Story time. January 24, 2008 ~ 12:40 pm
Posted by Julie in : Story Time , comments closedLet me tell you a sad story. There was a woman who lived in Brooklyn, where it was cold. And dark. And generally winter-like. And she got to go to Florida where her boyfriend was, and where the place she stayed had a heated pool and tiny lizards and lots of beer and fun people to hang out with. And she totally lost track of the days and chilled and even got to wear shorts a few days without being cold. She didn’t even mind the day they took her to play golf because she was so relaxed and having so much fun. And on the day she had to fly back to Brooklyn, they made it to the beach and it was 76* and there had been a storm the night before so the picture-taking was grand and she even saw a sea urchin and found some sand dollars. And she was blissfully happy. And then she had to catch a flight back home and when she got back to Brooklyn she had to put her shorts away and dig out her parka and go back to work. It sucked. And her boyfriend still got to be in Florida for another week. And Heath Ledger was dead. The end.
Pictures to come tomorrow, when I have more successfully dealt with my re-entry.
Christmas proposal November 15, 2007 ~ 10:58 am
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity, Story Time , comments closedI love Christmas as much as the next person. I love decorating for it, buying gifts for other people (I get a real rush from finding the perfect gift for someone), making things for people…I’m still a big kid about it. Especially this year, which will be Samang’s first Christmas. (I went out and bought her a “Baby’s First Christmas” Winnie the Pooh ornament Monday night. She likes it very much and wishes she could eat it.) I can hardly wait to see the look on her face when she sees the Christmas decorations and lights.
However, like I said yesterday, this whole “put the decorations up the day after Halloween” thing is a bit much. Seeing the runners stream under the garlands on the streets during the NYC marathon? Just wrong. I like Christmas decorations, I enjoy how they brighten up gloomy winter days and give us something beautiful to break up the long dark nights. But I would like to propose something: how about next year we put up the lights the day after Thanksgiving, like we have always done up until now, but we leave them up an extra month to make up for not having them in November? I dunno about you, but January depresses me. No festive holidays to look forward to, just cold and darkness. I think January needs brightening up a whole lot more than November does. Because really, November has Thanksgiving. You might not go all out decorating for it unless you live in my neighborhood (we’re Irish, we decorate for everything), but you’ve got it to look forward to. I do not look forward to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the same way. Perhaps because there’s no pumpkin pie.
Note: this late taking down of decorations has worked before. When I had a roommate and liked to annoy her in retaliation for all the shit she pulled on me, I left the decorations up until March one year. I simply told her that in my family we didn’t take the decorations down until Little Christmas. I then told her Little Christmas was in March. And she fell for it. Her gullibility led to a much brighter and happier winter for me, and her obsessive compulsive self had fits every time she walked into the house and saw our fake tree still up and lit. (I was going to say “everyone wins,” but really it was just me who was the winner. I’m okay with that.)
Weekend May 30, 2007 ~ 10:05 am
Posted by Julie in : Story Time , comments closedI could tell you about this weekend in words. In fact, I probably will. Eventually. But I’m a firm believer in a picture being worth a thousand words, and rather than ramble on for oh, 14, 000 words and putting you to sleep, I’ll give you fourteen pictures instead. They’re behind the cut.
This is how I spent Memorial Day Weekend 2007. With my best friend from high school and her family in a belated birthday (Leenie’s was May 18) surprise that her mom (my other mom) sprung on us both.
The dog ate my homework April 30, 2007 ~ 11:36 am
Posted by Julie in : Story Time, Technobabble , comments closedI uploaded photos to Flickr this morning that I was going to use in my post. Pictures of the socks I finished knitting last night, pictures of Freddie and Joe…it was going to be a fun and picture-heavy post. And then I got to the office and realized that my Flickr plugin was spazzing because I had updated Wordpress. Okay, no problem. Just go over to Bluehost and upload the updated plugin with FTP.
This computer? It hates the FTP. So now I can’t post the pictures or do the post I wanted. This is like the time in 7th grade where my dog chewed the plug off my typewriter (hey, remember typewriters??) and I couldn’t type my paper for English. Yeah, try using that excuse. Teachers don’t believe it even when your mother writes a note confirming that yes, the dog was that stupid. And when you bring in the plug to show them.
So…you can go over to Flickr and check out my half-done homework if you want. I’ll hopefully get the situation resolved this evening after Freddie’s vet appointment. In the meantime, I’ll just sit here and twiddle my thumbs.
Mice are our friends. October 3, 2006 ~ 8:25 pm
Posted by Julie in : Story Time , comments closedYou wanted a story about a one-eyed mouse, you got a story about a one-eyed mouse.
Rick and I had been involved in, um, certain birthday activities which involved a lack of clothing when I decided I had to go to the bathroom. I switched on the light, closed the door behind me, and froze. There was a scuffling noise somewhere in the room. A tiny scratching. I looked down, and from behind the garbage can a little mouse shuffled out. He wasn’t moving that fast and he was very small, but there was I in my all-together and I did what anyone would do. I screamed. Yeah, laugh, but you get caught in a tiny room with a rodent while you’re buck nekkid with nothing between you and said rodent and see what you do.
From outside the bathroom, Rick called “What’s wrong?”
“A mouse.”
“Where’d it go?”
“Uh, it’s still in here with me.”
I looked around. Fortunately, we had a rubbermaid container in the bathroom to contain a sometime-leaky pipe. Doubly fortunate, said container was dry. I turned it over on top of the mouse, and the container lived up to its name. It contained the mouse very well.
Some time later (certain activities had to be resumed, after all, mouse or no), I put my clothes back on and went to retrieve said mouse, now christened Steve McQueen (guess where I got that name from?). I had convinced Rick not to kill him, and was about to do a release. I would have taken him down the block to Central Park, but Rick’s merciful streak did not extend that far, so I had to settle for a tree planter on the sidewalk. I looked at the mouse before I let him go, and the mouse looked back at me. With his one eye. There was no second eye. No wonder he was shuffling around the bathroom, the poor thing was legally blind! I was in the process of telling Rick this when Steve suddenly got feisty and tried to hurl himself out of the container, so I quickly put him in the tree planter. I went back into the apartment.
Steve hasn’t returned to Rick’s apartment yet, but if he does, Rick has strict orders. No killing Steve McQueen, my legally blind birthday mouse.
(Note that this is not the first time I have rescued a mouse from a bathroom with tupperware. They are apparently seeking me out.)
Uncle Walter July 26, 2006 ~ 9:52 pm
Posted by Julie in : About a Julz, Politically Incorrect, Story Time , comments closedI’ve been watching a PBS documentary about Walter Cronkite this evening and I remembered a conversation I had with my mom about him a couple of years ago:
Julie: For some reason I find Walter Cronkite’s voice really relaxing to listen to.
Mom: (laughing)
Julie: What?
Mom: (still laughing)
Julie: What’s so funny about that?
Mom: When you were a baby and were really fussy because of colic and earaches, we couldn’t find anything to make you stop crying. So we would sit you in front of the TV for the CBS Evening News, and Walter Cronkite would always make you stop. You thought he was talking just to you.
Julie: Well, that would explain it.
Bonus points to Walter Crokite for using a PBS Documentary about him to slam Dubya and Iraq. I knew I liked him for more than his voice. Now if only Dubya would listen to him like LBJ did and step the hell down.
Luck of the Irish July 6, 2006 ~ 10:45 am
Posted by Julie in : About a Julz, Story Time , comments closedRedheads are always stereotyped. People take one look at us and say “Ohhhh, you’re Irish.” As if red hair can’t come from anywhere else in the world. Forget that in ancient Egyptian myth, Set was a redhead. Forget that Judas was supposedly redheaded, too. (What the hell is with all the redheads being demonized?) Forget that there is quite a large sector of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn with flaming red hair. Nope, we’re all from Ireland.
To be honest, I did get my red hair from Ireland. County Cork, to be exact, where my mother’s mother’s family hails from. But I am predominantly of German descent. My father’s family was German straight down the line from when they arrived in this country before the Revolutionary War. My mother’s father’s family was German as well. Yet nobody ever looks at my brown eyes and thinks “Aha! Bavarian!”
The week before last, I got mistaken for an Irish person twice within two days. And by Irish, I mean “direct from Ireland,” not “of Irish descent. Maybe I was sending out “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph” vibes or something, I don’t know.
The first time, Rick and I were walking by the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side. There was a homeless person, drunk by the smell of him, sprawled out on the ground by the stage door. As we walked past him, he looked blearily up at me, apparently registered the red hair, and yelled “Fuckin’ Irish! Takin’ over the world!” after me as we continued down the street. I yelled “Damn skippy!” back at him.
The second time was in the parking lot at Jones Beach before the Def Leppard show. Jordana and I were getting changed into heavier clothes (we had stupidly worn shorts and t-shirts over our swimsuits, not anticipating that it was going to be a total downpour at the beach), and two guys in the car behind us were watching. (Again, I was wearing a swimsuit the entire time, it’s not like they saw underwear or boobs.) As we were getting ready to leave the car, one of the guys yelled “Hey! Did you come all the way from Ireland to see the show?” Uh, no. Brooklyn.
I think that if I’m going to be mistaken for Irish, I should get some of the perks. Like luck. A nice lottery win would be appreciated right about now. Or perhaps high alcoholic tolerance. It would be nice to be able to drink three beers and not be drunk. But no. All I’ve got is the red hair and the temper. That might just be enough to take over the world.
What’s that, Lassie? July 2, 2006 ~ 10:43 pm
Posted by Julie in : Story Time, Urban Family , comments closed
Brooklyn Botanical Garden
Last night I went to another Celebrate Brooklyn concert with Thabiso and Jordana. It was Celebrate South Africa night, and I figured we were going to end up hanging with a lot of South African expatriates - I swear they all know each other. I was not disappointed. We started the night with five of us on a blanket and ended up with about twenty people at our little space. Every time I turned around someone was calling Thabiso’s cell phone or randomly finding us on the hill. Some of those people I haven’t seen in years, but they were there last night - it was like old home night in Brooklyn.
Thabs’s friend Bongani was there with his girlfriend, Sonja. One thing you have to understand about Bongani is that he is a social butterfly. He goes through life introducing himself to everyone around him and has friends all over as result. He’s incredibly friendly, and people just respond to him. Jordana and I have a saying about him: “Instant party? Add Bongani!”
Last night he outdid himself. With the large numbers of people gathered on our blanket, we went through all the alcohol we had snuck in rather quickly. We made a beer run over to Farrell’s and got 6 containers. We ran through those pretty quickly as well. There we were without any more alcohol and no way to get more (we had spent all our collective money at Farrell’s). It was at this point that Sonja came up to me and said “Have you seen Bongani? He’s been gone for 20 minutes and I’m wondering if he got lost.”
I looked around and realized that it was totally possible to get lost - there were hundreds of people around all stuck together in a small place, and it was dark. Right as I was about to admit that, however, Bongani showed up. With two bottles of wine. Celebrate Brooklyn has a no glass bottles rule, so I said “Where the hell did you get those?”. Bongani just smiled benevolently and waved his wrist at me. “VIP Tent,” he said proudly, and there on his wrist was his VIP bracelet. Jordana turned around and said “How did you get into the VIP Tent?” He grinned at her. “Nevermind,” we both said. He got in because he’s Bongani and he could make friends with a great white shark in a feeding frenzy. “But how did you get the wine?” I asked. “I mean, what the hell, you’re like Lassie! What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s in a well? With wine? Go get the wine, Lassie!”
Bongani lost it and fell on the ground, he was laughing so hard. When he stood up again, we realized that Lassie had fucked up. While he had retrieved the wine, he had forgotten to find a bottle opener. And he sat looking forlornly at the sealed bottles of Shiraz Pinotage the rest of the night.
I tell you what, search and seizure by cops or no, there will be a bottle opener in my bag for the rest of the summer. I’m not missing out on free alcohol again.
Mutual of Jones Beach’s “Wild Kingdom” June 26, 2006 ~ 11:04 pm
Posted by Julie in : Shorty, Story Time , comments closedI know that some people wouldn’t classify a concert without alcohol as hell, but there’s just something nice about kicking back with a beer while seeing your favorite band. It’s even nicer to have a beer to help you pass the time until your not-so-favorite band gets the hell off the stage and lets your favorite band take over. For instance, about the time that your not-so-favorite band starts singing “Wheel in the Sky.” That would be a good great time for a beer.
Apparently I was not the only one thinking like this on Saturday night. Our first hint was the huge tailgate party going on in the parking lot when we arrived. People had pitched tents, were sitting under tarps, or were just chilling out in their cars blasting Def Leppard (there were no Journey tailgaters as near as I could tell) and drinking pre-show. However the real proof was an incident that happened the third time I went to the bathroom during the Journey half of the show (I had been tailgating with everyone else, what can I say?).
There was a line of about ten women waiting for stalls when I came over to wash my hands, and I was glancing at them in the mirror when I saw something shiny and cylindrical in the hand of a woman behind me. At that same instant, every other woman in the room saw it, too. As one, much like a group of lions sensing prey, we all whirled to face her. “Where’d you get the beer???” we asked with one voice, obviously all having been denied life-giving alcohol by the evil venue. The woman backed up a step towards the wall, trying to protect her Bud Light from the predators around her, then giggled tipsily. “Out of my purse!” she exclaimed, as if it were the most natural thing on earth.
All of us who were without alcohol looked at each other in a mass “D’oh!” moment before I summed it up. “Goddammit!” I said, looking at the tiny bag on my hip. “I’m bringing a bigger purse next time!”
New career goal May 31, 2006 ~ 10:38 pm
Posted by Julie in : About a Julz, Story Time , comments closedWhen I was 14, I always said that I wanted to be a rock journalist when I grew up. Either that, or one of Sting’s back-up singers/dancers. Because dammit, I could dance and shake a tambourine and sing. But after I went to a couple of Sting concerts, I realized I could never be a Sting dancer because 1.) I wasn’t tall enough, and 2.) Sting only had black women as his dancers. Leggy and black I will never be. I shelved my hopes of being a Sting dancer.
However tonight, watching the VH1 Rock Awards, I have come up with a new career goal. Def Leppard has back-up singers/dancers for when they do “Twentieth Century Boy,” and one of those girls was white. And not all that tall. When I grow up? I’m going to be a Def Leppard dancer.
