al would be proud

so remember this?

well last month was the first month that i was actually enrolled in the program. it took an unbearably long amount of time to get my forms processed and whatnot.

and i just got my bill and it's $5 less than the one i got last month. so on top of the fact that it cost me nothing to switch to wind power and it was easy as pie, it also feels pretty damn good to think i'm helping out the environment. i like being eco friendly. here are the ways (mostly common sense) i'm helping and ideas for how you can do your part:

1.) hang dry more of your clothes (or city dwellers: use those spinny machines that get all the extra water out of your clothes, it cuts a good half hour off your drying time, saves energy and quarters!).
2.) take public transport to work or carpool!
3.) don't litter.
4.) make sure you're turning off lights/televisions when you leave a room. (we have a huge flat screen tv in our cafeteria at work and i'm constantly turning it off when there is no one in there watching it.)
5.) unplug appliances that you're not using (they use energy even if the power is off).
6.) switch to wind power! energy companies all over the country give you this option, even if they don't advertise it.
7.) start replacing old light bulbs with CFLs.
8.) recycle, recycle, recycle.
9.) whole foods shoppers: save those plastic bags. you get 10 cents off your purchase with every bag you bring in and reuse.
10.) use those mugs when you're stopping at starbucks or dunkin donuts or wherever. not only will they keep your coffee hotter longer, you're not wasting the cup.
11.) ladies, don't take shopping bags if you don't need them, if your purse is big enough for that top or that pair of earrings, don't make them give you a bag for it.
12.) don't let the water run while you're brushing your teeth.

all hail al gore!

my number

was talking with a friend who is seeing a girl. she asked him how many people he'd slept with and he honestly didn't know. she didn't believe that he wasn't keeping count.

so he asks me if i know my number. and i don't. so we agree to try to figure our numbers out.

i make out a list and send it to him.

and for the last few days, i've been remembering people. i'll be on the train home and think, "i forgot about derek." or, "oh! jared..."

you know what all those later remembered ones have in common? they were all AWFUL in bed. you'd think i'd remember those up front, but no. seems i've subconsciously blocked out all my bad sexual partners.

how about you non-virginal folks? you know your number without having to think back and count them up?

obama rama

i saw barack last night a his broadway event. for as much as i love ebersole and the readings by marcia gay harden and phylicia rashad, obama's speech was the highlight of the evening.

every time i see him, i like him more. the only parts of his speeches that seemed contrived are the jokes about his wife putting him in his place, whether or not they're true.

fire it up! ready to go!

also, re: rudy getting phone calls during his speeches, i'm fully convinced he's pulling those "call me to save me in case i'm having a bad date" calls. you know, the ones you set up with your girlfriend so that if the date is going down in flames, you can have this "emergency" that you have to run out and take care of. rudy is talking to the people at the NRA, he's assuming there's a chance it'll go poorly. judy calls him so that he'll have an out if he needs one. "hello judy! what?! oh my god! i'll be there right away!" and with that, he can shuffle off the stage and head away from the gun lovers.

driving miss emily

emily's boyfriend was exhausted when we dragged him out of bed saturday morning so i offered to drive.

i haven't driven a car in about two years. new york is the only city i can think of where it's nearly impossible to keep a car. everyone in l.a. drives as public transportation there is sorely lacking. the el/buses in chicago are decent but there's plenty of room for street parking and lots of people even have garages or parking spaces behind their houses.

in new york, it is just not feasible. they clean each side of the street twice each week which means you could have to move it 4 times a week. street space is non-existent. parking garages start at some $500 a month. it's all a mess.

but i've found that driving is a bit like riding a bike. you can't really forget how to do it. i've found that my foot is still as leaden as ever. but i was so focused on the driving and afraid i'd mess up somewhere i wouldn't even glance off the road to adjust the air conditioning. it didn't help that the steering wheel was so sensitive that if you moved the thing a hair you found yourself switching lanes.

in high school, i used to eat while driving. i had opera season tickets in high school and was always running late so as i drove downtown i'd put on makeup (curled eyelashes and all), change clothes and even change shoes (rock on cruise control) while on my way to the lyric.

looking back i'm realizing how completely crazy/reckless/stupid that was and how lucky i was to have never gotten into an accident but seriously, it's such bad taste to show up late to the opera!

otherwise the beach was fab. the weekend weather was amazing and i didn't put nearly enough sunscreen on yesterday and am so burned that my bra straps are punishing me with every turn.

friday hotness

and unrelated to anything: i think caramel apples with nuts may be my favorite food ever.

tidbits

1.) go yankees! though, seriously, mariano is killing me. i texted omar last night to say i was going to have a heart attack one of these days. i mean, i'd rather have him get a bunch of guys on base yet still eek out a win than have him lose the game for us over and over but i can't handle this kind of stress.

2.) milk & honey just changed their number. i'm now one of the few people with the new number. to share, or not to share?

3.) re: my good deeds, thanks to all the thoughtful men that suggested posting some nudie pics. if only you were so lucky! as i was on the bus on the way home i noticed that when a girl got up, her wallet fell out of her pocket. when she didn't hear me call her, i jumped off the bus with it and chased her down. but only after taking all the cash out of it. kidding!

4.) i'm going to the beach for one last weekend this summer. i usually love fall but i had such a spectacular summer that i'm actually really sad to see the season go.

5.) i have a friend named wesley. lately, when you call out his name he'll yell back, "aaaaas...youuuuu...wiiiiiiishhhhh!" heh.

6.) my friend julie bought a cool looking lamp from ikea. once we had it assembled though, we plugged it in and it wouldn't turn on. we moved it to a different socket. we flicked the light switch. julie and i kept taking out and re-inserting the light bulb (which was this wee super environmental friendly thing about the size of a dime). we plugged it in again and it worked! we moved it to the table where she wanted it and, again, it wouldn't turn on. julie calls last night to say she got the lamp working. apparently, it's a touch lamp. the only time it turned on happened to be the only time she was holding it when we plugged it in. we are idiots.

Tell Your Senator To Pass Webb's Dwell Time Amendment

Tell Your Senator To Pass Webb's Dwell Time Amendment
By georgia10
on Iraq

Senator Jim Webb (via email):

Today, Senator Chuck Hagel and I will reintroduce an amendment that seeks to provide our men and women in uniform with the responsible rotational cycles they deserve.
We will be offering an amendment that requires our troops have a 1:1 deployment-to-dwell ratio for active units and members. This is a minimum floor. The Department of Defense's historic policy and current goal is a ratio of 1:2. Currently, Army units are deployed for 15 months with 12 months at home. It is not unusual for Marines also to have less time at home than the length of their last deployment.

This amendment is vital to the continued morale and effectiveness of our Armed Forces, which are breaking under the strain of unprecedented long deployments in combat zones.
Please email your Senators before today's vote. Encourage them to support my Dwell Time Amendment to support our troops.

This Dwell Time Amendment provides a safety net under our troops. However long a servicemember has been deployed, they deserve at least that much time at home. It is a very simple, common sense amendment.

In July, my amendment received 56 votes. We need just 4 more votes this time to pass this amendment, and I am asking for your help.

Please take a moment now, and send a message to your Senators to support the Dwell Time Amendment.

After 4 1/2 years of occupation in Iraq, it is time for the availability of troops to dictate the operational tempo, not the other way around. I hope you will join me in supporting this important legislation. Then help me spread the word to friends and family across the country. For the sake of our servicemembers and their families, this is the right thing to do.
Sincerely,
Jim Webb

You can use the form here at the Born Fighting PAC to email your Senator. Call your Senator as well (especially if they are Republicans), and report the status of their position in the thread below. The switchboard number is 202-224-3121. Toll free is 888-355-3588.

Update: These six Republican Senators are wavering. Give them a call now!

Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) DC: 202-224-6665 Anchorage: 907-271-3735
George Voinovich (R-Ohio) DC: (202) 224-3353 Cleveland: (216) 522-7095
Elizabeth Dole (R-North Carolina) DC: 202-224-6342 Raleigh: 866-420-6083
John Warner (R-Virginia) DC: (202) 224-2023 Roanoke: (540) 857-2676
Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) DC: 202-224-2541 Louisville: 502-82-6304
Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) DC: 202-224-4254 Harrisburg: (717) 782-3951

paying it forward

as i entered the subway station i heard the train rolling up. the girl in front of me at the turnstile ran through and started sprinting towards the stairs. i was about ten paces behind her. the doors started to shut on her as she entered the train. they opened up again to let her in and immediately started to close. "fuck! i'm going to miss this train," i thought.

but then i a young guy (late-teens, i'd say) sees me and sticks his forearm between the doors, effectively holding the whole train for me. the doors open once again and i slide through, thanking him profusely. this kid looked a bit like a punk, a hoodlum perhaps. but today, he was my knight in shining armor.

so now i feel like i need to pay this good deed forward and do some nice things for people today. any suggestions?

i'm now only four degrees from sufjan

my friend lacey saw sufjan stevens out at dinner last night. i get a series of messages: "sufjan stevens is sitting next to me right now." i'm speed walking to my pilates class and right about have a heart attack. "he has on bad sneakers." and just as i'm trying to imagine how bad the sneakers could really be i get another "he also has on a terrible hat."

my love for sufjan is more than skin deep, i think. i'm not so shallow as to disavow him because of some poor wardrobe choices. i text back: "he is an artist. a genius. i will still love him even if he has no taste in clothes. please pass that message onto him."

but she didn't pass my message on because as i was sending it, he was leaving. and as he and his companion (an old man) were leaving, the old man waved to lacey's friend at the restaurant. i'm officially only 4 degrees away from sufjan stevens. lacey is gonna try to find out how her friend's friend knows him.

now if only i could pay her enough to follow him home next time she sees him...

holy hell

remember this guy? he e-mailed over his modeling website.

damn.

it's only wednesday? seriously?

it's been an unbearably long week already. that's what too much alcohol and late nights will do for you.

yesterday was 5 too many margaritas with the CEO. he was profiled in a major magazine recently and it makes me realize how incredibly important he is and how much freaking stress he must be under. the entire article was like, "X company is placing all bets on CEO to save them." and X company is a huge huge HUGE business. like, there isn't anyone in the world who hasn't heard of it. SCARY!

i'll probably start having sympathy anxiety dreams now. great.

joined new awesome gym and currently scanning all awesome classes that i can take, wheee!!!

sexual ambiguity and stripes

so the party last night was madness. it was a paul smith party (with awesome gift bags, btw) at the gansevoort hotel.

we get there and the line is three blocks long. i don't do lines. so we called our friend who walked us right in. it took everything in me not to yell "suckas!" at the waiting folk as we glided by them. i think i'm entitled to be smug about my connections every once in a while, don't you think?

we get upstairs and the lines by the bar were horrendous. "oh, my company has a tab open at the cash bar, just use that" so instead of waiting with the masses for the open bar drinks, we drank on the host company's tab. rock. on. there wasn't a big celebrity turnout. sean scott thomas william something...hold on, i'll look him up, he's a guy with three first names... seann william scott was there. the highlight of the night, and possibly, of my life was getting to stand near nigel barker for a good half hour. the man is a tall glass of water. i'm in love. we met this really hot man (model, of course) from atlanta. he was kind of colin farrellish, but put shaggy hair on him and make him sweeter. we all assumed he was gay but once we started talking to him, we couldn't tell.

we invited him back to the company suite (where about 50K of clothes were stashed) and we ordered more bottles of alcohol and champagne for the 8 of us. we had a dance party where mr. ambiguous was grinding with both the men and women equally. he and a gay would hole up on the balcony but then 10 minutes later he'd be straddling me telling me he was going to go home with me.

i'm certain he was purposefully trying to keep us guessing. and it worked. and i was out until 3:30 which is just too damn late for a monday night. then i showed up to work over an hour late because i couldn't manage to get out of bed while it was still raining. i hate rain when i have to leave my house so i literally stayed in bed an extra hour to wait it out. i'm a mess. but now i'm a mess with cute stripey socks.

Update: so apparently after i left, all the gays started getting naked so they could hang out in the steam room and ambiguous said he was straight. ha! also, i forgot to mention the best part. he introduced his name to me as christian (pronounced chris-tee-an) but introduced himself to others as pi. like 3.141. only in new york kids, only in new york...

the weekend

fire island was a blast. my costume for the luau was a hit. ted, the birthday boy, dressed up as the little mermaid. one word for this: amazing. we fashioned a tail out of a blue little mermaid shower curtain and ted ingeniously fashioned a tail using a hangar and ribbon. the tail was connected to his wrist so whenever he took a drink, the tail flapped. he also carried a fork around with him, combing his long red wig with it throughout the evening. pure genius.

we decided to go out to the bars dressed up (well, everyone except highcontrast, because he's lame. his costume was cute too, he was the hawaiian punch mascot, the little guy with red hair). even at the gay club where half the people walk around naked, we caused a scene.

the birthday boy even got hit on by the performing drag queen at a show we went to later that night. "oooooohhhh, you're a tall glass of water. what's your name honey?" "ted." "what do you do ted?" ted is very very drunk at this point. i'll also mention that he's an event planner. "i'm a carpenter. like jesus. i like to work with wood." ba-dum-ching!

at any rate, it was a hysterical evening and we got plenty of beach time.

tonight is a fashion week party. will report back with celebrity sightings tomorrow!

my chef gossip

grub street broke it today. scratch that, restaurant girl broke it it seems.

so congrats to dear craig who will, undoubtedly, rock that place. god knows it needs a bit of a revamp.

it's about time he's had a kitchen to call his own...

random tidbits, men edition

emily's boyfriend just had a friend move to the city. he's a dead-ringer for julian mcmahon from nip/tuck. and he's single. i have plans to get him naked.

a friend of a friend of ex future husband came to my birthday party and we got along famously. he does policy work and reads and that makes me happy. it also makes me wonder where my standards went...

i went to a concert recently and, as is my way, i obsessed over the trumpet player. and, as is my way, i stalked him online and he went to juliard and borges was the first author listed in his favorites column on his profile. i think i'm in love. seriously, he may literally be my soul mate.

i'm headed to fire island this weekend to hang with the gays. it's ted's birthday and we're having a luau but it's also "fancy dress" i.e. a costume party. i'm planning on getting a grass skirt and wearing a brown bikini top on which i'll stick/tape little black dot trios to somehow convey the coconut look. i have some leis and flowers to stick in my hair. another friend is going as a volcano and another as palm tree. i am not creative and i'm really really lazy and i accept that about myself.

mad what?!

i had to post this, it's hilarious. thanks to lacey for passing it on, her friend mike's brother is a 7th grade teacher in brooklyn. this is a story about his first day back at school.

"So I start off with a lesson on using evidence to draw conclusions,namely evidence of stuff in the classroom that the kids could use to infer things about what kind of person I was. I got a lot of stuff like "you have a kid because I see pictures of a baby by your desk" or"you like to read, because there's lots of books in this room." And then this one kid says:

kid: I think that you play the banjo.
me: really, and what makes you think that?
other kid: because he's Jewish.
kid: no, because you have mad banjo arms.

he did not care to elaborate further."

random tidbits

i got tickets to BQE to see my darling darling sufjan stevens. can't wait!!!

also, remember this bit of gossip? well we're still not sure whether the other chef knows he's being fired yet so i STILL can't say anything. but my friend is to start his new job next week so hopefully i'll be able to fill people in soon. of course, with my luck, it'll be all over the food blogs before i can write about it...

finally saw transformers and loved it. i definitely should have seen it while it was on the big screen but i had a copy from someone who is in the industry. not bootleg but not quite an official release either.

also re: bootlegs, had a terrible bootleg of superbad that i brought out with me for the weekend. every time the people in the theatre laughed, it sounded like a laugh track. i thought i was safe getting a bootleg of a movie that contained no special effects, i was wrong. horribly wrong.

last night i got a text message from a random number as i was headed to bed: "tina do u still want me to bring this 11inch Black Dick over?" i was exhausted and couldn't think of what the best response to that would have been. any suggestions?

and for some quasi-celebrity gossip...a good friend's boyfriend reported a first hand account of going to a party in l.a., where perez hilton had the brilliant idea to photograph the asshole of everyone in attendance. he suggested it under the guise of a game saying, "oh, then we'll have to guess to whom each asshole belongs! it'll be fun!" and then one by one, each person went into the room with him. some people, the rational ones, would have none of it but were told, "oh, it's a joke, nobody is actually doing it, they're just going into the room and sitting there hoping _______ (insert host, birthday boy, whatever guest of honor) falls for the joke and actually does it." that turned out to be a lie as others reported having actually dropped trou for him. friend's boyfriend was totally weirded out by the whole ordeal. he's a very trusted source who'd have no reason to lie about it though it's a bit uncertain whether bf showed the goods himself.

more importantly, who the hell would let a person who makes a living by putting pictures online, who has a website with some 4 million hits a day, take a picture of their nether regions?! sounds like an ego-filled power play by perez to see how high people go when he says jump. and jump they did. sicko...

stuff, labor day edition

first, thanks to all for birthday well wishes! the day was good because even though i was at work all day, i left thursday night to get the fuck out of dodge.

i went to seneca lake where my friend katie's family has a lake house.

and there we did a lot of laying around sunning, drinking, skiing, swimming, drinking, playing cards on the screened in patio overlooking said lake, watching movies, drinking, cooking, playing with the cutest little black pomeranian that belongs to katie's little sister and just enjoying ourselves.

extra props to katie's mom who made lasagna, chocolate chip cookies and brownies for us. extra props to katie's dad who drove our drunk asses home from the bars, who didn't flinch at all the obscene language being tossed around in our drunken state, in stopping at the gas station at 2am on sunday morning so we could try to get more beer. also, props to the gas station attendant who, even though he wasn't allowed to be selling alcohol past midnight, let us sneak some out the back door anyhow.

the girls and the gays definitely, DEFINITELY, made quite a scene in the few towney bars we stopped into (the hickish people had probably never seen a gay in their life and then had four of them in all their splendor).

in all, a great, much needed break.

in other news, it's looking like heath ledger is single again. it's stalking time!