The Holiday Spirit

When I got to work this morning, my office building's lobby was dressed to the nines for the holiday season. Giant snowballs lay atop the revolving doors, reindeer flanked the halls, a giant menorah twinkled in the window, and a beautiful Christmas tree had its top cut off. Yup, it was headless.

The tree in my lobby is too big for the room.

Now, I've never had a Christmas tree in my life, but even I know that part of the beauty of the tree is the top - the crowning jewel delicately perched on a lone branch. I've never really understood how an angel or a star or a giant light bulb can stay on top of a tree, but something’s are meant to be enjoyed, not understood.

Since this is my first year in this building, I wondered if there is the same dilemma every year by the building management. Do we get the big tree or the bigger tree? Bigger is always better right? Who cares that it doesn't fit?

The lobbed-off tree has an end of "The Da Vinci Code" look, where the top of the pyramid is hidden and continues on to the next floor. It would actually be rad if the 2nd floor had a little tree topper with a giant star on it. A little private joke amongst the staff of the Grace building and Robert Langdon.

In case you are wondering if the same people who keep your corporate lobby stocked with fresh floral arrangements each week are the masterminds around your new Christmas tree, I have the answer. I met a guy on Saturday night who decorates Christmas trees. This is all he does for a living - despite the fact that the tree decorating season lasts about one month. When asked how he spends his 11-month long off-season, he simply explained that he decorates other things. OK.

Now, I know what you tare thinking, I was in a crowded bar, screaming over my shoulder (Mystery would be so proud) and barely coherent, let alone comprehensible. This guy surely can't just decorate Christmas trees and various other "things" all year long. But you are wrong. I was at an interim spot (before I later went out to a crowded bar where I negged dudes for their love of Michael Phelps - I just don't get it) where it was quiet and well lit. My friend and I had a very clear, sober conversation with the tree man. That is all there is.

Now, I'm not putting down manual labor or the holiday spirit in any way shape or form, but I am quite perplexed as to how someone can sustain themselves (drinking overpriced beer) in NYC by working only one month. Maybe he was messing with us.

I certainly hope he was. Because if I can continue to live the fabulous life by designing something beautiful for a few weeks a year, I'm off to pursue a new career in the Christmas Arts. Jews for Jesus!

Schamlippen!

My husband loves him some video games. I am quite tolerant of most video games, but especially like to watch him play games with a clear storyline like Spiderman 3 or any GTA. I can live without the Halos and the Call of Duties. These games are best played on weekend afternoons when I am out of the house and after 11pm when I am in bed.

My husband is very smart. He knows that the best way for me to continue to enable his Xbox habit is through participation. After noting my excellent Rock Band vocals, CinS decided to buy me a new game, Lips.

Lips is a karaoke game that comes pre-loaded with karaoke favorites like Hungry Like the Wolf, Call Me, and my personal karaoke go-to song - Bust A Move. But the beauty of Lips is that it also lets you upload your own music from your MP3 player. Yes, that's right. You can wail Avril Lavigne and OK Go and Paramore and all of your personal cheesy, dance-around-the-room pop against a video backdrop of a giant cobra licking an enormous ice cream cone. BEST GAME EVER!

CinS brought Lips home on Thursday night and we were so excited to play. We loaded up the Xbox, and after 20 minutes of CinS personalizing his new XBox Live avatar, we were ready to rock out.

The Lips opener is rad. There is a crowded party, and two lonely souls sit awkwardly alone on two opposite sides of a couch. The guy looks at the girl, smiles, and picks up a wayward microphone from a beer-can-strewn coffee table. He starts to sing the lyrics of that whistling song, Yong Folks. The girl finds her own mic and joins in. True love.

After the opener, the menu appears. Entirely written in German.

I've never seen so many umlauts in my life.

Yes, our version of Lips is German. The available songs are all US favorites – not a Hasselhoff tune in sight – but all the instructions, encouragement, and results are in German. We played anyway.

CinS and I made it through about 4 songs, screaming random German phrases at one another, before we gave up. While it would be totally awesome to have kept the German game for its novelty value, we decided to return it. The vocals weren’t synched with the game and it was driving me crazy. So when you come over and play our totally vanilla, English version of Lips, you can blame it on me.

Road Rules

As a city dweller, I've never owned a car. I never had a car in High School and never needed one in DC or in NY.* But that doesn't mean that I don't like to drive.

Despite what CinS says, I am a good driver. I used to be an awesome driver, but because I don't drive too often, I have downgraded myself to good.

In my awesome driving days, I would drive like a maniac. How does this constitute awesome driving, you ask? Well, the sheer fact that I have lived to tell the tale of my once awesomely maniacal driving is proof enough of my skills. I used to rock Route 1 Nico Bellic style.

Earlier this week, I was in San Francisco for business and was driving all over the Bay Area. And I realized something. Driving rules. Even in a Chevy Impala.

I was so enamored of the drive that I decided to leave the comfort of my airport hotel and venture into the city to watch Heroes with my fellow Heroes cronies. This was the best idea I've ever had.

As a sidebar, I am a Heroes nut despite EW's opinion that the show has gone downhill. To me, this season's Heroes is last season's American Idol. Yes, the obsession is deep.

And like AI, I am not alone. My pals Gloria and Christian are equally obsessed, and gladly spend each Tuesday dissecting the show with me via email. Gloria and Christian both relocated to SF from NY so the prospect of watching Heroes, not only in the same time zone as my friends, but in the same ROOM, was too good to pass up.

So I was on my way to Gloria's house, happily jamming to some alternative rock station with a penchant for Fall Out Boy, when I realized that my friend does not have a driveway. Hmm.

While I am an awesome driver, I am not an awesome parker. But it’s not my fault. When I was 16, the state of Pennsylvania did not require you to parallel park.

So I arrived at Gloria's and found a space. A really good space too. The problem was that the space was in between two cars. I had to parallel park.

I tried to remember the rules of parallel parking as I put my blinker on and slid up to the car in front of my space. I aligned our steering wheels and attempted to back in. After a set of 15 forwards and reverses, I squeezed far enough into the space to stop blocking oncoming traffic. But I was still miles away from the curb. I had to call for reinforcements.

Yes, I phoned a friend for help parking my car. Yes, I am embarrassed. Yes, I probably need a lesson or two before I buy a car of my very own someday. But like Cher Horowitz says, "What's the point? Everywhere you go has valet."

*In case any friends from the mid-nineties plan to call me to the curb, I will admit that I did own a car for one fateful summer. It was a sic burgundy Camaro with a gold bottom and gold rims. I called it the Hooch. The Hooch was good to me, but my parents claim that it had too many problems to keep for more than a few months. I think they were just intimidated by its badassedness.

Bloomers

In the last month I have come to realize that just about everything I own is the wrong length. It’s very troubling.

Most of these items I have been wearing for years - running around town in pants that are too short and skirts that are too long. How embarrassing!

I have no idea how this happened. I'm certain that when I get something shortened it is measured to hang just above the floor, and yet my hems are now hanging closer to my ankle. No wonder my husband calls all my pants bloomers.

The worst offenders are my sweats. Yes, I get my sweats shortened. When you are short, you get everything shortened. Sometimes even pajamas.

When CinS and I first met, I had a pair of pajamas that were not shortened, but were actual bloomers. I thought they were capris. I was mistaken. CinS was relentless in his mocking and called the pants bloomers until not just the bottoms were known as bloomers, but the entire sleep ensemble. I promptly donated these jams to Good Will.

Over the years, a few other items have also earned the bloomers moniker from my betrothed. But none were worse offenders than my "Cleveland Browns."

The Cleveland Browns are not pajama pants or sweat pants; they are a quite expensive pair of Theory pants that I got on sale at Bloomingdales. They are, as named, brown pants. The pants have no pockets, but do sport a sassy beaded seam down each side. I love these pants. My husband thinks they make me look like a football player.

After hearing a lot of crap about my Cleveland Browns, I retired them for about a year and a half. But now that I've uncomfortably returned to a pre-wedding size, the Cleveland Browns, and their wide legged glory, are calling to me.

I rescued the Cleveland Browns from their suffocating dry cleaning bag and wore them to work. It was then that I noticed something I’d never noticed before. The Cleveland Browns were totally bloomers! They were at least 2 inches too short and had no business being worn with heels. The horror!

CinS was right. These Cleveland Browns were ugly.

I sent the Cleveland Browns off to the tailor to be lengthened hoping it would fix them. The Cleveland Browns have been back in my closet for a while now, but I’m too afraid to try them on.

What if I still don’t like them? What if they don’t fit right? What if the problem wasn't the length, but the fact that they make me look like Valerie Malone sporting the camel-toe that she rocked in her brown pants in the mid-90's?

Maybe I'll be brave enough to wear them the next time CinS is out of town. I don't know if my delicate constitution can afford to fall back on the bloomers train.

The List

A friend of mine dug up an old list of personal jokes from the college years and sent a scanned version around to our friends. I didn’t go on the particular trip, opting for a Spring Break in the Bahamas instead of Florida because it's a foreign country and you can get a passport stamp. But the list brought much hilarity none-the-less.

What was odd about my friend posting this list, was not that she posted it, not that she still had it, but that I had been talking about other lists my group of friends made a few days before.

We were out to dinner with friends and were discussing nicknames for co-workers. While I'm sure in my highly social first job out of college I also had nicknames for my co-workers, I have no recollection of any nicknames or even of the act of plotting nicknames with friends. I'm sure I was too busy talking trash about the girl with inappropriate cleavage or the guy whose office always smelled like a fart.

All I could contribute to the nickname conversation was The List. The List is a 4-page, double-sided list of 101 nicknames assigned to GW students by my friends and I in 1995. It is a wonder to behold.

Many names from the list I recall to this day. Half and Half Eye shadow Girl. Guido in the Morning. Rabbinic Turtle.

The list was broken into groups of friends to make sure we didn’t forget anyone. We put stars next to the names of the boys we liked.

My friends and I were fond of documenting things - nicknames, party invite lists, personal jokes. And I'm glad we did. Without our gnarled notebook papers and paper plates, our college years may have been lost. And who would ever want to forget FChinring?

Blame Canada

It's been a busy few weeks in Blogtari country, with most of the busyness stemming from a trip out of the country.

Ma and Pa Blogtari (the LA parents) came for a visit East, and the family hauled up to the glamorous Niagara Falls area to gamble with a foreign currency and see some nature (in that order). I had never been to the Falls before and was mildly excited for the trip. While a good time was had by all, especially my father-in-law who was overjoyed that a gambling woman had married into the family, Niagara Falls is not a trip I would recommend.

Niagara Falls is sort of depressing. Granted, we visited during the off season when tourism is low, but the "town" felt just shy of deserted. And I can't imagine things improving in the summer. Aside from the casino and the 2 nice restaurants I scrounged up, all Niagara Falls activities decidedly fall into the category of budget-priced family fun. There was an indoor (?) waterpark, 2 IMAX theatres and countless haunted houses and wax museums. Honestly, hundreds of wax museums. I had no idea that the art of wax was so popular with our neighbors to the North. After seeing warped wax portraits of Angelina Jolie and Robert DiNiro all over the city, the "Criminals Hall of Fame Wax Museum" had a whole new appeal.

The Falls themselves are ridiculously cool, but the kind of cool that you can experience in a 15-minute moment of reflection while driving up to a sweet weekend in Toronto. Without the casino action, the 2-day trip would have been painfully long. Yet another great reason to support gambling in your community.

The entire trip, my family and I kept talking about how cool it was that we were witnessing one of the 7 Wonders of the World. As if this alone made the trip worthwhile. Sadly, my curious mind led me to Wikipedia to recall the other wonders of the world ('cause that mini golf course from Overboard may not have covered them all...), where I learned that Niagara Falls is not on any Wonders list at all. But then again, I was a fan of Andre the Giant, so maybe that can count instead.