2010.

Copied from all over the damn internet, especially Sundry.  2009 here.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
I stuck around at a job long enough to actually get promoted.


Moved into a new place that actually feels like an adult home.


I am more at peace with my relationship with my parents, after a few ugly conversations which involved me telling my truth about a few things.

Got glasses/contacts.


Flew First Class.  It is so much better up there, unfortunately.


Bought something on Etsy.


Watched my Baylor Bears defeat UT in Austin.  And will watch them play in a bowl game tonight!

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Well, according to last year's meme, I resolved to eat slower.  And cut back on work gossip.


FAIL.

This year I just want to do better at things.  Not anything grand, but the things I do every single day, I want to do them better.


Find a new kind of exercise, and do it at least once a week- Tennis anyone?

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My childhood best friend.

4. Did anyone close to you die?


Nope.

5. What countries did you visit?



Grand Cayman in September.


I also visited California in May and New York this summer and Atlanta in January.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?


A damn iPad.

A new fancy camera.

Looks like last year I wanted to move into a bigger place, and that I did achieve.

I'm still looking for something more fulfilling to do with my spare time.

I would like to cook more, and lucky me, I'm joining the writing staff at a Food Blog this year (more on that next week), so unless I plan on failing both myself AND a few others, I should achieve this goal.

Just today I resolved to Waxy to make more of an effort to keep in touch with his grandmother.  She is 90 years old, and won't be around forever, and really, there is no time like the present to let her know she is appreciated.



7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Oh Dude, I suck at this kind of thing.  There were no really big days this year.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?


Got a promotion at my job, finally made the place I live feel like home.  FINALLY made my damn photo gallery wall, four years in the making.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Buying WAY too much stuff.  Again.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nope.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
All of the new furniture for the apartment.  My Heavenly Bed.  All of the fun little trinkets I'm starting to collect for our home.  A new TV for the bedroom.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?  Several of my sanity saving co-workers.  Lots of good friends.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?


Just as was the case last year, the answer to this covers a non-bloggable subject. 


14. Where did most of your money go?
Furniture.  I don't regret that, but I spent too much on clothes.  Again.  I am so annoyed with myself.  I also spent a lot on eating out, which I don't regret.  At all.

15. What did you get really excited about?
Going to Grand Cayman.  Going to my first Indian Wedding.  Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway.  Going to New York City.  Finally, briefly, getting a chance at being in charge of something, anything at work.  My current promotion will allow me to very temporarily be in a supervisory position.  My next promotion will be at the bottom rung of a higher level in my organization, so I best enjoy it while I can.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
Florence and the Machine "Dog Days."  No good reason, other than I got completely addicted to it and played it to death in my car.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

(a) happier or sadder?
(b) thinner or fatter?
(c) richer or poorer?

(a) Happier.  Life is pretty good.

(b) Probably the same size.

(c) Richer.  Somewhat richer- we've increased our savings.  Promotion will EVENTUALLY result in a raise, but that hasn't happened just yet.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?


Travel more.  Cook more.  Taken my dry cleaning more frequently so the bills weren't $200.  Yep, those are the same answers as last year.


I wish we had gone to visit Waxy's grandmother in Washington (hopefully that will make it onto the books this year).  


I wish I had spent more time finding some kind of physical activity to do that wasn't just doing time on the elliptical.


Spend more time with a few close friends- Matt, Denise, Kim, to name a few.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

 

Gossiped.  Shopped.  Get angry about stupid things that aren't worth my time.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
We spend Christmas Eve at my parents house and Christmas Day with Mr. A's family.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
Yes.  With Udi's Gluten Free Bread.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Real Housewives, 16 and Pregnant, um, yeah, its a real high brow situation in my DVR.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
 

Yes, yes I do.  And to that person- you suck.  I know it.  You just don't know I know it.  Yet.

24. What was the best book you read?


All I can think of is the Hunger Games series.  I know I read more stuff, but I can't think of any of it.  Crap, what did I read on vacation?  Something was really good...

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Uh, Florence and the Machine?  I don't endeavor to discover music.  Ever.

26. What did you want and get?


Promotion.  An iPhone 4, which I would gladly return.  All new furniture.  A new apartment.  Some new friends, especially a good new girlfriend, and an even closer bond with a newish friend made last year.

27. What did you want and not get?

An iPad.


My husband to come home at a decent hour with any regularity.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
True Grit.  The Social Network.  Inception.  

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Um, yeah, I don't even remember.  Not really a fan of attention focused on me for parties and the like.  And this was the big 3-0.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?


I would have loved to have fit one more trip in this year. (Same as last year).  Waxy having a more reasonable working schedule.



An iPad.  (sensing a theme?)

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?


You hear enough about my style around here, but I got a little more adventurous this year with shoes and accessories.

32. What kept you sane?


My co-workers.  The Internet and its fine people (oddly, this also kept me insane).  The OAF.  My husband.  My new mattress.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Johnny Weir.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

DADT.  The concept that my income apparently makes me "rich."  (No, I don't want to bring about a tax debate, but I do find it laughable that people consider annual income to be the deciding factor in who is rich and who isn't).  

35. Who did you miss?


All of my friends who live in a state that is not Texas.  My friend Matty, who I haven't seen as much of lately.  Again.

36. Who was the best new person you met?


My friend K from work.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.


Eh.  Errr....  I dunno.  I still enjoy getting older, and I'm more and more okay with who I am and expressing my opinions.  But that isn't really a "life lesson." 


I did learn, unfortunately, to be more wary of people before trusting them, and that sometimes my initial judgments of people are more off than I might have thought.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Not big into this kind of thing.

Merry Christmas

from me and Ole Waxy:

POSEIDON LOOK AT ME!*

Waxy and I are really pretty lame individuals when it comes right down to it, and nothing really proves that more than a video of us having a wild and crazy time on a luggage cart in our hallway on a Saturday night:

On a cart motherfucker.

We are off to San Antonio for Xmas tomorrow tonight, to enjoy lots of yummy dinners, and lots of lovely company.  And if we are lucky at all, lots of Ole Waxy's dad playing half-sober Trivial Pursuit.

Happy Holidays to you, fair readers, for whom I am perpetually grateful!

*If you don't catch this reference, we can't be friends.

A Variety of Matters: Train of Thought Post

Over the past couple of days, things have popped into my mind that are not sufficient to make a post of in and of themselves, but are great for a collective thing.  OR SO I THOUGHT.  Tonight when I sat down to write this, I was all "Oh, this post will write itself!" as I had sent the ideas to myself as emails.

Then I opened the emails.

This is the crap I thought was so awesome?  Well, too bad for you, even though this material sucks, I'm still posting it.  ENJOY!

1)  Last year, while trekking through the COMPLETELY AWFUL Atlanta airport, on my way to see Ali, Metalia and Kristin, I was overcome with rage about people riding the damn moving sidewalks like they had nothing better to do than stand on them and enjoy the freedom of finally not having to walk at all!  DID YOU PEOPLE NOT SEE WALL-E!  IT WAS A MESSAGE MOVIE, LAZY PANTS!  

And thus a site idea was born, ItIsNotARide.com.  It would be a collective site, where you could all send in your photos with INTENT TO SHAME those, lacking disability or agedness, who are just standing there enjoying the damn ride and impeding your progress to your gate, your loved one, your mandatory airport McDonald's hashbrown.  Wherever you are going, I can pretty much guarantee its a more important place than standing on a moving damn sidewalk.

And THEN!  I started working in a building full of escalators.  I spend about 45 minutes of my day riding escalators between floors.  As a result, I walk up and down them instead of just enjoying the wind flowing through my hair. I recognize this is a controversial opinion, but dude.  ESCALATORS ARE ALSO NOT A RIDE!

2)  Anyway, this whole Not a Ride business was all leading up to my next great invention/internet revolution, Overheard in My Car.  Overheard in My Car and ItIsNotARide are actually in no way related, other than in that they are both my brilliant ideas.  Anyhoo, this site would feature nothing but quotes from my car, such as these gems:

YIELD TO THE EXIT RAMP, BITCH.  Not CUT IN FRONT OF THE CAR ON THE EXIT RAMP NEARLY CAUSING THAT PERSON'S DEATH!  CAN YOU READ!

OH NO YOU DI'NT.

DON'T MAKE ME CUT YOU!

There are way funnier things to be overheard in my car, but it is 11 pm and I can't think of any of them.  Sorry.

3)  There are many misconceptions floating around about Texas:

-- We all have accents (dude, really, I know like, 3 people with accents and they are from a) Graham, Texas or b) Deep East Texas.  The only other accent you hear is Hispanic.  SORRY TO DISAPPOINT!)

-- We all own horses (we don't)

-- We all have oil wells (we don't)

But the one that boggles me the most is the misconception that we have no winter and it never gets cold here. People!  This scene, here, with the snow?  Was repeated a record number of times last winter here.  Yes, IT SNOWS IN TEXAS!  It gets COLD!  I have many, many (too many) COATS.  

Texas (especially Dallas)!  It is NOT ON THE EQUATOR!  Tell your friends!  

4)  WHAT IS MY DEAL lately with having to go to the bathroom 75 times before going to bed?  Every night, I go to the bathroom, then I wash my face and do my whole routine, and then for good measure even though I don't feel the need to, I go to the bathroom again.

It NEVER FREAKING FAILS that 15 minutes later when Waxy and I finally turn off the lights to go to bed, I have to get up to pee.  Sometimes more than once.  I drink a lot of water during the day, but this is RIDICULOUS.  And really fucks with my sleep schedule, as I have a totally important sleep window and this shit is totally messing it up.  If this is one of those things you sign up for when you get pregnant, count me and my tiny ass bladder out.  What makes this even more mystifying is that my bladder is SUCH A FUCKING TROOPER about long drives.  I only usually have to make a potty break once during our 5-6 hour drive to San Antonio.  I take PRIDE! in this!  ANNOYING.

5)  Yeah, this is seriously the stuff I thought was so genius in those emails.  I AM CLEARLY DUMBER THAN I THOUGHT.  If you want a well written train of thought post, try Jonniker.

Final Chance at $100!

The fourth and final $100 Visa card giveaway is up on the review blog!  Today we're talking about what gets better with age, ya know, besides wine.

YAY!

Happy Birthday to YE OLE WAXY!

May you live to be many years older, but always so young at heart that you play with tugboats in the pool!

Contrary to Popular Belief, There Are Some Things Related to Wardrobe I AM Cheap About.

Last Saturday, in an act of lazy desperation, I took, or shall I say attempted to take, my dry cleaning to the fancy pants cleaners closest to my apartment.  In retrospect, I should have had the foresight to see how bad of an idea this was, as I live in a kind of fancy pants building, immediatey adjacent to fancy hotels and an office building full of super professional lawyer/finance types who apparently don't think twice about spending a week's wages on keeping their pants clean.  While my husband and I may in fact be professional lawyer types, dry cleaning falls under my mental category "You Have Got to be Fucking Kidding Me, I am Not Paying That Much For That!"  In other words, not unlike valet parking, I find paying more than a miniscule amount for dry cleaning to be an insult to my intelligence, and my student loan balance.

So I drug my GIGANTIC pile of clothes (I like to try and avoid going to the cleaners until I see that the amount of dry cleaning I have reaches approximately the size of the backseat of the car which I will be using to transport the dry cleaning to the cleaners) out of my car, across the damn street because there was no parking, and into the dry cleaners.  The woman observed my bag, and clearly having dealt with sticker shock before, removed a few items from the bag and said "You are new here right?  Let me tell your our prices. . ." and then proceeded to quote several unreasonable figures, like $7.50 for a silk blouse and $18.00 for a skirt suit.  Given the amount of dirty clothes I was in possession of at the time, my dry cleaning bill would have been an estimated Eleventy Billion Dollars. 

I looked into the back of the cleaners, and saw the assorted dry cleaned items hanging freshly pressed in their plastic bags.  I was thoroughly disappointed in their presentation.  You see, Dallas has its very own Incredibly Expensive Cleaners chain, Bibbentucker's.  I've only had a few items cleaned at Bibbentucker's in my day.  When you get your items back from Bibbentucker's you can see that they have at least made an effort to make you feel somewhat less ridiculously stupid about spending $9.00 on having your button downs pressed.  Shirts come with tissue paper stuffed in the sleeves, to keep the shape of the garment.  Dresses come with a full on mannequin constructed of tissue paper, blood, sweat and tears.  Suits come out with an entire tissue paper man living inside.  You could prop up your fresh from Bibbentucker's suit at your desk at work, and leave many of your less intelligent co-workers to believe that you are just working quietly at your desk.  While all that stuffing isn't going to convince me that they did $9.00 worth of work on my Brooks Brothers, it at least lets me know they tried. 

"PSHAW, DRY CLEANING LADY!"  I said, um, in my head.

"THAT IS TOO EXPENSIVE!" I said, outloud.  And then began the process of loading my garments back into the reusable shopping bag I got for free at World Market.

I was lamely proud of myself for taking a stand against dry cleaning neighborhood based inflation!  TAKE THAT, LADY WHO PROBABLY MAKES $8.00 AN HOUR AND DOES NOT ACTUALLY EVEN OWN THE CLEANERS!  I WILL NOT BE DUPED!

Yes so, the point of sharing with you my Yuppie Malaise....

How much do YOU pay for dry cleaning?  I'm quite curious as to what is considered reasonable in different areas of the country.  At my usual cleaners, which I visited promptly upon leaving Overpriced Cleaners, is around $2.50/piece.  Do tell....I would like to take my findings and anonymously leave them in the mail slot of the cleaners down the street.  THAT WILL SHOW THEM.

Next $100 Giveaway from Olay is Up!

Today I'm talking about how budgeting and allocation of funds changes with age.  Head on over for a chance to win a $100 Visa gift card, because don't we all need an extra $100 in the holiday season budget right now?

That Thing I am Not Supposed to Talk About.

My husband works.  A lot.  

He comes home, on average, at 10 pm.  

He works every Saturday.  He works every Sunday.

My husband also makes a lot of money.

My husband's job affords me a lifestyle that my own job would never afford me.  

My husband also probably has a job I couldn't land, and makes a salary I may never earn.

My husband is also a good man.

My husband came home tonight at about 9:45, to a dinner that I had cooked for him.  Admittedly, this is not a frequent occurrence, as he prefers Lean Cuisine pizzas to whatever thing I'm eating for dinner.  Which I eat alone, every night.  And admittedly, the dinner I cooked for him was pasta, and not anything even remotely resembling a feast.  

While I cooked my husband's dinner, I spent an hour doing laundry, cleaning the floors, cleaning his bathroom.  Emptying the trash in a bag to be taken to the trash chute.  I did all of these things.  Alone.  Like I do every night.

When my hard working husband came home tonight he, probably inadvertently, made a comment that offended me.  A comment about the things I do around the house and my role around here.  He was probably joking.  It made me upset regardless.

It made me upset, not just because of that one comment in the abstract, but because of a general attitude I perceive every day with people I interact with.  People who include friends.  Co-workers.  Family members.  Acquaintances.  The random attorney I saw at work who made that comment about how big my engagement ring was and how I must have married well.

That attitude is that I somehow got lucky.  Hitched my wagon on to a star that was taking me places I wouldn't necessarily go on my own.  An attitude that I am somehow a kept woman.  An attitude that I am not doing my fair share.

When I talk to my parents, my husband is usually at work.  Because at any given time, my husband is usually at work.  When I talk to them, they always talk about how hard A works.  About how lucky I am that he has the job he has.  

These things are all true.

But sometimes, some days, I get so very sick of it.  So sick of the implication that what I do is somehow less. Somehow a less valued contribution.

While my husband is working all of those hours, I am taking care of everything here alone.  

It's true, if my husband didn't have the job he had, I wouldn't get to drive a BMW.  I wouldn't get to go shopping.  And I couldn't buy my groceries at Whole Foods.

But guess what else.  If my husband didn't have the job that he has, he could do his share of the laundry.  He could do his share of the cleaning.  He could do some of the Christmas shopping.  He could make sure that we had light bulbs.  He could sometimes sort the mail.  He could cook dinner.  He could change the sheets.  He could vacuum the floors.  I wouldn't have to spend every single evening finding something to do by myself.  Ya know, after I come home from working my full time job.  Where I too am I a lawyer.

I don't ask him to do these things because he truly does not have the time.  I don't ask him to do these things because I don't think he should have to spend what little time he has at home in the evenings pairing socks and scrubbing the toilet.

But the fact that I do all of those things?  Well, it isn't nothing, and he?  He married well too. 

Disclaimer:  This is in no way an indictment of my husband, who is a very wonderful guy.

$100 Giveaway Time.

Talking more about Olay Total Effects, during which I attempt to liken my career to my face.  Was I successful?  Go judge me and get a chance at another $100 Visa gift card from Olay and Blogher.  And yes, you CAN enter this giveaway even if you entered the last one.  And yes, the question prompt is the same.  Don't let that stop you!