angiebandy

Best of 2009 Blog Challenge - Day 2 - Best Restaurant Moment

I had never been the guest of honor at a surprise party before this year.  The weekend before my birthday, an innocent night out with a couple of girlfriends turned out to be, in reality, a decadent feast at one of my favorite Italian places, with about 20 of my favorite people and a long table laden with delicious food and free flowing wine. What a blast! I’ll never forget the moment of “surprise” when I saw so many people I love gathered together in one little space, waiting to scare the living daylights out of me in the best possible way. There is no better gift in the world than a reminder of all the love you have in your life. Best birthday present ever.

Best of Blog Challenge - Day 1 - Best Trip in 2009

I was so close to not even going. Some personal conflicts, a new job, and post-holiday budget consciousness were all telling me to stay home. But I went.

Mexico in February was full of dazzling sunlight, chatty older Canadians, and old friends I hadn’t seen in years who flew down for my friends’ wedding. I saw my first blue whales on the water taxi ride to Yelapa one day. It was like getting a wink and a nudge from god.

After a few days of the magnificent ocean, great tequila, sublime ceviche and rambunctious women, I was thanking myself for making the trek. And then, I went to my friends’ beautiful wedding. After which I met the love of my life on the beach at sunset, which makes me laugh, because neither one of us is much the romantic sort. Another wink and nudge, perhaps.

I went through a brutal divorce (is there any other kind?) in 2006, and a couple years of hard work putting my shattered life back together. The Mexico trip was the ultimate reward for all the sleepless nights, tears, rage and psychological heavy lifting. The reward manifests itself every day, as I build a new life with my awesome boyfriend, who was just a cute guy standing on the beach at a wedding reception 10 months ago.

Irony of the day

This afternoon, my co-worker Andrea went out to the coffee cart in the lobby of our building to get some hot water, to find the guy who works the cart FAST ASLEEP, with his head cradled on his arms. He was out cold.

How does this happen when you’re working a job where you are literally surrounded by gallons and gallons of coffee?

Hypocrisy 2.0

I realize that satirical newspaper columnists are at a loss for material these days, what with W out of office (say thank you, Jesus!), a democratic Senate, and Sarah Palin safely in Alaska dressing moose and burning books and outlawing condoms. I am sure it’s hard to come up with new things to make fun of, given the circumstances, but Mark Morford’s little diatribe in the Chronicle today really made we wince.

It’s hard to tell exactly who he is sneering at more- people who use web 2.0 technology and social networking, or people who don’t. Obviously, we all have our opinions and he’s welcome to his as much I am to mine. The only kicker is, Mark Morford is ALL OVER Facebook. In fact, with over 3,000 friends, he is what some might call a Facebook whore. He regularly posts his columns to the site and updates his status with sexual innuendos and yogic soundbites, so I have to wonder where he gets the cojones to act so smug and superior.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say maybe he meant to also make fun of himself in his column, and it just didn’t come across. This may be a stretch. (OK, it’s definitely a stretch.) For someone who has been a vigilant caller-out of hypocrisy, I think he needs to turn that critical eye a little inward next time he’s desperate for newspaper content.

Mini Malkovitch - The Saga Continues

It’s about time for an update on my favorite socially awkward Buddhist know-it-all. He’s been providing plenty of material over the past few weeks.

Here are the greatest hits:

Nudity Near-miss

Picture, if you will, an incident wherein a very sweaty girl enters the dressing room at Yoga Tree after class. Said dressing room has curtains instead of a door. The sweaty girl is poised to rip her soaking wet yoga top off and change into drier clothing. She is seconds away from being completely topless when Mini Malkovitch pokes his head between the (tightly closed) curtains to ask if she is coming to discussion group that night. Yes, that sweaty girl was me. Yes, I screamed. Yes, what the fuck.

Man Shoulders

MM was bemoaning his life’s cruel fate one evening, because his girlfriend of two months had just broken up with his ass. He was genuinely depressed, and I felt for the guy. That is, I felt for him until I found out why they broke up. Apparently, they were making out, and he told the ex gf that she had “man shoulders”. She didn’t like her lady parts being likened to man parts, go figure. He said he meant it as a compliment, and then I once again felt for him. What must it be like to be that misguided?

Symphony Date

The Saturday after the man shoulders story was revealed, I got a voice mail from MM. He had an extra ticket to the symphony and he wanted to know if I wanted to go. It was nice of him to think of me, and I was almost touched, until the end of the message when he made sure to let me know I wasn’t the first person he had asked to go. Really MM, you shouldn’t have. Really.

May, December

I’ve noticed a trend lately in my circle of friends. Those of us who are dating have all been out recently with someone at least a few years our junior. Based on our experiences, I thought I would throw you younger guys a bone, and let you in on some things that you don’t want to do when you’re trying to score with a woman in her mid-thirties.

1. Don’t say: “I’m into older women.”  For one, we don’t think of ourselves as older women. Also, this statement loosely translates as “I’ve heard older women are good in bed.” While this is absolutely true, and may very well be the reason you’re hitting on us, it’s best to be more subtle. “Older” women dig subtlety.

2. Don’t act surprised when you find out how old we are. It’s not actually flattering. We don’t look young for our age, we look our age. If other people our age look older, they look old for our age. It’s really not the other way around.

3. Don’t make comments about how you have years and years ahead of you to “settle down” (a.k.a. have kids). Whether or not we want babies, it’s not polite for you to revel in your lack of a biological clock. This will annoy the woman in question, at best.

4. If you’re buying/serving her an alcoholic beverage, don’t skimp on quality. Unless she’s into ironically sipping 8 balls and tall boys, go for the good stuff. If you spring for top-shelf liquor, premium beer, nice wine, etc., even if it’s only one drink, you’ll make a good impression.

That’s all for now, boys. I know a lot of hot women who are wandering around the dating scene right this minute, waiting for a guy like you with all the right moves to join in the fun. Good luck!

Auld Lang Lessons Learned

Every time I go to a New Year’s Eve party, I come away with some helpful lessons that help guide me in the year (and years) to come.

Some of the lessons I have learned in days of auld lang syne:

- If there is an ice storm during the New Year’s Eve party, don’t let your drunk-ass sister walk next to you on the way home, because she will grab onto you when she slips and take you both down. This is especially true if you are having considerable trouble with balance yourself. In fact, it is easier not to actually walk under these circumstances. You can sit down and slide.

- Falling asleep cradling a champagne bottle on a porch swing in the woods in North Carolina may seem like a good dramatic gesture to express booze-fueled heartbreak, but it really only results in you waking up freezing cold, not knowing where the fuck you are, and with an incredibly stiff neck.

- Be careful where you’re walking on the last BART train to the East Bay at 4 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, as there are some serious OG’s playing craps for money in the aisles and they don’t take kindly to being interrupted.

- Do not think about the smell of raclette cheese when you are really hungover on New Year’s Day. This could result in projectile vomiting.

New Year’s Eve 2008 taught me a couple more lessons that I will now add to this list.

- There are no cabs in wine country. If you try to find one, you could end up walking a really long way down a pitch black country road, drunk and in heels, at 3:30 a.m., praying for some (any) kind of four-wheeled relief.

- It’s better when the really hot guy rubbing all over you on the dance floor doesn’t have a girlfriend. Who is at the party. Sitting in a chair ten feet away watching it happen.

Another year, another dose of practical knowledge. Hello 2009!

Shopping for Two

My nephew is currently prepping for birth- he’s going to make his appearance in March - and I am doing everything I can to make sure he is properly clothed for his foray into this world. Back when I was just plain Angie, instead of Aunt Angie, I never realized how many awesome baby clothes were out there waiting for me to buy them. I mean sure, I’d see them, but it wasn’t the same as envisioning your  little nephew-to-be wearing them as he lies around looking adorable and creating a lot of work for your sister.

Another thing I have discovered is that there are a lot of really funny onesies out there. Here are a few of my favorites.

Making the Yuletide Gay

I always know that it’s Christmas when the house at the bottom of my street puts up their life-size abominable snowman, complete with an inflatable Santa Claus who is doing something to the snowman that…let’s just say it’s something that I really don’t think Santa would ever do. It’s definitely not a tableau for the whole family, but it’s come to make me feel like I am home for the holidays, admittedly in a perverse kind of way.

I recently passed by the snowman en route to a brunch/ornament exchange at my friend Kenny’s place in the Castro. The whole scene is not quite as impressive during the day. At night, snowman and Santa are illuminated by the (approximately) 5,000 strings of lights that decorate the rest of the house where they hang. In the light of day the whole thing seems slightly seedy and desperate. Never underestimate the importance of good lighting! Red lights are especially effective at emphasizing the flattering things while downplaying areas that could use improvement (ergo, the red light district in Amsterdam). Lucky for the snowman and Santa, red lights feature predominantly in the overall color scheme.

I think I am going to try to avoid the daytime version- it was kind of depressing. I prefer to think of the snowman and Santa full of enthusiam and passion, brazen in the absolute wrongness of their holiday glory. I have grown to love the way they make my Yuletide just a little more gay every time I pass them by.

R.I.P. Cardboard Box Boy

Kim is having her annual holiday party tonight, complete with powdered sugar donut Christmas tree and hot crab dip. It’s going to be great to see all my old co-workers from PeoplePC, and it’s going to be great not going home with Cardboard Box Boy (a.k.a. my official single girl low).

CBB was a combination of several bad decisions I made at last year’s party, inlcuding, but not limited to, combining Jaeger shots with champagne, going to Delirium for a drink with some guys I “met” on my way to get into a cab and go home, who were smoking pot on Albion St.,and going home with someone my age who I met at Delirium. At the time I thought he was cute, and let’s just say I am really glad I never saw him again. We got to his house and he served me Budweiser in a can (not a drink you serve to the ladies when you are trying to get somewhere, even if it is hipster-ironic), then we went to his room and I found out that at 33 this man did not have it together enough to own one stick of furniture. All his stuff was perched somewhat precariously on cardboard boxes, including his computer, which was about 20 years old and still running on DOS. He had a dirty mattress on the floor, a mountain of nasty laundry with a pair of crutches inexplicably balanced on top, and a bunch of cardboard boxes. Needless to say, I didn’t stay long. I mean yeah, it could have been worse. He could have been, say, living in a cardboard box. I could have stayed longer (shudder). But even as it was, it was bad.

Last year at this time I was kind of a hot mess, at the tail end of a long break-up and going home for the holidays for the first time since an epic, Myth of Fingerprints style dysfunctional family Thanksgiving two years before. (If you haven’t seen Myth of Fingerprints, it is the best dysfunctional, home for the holidays movie ever made, IMHO.) Things are much better now, thank goodness.

This year I am bringing the following things to Kim’s party: a bottle of good zin, some brie from Whole Foods and my better judgement. I think it’s going to work out well for everyone.