Two posts in one day! CAN YOU STAND IT??

First World Problem of the Day:

I'm unhappy with my new bathroom decor.

The old bathroom decor was brown with orange art & towels:

When I painted the bathroom brown I did so with the intention of swapping out the accessories with any number of brown-friendly coordinates, so when I came across this "FOR LIKE EVER" poster I immediately thought that my next bathroom theme would be brown and PINK:

Santa brought it for me for Christmas that year and I searched and searched for the right color pink towels. They had to be bubble gum pink...NOT baby pink. You know how many companies make bubble gum pink towels?

Answer: NOT MANY. It took me a few weeks of intense searching but I finally found them.

And then I got laid off.

So what?

Plenty of bathroom redecorating time, right?

Right.

Except that girls who've lost their jobs have no business spending money on little things like getting giant, odd-sized posters framed.

So that poor poster sat in my closet for months.

And months.

And even after I got a job I was too busy trying to keep my head above water to worry about silly things like bathroom decor. Then FINALLY, when my hero the CPA/Fireman told me I was getting a kick ass tax refund, I decided that my poster (and a couple others I'd accumulated) could finally get bumped up to the top of my priority list.

I picked it up from the framer on Monday (after all that I ended up just getting it mounted on foam core -- I didn't like the look of any of the non-million-dollar frame options -- less is best...and yes, I know that it's not protected from all the dangerous elements in my bathroom [read: excessive amounts of AquaNet], but I have a couple other non-OMGSAFE pieces of art in there and they're FINE, so r-lax Internet!) and last night I took down all the orange and went about the business of sassifying.

Except now that it's mostly done (I still need more art, but I have some cheap ideas) I don't really like it. While the poster's background is bubble gum pink, the orange-red of the design is definitely the bolder, more dominant color and I'm thinking I need to ditch the pink.

Besides, the pink and brown? Is very reminiscent of Baskin Robbins uniforms circa my childhood.

So now I'm on the hunt for the correct orangey-red towels.

The end.

Killers, Billy Joel & Cupcakes

Yesterday was kinda blah but today? Whooooo boy...my Tuesday got off to an exciting start. I rolled up to my boot camp location at 5:29AM and saw a police line and a couple of not-the-standard-park-service-police-guy-who-usually-patrols-the-area police cars (one with a dog inside who was going APE SHIT).

The whole picnic area alongside the building was taped off:


Totally un-scenic workout area, don't you think?

BTW, Kristy & Jason -- juuuuust on the other side of that building is where I took you for pictures under the bridge!

That particular neck of the woods is really dark and creepy at night (or early morning) but there's also a steady stream of runners passing through so it's an awesome spot to kill someone, but you'd only have a few minutes to do it. Earlier in our session I thought for sure the plastic bags I saw shining in the moonlight were covering up severed body parts but as it got lighter outside they just looked like piles of junk.

So we don't know what the heck was going on, but there was lots of excitement out there this morning. And even though we don't think anybody was murdered out there last night, they did appear to be searching for someone in the tall grass as I drove in and I was still glad the coach didn't make us run up the mountain (where it's pitch black and you can't see more than a few feet in front of you) and into the hands of the killer. I'm sure our tired asses will be forced up that hill next time though.

In other news:

1. I bought Billy Joel (and Elton John) tickets yesterday! Joanie and I went to see Billy Joel a couple of years ago because it was an item on my life list and maaaaaaaaaan, that guy is one hell of an entertainer. Thank goodness for tax refunds because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to pay for the BAJILLION dollar tickets. Aren't you rich enough, Billy? Elton? Come ON.

2. I attended my "orientation" to house and dog sit for Ben & Sarah while they go on the vacation I planned for them. I'm a full-service travel advisor, I tell you. Travel planning AND house/dog sitting! Except maaaaaaaaaaaybe I forget that hotel rooms in Rome might be stupid expensive if you're there on EASTER SUNDAY. Doi. And maaaaaaaaaaaybe I don't notice that the cheap and easy ways of getting to Sorrento from Naples don't operate during the off-season. OOPS! Enjoy that commuter rail, kids!

2a. While I'm kickin' it at Casa de Slowsky I think I'm gonna entertain myself by trying to make these:

The only problem is that if all is successful, I'll be left with a gang of delicious things that I should not be eating and two of the people I might try to pass them off on will be in Italy.

3. Okay, blah blah blah. Killers, Billy Joel & cupcakes. I have work to do.

Easily Annoyed

I had two pairs of headphones but one pair has up and disappeared (I think they might have been stolen off my desk but who does that?? They'd been INSIDE my ears! Grohhhhsss!) so now I'm stuck with my iPhone ear buds, which not only hurt my delicate little princess ears, but only one side of them actually works.

I ordered new ones but while I wait for them to arrive, I'm finding myself faced with a problem that I swear to goodness gracious makes me want to throw a hissy fit.

The problem:

There are two sinus snot suckers in the vacinity of my cube (in addition to the multiple coughers). These types of things get on my LAST DAMN NERVE because HELLO ASSHOLES, DO YOU THINK WE CAN'T HEAR YOU SLURPING THAT SNOT BACK INTO YOUR HEAD??????

Because OMG we totally can.

And I have an irrational HATRED for the offenders.

Especially this one guy (because the sinus suckers are ALWAYS men...I'm not talking about people with stuffy noses, although those are PLENTY annoying...I'm talking about how men make that chunky, hollow noise when they're, I can only assume, clearing their sinuses) sits on the clear other side of the building but I can still hear him.

And it's not even an occassional snot suck...it's like every 12 seconds.

And when I say "every 12 seconds" I'm not exaggerating. L-I-T-E-R-A-L-L-Y every 12 seconds.

Which I know because I timed him.

Please let my new ear phone things HURRY THE HECK UP because otherwise I'm gonna march myself over to wherever that guy is and tell him that he's a nasty, inconsiderate jerk. And I swear to you, I do not care if he's sick or if this makes me more of an asshole than normal.

OMG OMG OMG!

I just thought of a more pressing issue:

I think this might be the last weekend of Girl Scout cookie season!!!!!!! OR WAS IT LAST WEEK!?!?!?

Crap sandwich. I just checked the WWW and cookie season IS over. It's for the best though...I certainly don't neeeeeeeeed more Samoas in my life.

Also pressing:

Nevermind...it's not that pressing and I just realized that it's late enough in the day that I can justify blowing this popsicle stand for the weekend. Next time I'll write about something that might lead to you believe that I'm at least SOMEWHAT likeable and pleasant to be around.

If I can think of something.

In the great words of Ms Britney Spears: "Make sure you catch me from my good side; Pick one."

You know what's unfortunate about being 32?

Close up photos.

Don't get me wrong -- 32 is pretty great (all 2009-economy-related-things considered) and I wouldn't want to be 22 again but I just took a whole gang of self portraits with my phone and WHO IS THAT OLD, GRAY-HAIRED, WRINKLY, MASCULINE-LOOKING LADY WITH THE BAD HAIR!?!?!? I'm never wearing this sweater again.

My skin has definitely been looking less fresh in recent years but these close ups in flourescent light are not pretty and now I feel the same way I feel after looking at my skin in the magnifying mirror except without the knowledge that nooooooobody sees my skin at that magnification so if it looks okay at a normal distance, then it's okay. Because those pictures? I took them at arm's distance and plenty of people stand within arm's distance of me so plenty of people know that I look like an old, gray-haired, wrinkly, masculine-looking lady with bad hair. And that's not even counting the sitting-down-stomach-roll. Or the years-of-obesity-skin-sag.

I'm thinking I need to start looking for old men to date so they don't realize that I'm so old and haggard looking. Compared to a 75-year-old, I'll still be as fresh as a daisy.

And you know how they say that youth is wasted on the young? I totally get it, but because I'm still on the upswing of life (I hope), I probably only *think* I get it and that in 25 years I'll look back and tsk tsk for thinking that I could appreciate that thought at 32...which means that it's all downhill from here. Asthetically speaking, anyway.

Vanity aside, I expect the next 32 (dare I say 64?) years will be really awesome and way better than the first 32. Not to discount my childhood (and this is really sad and has me ALLLLLL choked up: the majority of years I will have spent with my parents), but the next 32 will surely be the years when I will watch my brothers have families, find someone to spend my life with, maybe have my own family. Those things are all supposed to be awesome so I'm looking forward to it but I'm kind of bummed that I'll have to do them all from under dry, tired-looking skin.

Things:

1. I hope I'm just experiencing the change-of-season skin freak out and that as soon as summer gets here I'll be looking as youthful and dewy as ever.

2. I hope that I do finally get around to losing eight million pounds so I can get my extra skin hacked off.

3. I can really feel the difference in my arm strength in recent months. All those push ups at boot camp are paying off because maaaaaaan, I can feel the toned muscles. Underneath all the fat. I want to say OMG FEEL MY GUNS but I can't because the gun feeler would have to get through all the fat and skin first and it wouldn't be very impressive at all...but BOY HOWDY, I can tell!

4. The downside to being 32 and single: Any man I date won't have been around to know me when I had youthful skin.

5. The upside to being 32 and single: Any man I date won't have had to put up with pain-in-the-ass 22-year-old Elizabeth Holt. He'll be MUCH happier with 32-year-old Elizabeth Holt. Assuming he can get over the saggy old lady thing.

6. As has been discussed in other forums lately, I spend too much time worrying about death. Not my actual death, actually, but mostly worrying about what would happen if I died tomorrow and didn't get a chance to do the breakfast dishes. OH, THE HORROR of people thinking I was dirty.

7. My All-Time #1 Fear: The deaths of my parents and brothers. And the PISSER is that unless I die first, I will eventually have to face this fear.

8. My #2 All-Time Fear: That I'll be alone when #7 happens. I know there will be friends and family there, but that's not what I mean.

9. DOWNERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR, I know. Here's a remedy:

Baby Grady helps my mom get back into baby-feeding practice:

It should be illegal to be this cute:

My friend CK is the sweetest. He sent me for-no-reason flowers...my favorite kind:

And truth be told, I surely do NOT want to look 17 again:

I need a new party rental place.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, Williams Party Rental...you're making my blood pressure rise.

Renting all the stuff for Sarah's bridal shower last year was so easy! I needed 35 water glasses, you brought me 35 water glasses. Like magic!

Now I'm trying to rent stuff for Andrew & Laurina's baby BBQ and you're making me want to throw my computer out the window! It appears that it's now impossible to order 35 water glasses because they have to be ordered in multiples of 25...but okay, ending up with 50 water glasses isn't the end of the world, even if it's a pretty obvious way of squeezing more money out of me.

The thing that REALLY gets my goat is the new coffee cup and saucer policy. I ordered 15 coffee cups and 15 saucers. Because THEY GO TOGETHER, duh. They "corrected" my order to reflect 16 coffee cups because you now have to rent coffee cups in multiples of 16, but they didn't update the number of saucers. I was like dude, I don't *want* to pay you for an extra saucer, but you might as well throw in another one so I can, like, actually USE that extra cup.

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, INTERNET?

They only rent saucers in multiples of FIVE.

So really, if I want to have an equal number of cups and saucers, I need to rent them in multiples of EIGHTY. I'm sure there's someone out there whose OCD would FLIP THE HELL OUT at this imbalance but I will do my best to take a deep breath not let it bother me. I want to tell them to suck it, but it's a pointless battle over 45 cents and besides, it's allllllll for the baby.

Samoas = environmental responsibility

If anyone at work actually talked to me then somebody might say "Hey Elizabeth! How was your weekend?" and I'd say "OMG it was great! I went to a party I still don't understand and got a free Nintendo DS, I ate Girl Scout cookies and recycled my old TV!"

But they don't talk to me so I'm going to share the fun and excitement with you, Internet:

1. My friend Sarah invited Carrie and me to a party in a sexy event space in the Dogpatch where we were promised food and drinks and free Nintendo DS video game things. So we show up, they hand us each a Nintendo charm bracelet (seriously...I'll betcha didn't even know such things existed!) and tell us that the goal is to play the game at each station, collect each of the charms for our bracelets and then we'd get a prize. So, okay...we can do that. We got ourselves some wine and sat down at the first station to play Mario Kart.

By the end of the party we'd played Mario Kart (it's more fun on my brother's Wii, but even then, I have a limited attention span), Guitar Hero (I *suck* at the real Guitar Hero, but I was able to actually finish a couple of songs on the Nintendo DS version of it...thank you, Bon Jovi!), a game with word puzzles that was REALLY FREAKING HARD -- especially after a few glasses of wine, and the game about testing your brain age (my brain age, by the way, is a youthful 54).

The prize:

On the drive home Carrie and I were talking about how that party was a guy gamer's fantasy: A room full of attractive women playing video games. ManicPopSteve, I'm looking at you.

Fun Facts:

• The four or five chicks who ran the party don't even live in SF, which was a surprise to me. I thought this was a bay area thing but no -- they live all over the country and they travel to different cities all the time.

• I'd totally want that job except that really, how exciting is it to stand around and watch other people play video games? Not very. Plus, the uniform wouldn't fit me.

• They were all wearing the same black wrap dress and the same black sling back heels and the same black Gucchi fanny packs.

Anyway, there's lots of stuff I still don't understand about that party but at the end of the day, I had a good time and my brother is getting my free NintendoDS. Winners all around!

Thanks to Sarah for inviting me!!

2. Other than the gaming, the only thing on my agenda for the weekend was to stalk the Girl Scouts in San Francisco and find me some Samoas. I was successful, but I had to leave my multi-cultural neighborhood and go to where the rich white folks live, but daaaaaaamn those Samoas were totally worth the effort. $4 for 15 Nilla Wafer sized cookies? No problem.

3. On my way out of my neighborhood I passed by a big truck with a big sign that said "FREE ELECTRONICS RECYCLING." I've had my big, giant, broken TV sitting in my entry way for a few weeks because getting rid of these things is a PAIN. The plan was for me to work from home some day soon so that Carrie could help me haul it to the recycling center during its LAME business hours (something like 915-1130AM and 200-345PM Monday through Friday) but SHOOT! If I could figure out how to get the TV into my car, I could cross the whole thing off my list!

So after I scored my Samoas I went home to see if I could even lift the TV by myself. It turned out that yes, I could...but would I be able to get it into the elevator, down the garage stairs and into my car all by myself?

YES!

The TV has now been recycled, it didn't cost me a penny and I owe it all to the Girl Scouts because without the draw of the lovely Samoas, I never would have left the house and I would still have a GIANT TV sitting in my entry way.

Samoas = environmental responsibility.

It's a dog SAVE dog world out there.

Sappy video that even pre-Dave Elizabeth would have been choked up by:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HJTG6RRN4E

I'd embed it but YouTube has some sort of newfangled embedding thing going on and I couldn't figure it out and now you have to click the link OH NO.

I love cable television stars.

It's common knowledge that I totally have a thing for Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs. He's definitely on the outer edge of my acceptable dating age range but HOLY COW if he asked me out on a hot date I'd probably die of heart palpitations before we even got past the appetizer.

I've never met him (even though we live in the same city -- CALL ME, MIKE ROWE!) so it's totally possible that he's not all he's cracked up to be but I just watched this video of a speech he gave and I'm even more smitten than before:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html

It's 20 minutes long which is well past my internet video watching attention span, but A) it's Mike Rowe and B) he's a great speaker and I was sucked in right off the bat. The point he's making about blue collar workers is awesome and I'm even more of a fan now than I was before. Unfortunately, my track record with celebrities isn't that awesome so I'm sure if I did run into him I'd be a total spaz.

Pre-enactment:

ME: OMG I LOVE YOU AND I LOVE BLUE COLLAR WORKERS TOO WILL YOU MARRY ME?

Mike Rowe: Here's a restraining order, now go get in your Cabriolet* and go to the mall.

ME: CALL ME! LOVEYOUBYE!

* I don't actually drive a Cabriolet, but I recognize that I look like I do.

Backhanded compliment I hear most frequently: "When I first met you I thought you were going to be a bitch but you're SO not and now I really like you!"

Um, thanks.

But back to the matter at hand: Mike Rowe is my celebrity boyfriend in a totally NON-restraining order kind of way, I swear. You should watch the video even though it's 20 minutes long because it's Friday and you're killing time until the weekend anyway.

Thanks to Cat for the link!

Things:

1. I ate a whole TON of beets for dinner and now my tongue is RED:
It's always pointy though.

2. I won the tax refund lottery. THANK THE SWEET BABY JESUS. Now I can get my oil changed, have a couple of pictures framed, get my hair cut, pay for my dry cleaning and then still have enough money left to have my family over for dinner. I'm a high roller, yo.

3. I made the mistake of opening the Pottery Barn catalog that came in the mail today. I would have lived a perfectly happy life not knowing that this duvet cover existed but now that I do, it's going to TORTURE ME to not buy it because it matches my apartment soooo beautifully:

I'm putting it on my birthday list and maybe it'll still be available then. YOU SEE HOW FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE I AM NOW, INTERNET? It's crazy.

3a. Gawd...going to the Pottery Barn site looking for that picture was also a BAD idea because now I see 85 million other duvet covers that I NEED. My mom buys a new duvet cover every couple of weeks so I can't help being drawn to them...it's in my blood.

3b. My friend Christa couldn't figure out why I got two duvet covers for Christmas because who in the heck needs more than one?? Except that don't forget, my mother is English and they change duvet covers every time they change they change their sheets so that's the way I've always done it too.

4. Another nugget of proof of my financial responsibility: I came home from work and didn't really have much to eat and I was feeling flush at the news of my tax refund lottery winnings so I decided to treat myself and be lazy and order Chinese food. I got my credit card out and I sat down at the WWW to view the menu and decided that YOU KNOW WHAT, SELF? You're not DYING for Chinese food so why feel gross and greasy and spend money you don't actually have yet when you *could* eat a Lean Cuisine and roast those beets you bought the other day. So I did. I ate the Weight Watcher friendly and FREE meal.

I WIN!

5. The blind guy on American Idol makes me nervous with his awkward close leaning into Ryan like they're gonna kiss or something. And the scared look on his face too -- his brother needs to teach him not to look SO! ALERT! And he needs a haircut, but that's not his fault.