This is my life and musings and whatever else I decide to write about in a day.
Pure Imitation Maranie
Saturday, July 06, 2002
Last night, I wanted to post here. I wanted to start out with one word:WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But now, change that to:
Ugghhh..... :-P
I have to say, I did have a wonderful time last night. I've lost enough weight to fit into my navy blue mini-skirt, so I threw on that and my new blue blouse from Target and headed over to pick up Beth, the new girl at work who just moved here from the Cleveland area. We went to Susan's, where we also met up with Colleen and Heather. We talked, had a beer or two and some wine, and then all crowded into Susan's little car to go to German Village.
We knew we wanted to go dancing, but I refused to set foot into another meat market like Banana Joe's or the Yucatan Liquor Stand, so we ended up at a bar called Victory's. I could go there again. There's two dance floors - one indoors, one out - a patio bar, and a place for live bands to play. The beer prices aren't too bad for a bar. But most importantly, although all of us got flirted with at one point or another, no one was pinching my ass as I walked by, or using cheesy pick-up lines. (At least, I didn't hear any. But it WAS really loud there.) We watched the band, drank, and danced. We danced a lot. I loved it.
I had a lot of booze. The purpose of my drinking last night was to get totally blotto, and I succeeded in my goal. Colleen drove Beth and me home, and I didn't crawl into bed until 3:30 a.m. This is why I just woke up 20 minutes ago, and I'm not feeling so hot. I ate bread and drank water before heading off to bed, but I'm still hungover. Ah well. For the good time I had last night, rather than just sitting around my apartment, lonely and watching Farscape, the hangover is well worth it.
posted by Maranie on 7/06/2002 01:16:00 PM
Friday, July 05, 2002
I have such pretty memories of the past couple days.Like the Red White n' Boom party. I'm standing on the balcony with Jason, watching the fireworks and listening to the music accompanying them. But what really made it enjoyable was a sweet 4-year-old girl named Rachel, the daughter of my co-worker Beth. She stood there in awe, her little hands over her ears, watching the sparks fly over Columbus and squealing "Oooo! Look at that one!" I love fireworks displays, they never grow old for me, but what I wouldn't do to have that pure joy again. I can't wait for us to have our own children someday, to take them to their first fireworks display and watch the wonder on their faces.
Or the tour of the home of one of the partners here, who had a cookout yesterday. At his request, his 16-year-old son showed me the whole house, and I got a personal look into his life and that of his family. A lot of times, I feel like I don't quite fit in, that I'm not sophisticated or smooth enough to work here. And maybe I'm not. But I'm more accepted here than I've ever been at any other job, if for no other reason that I've never before seen where any boss of mine sleeps at night.
Or swimming in Susan's pool at her condo complex. It was a nice scene to begin with - Susan and Heather, lounging on the deck chairs, along with others in the complex. Colleen playing Marco Polo with the kids in the pool. A cool breeze blowing over the water, relieving us from the crushing heat and humidity of the past several days. Then, in the midst of all this, Jason picked me up in four-feet deep water, like a bride being carried over the threshold, and just started spinning us around in the water so fast that I got dizzy. I can still feel the water streaming under my feet, feel his arms holding me, and hear myself shrieking with delight. Just thinking about it gets me smiling again.
Or last night, after we returned from Susan's. I'm upstairs, hearing booming sounds. At first I think they're somehow from a neighbor. Then I think it's thunder, but realize it doesn't sound quite right to be that. It takes me a minute to realize it's fireworks. When I head out the door to investigate, there's our neighbors, Mark and Amelia, just married last weekend, walking outside their door and looking into the skies too. Jason follows me out, and we all discover that the sound is the Dublin fireworks show, visible above the trees behind our building. We walked up the street, toward the dead end, standing right in the middle of the road, talking and watching the show and only moving when the occasional car came by. It was a beautiful impromptu ending to a holiday that is quickly becoming one of my favorites. :-)
posted by Maranie on 7/05/2002 12:36:00 PM
Thursday, July 04, 2002
Happy Independence Day, folks. I'm celebrating it with another Random Thought:Ten years ago, this very day, I was part of something called the West Virginia Governor's Honors Academy. We called it the GHA for short. It was a month-long program for kids in between their junior and senior years of high school, supposedly for the "best and the brightest" in the state. There were at least two kids picked in each county, then more at the statewide level, so there ended up being around 165 kids there.
Every year, GHA was held at a university or college in West Virginia. It rotated every two years, and I feel lucky that it was being held at WVU in 1992. I can't speak for other years, but when I was there, I had two classes: The morning class, which was considered to be the intensive one, and the afternoon class. Then there was recreation time and a whole lot of speakers, perfomers, evening activities (mostly dances or movies), and even trips to Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. Not bad for a state-run program designed to entice the smart kids to go to West Virginia colleges and stop the state's brain drain.
Strangely enough, at GHA I was kind of popular. I'm only chatty now in a group if you put at least a beer in me. But back then, I was only 16 and didn't touch beer. I knew so many kids there, had so many people I called friends. I was never really lonely there, never felt like I had to hold back in any regard or hide myself. It was a place where I felt accepted, like I belonged. I still have a million stories about that one month for anyone who cares to listen to them.
I had friends there, the first and foremost being my roommate, a girl named Laura Henry. She was tall and laid-back, a sweet, funny girl. We'd talk into the night, go do things together - we even both bought WVU boxer shorts one day together, to wear as regular shorts around campus. They weren't the same shorts - she got a reddish-brown floral or paisley design, mine were green and blue plaid - but it didn't matter because it connected us. They had the same logo, a white WVU on one leg, and we bought them together. I kind of considered them to be OUR shorts. Here, these are the shorts I got with Laura. Silly, I know, but true. I stayed friends with her, off and on, for the next 5 years or so, and the last I heard, she was working for an Alaskan environmental group and living outside Fairbanks with her boyfriend, in a cabin with no running water but electricity so we could talk online.
I watched the video yearbook of GHA the other day. I had worked on it - my morning class was TV News Reporting. My song, a parody of "Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda," is being sung in it, and I have a lyricist credit at the end. I kept freeze-framing it so Jason could see little 16-year-old me, or a shot of the sculpture I created in my afternoon class, but I wanted to freeze it so many other times: There's Laura! Tara! Mike Hicks and Will Bonifant and Thumper Maxson! Jim Jordan and Keow Thavaradhara and Mike Burr (Merle!) and Laurel Ogden! There's Maria Termini and Rebecca Boggs! Hell, even both the Shawns I dated! I even wanted to point out all the spots where I wish my friend Elizabeth Criddle had made it in to - the only person I knew who wasn't filmed. It makes me so sad that there were so many of those people I called friends who I don't even know anymore. People who I could be myself around for the first time in my life. I've tried to look some of them up over the years, but it's been impossible, especially when you know the girls have, for the most part, gotten married and have completely different last names now.
I wonder if I will ever feel that way again. I wonder if one day, someone from that time long ago will find this blog, read it, and realize how much it meant to me and possibly to them. I wonder if I will ever find any of them again, if it would even be a good idea with all these years and experiences between us now. And getting ready for bed last night, I wondered if Laura still has her boxer shorts as I pulled on my own pair, a decade old, with a little faded white WVU logo on the leg.
posted by Maranie on 7/04/2002 12:25:00 PM
Wednesday, July 03, 2002
And the hits just keep on comin'.I'm here at my office's Red White n' Boom party. So why am I on the computer, do you ask? Because I'm a geek and there's a high speed connection here. Duh. :-P
posted by Maranie on 7/03/2002 06:50:00 PM
So true. All my single female friends need to read that. Seriously.
And I'm feeling better now. Hormonal mood swings, yada yada. Damn fertility meds. I'm perfectly fine now, 'cept for the feeling that I've put on ten pounds, and it's all in the pit of my chest.
posted by Maranie on 7/03/2002 01:26:00 PM
Oh yeah, kiddies, and ignorance is bliss. "Sometimes I wished to God I didn't know now, the things I didn't know then," yada yada. One morning I'm gonna wake up stupid. I'm going to Forget. I'm going to Stop Asking, because every answer I get is more cryptic than 42. And it's going to be the best morning of my life. :-D
posted by Maranie on 7/03/2002 12:49:00 PM
Random observation here:
Have you ever had the chair pulled out from underneath you, or the wool pulled over your eyes, only to find out that you're the one who told them to remove the chair, that you're the one who tied the blindfold?
I am the Queen of Regrets, the Mistress of Memories that won't go away. I am walking, talking, living proof that one thing you do or say can change or ruin your life forever. Don't throw out words randomly. They'll come back to haunt you. Trust me on this one.
And on that note, hi-ho, hi-ho, it's back to work I go.
posted by Maranie on 7/03/2002 12:45:00 PM
Yay me, I passed my notary exam. :-D
In other news, I don't know how the hell they expect us to get any work done here today. Almost all the streets around us are closed. Right in front of our building, there's food stands, booths, and a live band. And tonight's the Red White n' Boom party, which is obvious by the copious amounts of snack food all over the place. I'm serious, there's an ENTIRE SHELF in the refrigerator occupied by nothing but cheese cubes. There's chips, there's dips, there's cookies and mini-sausages and who knows what all else. Plus we got to wear shorts today. I'm running around the office in an Eeyore shirt and they expect me to take things seriously? Pffft. :-P
I'm already exhausted but can't imagine tomorrow, when I'll be heading to not only Susan's little shindig, but one at the home of one of the partners here as well. Then back to work on Friday (BAH!), Friday night fun with Susan and Heather, and a date with Jason Saturday night. Bloody hell, between this schedule, and the frequent recent attire of shorts, skirts, and swimsuits, I'm never gonna catch up on sleeping or shaving my legs. :-P
posted by Maranie on 7/03/2002 12:24:00 PM
Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Oooo!We're loving this.
Haven't toured it yet, our real estate agent just sent us the listing. But look at it! It's in our neighborhood too. And I know you're not supposed to fall in love with a house, because it means you have much less negotiating power, yada yada, but it's gonna be tough with this one. We've already toured another house with the same layout, in lesser shape, and adored it.
I suppose this would mean less trips to Max & Erma's like we did tonight. But who cares? I want, I want, I want. Gimme. :-)
posted by Maranie on 7/02/2002 11:37:00 PM
It's one of the bad days again. One of the ones where I can't quite get a real smile to pop up on my face. It'd be a lot easier to deal with if I didn't have a bunch of ABBA songs stuck in my head. I really don't want to hear fluff about how wonderful love is, how life is just a dance, yada yada. I just want to tell the musical ensemble in my noggin to shut the hell up.
Right now I'm fatigued, at work a little late, and hungry. In about 15 minutes or so, I'm going to go haggle with the street closings for the 4th and somehow get to my 6:30 hair appointment. With any luck, this will keep me busy enough to get my mind off of sad things, ABBA songs, feelings of horrible inadequacy, and relating to Chris Isaak lyrics long enough to get me to Jason, who'll hopefully put the first honest-to-God smile on my face that I've had all day.
posted by Maranie on 7/02/2002 05:18:00 PM
Ick.
Word to the wise: Margaritas, plus a buffalo burger, plus crushing heat and humidity, plus underlying stress, plus staying up too late on the computer - not a good idea. Any one of those, hell, even a few of those together, would be OK. But all of those together, and I'm definitely not feeling so hot at the moment. Bleh.
Off I finally go to bed, after chatting with Coby and doing a whole lotta nothing online. Hopefully I'll feel better in the morning to tackle work once more. Anyone reading this, I bid you adieu. (I'm no good at French. Here's hoping that was spelled correctly.)
posted by Maranie on 7/02/2002 12:36:00 AM
Monday, July 01, 2002
It looks like we're finally getting our Independence Day weekend plans hammered out.Wednesday evening, Jason will be joining me for the firm's Red White and Boom party downtown. We'll watch fireworks and enjoy much free food and beverage.
Thursday, I'm heading to Susan's around 4 for some pool time and a cookout. We're all bringing our own stuff to eat and drink, and with Susan and Colleen being vegetarians, this should be interesting. Susan's already mentioned making Boca Burgers, and Colleen suggested she bring a marinated tofu. With Darren heading back home to Pennsylvania, it looks like Jason will end up being the only dude at this little shindig. :-)
Friday evening, Susan and I have made some tentative plans to rent a movie, then "who knows?" Looks like Heather will be joining us, and possibly Jason and Colleen much later in the evening (Jason working 'til 9:45 or so, Colleen until around 11:30.) Dancing was brought up, as was karaoke.
Saturday, Jason works, I sleep, and in the evening it's Men in Black II with Jason and maybe some dinner. A date with my husband. I love having those every now and again. :-)
And Sunday? Sleep, laundry, and other mundane tasks. Who knows? All I know is, it should be a good time, at least that's what I'm hoping for.
posted by Maranie on 7/01/2002 11:46:00 PM
So Jason and I were talking about Mamma Mia! and I told him that there's a musical in the works now based on the songs of Queen. He said he could see that, but thought Fleetwood Mac would make a better choice.
I got to thinking about that.
"Tusk" would be a great song for a musical, I can see a production number, but it's really short and not much lyrically. "Say You Love Me" and "Little Lies" would be good lyrically, but they lack the big, overblown sound that songs in a play usually need. (Which is why ABBA and Queen were such good choices - c'mon, each one of those songs is epic. But not TOO epic. A Meatloaf musical, for example, would be frigging exhausting.) :-P
And then there's the problem of Fleetwood Mac in general, which is the topic of a good portion of their songs: "We're a coed group, we've all slept with each other, and relationships here are messier than the worst soap opera Susan Lucci never starred in!" A brief sampler of Fleetwood Mac lyrics:
Hold Me: You hold the percentage/But I'm the fool paying the dues
Go Your Own Way: Shacking up is all you wanna do
The Chain: And if you don't love me now/You will never love me again
Silver Springs: I'll follow you down 'til the sound of my voice will haunt you.
*sigh* Yup, that's the Feel-Good Musical of the Year right there. :-P
Speaking of downer music, we were listening to Chris Isaak on CD in Darren's car yesterday. Darren commented how he loves the fact that all the guy's songs are so full of angst, lost love and general misery. We listened for a few minutes, and then the commentary went something like this:
I mused, "See, I wonder if Chris Isaak is really THAT miserable all the time?"
Darren gave a wry laugh and said, "That man gets more pussy than I will ever see in a lifetime."
To which Jason pipes up from the backseat, "Yeah, but that doesn't mean he's not miserable."
A good point to be made.
So in summation:
1.) The Fleetwood Mac Musical - good on paper, and that's all; and
2.) Either Chris Isaak really is miserable or he's a master at this schtick for muchos sympathy lays.
posted by Maranie on 7/01/2002 12:35:00 PM
Sunday, June 30, 2002
So we just got back from looking at a house and checking out Comfest with Darren.The house? What a disappointment. I'd love to have it - it was built in 1915, has hardwood floors all over the place, weird little nooks n' crannies, etc. The biggest problem we have is that one of said nooks n' crannies was chosen to be the one and only bathroom in the place. It is TINY. You can't even get a shower into it - just a tub, sink, and toliet. I've seen bigger closets. You'd get claustrophobia just taking a crap in that place. *shudder*
Comfest was interesting. Would've been better had it not been so damn hot n' muggy - around 90 degrees, with humidity about the same. An eclectic mix of people, dogs, and music, not to mention interchangable booths selling smoothies, handmade jewelry, tie-dye, and art. The music was pretty cool; there was a huge percussion ensemble at the smaller stage when we first got there, which of course I had to stop and check out for a few minutes. And the main stage had a group singing and playing Latin-themed songs. There were people dancing to that group, and the little hippie chick in me wanted to join them in dance. But I was hot and sweaty, with two equally hot and sweaty guys who weren't as keen on the idea as I was, so no dancing for Maranie. :-(
So now we're all back at the house, Darren's passed out on our living room floor and we're all pretty much beat. I'm tired but at least I didn't spend my weekend doing the same old shit I do every weekend. All in all, I had a good time. :-)
posted by Maranie on 6/30/2002 06:39:00 PM
So I'm listening to the Mamma Mia! soundtrack we bought last night.
Wow.
First off, don't bring the kiddies to this one. The whole plot revolves around a girl getting married who doesn't know who her father is, because even her mom's not sure - she knows it's one of three guys. And there's enough other double-entendres (a line about "you can pepper my snapper!" comes to mind) and suggestiveness that the whole show is PG-13, TV-14.
But don't think for a minute it's some heavy-hearted affair. I mean, it's a musical based on the songs of ABBA! If only real life was as frothy as this play, with it's Day-Glo costumes, happy music, and simple yet wonderful sets. If only the world was as breezy as a wedding on a tiny Greek isle, where people just break into songs from the 70's and the main form of transportation seems to be a little rowboat named "Waterloo." (He he he....) And the people who left early in the curtain call missed the best part - an entire ensemble concert of "Mamma Mia!", "Dancing Queen", and "Waterloo." I've never seen such an enthusiastic crowd - people clapping to the beat, whooping and hollering to cheer. I've never seen a true standing ovation either, not until last night. The whole thing made me all shades of happy, and I can't wait to see it again someday.
posted by Maranie on 6/30/2002 11:57:00 AM