i see one hundred and twenty eight pairs of underpants

though only 24 or so are in this pic.


we had fun. people stared. and laughed. and exchanged. and I liked it. we each ended up with 5 pairs, except for me--I had 8 because someone canceled last minute and I had to cover for her. it annoyed me, but that's okay. I'm not complaining about 8 cute pairs of undies!

time to skeedaddle. dinner theatre. like in three hours. looking forward to it being finished, I tell ya.

and lost? wtf? why? I feel like we got a lot of back story and not a lot of progression BUT I still liked it!

dear february, i love you.

who knew that news of my first gigantic achievement as a photographer (other than my first sales!) would come during my least favorite month of the year?

ladies and gentlemen...I have an announcement. I. Am. Being. Published.

Like, published in a real actual magazine. My real actual photos. Yes, you read that right. PLURAL. Two Page Spread!!! Our State Magazine's April issue. Me. Photography. MY PICTURES. They are paying me to use my pictures in their magazine. Holy friggin cow.

Holy.
friggin.
cow.

I am so happy I could cry. After all this dinner theatre hullabaloo, I intend to celebrate. This is the best news I've had in quite some time. I want to do cartwheels! And heel clicks. And I have a terribly annoying smile on my face. :)

YAAAAAAAAY!

i see london, i see france...

ohmygoodness is it time to leave yet? I'm totally scooting at 545 so I can go home, change clothes, go pick up patty and marla's things and get to the ale house. I feel like in addition to our panty exchange I'm going to a swap meet.

I need to bring:
-my panties and things for the party
-patty's gs cookies
-patty's ski apparel
-marla's dress
-jessica z.'s picture
-marla's picture

and I will be getting:
-my five pairs of underoos
-my casserole dish from patty
-my christmas present from jessica z.
-my "thank you for taking pics o' my bebe" gift from nicole
-my dresses from kara

gracious!

I'm hoping tonight will be a nice little stress reliever. Because I am, apparently, stressed out. It's rather evidents when I have to talk myself out of crying about something that isn't cry-about-able. I learned this last night, when my choir director said "you're going to have to have someone pluck it out, we don't have time." when I raised my hand, and I almost bawled. I had to have a "buck up!" convo with myself. It was n-o-f-u-n.

Thankfully, last night as I wrapped panties and matted photos, I had the privilege of talking to Jeremy "that's my boy" Wood for like an hour and a half. It was strange talking about homophobes and overspenders and kind people and silly banter and underwear and dating all in one convo, that's for sure. But it was a nice break from reality. :)

mmkay, back to the spreadsheet. I am SO looking forward to girl time and silly pictures and watching LOST afterwards with Matt who I haven't seen since Monday!!!

enthusi-usi-usiasm.

I think my interview went well. I didn't leave thinking "I got the job!" but I also didn't leave thinking "man, I sucked at that one." I think it was the cream cheese danish. :)

and I liked it that when they asked me why they should hire me over some one else I said because I have enthusiasm. and I like it that they liked it.

I had a dream last night that Matt and I went to Hawaii to visit Ariel and Chris, but that we stayed there for five hours and didn't see them at all and then had to get back on the plane to go home. And when we got back (wherever it was was a sunny place...) we tried to get tickets to go straight back right then, but they wouldn't sell them to us. And I cried. And then I started rehearsing skits for our dinner theatre to entertain the man at the counter while matt tried to get tickets from the lady next to him.

bizarre.

also, go sign this, pretty please. it's a breast cancer petition to urge congress to stop drive-through mastectomies.

see, this is why I shouldn't clean.

biiiiiiiiig sigh.

in the past short while I have thrown away the check my mother sent me (it was still in the envelope), a good ink cartridge and a very important piece of green plastic that loaded my cartridges into the printer itself.

also, hazel is on my shit list. those last two things are a lot her fault. at some point during my haze-that-was-my-first-week-of-sinus-surgery-recovery, I vaguely recall little hazey mac pushing my printer off the shelf. this is, apparently, when both ink cartridges and the green plastic fell out. I remember finding the cartridge and thinking "weird. this must be OLD. like, way old. huh." as I chucked it, and I'm pretty sure I actually recycled the plastic piece.

I'm hoping the nice people at HP can provide me with a replacement. cross your fingers. thank goodness that check went in the "secure" recycling bin, and my mom said she'll write me a new one.

I think I need a niiiiiiiiiice, loooooooooooooong break. bah, humbug.

i'm feeling very not interesting today.

so I shall make a list.

a) I have an interview. tomorrow. noon. for a job at my current company in the dept I've been helping. anyone know what I'll be having for breakfast?

b) I seriously cannot wait for march 2nd. it'll signal that feb is totally over (though so far so good, I must say), that dinner theatre is finito with and that my life won't be nearly so cluttered. still working on that giving up overscheduling for lent thing. right now it's sorta out of my hands.

c) I am having trouble falling asleep at night. boohissssss!

d) I am reallyreally excited about purchasing a fancy-schmance thesaurus if I do get the job. It will be necessary.

e) today I got an email that made me happy. the dude who I work for in the other group basically backed me up and said "let's check a few short ones and if those look good, we're good." I like it that he assumes THE BEST instead of THE WORST.

f) I never thought I'd revisit it, but I'm having to look at my thermo paper again since they need a writing sample. High five to Kim and Matt R for chizzy-checking it out. They had some awesome input--it's hard transforming a paper from "good enough for a class" to "good enough to submit for an interview." I didn't realize that I used "the" a lot. that was totally helpful! which brings me to g.

g) I don't like the oxford comma. I just don't. I felt this way in high school. A whole lot of the time (though not always) that comma before the and is totally unnecessary. I feel like it wastes ink. And paper space. Even just a little. And makes things look cluttered. Now, if it makes your sentence more clear, by all means! but yeah. whatev. they're both acceptable, and for the number of arguments mmh and I had over commas, I think I've got to stick to my guns. ha!

so, time to...
-collect the gas sample
-grab some fast food
-head to church for practice (and while I sit and wait, re-revise my paper, try to get the good olfactory boys to have enough energy and get the kids to be quiet)
-go to the grocery to buy my breakfast for tomorrow
-go home. edit paper. burn our state cd. etc. yikes.

okay, toodles loves. gotta get a move on.

thirty drafts of beer on the wall...

my weekend was, indeed, a whirlwind. a fun whirlwind, to be sure, but now I'm exhausted and all i really want to do it go to sleep. which I will. shortly.

this is matt from saturday night, approx 29 beers in. that other guy is chase, the only other guy who finished "the wall." that's a total of 30 different beers. he was NOT in good shape when we got home and he's definitely decided that that's something he'll never even THINK about again, but, well...yowza. I mean, it's cool that his name will forever be written on the wall of Bub's (I mean, once he gets to sign it, which will be in a few weeks, when he's NOT hammered). But, um, yeah.

and yesterday I spent the day sleeping when I wasn't at youth. and then cleaned in the evening. just a little. but enough that I took even more stuff to goodwill today than I thought I was gonna. :) yay, me.

and and and...today I got to see Little Miss Wonderful herself, my dear friend Tonya!!! I have been looking forward to this for a whole week! We had extra yummy sushi at extra yummy akashi, all with extra fantastic company! Matt and Tonya and I enjoyed dinner, AND she got to meet my kitties. Oh, Hazel and Gobi.

speaking of which, this morning they did the cutest thing yet. so, I slept pretty poorly last night, and once I finally got to sleep I was sleeping pretty hard. and hazel and gobi came upstairs at some point, and somehow managed to BOTH be sleeping on my back. at the same time. while cuddling together. and each sticking out one paw like gobi likes to.

it. was. precious. and it kind of made my day. :)

all work and no play make carrie a dull girl.

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time working this week. At work. At home. At my other office. It hasn't been miserable--it's actually been a nice change of pace getting to do anything having to do with writing--but I'm a little worse for wear.

Between the KD newsletter and the working at home I only got six hours of sleep on wednesday night, and I feel like the energizer bunny--I keep going and going and going.

I have also been playing the fun game of writing emails I don't intend to send and sending them to my friend instead. I'm really glad someone taught me to do this. But it might escalate to the point that I have to actually *send* the email. this is out. of. hand.

And LOST last night was GOOD! When I finally left work at 830 Matt and I went straight to dinner and then came home and watched it. I am SO sad there are only eight eps this season. And these flash forwards are killing me! I want to know, I want to know!

whirlwind weekend ahead, ready?

tonight 6-11 youth practice for dinner theatre

tomorrow 12-1230 or so, stop by cookie booth if possible.
100ish-pick up lunch for jamie and me.
130ish-eat lunch with jamie. champagne and when harry met sally.
415-head to greensboro with kara for mary alise's shower.
600-attend shower. leave around, oh, 830?
830-return to raleigh
1000ish. get home. try to go collect the boys from their drinking extravaganza.

sunday
11-church
12-youth
after around 1pm I'm FREEEEEE! to, um, clean and select photos to submit for our state since friday is a deadline.

gee friggin whiz. can I go back to last weekend and the dc fun, please?

hey, you know those kids who weren't allowed to eat sugary cereals at home?

well, imagonna have kids like that, I'm afraid. kinda sorta.

when I was growing up, as all of my friends were dressed in the their Laura Ashley and their whatever-the-hell-it-is connection and other designer-for-children duds, my mother let me wear whatever I wanted as long as all the necessary parts were covered. and let me tell you, I had some ROCKIN' outfits.

bright orange high-top converse.
pink jelly shoes.
wearing two shirts rolling up the sleeves so you could see the others--with matching double pairs of socks.
shirts with sequins, glitter, plastic appliqués or all three.
flower-print denim shorts.

it was AMAZING. let me tell you. some day I'll share pictures to prove it.

but anyway, so. my kids are probably going to get to eat sugary cereals and sometimes have soda or from-concentrate juice. they'll be okay, really. BUT. when they go to someone else's house, they're going to say "where's the recycling bin? what, you don't have reusable bags? where do you put your composting stuff? where's your solar backup generator? what, you don't have [insert new eco-technology here]."

yeah. those'll be my kids. yikes. jackie already told me quite some time ago that my kids aren't allowed to play with her kids 'cause mine'll be too smart. apparently mine will be too eco-minded, as well. can you imagine? ha!

ps, there was a lunar eclipse tonight and my neighbor john made sure I saw it--how cool!

"wait, why did we do that again?"

~yours truly, in the elevator, with the headache. (kind of like clue, but not.)

yeesh. okay, so this is mostly gonna be a picture post. I mean, I was only there for, what, 42 hours or less? yeah. but we did SO much.

friday night:

got there. after we got all my crap in the room (I'm an overpacker who packed in a hurry AND couldn't tell if it was gonna be balmy or freezing--whatev.) jackie was like "everyone says hi." everyone, who? "oh, everyone. kat. brooke. everyone else. they all had something specific but what they all meant was 'hi, hi! have fun! y'all will have fun!'" it made me smile.

so to all of you, hi back. :)

after a quick shower and change of dress it was off to matchbox with matt r and shannon. it's a swank little restaurant with three floors, but it's still pretty tiny. I felt like the people next to us were listening to our whole convo! I also ran into my friend's ex--that I'd met once. In DC? Huh? Yeah, he had no idea who I was. Oh well. note: the pizza sauce at matchbox is SPICY!

next we went to proof where a guy jax had met was drinking. he was entertaining and jax and I hoped we'd get free drinks out of it, honestly. :) but he DID NOT know what to think of me. he was not prepared for a chemical engineering environmentalist to tell him what's what when he tried to sound all snooty about going to paris to learn about nuclear power. he thought I knew nothing. boy was he wrong!

and I met a guy, andrew, who said "c-a-r-e-y?" and I said "no, c-a-r-r-i-e, the other is a boy's name." and he said, jokingly I hope, "either way I'd f*ck them." yikes. he was dee-runk and apparently, according to matt r, would've liked to take me home. whoa.

we were also told by MULTIPLE people (at least three) that there was "no way" we'd fit in everything we had planned for our saturday. they meant well. ps, they were wrong.

e left at last call, and this is when we a)took the donald w. reynolds pic and b)when jax lost her phone. she didn't realize until we were already in the subway, and thank gawd we found it. but I had to CHASE after her. in heels. it was awful. I actually screamed "jaaaaaaaaackie, waaaaaaaait!" she didn't. I caught up. and I complained a lot about my feet the next day. :)

um and then we *ahem* went the wrong way on the metro. oopsie. and waited forever at judiciary square. and got home at 330 and crashed. "an early night" I'd suggested. so much for that.

saturday:

checked out of our hotel and then almost killed each other. well, sort of.

we checked our bags at hotel helix and went in search of a parking deck that didn't cost $30 like the valet parking. we made circles and circles and circles. and nothing. and 20-minutes-that-felt-like-an-eternity later, we went back to the hotel helix and some jackass was blocking the drive. ugh.

we finally valeted it, had our respective fixes at caribou coffee across the street (pepsi and orange juice) and started our adventure.

we saw: the supreme court. the capitol. a bunch of eighth graders. a cat on the supreme court steps. a photographer who took our picture as we walked. the metros. a nice lady in the metro booth who told us that despite insistence otherwise, yes we could get to georgetown. georgetown. zara (where I bought the cute argyle sweater). sushiko. an icky cemetery near sushiko. the river. the inside of multiple buses. a cvs where I bought new eyeshadow. the metro again.

and then, the inside of our hotel room! damn, we had too much fun. and I actually had to say "um, jackie? where's the bed?" it was hidden behind the curtain. yikes!

saturday we went out to dinner at lauriol plaza, which was decent but soooooooo not tex mex. and deffo not better. believe you me, if you think that's tex mex, you need to come on a little vacay to t-town. I'll show you. jackie and I had MANY entertaining convos here, most of which were SO not PG.

next we met up with adriana (one of ariel's friends who I know from her bachelorette and wedding) and her friend javier at brassiere beck. though jackie and I made insta-friends (aka drunk dudes who were hitting on us) the place was dead and we left. josephines looked unreasonably packed so we went to lima, which was, not surprisingly, also unreasonably packed. like, at one point I had people pressed up on all sides of me and was at the mercy of the crowd as I clutched my coat, wristlet and orange stoli with sprite.

we had a good time with adriana and javier, but the bar was WAY too crowded for us. plus, it was past midnight when we got there, so jax and I were tie-tie. we graciously exited a skosh after 2 and went back to the helix for our hallway dance party and picture taking extravaganza. some of those photos had to be deleted incase either of us ever wanted to run for office. kidding, but seriously? our cameras should automatically shut off after 2am. yeesh.

and sunday we left. ate breakfast, took jax to the airport, drove through alexandria by mistake but found 395 anyway, went to Ikea and came home. I also learned that there is no bojangles between dc and raleigh, at least not according to the highway signs.

and now I am *still* tired. and *still* catching up on my life and obligations and the newsletter and evites and the panty party and work and aaah! I have to say, feb is doing okay in my book, but I'm looking forward to my less-cluttered calendar in march...

we now interrupt your regularly scheduled programming.

um, you expected a post about dc, no? well, we're going to have to wait kids. I ain't got the time. or the grammatical mumbo-jumbo. etc.

what I will share with you is:

the view from my car while I drove to the other office

~and~

my shelf in my living room. see: magazine holders. yay for ikea! (but boo that they didn't have the green ones--but then again these were cheaper and look cute...so I'm good) I bought some white ones too, but they aren't nearly as pretty. I'm trying to decide if I want to cover them with contact paper or fabric. I bought a bunch so I could do a set of each. (I also have A LOT of magazines that I'd like to have as references, at least for now.) opinions? fabric v. contact paper (clearly, a pattern on each.)

dc later. or tomorrow. must work now.

we are tourists clapclap-clapclapclap

if you don't know what this is you are CLEARLY not a TU fan. or a friend of jackie. chips and salsa, anyone?

so, you know how in 80s movies (and probably many before and after) most japanese characters were stereotyped as crazy photographers? um, I'm pretty sure that they would've portrayed twenty-something females as the obsessive ones instead if they'd known jackie and me. for reals.

I will tell you all about the time in exhaustive detail later. for now, I will tell you that I am very tired, that I had SO MUCH FUN and that I took almost 200 pictures despite being battery-less until 1pm on saturday. this is not including the pics I took with jax's camera. yeesh!

okay, so bedtime. and maybe some unpacking. so here are some pictures to tide you over.

please note: cute new argyle sweater, late night semi-drunken jumping on the bed, the kitty on the steps of the supreme court, the capitol building between our heads and the silliest picture I have :)

also a prize to the first non-jackie person who tells me why I took this photo in georgetown. :)

ps: you need to read this. it's a forward melissa got about our president. and it is SCARY.