I have four months until the wedding and we haven’t: done invitations, found a dress, picked out colors or flowers or found a proper cupcake baker. I think my mom might be stressed. Frankly though, I think she should be glad I’m not doing this for my wedding.

Last night I went out with some current and former coworkers—they’ve now decided we shall have a very alcoholic bachelorette party for me come November. I’m slightly terrified, as this morning I woke up with quite the headache. Those women, my god, can they drink. It was insane.

I normally don’t do memes, mainly because they require work and/or answers to questions I a) don’t want to answer or b) don’t know how to answer. On the other hand, I’ve barely been blogging lately, so once curiosity tagged me, I figured hell, why not.

There’s a first time for everything!

Rules

1. Respond and rework. Answer the questions on your blog. Replace one question that you dislike with a question of your invention, and add one more question of your own.
2. Tag other people.

Questions
What are you wearing today?
Uh, I started out in jeans and a Gap brown three-quarter length shirt for a meeting/interview (oh yeah, I got a new job today :D). Then I cleaned our house frantically as the soon-to-be in-laws flew in for a visit, showered and put on jeans and a t-shirt. Currently I am in sweatpants, drinking vodka. The little things, you know.

What’s for dinner?
We took his parents to our favorite new restaurant.. I had “Limoncello Shrimp,” which was quite amazing. And a martini. Oh and for dessert we all had strawberries that had been dipped in cheesecake and dark chocolate. I know, I know, it’s disgusting, lol.

What would you eat for your last meal?
Vodka? With maybe, more vodka? Followed by berries of all kinds, Cool Ranch Doritos, some very good Belgian chocolate and mashed potatoes. Oh and sushi. Copious amounts of sushi. 🙂

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would it be?
There’s this tiny island on the coast off the Carolinas called Ocracoke. It’s beautiful and peaceful and I’d love to sit on the beach for an hour. Or the beach at Provincetown on Cape Cod. Or Carmel by the Sea in California. Basically the ocean is a big factor here, lol.

What language do you want to learn?
I’d like for my French and my Spanish to be fluent, but if I had to newly learn one language, I’d choose Farsi or Thai. I’m weird.

What do you love most about where you currently live?
I love everything about the EC. The weather, the ocean, the beaches, the maple syrup, the people, the proximity to Europe, etc.

What style is your current home decorated in?
Um, hmm. Well I have two very distinct decorating styles and I guess both are being employed at the new place. Mostly it’s very coastal themed, lots of mellow yellows, blues and whites—but I also have loads of art and so the porch is becoming slightly Parisian-esque. It’s hard to say, in other words. It’s my style, so it’s awesome! 😀

If you were a time traveler what era would you live in?
If I were a time traveler, I wouldn’t have to choose, correct? I could go wherever, whenever? Or is this the kind of funky time travel where a) I must choose where to stay or b) I get randomly tossed through time whenever? If I had to choose an era, I’d go with the ’40s. Love the clothes, the styles, and I’d love to meet my grandmother as a young woman. I believe we’d be great friends.

What is your favorite color?
I honestly don’t really have one. I like yellows, blues, greens and white.

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
This is just so sad, but honestly, it’s probably all my KS purses, lol. Physical clothing—my extremely cozy sweatpants that I where when I work, LOL.

What were you doing ten years ago?
Ten years ago my sister had just graduated from high school and had mono all summer. I had just ended my sophomore year in high school and was busily working at a juice bar for the summer. It was reggae-themed and I regularly braided my hair and wore funky jewelry. It was loads of fun and I wouldn’t mind working there again.

What are you going to do after this?
Um, well I’m planning to go to bed I suppose. Unless we’re talking about the existential this. In that case, I hope to come back as a house cat.

What are your favorite films?
I have many movies I love—most are ones I’d watch over and over again and if they’re on TV, will always turn to them. Lord of the Rings, Shawshank Redemption, Harry Potter, Amelie, The Secretary, the list goes on and on.

What are your favorite books?
That’s like asking me to choose a favorite pet. I have well over 1000 books and I’m constantly adding more. An all-time favorite is the original The Rookie by Jerry B Jenkins. Then anything by Anita Shreve, Neil Gaiman, Kate Furnivall, John Irving, Steinbeck, Joyce Carol Oates… I’m actually looking at my bookshelf trying to decide what to add and it’s KILLING me to skip any. That’s how sick I am.

Do you collect anything?
Books, obviously. And odd art and weird statues that are incredibly adorable and that Chop thinks are weird as hell. I have a little troll he likes to turn around because he’s odd looking. So rude.

What makes you follow a blog?
I follow somewhere around 300 blogs on a regular basis, and it’s really about being entertaining or odd or educational.. and I like pretty, pretty pictures, too. There’s a wonderfully entertaining mother of three in Ireland who is absolutely a delight to read—and I like her just as much as the man in Seattle who blogs random thoughts and comics and the accordionist in Canada. Be entertaining, be relatively frequent and have some sort of cohesion and I’m sold. However, if the blogger makes constant grammatical and/or spelling errors, I don’t ever go back.

What was the most enjoyable thing you did today?
Accepted an awesome job offer. Drank a really nice coffee. Ate a strawberry dipped in cheesecake and chocolate. It’s so hard to choose!

Ann’s Question: What makes you comment on a blog? Too much free time? Not enough? Something I can relate to? One of those moods?
I normally only comment if I feel like I have something to contribute to the conversation. I dislike people who comment just for the sake of commenting.

Tonya’s Question: What is a talent you wished you had?
I’d love to be able to play an instrument. I tried guitar and couldn’t form the callouses; my hands are far to small for piano; and I feel like stringed instruments are just way out of my league.

Noelle’s Question: If you could go to heaven, who would you see and why?
My grandmother because I miss her all the time and my grandfather, whom I’ve never met. I think we’d get along.

Kitten’s Question: Other than Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, etc. what are your most frequently visited websites?
I do web design and development for a job, this question would be insane for me to answer, LOL. For pleasure, I like EW.com, PerezHilton, Boston.com and around 300 blogs.

SeptemberMom’s Question: What was your favorite subject in school?
I love history and had I really thought about it, would’ve been a history major in college and gone into anthropology. I find history infinitely entertaining.

Christy’s question: As a child/teen how did you envision your adult life?
I don’t think I ever really did. I wanted to travel everywhere and try anything. That was about the extent of my planning.

Dan from Art of Panic’s Question: How much time do you spend on your average blog post?
Haha, 5 minutes? 10? This one has been like 20 minutes and my god, it’s painful, lol.

Little Ms Blogger’s Question: If you could would you want to control the weather?
God yes. 75 degrees, no humidity, rain every five days for one day. Perfect.

Susan’s Question: What is the one thing you’d like to check off your “bucket list” in the next 5 years?
Having kids, being fully self-employed.

Curiosity’s Question: If you could give any advice to your teenage self, what would it be?
Spend less time working and more time having fun. Don’t take so many college courses and enjoy your final year of high school. Really think about what you want to study in college and find the perfect school. Don’t drive so fast. Don’t be afraid to kiss whoever you want. Keep a journal (you’ll forget half the shit you did if you don’t!). Study abroad as long as you can.

My Question: If you had the chance to go back and relive your life, keeping the knowledge of everything you’ve done, would you?
Yes.

Tagging… um, haha, wendykat! and moxie.

While the Chop and I love our new house, the dog is not adjusting well, lol. The people at her daycare say it’s behavioral… basically she’s a teenager who has been moved away from her friends and she’s acting out. How, you might wonder, does a dog act out? She defecates in the basement.

Yeah. It’s awesome. I found it the morning the cleaners were coming to clean the basement carpets, so fortunately I got it picked up, sopped up (pee and poo, fabulous) and was waiting for the carpet cleaners to do their thing all day. They did and the carpet looked great.

I scolded her, the Chop and I watched her like a hawk, we tried to close off the basement and yet, last night, she managed to sneak down and pee down there again. Deep sigh. Upstairs is all hardwoods, but the basement is finished with carpet and none of my animals have ever had carpet in the house, so maybe that’s part of it? I dunno.

For now we’ve invested in a door stop to allow only the cats downstairs and are hoping she quits being a shit biscuit soon. Until then, she has to be crated when we are gone and at night. Idiot teenager!

Saturday: got the U-Haul, moved all of the boxes and suitcases and drove through a ridiculous hailstorm on the way home. While driving said U-Haul. I’m not going to lie, it was slightly terrifying.

Sunday: We cleaned the house and waited for the movers to come (they were over an hour late). Did a walk through with the landlord (who gave us a bottle of champagne to celebrate our new home purchase, so nice) and spent the first night with all of our stuff in the new house. Also, realized we had no dryer vent. Oh, and the outlet is a three-prong and we have a four-prong dryer. Sigh.

Monday: Started unpacking, debated different avenues for a dryer vent… window, hiring someone to go through the wall, etc. Mom cleaned like mad while I worked and for dinner, we took her to Five Guys (which she now loves).

Tuesday: Hired an electrician (with seriously gorgeous eyes.. my mom thought they were “electrifying” hehe) who figured out the three-prong wasn’t enough volts anyway, so he ran in a line, fixed that outlet, added another one in our upstairs bathroom and then graciously offered to cut the hole in the plexiglass we had purchased to create our window vent. Got a call from my dad around 7PM—was in NYC and wanted to know what was for dinner. What now, I said? Yep, my dad decided to fly out after his call was over (on call till Tuesday morning) and help us set up the house. Apparently the numerous phone calls about random electrical questions was worrisome. 🙂 So sweet… except the weather caused his flight to be delayed, then diverted, then sent back to Boston. Got home at 3AM after Mom and I spent three hours playing Scrabble on my IPod in the cellphone lot at Logan. Dear god, so tired thinking about it lol.

Wednesday: My dad seriously is a jack of all trades. He created a dryer vent, secured it against break-ins, switched two blinds that were installed wrong and changed out the shower heads. Mom cleaned, I worked. (Chop had to work all week, so was only able to help at night anyway.) Went to a new restaurant for dinner, which was incredibly amazing and my parents are in love with it. 🙂

Thursday: Dad took out all the locks and had them rekeyed, Mom cleaned, I worked (see a pattern here? lol). Then we went to Ikea, Costco and Jordan’s Furniture while my Dad waited for Sears to come clean the carpets. Sears didn’t show (apparently the weather knocked out their communications system), and Mom and I spent four hours shopping… deep sigh. Had take-out Thai again—I will never get tired of that—watched the latest Die Hard movie (my dad is a huge fan) and crashed at midnight.

Friday: Chop and I both had the day off, so after we all slept in a bit, Mom went back to laundry, Dad re-hung four cabinet doors, and I made breakfast. Mom then went back to cleaning (I know, it’s crazy amazing) and Dad un-dented the top of my dryer (sigh, movers) while Chop and I installed the latest OS on my Dad’s laptop (we know our skills!). Sadly we dropped them at the airport a few hours ago and they are halfway home by now.

Verdict: My parents are awesome and managed to get so much stuff done while they were here (and save us a bunch of money on a handyman) and we are so, so thankful, but we’re also very glad we finally get to inaugurate our house with just us. And frankly, the dog needs some chill time… Grandpa fed her a Whopper, among other things, and her crazy level is on high alert.

Have a happy fourth of July everyone! We’re planning to sleep late and work like crazy all day. 🙂

So apparently I did a piss poor (ha, ha) job of showing the cats where their bathroom is, as they left a lovely present for me this morning in mine. The house is certainly bigger than any previous, and with more than one bathroom, so perhaps that’s the problem.. or that their bathroom is downstairs and we don’t need to go down too often.

We’re planning on bringing most everything (except furniture) up from the other house today, so hopefully locking them in their bathroom will hammer it into their heads.

Once again my mom and I stayed up here… we watched a movie, drank an awful lot of vodka and frankly did not want to get up this morning.

Ooo and last night marked the first night we’ve had someone deliver Thai food in all the years I’ve lived on the east coast. Much excitement. 😀

Mark Paul Gosselar as Zack Morris on Jimmy Fallon.. hilarious

Defective Yeti is a fabulous blog (when he manages to blog!), and he wrote a script for an The Office episode… and it’s completely freaking hilarious. Go read it.

I’m in Vegas for a conference that I’m giving a couple of seminars at, and right now I am quite hungover. The ladies I work with have a capacity for alcohol that I, sadly, do not.

bleh

The Chop and I put an offer on a house today. It’s weird, I’m excited and completely terrified all at the same time. Plus I’m stuck going to Vegas tomorrow to give two (freaking A) seminars in two days (I come home Thursday.. I hate trips like this), so overall my stress level is really high.

The house is awesome—virtually everything we were looking for in a house, sans a fence for the dog (which we’ll install). Three season porch (with gas stove), two bathrooms, renovated kitchen, big yard… and the best part, right in a town. The walkscore is 83 out of 100, which means we can walk everywhere—and it’s only 10 minutes from the Chop’s work. Sidewalks, loads of restaurants and a five minute walk to a commuter station that drops us in Boston in under an hour—perfecto.

The sellers are thinking over our offer and we’ll find out tomorrow. Crazy, I’m almost a homeowner.

David Sedaris is one of my favorite authors, so when I heard his lecture series was coming to town I was very excited. Chop got tickets and after a tasty dinner of sushi (and macaroni and cheese, lol), we headed to see him.

When we got there and sat down, we noticed an usher was moving people up and he eventually came over to us and said, “We can move you up to row 13, if you’d like to come with me.”

We weren’t that far back, but 13 moved us up about 20 rows, and who’s going to turn that down? Not us.

Unfortunately, it turns out that greed like that comes with a price. And our price was the most annoying couple on the face of this earth (I SWEAR TO GOD). It wasn’t the oft repeating of his final phrases in his monologues… no, instead it was the piercing, shrieking laughter that made me contemplate homicide. The man, in Chop’s opinion was worse, but the woman was hitting such high notes that now, two hours, vodka and two Tylenol later, I still have a headache.

I finally decided I couldn’t take it anymore and so we decided to move back to our original seats (or any seat far, far away from them). We waited for a break (one story to the next), but unfortunately moving meant saying excuse me to five college students who didn’t get up or move. No, instead they tried to scrunch up their legs.

And alright, the girls were waif-like and so that wasn’t an issue, but the guys were probably Chop’s size and “scrunching” up their knees allotted MAYBE one extra inch of space to move by them. So we both proceeded to say excuse me, step all over them (I almost fell over as I do not have the leg span of Chop) and finally struggle into the aisle.

At this point now I was considering mass homicide. (You go to jail either way, might as well make it count.)

His talk ended about 30 minutes later, and sitting at the far back of the theatre, I realized that proximity to someone reading is not that important, as long as the microphone is turned up high.