My Life, As Told Between (Baby Cakes') Naps

I love sleep.  My many nicknames include The Napster and Koala Bear.  (FYI – Koala Bears sleep approximately 23 hours a day.  What a life.)  As a proponent of sleep (I know, I know, I’m really going out on a limb with that statement), I found this particularly disturbing and scary. 

It’s RAINING today!  Ordinarily I wouldn’t be so thrilled, but my car has been filthy lately.  I knew if I held out long enough, it’d rain and I could avoid having to go get it washed.  I totally win!

Owning a car is so much harder when you don’t have someone else to wash it, maintain it, and keep it full of gas.  Does anyone know where I can put in an order for a monkey butler?  (Sorry, I unabashedly love the Simpsons and monkey servants are a running theme on that show.  I don’t question it.  I just embrace it.)

A close friend from law school who (reluctantly) reads my blog (only because I send her the link to it practically every day with the demand that she read it) recently emailed me, “I hate to admit it, but you’re funny. At least in writing.”  Unbeknownst to me, I apparently managed to be completely humorless during my entire three years in Cambridge (with the exception of that time the wall jumped right in front of me after a night of drinking).  It started me thinking.  I like to consider myself as a somewhat funny person.  No stand up comedian certainly, but someone who elicits the occasional chuckle.  Maybe even a guffaw or two.  Mostly because I can laugh at myself, don’t mind if others join in (which they all too often do with disturbing enthusiasm), and don’t take too much too seriously.  But what if I’m wrong?  What if I’m totally and completely self-delusional? 

For example, I’ve recently developed a fondness for adding the phrase “and then he kicked me” to the end of any story I tell.  I find it hilarious and crack myself up for hours over it.  I’m now wondering if that’s akin to the five-year-old who finds using the word “poop” to be the height of comic genius?  Poop.  Heh.  Actually, that’s a classic. 

Note:  Please ignore this particular entry when evaluating my aforementioned funniness.  (This, by the way, is not an invitation to introduce me to the truth!  I’m sure this moment of self-doubt will pass quickly enough.  It’s a good thing I’m fickle and a little flighty.)

Yay, the Patriots won!  Yes, I only half-assed watched the game and yawned through most of the parts I did watch, but there’s still a twinge of pride that my team won.  It’s funny how people become enamored of teams that only have a loose connection to their own lives.  Merely by living in Boston for three years, and breathing the same arctic air as the Patriots, I have somehow adopted them as “my” team (second only to the Niners because I was raised in the Bay Area and because if I say otherwise, there is a reasonably large chance my parents would disown me). 

Luckily, I survived a foray to Hollywood’s Sunset Room last night and made it to a friend’s Superbowl party in Pasadena today.  Barely.  It was touch and go for much of last night.  At least the parts I remember.  There may have been some pitiful whimpering cries of “I’m dying” as I curled up in the fetal position on the couch, broken only by occasional belligerent shouts of “Why don’t you guys care that I’m dyiiinnnggg?!!!”  Most of you already know I have a tendancy towards melodrama and histrionics when drunk.  And when sober.  Oh, and no, I didn’t run into any walls this time round.  Thanks for asking.   

Visited the Getty again, which really is breath-taking.  Managed to avoid spitting over the rails.  I’ve been informed that something about the combination of heights and rails triggers a spitting impulse in guys.  I’m just going to take this statement at face value since I have absolutely no desire to try and prove it.  

Sigh.  Work tomorrow.         

The armchair I bought yesterday arrived at my office today and is sitting next to the cute little table I also purchased yesterday.  I now have a reading nook.  It is warm and cozy and everything a law firm office probably shouldn’t be.  It certainly doesn’t send the message of Big Mean Litigator (of course, being 5’2″ and sounding somewhat like a valley girl doesn’t help).  In a moment of insanity, I also contemplated getting a stuffed teddy bear to occupy the armchair, but then I thought better of it.  I’d like to be taken seriously as an attorney.  A stuffed dog would clearly be much more professional. 

Went hiking this weekend.  Because of the rain earlier in the week, I was knee-deep in mud for most of the hike.  (I feel safe in making this statement only because the friend I went hiking with virtually never reads this blog and will therefore not be able to quibble about whether the mud was knee-deep or, say, barely enough to get my shoes slightly dirty.)

As for the rest of the weekend:  Tried to see a movie.  Unsuccessfully.  Bought the black purse I’ve been wanting forever (will graciously spare you the details about my beautiful new purse).  Made turkey chili, one of the few things I make well.  Bought office furniture (see first paragraph).  Went to a cardio kickboxing class at my new gym.  Did some weights.  By the way, never follow up an hour long kickboxing class and a weights session with a three and a half hour hike.  I realized when I woke up Sunday morning that it’s all too easy to take simple things, like being able to move ones limbs, for granted.

(*Yawn*) 

Okay, even I’m getting bored of this entry.  I’ll stop now.  Night all.  (*Wanders off*)

Yesterday was spent battling a bout of food poisoning.  Feeling much better today.  In a rare moment of extreme optimism, I’m going to head over to the gym across the street and join any minute now.  My collarbone made a reappearance last week, which has inspired me to keep up the diet and exercise.  My friend’s visit this weekend derailed that a bit, but I’m working to get back on track.  Maybe having to pay every month will inspire me to work out on those mornings when I just can’t seem to get out of bed.  Or maybe it will be an extravagant waste of money, seeing as to how I often can’t seem to make it to the gym downstairs in my own building.  We’ll see. 

I start my new job tomorrow. 

No, seriously.  Why do people keep trying to make me sing?  After dinner yesterday, I was dragged to a small karaoke bar.  There were maybe twenty-five people there.  Keifer Sutherland was one of them.  Weird.  Someone (not Keifer Sutherland) complimented my cleavage.  Anyone who has ever seen me will understand why this is possibly even weirder.

Also attended a great cocktail party in downtown LA Saturday.  The hostess, HB, had amazing appetizers and even better friends in attendance.  I ended up, as is my wont lately, discussing the half ton man.  In exchange, or perhaps retaliation, one of the guests told me an extremely disturbing story involving a heavily overweight woman, folds of fat, and a dead kitten.  (Mental note:  Stop talking about the half ton man.)  The highlight of the party may have been my being drafted into the Cupcake Brigade.  I’m told it’s a great honor.  Thank you, General C.  =) 

In any case, the party renewed my interest in throwing the housewarming party I’ve been talking about since October.  As long as HB caters the party, my friend ML organizes it, and my roommate cleans up afterwards, this party may actually happen.  Maybe in June…

Went hiking with a friend on the Mishe Mokwa Trail in Malibu today.  It was a beautiful day and a terrific one to spend outdoors.  So much better then working.  I need more three day weekends.  

The electricity in my apartment has been flickering on and off all weekend, presumably due to the storm that’s wrecking havoc in LA.  The old Jewish woman who lives down the hall from me dropped by yesterday, during a period in which the electricity was working, to ask for help in resetting the clocks in her apartment.  I think she wanted the company more than the help, since the clocks were bound to flicker off again anyways.  In the fifteen minutes I was there, she managed to tell me about the family, and the baby, she had lost in the holocaust and the husband she had lost to old age.  Her entire apartment was a shrine to her former life, with faded pictures of her and her husband scattered throughout.  I tried to stay and talk to her as long as I could, but soon the walls started to feel like they were closing in on me and I just had to escape.  It was a sad and sobering reminder of what it must be like to grow old in America.  I hope I work up the nerve to visit her again.  I’d like to, but I’m not sure I’m that brave.     

Aside from no hot water and all the food in the fridge going bad, my roommate and I have been forced to entertain ourselves by telling stories and “using our imaginations” this weekend.  Apparently, neither of us have much of one, so we ended up discussing our current topic of obsession – the half ton man.  I don’t know why I find him so riveting.  I think it’s because he makes me reconsider the limits of the human body.  Or that, even tipping the scales at 1,000+ pounds, he’s been married for over nine years.  The idea of a Mrs. Half Ton Man is mystifying to me.       

Forced to go karaokeing last night for a friend’s birthday.  Painful.  Why do people keep trying to make me sing? 

I’ve been inundated with emails this week.  Which is great (because, as y’all know, I love emails), except that most of the emails were from female friends who were perturbed by an article I sent concerning a study on the relationship between marriage and IQs.  In my opinion, the most salient statistic is the study’s finding that there’s a 35% increase in the likelihood of marriage for each 16-point rise in IQ for boys, whereas for girls, there’s a 40% drop for each 16-point increase (and no, I couldn’t get ahold of the actual study so I’m not sure how these statistics are calculated).  I had thought it was interesting, but I apparently ruined a few people’s weeks and started several other people on a downward spiral of self-analysis and doubt.  I’ve already sent out my round of apologetic emails, so I’ll skip that in this post.  However, I thought I would share the best response I received, which was that “at least on days when you’re feeling stupid at work and completely incapable of doing the task you’ve just been assigned, you can take comfort in the fact that maybe you are marriagable after all.”  So on that note, I’m off to work!  Happy Friday all!  

Oh, and for any guys reading this, I promise more guy-friendly subjects next week.  Unfortunately, I have no idea what those subject would be, so if you have any suggestions, shoot me an email.  Otherwise, you may be subjected to a post about the new black purse I’m planning to buy and whether I should also buy a gold clutch to match the gold shoes I rarely wear (in part because I don’t have a gold clutch – such a consumer catch-22). 

One more thing – my diet is going really well, thank you for asking.  Went running this morning despite the storm!  Yes, my gym is indoors.  Whatever.  Anyways, also read a cute quote on dieting/excercise today:  “I’m desperately trying to get to the weight I was when I thought I was fat.”

Dude, I love these things.  A friend just pointed them out to me.  Everyone’s getting one for Christmas next year.  Please act appropriately surprised.

My roommate has requested that I write an entry about her eggs (I think it may have been a joke, but she should know better around me).  She’s been mentioning them a lot recently.  Something about only being fertile for so long, wanting babies, blah, blah, blah.  I told another friend about it, expecting a little sympathy for my plight (after all, I’m the one who has to hear about it all the time), only to be shocked when the aforementioned friend confessed she’d also been worrying about it.  She then proceeded to rub her side and coo, “Don’t die little eggs.  Don’t die.”  She had just turned twenty-five a few days ago.  It was really funny at the time.  Now it just sounds a little creepy.

I worry about a lot of things, my horrible haircut being at the top of the list at the moment, but hadn’t even thought to worry about this.  Apparently I should be.  Yikes.  Okay, I’m now officially and totally freaked out.  When did I get to the stage where all of my friends are worried about their fertility?  And how do I get out of this hell dimension?!  HELP!  S.O.S.!  Someone?  Anyone?

Saw this movie a couple of days ago and really enjoyed it.  I laughed, I cried.  I don’t have anything particularly deep to say about it (yes, yes, you all are shocked, I know), although I practically had to tape my roommate’s mouth shut to prevent her from ruining it with a social critique.  She managed to squeak “Orientalism” before I could complete the job however.  I’m going to have to be quicker next time.

BTW, comments feature is finally working. 

Went to what I thought would be a rather low key wig party.  Yes, for some reason my friend thought it would be fun if everyone was forced to wear a wig to the event – who knew she’d be right? It turned out to be a lot wilder then I anticipated.  I feel I’ve lost a bit of my innocence last night just by being there. 

The highlight of the year so far though may have been arriving home at 7am, to be greeted with an email by a good friend from law school that simply said, “sfucking drunk.”  I love that he was too drunk to properly type “so fucking drunk,” but could function enough to get to the computer and contact his best friends.  Classic.  (CM, that’s sfucking cool.)  

What a great start to the new year! =)

Yuck.  Completed a long day at the office today with a Jack in the Box splurge.  It was a spontaneous roommate excursion; although, the only reason I went was because I’ve been desperately wanting a Reindeer Jack ball for my car.  Unfortunately, I only belatedly realized that my car does not actually have a protruding antenna upon which to affix said ball. 

Wow, I really can’t sing.  At all.  That became painfully obvious tonight.  After ducking out of work before seven, virtually unheard of in the corporate legal world, I headed out to Handel’s Messiah sing-a-long at the nearby Walt Disney Concert Hall.  That’s right folks.  You heard me:  Handel’s Messiah sing-a-long.  Minutes after sitting down and picking up the score, I realized that I’d somehow forgotten everything I had learned in my six years of playing the piano and clarinet.  And that I’ve never had to sing in public without a couple of beers in me.  Fortunately, the rest of the crowd was more than loud enough to cover the fact that I was only mouthing the words, as well as the fact that I stopped doing so about five minutes into the first song because I realized even that required too much work.  The music was good, the venue was neat, and the crowd was enthusiastic though, so all in all, it was a good night.  And on that note, good night all. 

My litigation group had our team dinner at a partner’s house tonight.  We all exchanged gifts and warm and fuzzies we had anonymously written earlier in the week.  My personal favorite started with “I know Harvard graduates don’t have the best reputations” and basically said I was a nice person despite the fact that I graduated from HLS.  I’ve actually received several comments along those lines in the last few years.  Honestly, what are other HLSers doing out there in the world that’s giving us such a bad reputation?

I don’t know when it happened.  I was at lunch yesterday with another first year associate and two of her friends.  One is the VP of something in a big bank and the other is a money manager.  And while it was supposed to be just a lunch among friends, it felt more like a networking event to me.  Both were very nice, but it was disconcerning how we all shifted into our “professional” voices when discussing our, for lack of a better word, “careers,” and then slid easily back into the slang of our every day lives when discussing things like our friends and past times.  It left me wondering.  Am I slowly turning into an adult despite my best intentions? 

It was nice to get back to my grad student roommate, who was giggling with excitement over an A+ she’d received.  Now that’s the kind of world with which I’m familiar.

Now, I don’t want to be one of those whiny LA people I make fun of, but my God, it’s FREEZING here!  I did not leave the East Coast for this!  Thankfully, I didn’t burn all my winter clothes, as I had contemplated, because I wanted to save them in the unlikely event that hell froze over.  What do you know?  It did. 

Aside from spending most of my day shivering, I’m finally wrapping up a document review project that’s taken me, oh, let’s say, my entire existence up until this point.  At least that’s what it feels like.  

Went to the UCLA/USC game Saturday and while we lost, as anticipated, it was a respectable game.  UCLA didn’t get its butt kicked too badly. =)  It gives me hope that the USC streak will end one day.  I finally got a glimpse of this “tailgating” that people are always talking about.  Interesting.  Not my scene, but interesting…

Also went to my firm’s holiday party at the Natural History Museum Saturday (slogan:  Dancing with the Dinosaurs) with one of my best friends (who was mad at not being mentioned in the previous, unedited version of this post).  Very different environment.  Didn’t win anything in the raffle, but had fun nonetheless, if for no other reason than because I got to witness the awesome power of the statement “I’m getting a PhD in astrophysics.”  I’ve never seen a conversation killed quite so quickly and efficiently before, not even back when my girlfriends and I had to drop the (obnoxiously monikered) H-bomb at The Kell’s. (And yes, I realize use of the word “moniker” is obnoxious in and of itself, but what can I say?  I didn’t escape Cambridge completely unscathed.)

Finished most of my Christmas shopping.  Yay!  (Had my sister over to wrap the gifts; she enjoys it – really!)  Whew, such a relief.  Now, it’s just sitting back and waiting for the gifts to arrive. =)