Not that I learned that this Friday, but maybe next?
Sometimes you just have to give in and sleep.
I slept outrageously late on Saturday due to not sleeping well Friday night and several other nights in the week because...
Allergies truly are awful.
As I've whined about before, after moving to D.C. I developed spring allergies. This year they appeared to have cured themselves as I didn't have any trouble. Until this week, however, when in the middle of three record-breaking hot days, I was all sore throat and runny nose.
X Men: First Class is a really good movie.
Despite the allergies, I made myself leave the apartment and decided to see any random movie that was playing, which happened to be the new X Men. I loved the first one, not so much the next two, so I was worried about this one but saw it anyway. I'm glad I did because it was a great distraction and just good fun.
There was no new episode of Friday Night Lights.
At almost midnight on Saturday I finally settled in front of my DVR to watch my beloved FNL. But, gasp! Apparently there wasn't one played due to hockey. (So it wasn't just an NC thing, Mom.) I'm still a very angry Panther/Lion.
Naps in a cool, air conditioned room with hair wet from the pool are the best naps.
Sunday morning/afternoon was spent again by the apartment pool soaking up the sun. I also got in the pool and floated around for a bit, just perfectly content. I had a light lunch of tomatoes soaked in Italian dressing and then took a short nap. Happy summer day.
I'm including this here because, in my opinion, geysers are nature's fountains. And this one was a beauty. The geyser is amongst the Montañas del Fuego in Timanfaya National Park. The Park is both beautiful and desolate and so completely foreign that it feels like another planet. This was my first time watching a geyser erupt and it was stunning to see.
I was sorting though all my skirts and dresses this week to see if buying more can be justified. (Jury's still out on that verdict.) There were two skirts that used to be favorites but are never worn anymore because the lengths aren't flattering, so I decided to shorten them. One of them is from my senior year of high school:
(Hello, highlighted hair.)
I haven't worn it since but somehow it has managed to travel with me for 9 years and 14 moves. But I wore it to a lot of events senior year and suppose I have kept it as one of the few things I have sentiment for from high school. (Perhaps because it's from the best part of high school -- the end!)
It still fits so I took about six inches off and am now in love. It makes me want to go swing dancing. And I neither swing nor dance.
I also came across some capri pants I wore to my first job the summer after high school. They also fit but I think leopard pants on an 18-year-old are different from leopard pants on a 27-year-old. I'm considering making them leopard shorts. Would that be better or worse?
The margaritas at Lauriol Plaza are just as strong as I remember. Friday night I went to dinner with B and K at an old favorite, Lauriol Plaza. Though always loud and busy, the ambiance is great, as is the food and the drinks. I'd vote their margaritas top 3, maybe top top, in D.C. And trust me, I know my margaritas.
Sometimes D.C. is just good fun. After our margarita and other Dupont adventures we went to a 24-hour diner a few blocks from our apartment to get hot fudge sundaes.
It's not officially summer until you're in your bathing suit by the pool. The best part of living in a cookie cutter apartment building: the pool. Saturday morning was spent with trashy magazines in the sun by the water.
A 27-year-old can can sometimes be mistaken for a less than 18-year-old. I went to see "The Hangover 2," got carded, and then was told that I am "way older than you look." More on this at a later date.
Sometimes laundry is better than sleep. Woke up early Sunday to do laundry, which made me feel very productive. And then very sleepy.
Cuban ballet > all other ballet? Also on Sunday I went to the Kennedy Center to see the visiting Cuban Ballet's production of "Don Quixote." I believe this makes my sixth ballet and it definitely had some of the most powerful and beautiful dancing I've seen. After each solo the dancer would bow to the audience and the audience clapped and cheered each time.
Warning: This post is very shallow and dramatic. There are also a lot of pictures of me. But if you make it to the end, it may have some redeeming qualities.
Confession: Sometimes I am really, really vain.
Like, checked myself out in a reflective window and fell down a flight of stairs once, vain. (In my defense, it was at my job in London where I climbed four flights of stairs a hundred times of day. Going more than a week without at least tripping would have been statistically impossible.)
One of the things I am most vain about is my hair. I have four different types of shampoos and conditioners, a conditioning mask, serum, and a nice hair dryer. My cabinet is full of ponytail holders, clips, headbands, barrettes, and spin pins. I brush it constantly and obsess over keeping it shiny and smooth. I just love my hair, particularly when it's long. I swear it makes me bolder and more powerful, truly.
But no stranger to changing my style, there was also the time I did this in 2006:
And most recently, there was just a lot of this:
Now, there is just this:
It's all gone. It's hard to show in the photos but it's short, with the majority of it just above my shoulders. It's just an all around crappy and sloppy cutting job, and if I don't arrange it just right it looks like I have a mullet or a rat tail. (But for fear of losing more length, I don't want to have anyone try to fix it.) Oh, and did I mention the salon charged me an extra $10 because of the length of my hair? Well done, salon, well done.
This wasn't me growing it out specifically to donate. This wasn't because I had graduated college and all my friends were gone and the only thing I could control was my hair. This was me stupidly trusting a cheap hair salon and stylist to understand what I meant by "long layers" and "keep as much of the length as possible." To be fair, I did want more of a shape and I did want it lighter for the summer, but that is not what I had in mind.
To quote our dear president, let me be clear, I know all of this to be true: It's just hair! It will grow back! Some people don't have hair or can't have hair! It's just hair!
But because this is my blog and I'm selfish I'm going to keep writing.
As soon as I walked out of the salon I started panicked breathing. A block later at the grocery store I was crying. I cried some more when I talked to my mom and then when I examined it in the mirror. And then I lost sleep over it. No joke, I lost sleep over a haircut! I am not that woman. (Well, I am that woman who loses sleep over things, just not usually hair. So maybe I am sort of that woman.)
It's just hair.
But hair is important! It was power for Samson, convenience for Lady Godiva, and love for Della.
For me, it usually means control. And as you very well know, I'm a control freak. (I've been harping on this but it's been more aggressively infiltrating my life lately.) When my world gets too heavy my ability to control something lessens the weight. I latch on to completing a work assignment, planning a trip, buying the perfect outfit, or, maybe, styling my hair. My world's not especially heavy right now, just a little whirly, and I really did want just a few layers, but there's still a lesson for me to learn and then promptly forget.
No matter how much I plan and think and worry and panic sometimes it's just not going to work out.I can't pick the bits of my hair off that salon floor. I can't control everything. Sometimes there is just nothing I can do. And it really, really sucks.
And it really is just hair; it will grow back.
In conclusion, I'll turn to India.Arie. I first heard this song on Good Morning America in a segment on Robin Roberts losing her hair during her battle with breast cancer. (Perspective much, Bonnie?) It's such a beautiful song and I've been singing it in my head all day today. (My head with all my hair secured in a ponytail that I only let three people see down.)
I am not my hair/I am not this skin/I am just the soul that lives within
(Until it grows out again -- then I am totally my hair. Kidding!)
Baseball is infinitely more entertaining and interesting when there is alcohol involved. I attended Friday's rainy but fun Nationals game with some coworkers. Believe it or not, this is the first time I've ever been tipsy at a sporting event. Maybe that shouldn't be a surpising fact, but it is, and I'm ok with that.
Living without a roommate for a month has some perks, but nothing beats spending a day with her watching stupid movies and episodes of "Sex and the City." My roomie's back in town after being gone for awhile.
J Crew makes clothes in the prettiest shade of Carolina blue. I bought a new summer dress shirt. Though the last thing on Earth I need is another blue dress shirt. I resisted the shorts.
White denim jeans are surprisingly cute on. But very, very white. I tried on a pair but, in the words of Carrie Bradshaw, "I will never be the woman who can wear white and not spill on it." Accepting our faults is a key aspect of adulthood and that is certainly one of mine. And I embrace it. From a safe distance in my blue denim jeans.
It's possible and preferable to go two weekends in a row without using the metro at all. Only used my feet or a bus. It was hot and my feet hurt, but I think it was worth it.
A hamburger from Burger King is not the same as a hamburger cooked on the grill. This was my Memorial Day lunch. I'll make up for the anti-holildayness of it when I go home for the Fourth.
My last name is not the only part of my name that can be grossly misspelled:
I went to Z Burger in Tenleytown and this is how they recorded my name. AFTER I spelled it for them. Who would look at a little baby girl and think, "I know what we shall name her: Bollid! Huzzah!" (Because apparently Bollid is medieval?)
This is the platform at my metro station, Van Ness-UDC, on Tuesday morning. This was taken from the floor above the tracks since the platform was too full for me to get down the escalator. That's an off-loaded train on the right, and scores of people on the left. For those not familiar with metro, a platform should only be that full if we are getting a new president or two comedians are in town to restore sanity and/or fear. And, quite frankly, a platform as far north as mine should never be that full. But by some act of the metro gods it only took three very full trains to clear most of the platform and only added 15 minutes to my commute.
And that pretty much sums up my week, and to some degree my past month: It looks like things are going to be difficult and then there's a bright spot. And then it's back to maybe being difficult the next day before an extra train appears or a dinner with a friend or a great TV show brings a bright spot.
This weekend was full of bright spots, literal and figurative. After a solid week of gray, Saturday looked like this:
I purposely made no specific plans this weekend and just let the days take me where they wanted. And on Saturday that meant going all over Northwest DC solely by bus. No specific reason except it's far cheaper than repeated metro tips and allows me to see so much more. So from my apartment to the National Cathedral to Dupont Circle to Georgetown to Friendship Heights to my apartment again, just me, some buses, and some sore feet.
I started at the thrift store run by the Cathedral where $25 got me two dresses, a skirt, a blouse, and a book. From there it was on to Dupont for what ended up being a very under-whelming craft fair. But it did allow me to finally get a taste of one of DC's newest fads: the food truck. There are a number of food trucks that descend on various parts of the city every day at lunch. Working in Old Town, I miss them, so it was nice to try the Fojol Bros. Indian fare.
From Dupont it was on to Georgetown. I have a definite love/hate relationship with this area. Love: Great shopping in a clean and pretty area. Hate: The throngs of spoiled undergrads and over-styled trophy wives and husbands. But I went anyway, primarily to visit a consignment store and Anthropologie. Getting into Anthro is always fun thanks to the maze that is the Georgetown mall. (This being Georgetown, it's not actually called a mall, but I refuse to look up the proper name.) It's three (or four) floors of stores with stairs and escalators haphazardly placed and since all the floors look the same and there are no solid landmarks, I never know where I am. But maybe that's just me. Somehow I ended up on the ground floor at a coffee shop and got some iced tea and homemade tiramisu. It took me all of about 2 minutes to devour this:
After some walking and shopping and cursing at rich people it was on to Friendship Heights and then my apartment to eat dinner, relax, and laugh hysterically at SNL.
On Sunday I cleaned in the morning before heading back to FH to see "Bridesmaids." I've been looking forward to this movie for weeks and it was funny, amazing, and the perfect end to the weekend. Which is now nearly over and it's somehow almost Monday. Again.
As I'm currently figuring out logistics for a return trip to Las Vegas with some friends, it seemed fitting to feature such an iconic sight today.
When making a to see/do list for my trip in 2009, this was at the top, bolded with a star, an absolute can't miss. It did not dissapoint. And I may have shed a tear. Maybe it was the jetlag, or the desert heat, or the alcohol. Or maybe it was just the simple beauty of jets of water coordinated to music. But there may have been a tear. I'm not confirming or denying anything.
And the best part was when my friends indulged me and we stayed an additional half hour so I could see it again. I have damn good friends.
A post on my obsession with "Parks and Recreation" will be forthcoming. But, for now, I leave you with this.
"Protect your friends. You only have one hometown. If you think you’ve had a bad date, remember, it can always get worse. And it’s okay to eat breakfast for dinner."
-Amy Poehler, after she was asked what she has learned from Leslie Knope
