless of the annoyance, the fact that people pay very little attention to greetings astounds me. Unfortunately, I find myself doing this all the time in daily life though too, for example if a stranger asks me, "How are you doing?" I immediately respond, "Good and you." and before I leave, if they say,"You enjoy those fresh tomatoes now." I automatically respond,"Yah you too. Thanks." Or occasionally I say, "You're welcome" just out of habit. Um....what? Normally I just walk away after that, because if I stayed to correct myself, it would just make it more awkward right? It's just an automatic reaction, because I'm assuming they're going to say, "Have a nice day/night/morning." or "Thanks come again." So I respond accordingly, because you know what else? People are really rude. I always make a point to tell employees to have a good day, or to even ask how their day is going because often times they look at me in shock and say, "It's going ok, thanks for asking." I've been on the other end of that, working in a bakery, almost all of my horror stories in customer service come from working in a bakery, which is also astounding because who can be mad when you're surrounded by cake and doughnuts? I've also worked as a waitress and bartender, and one woman actually said to me one day while I was clearing her table, "I know I'm a real bitch, but you're just gonna have to deal with it today." And I smiled and said, "Don't worry, I've actually had to deal with worse." No one ever apologizes to you, or asks you how you're doing, and rarely says please and thank you. Everyone's just gotta be somewhere else, doing something more important. But then again, sometimes I don't know if we would notice if everyone started to act polite and human. After all, I'm still trying to track down Jordan so I can relay the message.

Here's another funny message I tracked down on youtube. Currently living in Texas, this really makes me a laugh, especially references to the car "windah."

Saturday, November 20, 2010

San Francisco is a treat!

Well I've been back basking in the the grey skies of the Emerald City for almost a week--  yippee!! The only pleasant part of being stuck in this blustery weather is that I dream of "Hefflelumps & Woozles" visiting me in my sleep. On second thought, those things were mildly frightening as a kid so maybe there is nothing positive about this cave we live in...

In this post, I feel inclined to disclose some details of my trip to San Francisco with the infamous Jade & Stacy. Let me start by saying that multiple, random strangers referred to our threesome as Charlie's Angels. We started our adventure early Fri morning & wound up struggling to catch a cab on Sat AM in the Mission after a sweaty night of dancing @ a lovely joint called the Beauty Bar. And I mean sweaty... on the way out a fella stopped me to ask if the sweat on my back was part of my dress or sweat? Awkward but hilarious.

You know I love me some souvenir magnets!



After not nearly enough sleep & too much walking for my leggies it was a night of dancing round #2. Ey, yi, yi (sp?) I feel old... Anyway, after a disgusting walk home sans shoes (heels blow!) on the streets of San Fran we crashed & got up early & headed for the hills. The hills of Napa that is. We fell in love. The weather, scenery, fermented grapes & company could not have been more magnificent.



Due to the fact the Stacy lost her id Saturday night we were stuck scoping out the bars of North Beach (SF's Little Italy). But it all worked out; we made numerous new Italiano friends while sipping bellinis on Columbus Ave.
Meet (from left to right): Stacy, Cassondra, Antonio, Jade, me, Lorenzo, & Simon (aka: GiGi)

This got me to thinking about how the unexpected can be so refreshing; a happy accident some may say. I know Jade & Stacy were dying to do another round of bumping & grinding & I was SO not. Going out sans ID was a no-go so there we sat meeting these fresh, young faces from overseas was simply delightful. The smooth-headed fella, Lorenzo, was managing--or pretending to, rather--Pantarei that night & kept hastling us to take a seat the two times we walked by before committing to a drink there. Ultimately, we decided to pop a squat next to this attractive group of Europeans & risk them either talking about us in Italian or talking to us. Clearly, they decided to befriend us. Long story short, by the end of the night they had us kissing each others cheeks & saying ciao. Can I just say our hand-shaking custom is so lame. I found myself become captivated by almost everything about this crowd- how they always look so relaxed, speak so beautifully, & even how they hold their wine glasses. Is this why Italian is one of the Romance Languages? *just kidding.

So what I'm getting at is that happy accidents should be embraced. AND I realized that Loopi is really onto something: it pays to chat with strangers; you never know who you might meet :)

Ciao Bellissime!
lucy

Friday, November 19, 2010

what we repeat

Sissies:

We are what we repeatedly do.

I read this quote in an online article several weeks ago. Aristotle said it. Now, I can’t stop repeatedly saying it. (Which I think might mean that I’ve one-upped Aristotle?).

There are a lot of things I do repeatedly. In fact, most things I do I do repeatedly. So what does this quote mean for someone with an obsessive personality?

Well, as of now it means, in this order:

1. Checking my e-mail. Many, many times. Probably can’t stress that enough.
2. Trolling the internet for a career.
3. Trolling the net for art opportunities and crochet patterns (whatever don’t judge).
4. Trolling the net for sites that offer free episodes of my fave hard-to-find tv shows (Cupcake Wars and Thintervention - so effing hard to find).

So, basically I’m spending a lot of time online, and there’s a lot of trolling going on. And I do feel a little bit like a troll. A greedy little troll, grubbing to get some money before my bank account runs dry.

I have black rings under my bulgy eyes from staring at my laptop screen for extended periods. We only get 7 hours of daylight in Oregon this time of year. Half of those hours I’m asleep for, and the other half - ok, ALL – of those are cloudy hours. There’s a lot of eye straining and hiding from the elements right now. And I already have the bulbous nose.

Remember that list I made? Add to that staying home on a Friday night, taking repeated photos of myself in an attempt to draw comparisons with a plastic Mattel troll.



These long stretches of online time take me back to my pre-pubescent years and my enamor for Joel Madden (Nicole Richie’s babys' daddy - wow, his father-in-law is Lionel Richie) -- the 5 ft 2 in. lead twin of the pop-punk band Good Charlotte.

At 13 I ascertained we would marry, so, like any self-respecting suitor, I Googled him. I Googled him a LOT. I Googled to see a variety of photos of him, to see his different angles, different locations, different pets, and also to assure myself, with the lack of verifiable photos of him with a girlfriend, that he was single. The worst was when I found a picture of him at a strip club. Btw this was before Google Image search, so I had to click on each hit and individually scroll through each site.

This was also at the time when Joel and his Sid-Vicious-inspired bro Benji went by first names only, a la Cher, because they didn’t want to use their bastard dad’s last name. So, I devoted a lot of time to genealogical searches, trying to unearth their mother's maiden name (which of course we all know now is "Madden").

I stayed up until 2 am every weekend to watch their afterhours mtv program, All Things Rock. Then I’d go on their message board and post about it. Verybored_17. That was me. I was this girl, without the energy or knowhow to make a fansite.  She too has clearly pulled from diverse sources and undoubtedly exhausted Joel's available online archives. Look at her range:



Reading all of this, it sounds a little psychotic. I’m thinking about Fatal Attraction and contemplating what  Glenn Close's change in tactics would have been if she'd been given Internet access.

On the upside, I honestly think these Joel and Joel-like searches are how I became so good with search engines. Because, after all, there are many, many ways to type in "photos of Joel Madden;" each way yields different results, and you don't know which results you'll get until you've tried every possible combination. Believe it or not, this has been extremely helpful in my academic career -- in my research, art and otherwise.  (See you in academia, Joel Lover 16 of Melbourne.)

It’s probably also very indicative of how/ why I didn’t have a real boyfriend until I was 20...Well, fantasy is funner than fact, isn’t that it?

There’s a morsel of me -- that is responsible for my lack of a job (as it was responsible for my lack of any boyfriends in HS) --  that’s enjoying this trolling right now; it is fantasy.

On a quest, I surf these postings, I don’t know the companies, I don’t know the poster, and I have no idea what that position would be like really. Once I get out from under my dingy troll bridge and cross that bridge, the view may pale in comparison to the view I had under the bridge.

So you see, trying to find a job is kind of like trying to find love: it's all about projecting.

Maybe in the end all I need is a little less obsession/self-reflection and a little more...



Joel always gets the last word.

-J

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Who farted?????

Ok sisters, sorry I haven't been as diligently posting as you guys have. So, after reading Jen's hilarious post about getting lost (if you haven't read it, please read it before reading the rest of my post as the following references will not make sense if you don't) I had to include this clip because for those that don't understand Mrs. Skitene (how the frick do you spell her name? I need to ask Mom) aka Mrs. Skiddin aka our childhood bus driver, THIS is her night job. Not even a night job, sometimes she did this with us ON the bus! Kraig saw me watching this video on youtube and said, "Why on earth are you watching that video?" And I said, "You don't understand, they put my bus driver on youtube." And he gave me a puzzled look. I then explained to him that one morning as we were waiting for our bus to come pick us up, we heard it and saw it coming and then all of a sudden heard this noise, it was deafening really, it sounded like a machine gun. DUHDUDHDUDHDUDHDUDHDUDHDUDHDHDUDHD. My sisters and I all looked at each other completely puzzled, only to see that once the bus had rounded the corner that the street sign on the corner was bent in half. The machine gun noise was the street sign hitting every window down the side of the bus. Observe, our former bus driver:



You know what else is funny, Jen and I swear that we had to ride that bus for years. YEARS! We had to put up with people peeing on that bus, Candice germs (another post for another day) and street signs getting hit, but according to Mom we only rode it for a few months. It couldn't have only been a few months....could it?
Anyway, my story has relevance here, I promise. I was on my way to a job interview earlier this week when the fricken google map directions were taking me all over the place. In fact, the last few times I've used google map directions, they've gotten me lost. Why? Because instead of saying, "TURN LEFT" they say "KEEP LEFT" which would mean that there's probably like a fork in a road, not a stop light right? Anyway, after going two blocks past my turn I realize that I have to turn around, where a very pretty light blue Volkswagen bug is tailing me and honking repeatedly because I'm driving so slow trying to read the street signs. So I finally end up in this parking lot where I accidently parked in the parking lot which clearly stated "NO PARKING. GOVERNMENT VEHICLES ONLY!" Don't ask me how I missed that sign the first 2 times I drove by it, and then parked right next to it. Anyway, I decided I should move my vehicle in case my possible future employer saw me parking there. So, as I'm making a U-turn in the tiny "customer" parking lot, I accidently hit my horn. Honking it right into the front door of the building at 7:59 a.m. Oopsie. No one noticed right? Except for that guy on his cell phone in a parked car. But, he's on his cell phone. I park my car as this man is walking up to my car and standing outside the door. I open it and casually ask if he's the man I'm supposed to be meeting for my interview. He nods, and says, "I saw you in the lobby and then you dissappeared...." I was waiting for him to say, "To park your car and honk your horn into the lobby...." but he refrained.

The interview went ok, but I won't know for 2 weeks whether or not I got the job. When I got home that day, I decided to edit/upload some new videos on my youtube channel, and ran across an astonishing number of videos of news anchors and politicians supposedly farting on live tv. All of them are fake, but seriously, Hillary Clinton farting during a live debate got over 5 million hits. I admit, one of those 5 million was mine but the amount of comments and laughter is hilarious to me. I guess no one is too old to laugh at a fart joke. Ok, this has nothing to do with being late or getting lost but I had to include that little tidbit.

bun in the sun

a flea-free Bun makes for a happy household!!! she's getting her winter coat. she's got a crew cut up top. wait, with her bunny ears, that might mean she has a mullet??

-J

Sunday, November 7, 2010

C.A.D.D.

No, I'm not talking about the computer-aided design program. I'm referring to something I truly feel belongs in the DSM-IV: Creative Attention Deficit Disorder. I have it; it's both a blessing & a curse. For the past few years my New Year's resolution has been to "finish what I start"... apparently I don't take resolutions seriously.
So what am I getting at here? I can't focus!! This is why this wonderful book is on my Christmas list (Brad is hoping it will help me achieve some assemblance of order in my chaotically creative brain & our home):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0847833658/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp_GeoVmb0HABQ9B

So how does one prioritize their creative right-brained ways? (Aside: I used to think that I could not label myself as right or left-brained but recently "lefty" seems to be taking a back seat as it's "righty" that brings me more satisfaction.) Do you make lists? That only seems to overwhelm me & it's frustrating when you can't check things off regularly. Any suggestions would be helpful. One thing I do know is that this winter I'm finally going to learn how to sew & I've joined an online Home Ec class:

http://frecklednest.blogspot.com/2010/07/home-ec-full-details-registration.html
(I'm just patiently awaiting that sewing machine I requested as an early Christmas gift from mom)

Once I get that bad-boy I'm committed to making all sorts of loveliness: curtains, satchels, ironing board covers, & accessories galore! And I'm very excited to share these creations :) In the meantime I'm totally obsessing about this gorgeous plan I have for our "cozy" kitchen & my FIESTAWARE:


a special thanks to my lovely friend Ellen for snipping out this inspiration

As you can tell I can barely make this post tangible as my mind overfloweth with creative steam....HELP! Am hoping after my much-anticipated girls' trip to SanFran next weekend I will be in full holiday swing and have a new-found focus. I've got holiday goodies to create-- I'll let you know the percentage of planned homemade gifts actually come to fruition.

So that's a wrap. You've now seen posts from WeThree: Lucy & the Invisibles. Cheers to many more in store!
-lucy

Saturday, November 6, 2010

the rain rain rain came down down down

Sis's,

All right, so I know it's not my turn, but I had to share my story of the day.

I went for a bike ride this evening. Observe



And that's my front side. Nevermind that I don't have a rear fender. Yes, ok, so by now I should really know better. But, in my defense, (or is it a defense?) I wouldn’t have been so drenched if I hadn’t gotten so utterly lost. Here’s what went down:



The blue line is Google telling me where to go; the red line is where I went. As you see, there is a major discrepancy. Once I reached 82nd Ave I became seriously suspicious of my navigation skills and had to phone home for some Mapquest/mom assistance. Three hrs and 15 miles later I was finally home. Luckily I had my Goretex jacket on, but, as already communicated via the photograph, no rainpants. Just yoga pants.

My lostness was partially due to the fact that tons of street signs in Portland are twisted around, i.e. Ainsworth St says Vancouver Ave and Vancouver Ave says Ainsworth St. It happens a lot, to a marked degree, and to the point where I wonder how such a thing is even possible. It had to have been a vehicle that turned these signs around.

The only precedence I have for this is with our childhood bus driver Ms. Skitene {(who took out street signs rounding corners, when her bus was full of children, and when one corner happened to curve around a ravine (remember, by that house on the hill that used to give out King-sized candy bars at Halloween?)}. Could it be that Ms. Skitene  has that many twinsies in the world? (And, by the way, did we call her Ms. Skiddin’? Because we should have.) I also saw a pair of Hummer limos on my bike ride today, unpacking at the park with girls in puffy ballroom dresses, undoubtedly celebrating Quinceneras. Maybe it was a vehicle like theirs that is responsible for these sign turnarounds. Hard to say.

Despite getting lost, and despite the unrelenting rain, I have to admit I found myself very charmed by the season's affects. All of the trees are changing colors. The golden leaves are my favorite; against the grey clouds they are breathtaking. Some parks and sidewalks are completely blanketed with them. I think my subconscious expects to see munchkins. Actually, I was admiring a sidewalk like this when I noted a peculiar white stripe in my bike lane…it was a white stripe where nothing but my tires should be. Well, upon closer inspection I discerned that it was a skunk that had been run over repeatedly and rendered 2-dimensional, matted with rain. Not quite a munchkin. Though this was another wonder of the day, more wonderous than revolting -- no buts about it, this skunk has jumped dimensions, from living and breathing as a 3d in the 4d, to presiding solely in the 2d. Kinda like Quantum Leap, except probably not really. Well, maybe like Al in Quantum Leap.

We discovered today that our Bunny, “Bun,” has fleas, so hopefully the dollop of flea gel treatment that we put on her neck will keep them at bay. I Googled bunny fleas and learned that bunnies demand a lot of grooming. Apparently they should be brushed once a week, as they lick and groom themselves but don’t have the capacity to cough up furballs a la kitties. Sometimes their bunny fur gets stuck in their digestive system. We’ll have to get a brush sometime. I’m curious how long she’s had them. I never noticed her itching before. Regardless, for now she has been quarantined to her cage.

-J