Wet/Dry Vac

A couple of days ago, I was in Florida complaining of smothering humidity. My hair literally was not dry for 3 days! I could curl it with my finger!

Now, here I am, home sweet home in California, and it is so dang dry! I want to grab my snorkle and spend the next several days underwater just to avoid the wind and dust flying in from the.....gulp....Inland Empire. As if wind and dust weren't bad enough before...this kind is from the 909. The human equivalent of this wind has tattoos and a monster truck. No wonder my eyes hurt.



P.S. this is my only salvation so far:
http://www.cremedelamer.com/templates/products/sp_nonshaded.tmpl?CATEGORY_ID=CATEGORY5778&PRODUCT_ID=PROD2459

Accidental Nakedness at the Beach, Part 2, or What the Hell Happened to My Camera!?, Part 4

You’d think I would have learned my lesson by now, but clearly, I have not. Every time a certain rowdy group of friends invites me to spend a weekend at the beach with them, I go, and I get drunk. Really really drunk. You’ll remember one such occasion last summer when I found myself late one night on the beach frolicking naked in jellyfish-infested waters (everyone in that group had decided, as drunk people so often do, that they needed to be naked).

Anyway, this past weekend, once again I found myself on the beach with this fun-loving group, though this time we were decently dressed for 10am. I untied the straps on my halter-top bikini and relied, admittedly rather foolishly, on the bath towel wrapped around my body to maintain modesty. I set my camera on a frail-looking balcony railing, and just as my friend jumped up to sit on the railing, my camera launched itself into the sand 5 feet below. “Oh no!” I said. “Not again!”

It should be mentioned here that I have a long and ugly history with mixing cameras and alcohol (yes, I did say this happened at 10am, shut up and stop judging). The first one bit the dust some years ago after it fell (some would say jumped) from a bar counter in Tonga. But that was ok because there was sand in the gears and the memory stick sort of came down with a case of amnesia. Camera #2 met its demise at the bottom of a margarita glass. (I know what you’re thinking, margaritas go with everything, but the viewfinder became so messed up it was like perpetually looking through beer goggles, and God knows I do that enough on my own, so I was ok with throwing that one out.) The third victim came as part of a packaged deal with a DIY photo printer at Costco. It was lost one night during a post-breakup breakdown at the bar at the Ritz Carlton, which involved so much crying and rhetorical “Why doesn’t he [hiccup] LOOOVE me?!” (that came with a few unsolicited answers from passers-by) that the Ritz gave my friends and me complimentary use of their car and driver. I guess that’s how the Ritz kicks you out of their bar. I’ll give it to ‘em, that’s pretty classy. So that brings me to camera #4.

It was on the railing of a wooden balcony that would have fallen apart if the termites ever stopped holding hands. Then before I knew it, the camera was in the sand. I ran down to get it and haphazardly pushed buttons, trying to resuscitate the poor thing. My friend Ashley thought she could fix it, so she also pushed some buttons and declared it in perfectly good working order. “All right!!” she said, raising both arms to meet me in a double high five. I was excited about the camera working too, so I met Ash halfway with the high fives. Unfortunately, just then, my bikini top and towel decided to fall to the ground too. I gasped and pulled them back up as quickly as I could, just in time for the boys to realize they had, in their own words, “missed out on naked boobies!” I was so embarrassed, but one of the boys took a sympathetic tone. “Don’t worry, it’s ok” he said. He was right, we were all adults here, and the guys were pretty gentlemanly. Or so I thought, until he continued with, “I mean, we’ve all seen you naked before!”

the most insightful thought I've ever had

A few weeks ago I had the most astute, insightful thought occur to me. It really needs no introduction, so here it is..........

The difference between men and women is that women like to identify their feelings and deny their farts, whereas men like to deny their feelings and identify their farts.

Coworkerus Idiotus

In my much less glamorous, much lamer previous job, I had the...pleasure...of working with someone who unknowingly provided me with hours of entertainment. She wasn't aware of it, however, because I very nicely waited until she wasn't around to laugh at her. The following is a totally true, nearly verbatim account of one such conversation:

me: By the way, Jim offered to translate Spanish for us.

her: How did you know that he speaks Spanish?

me: Well, he works in the Latin American Sales department, I sure hope he speaks Spanish!

her: Whats Latin America? Don't they speak Latin?

me [stifling laughter]: Um, you know, South America....where they speak Spanish. [and of course Portuguese, but why get into that] No one speaks Latin anymore.

Seriously, the dude's name is Jim, not Caesar. That the only name I could think of that would cause any such confusion.....can you imagine!? "Hola, como esta!? Bien, et tu Brutus?"

Hold Me Accountable, Tiny Dancer

I can never go to the gym again. There are many good reasons why, two of which are:

1) Working out affects one's metabolism. I have the metabolism of a 24-year-old. To mess with that would clearly be akin to looking a gift horse in the mouth.

2) I never sweat. Ever. On my several attempts at working out, I have been a reluctant witness to the fact that it does, in fact, cause people to sweat. Sometimes profusely. Apparently it even activates sweat glands in people who normally don't sweat, so clearly I would be opening up quite a can of worms, the thought of which makes me nervous, but thankfully, not sweaty.

But most importantly, the following story illustrates why I can never go the gym again (and should probably avoid anything even mildly strenuous, just for good measure). The last time I was at the gym, I was participating in a hip hop dance class. I say "participating" in the sense that I was there and following along with the spotty comprehension of a tourist asking for directions in a foreign language, and I was definitely putting in enough effort to look ridiculously white, middle class, and straight. This is not the look you're going for in a hip hop dance class. But its the gym, and who cares what you look like, right? Anyone who looks okay looks out of place anyway (see bullet point #2). So I didn't think much about it until the next day at work when a guy who I'll call "Elton" said to me, "Hey, didn't I see you at the gym last night?" Now, statistically speaking, the odds of running into me at the gym are right up there with seeing Bigfoot, so my automatic response was "No, that wasn't me." But then of course I remembered my rendez-vous with Terrence-the-gay-dance-instructor. Unfortunately Elton continued with "Yeah, I saw you in an erotic dance class!" Now, I can't for the life of me think what Elton could have possibly considered erotic about anything I did in a class which included a move the instructor called "the retarded hula." So in a knee-jerk reaction, I blurted out, "It wasn't an erotic dance class! It was hip hop! Hip hop!!" "Aha!" he said. "So it was you." Damn. Immediately I flashed back to memories of my much-too-retarded Retarded Hula, girly pushups, and the move where the whole class spun clockwise and I, the lone left-hander, naturally spun counter-clockwise and nearly took out my neighbor's eye. Erotic?? How was someone supposed to take me seriously in the business world after witnessing that? Thankfully, Elton was headed out of the office, but not without a sly "See ya later, Tiny Dancer!" I am never going back to the gym. And possibly work.

An Eye for a Guy

While I was at work the other day, an amazingly gorgeous guy walked up to my desk. "Hi," he said. "I'm here for Danielle and Cedar." I wrote down his name and quickly ran back to find the two girls, who were in the marketing department. "Thanks a lot!" I said when I found them. "I could have used some warning, I mean, I'm wearing my glasses for crying out loud!" "Why, is he hot or something?" said Cedar. "Oh no," I said sarcastically with a smile. I watched Danielle's and Cedar's faces when they spotted Mr. Hot Stuff, and Danielle looked up at me with a conspiratorial smile and a wink. Later on that day, I asked Cedar if my "future husband" had been a nice guy in their meeting. "Oh yeah," she said, "Good eye you've got there." "Well you know," I said, "I was wearing my glasses."

For your viewing pleasure...

The perfect Valentine's Day in Paris...I spent it with Herve Chapelier!


A lovely day in St. Tropez!

Tapas! A nice little snack in Sevilla, Spain.

Tomatoes in Tonga

a squeaky-clean soapbox!

So I am trying out blogging for a bit, just to see how it feels to put my writing out there for everyone and anyone to see! It's not in my nature to say anything controversial or offensive, to me this is really more about artistic expression and that "eek! this is me, vulnerable for everyone else to see!" feeling. So I would appreciate (if anyone is reading this at all) not receiving offensive responses! However, when I look at other people's writing, it makes me want to say a few things:

1) your = belongs to you. you're = you+are.

2) the letter "A" is not in the word "definitely"

whew! I feel better now...a little exposed, but definitely (no "A") better

falling for the catch

you called to me
like the knight to Rapunzel
wanted me to come
said i was a catch

so i fell for you
and all the while
you knew you'd drop me
hoping i wouldn't catch on

but i'll hit the ground running
trying not to look back
now i'm off the pedestal
a million places to go
and you're still standing there
but with no one to hold

first post....The Beauty of Travel

Its no secret that traveling can wreak havoc on your looks. Just ask anyone who has stepped off a six hour flight (sans more than 3 ounces of cosmetics, of course) to be greeted by a bleary-eyed mess staring back at them in the airport bathroom mirror. Usually the flight itself is enough to make even the most gorgeous passenger look and feel like a deflated oxygen mask, but when a few friends and I traveled to Tonga last summer, I discovered that in terms of taming the beauty-stealing beast, getting there is half the battle.

Before actually getting to Tonga, our plane stopped in Samoa, or as I came to know it, Land Where the Little White Maiden Has Hair Bigger than Banyan Tree. Based off the presence of my morning breath and bed-head hairstyle, I determined that it was just before sunrise when we got there. Once the sun rose, which, that close to the equator is surprisingly fast, I got a good look at myself and my traveling companions. I was really grateful we weren't going to be greeted in Tonga like the Beckhams at LAX because we were not looking very posh. My clothes, which seemed very LA sloppy-chic when I left home that morning, were now coated with crumbs, juice, and the kind of wrinkles that can only be created by contortionist-style sleeping positions necessary for spending 12 hours in coach. But no matter. We didn't know anyone there anyway, and in just an hour we were back on the plane headed to Nukalofa.

Once we landed in Tonga's capital city, the first person I saw was dressed much sloppier than a paparazzo (which, if you've ever lived in LA's Westside, you know that is really saying something). He didn't have a camera in hand, thank God, but he did have two straw-impaled coconuts. And he certainly didn't seem to have any concern about appearances. At first glance, I thought he must have joined a cult...and it sure was nice of him to consider that his visitors would need some rum to ease their shock upon realizing what had happened to their open-minded friend...but then I realized his long hair and beard and dark conservative clothing were the results of living in Tonga for much too long. I'd say he had probably been there for about 6 months - with the Peace Corps, no doubt - and upon speaking with him for a moment I discovered he was, in fact, there with the Peace Corps and employed as a prison guard. He was wearing flip-flops and a long, dark, flowy skirt. That kind of outfit wouldn't go over well at any prison back in America. But the Tongan cultural aesthetic is different, which brings me back to my original point.

The process of getting somewhere to photograph beautiful sights is not always a pretty picture.