Dropped off the deposit on our next apartment this morning. We have > thirty days to pack everything up and move ...two blocks away. This is an upgrade though. I snuck in and took some pics of the empty space:


Building facade


Facade Close-Up

( New on the Inside )

 THE MAIN EVENT --

Flynn/Parker Lumberjack Thundercage: Wangri-BRAWL

We all know the rules, the time for hype is over. Grudge match. The younger Parker is a 3 to 5 favorite.

Judges: John, Jason, Tim

THE UNDERCARD --

Pentathalon: Five Times The FURY

Tripodi vs. Millard

Events --

3 cup Flip Cup
Diamond Beirut (four cip beirut arranged in the diamond formation)
Speed Funnel (fastest to finish wins)
Thumb Wrestling
Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? (Ten questions taken directly from fifth grade text books in this test of mental dexterity)

To keep things fair there are no feats of strength (as Paul is small and weak) and no tests of speed (as Millard is slow-footed and lumbering).

John is a 2 to 3 favorite.

OVER UNDERS --

Number of times Thomas vomits: 2.5
Number of times anyone vomits: 4.5

Also:

Funnels are constructed and Funnel Yard Dash is open to all.

We need a ring card girl.

Bring more Jello.

LET'S GET IT ON.

Exactly two weeks until I turn 24 years old.

Anthony's been asking me what I want for my birthday, and I finally came up with something that's not too expensive that I actually want.

This thing is the coolest thing ever. Since Polaroid is phasing out their traditional camera, the company has started putting out some pretty nifty new technology. This is a photo printer about the size of your hand, which connects to your digital camera and prints out photos instantly.




I can shove it in my purse and whenever I get a "I want a copy of that one!"... I can just make it. Ammendment: Except, paper is $9.99 a pack, so I can just make it for the cost of a dollar or two.

The only drawback is that the photos are always 2x3". I figure that's cool, since I can just put them into scrapbooks and they take up less room. I don't plan on it being my main photo-printing source, but I do love a great gadget.

Check out the 2girls1cup reaction videos on youtube. This one is hilarious:

I am sooooooooooooo tired I can barely stand. And im dirty. So shower while reading and sleep? Yes ? Yes. Thanks

Think I may go see Mama Mia tomorrow. Is it weird that I would totally see Wanted instead if I could find someone to go with me?

it may be worth installing itunes to get Dr. Horrible...

Apt 209 will be going LIVE in about 1/2 hr. Show starts at Midnight EST. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/apt-209

I hate this and my neck still hurts.

you all need the weepies' new album.
my favorites so far are "little bird" and "how you survived the war." ♥♥

ps. i don't know why, but i love rihanna's "disturbia" way too much and i don't care who knows it.

Things I meant to write about but time twittered away

• 07:33 I think writing a tell-all book about your family - even if they are awful people - is at the very best scummy. I would say immoral too #
• 07:34 I turned off the All-Star game in the 11th. Hate being a grown-up sometimes. :-( #
• 07:36 @tiffy643 I like watching A-Rod play. I like Jeter. #
• 12:11 @chrisbrogan you can download iMovie 06 for free if you have 08 #

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And I am dying to make an A.

I am tired and am going to go home. Fix a website, read, and watch bad tv. Oh and sleep. MMM sleep.

I so have to put on my big girl panties today. I really don't want to but I have like NO choice.

 All day Monday my back hurt and I thought it was from doing some different things at the gym. After taking some advil though I was able to isolate the pain and thought, "Shit, this feels like a kidney stone." Surely the pain got worse and worse- so bad that I was throwing up constantly. Needless to say I wound up in the ER in the middle of the night, dehydrated and miserable. I spent most of today in a daze, until the drugs started wearing off, then I spent the rest of my day throwing up. I thought I was going to have to go back to the hospital but luckily I haven't thrown up in about 5 hours, and the pain is subsiding. 

Oh and I got referred to a urologist- Dr. Fallick. Apparently I made fun of his name when they told it to me at the hospital.

Everyone that has a youtube account should go ahead and subscribe...if people start enjoying these I'll keep making them.

Things I meant to write about but time twittered away

• 11:34 Monthly staff meetings are fun. I'm on a great team. #

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Wine tasting Monday coming straight off my flight from Japan. Friday had a very nice dinner with the firm at Park Ave. Saturday was the picnic where we tired ourselves out playing touch football and got tan and tangled in seaweed at Laguna Beach after. Had dinner at Toreo's, which was yummy. Sunday we majorly slept in and had dinner with his family at Sin Bala.

Last night was the Coldplay concert. GREAT concert. There were lasers, lights, globes with projected images, ramps and a lit stage in the audience, and an awesome live performance. And to top all that off, THEY CAME UP TO OUR SECTION. Yup, we were up in the boonies, and it's the type of thing fans dream about but know won't happen. After one of the songs, Chris Martin goes, "Well, I'm getting tired of just sitting up here." So they get up and come off the stage, and to my increasing shock, walk farther and farther away from the stage and come up a whole bunch of stairs right up to the beginning of our section, under 10 rows away. I could see Chris Martin's long head of curls, and I was kicking myself for not having my camera with me, b/c I could have had a really good picture. I still can't believe that they had the balls to come up into the crowd, and that we had just happened to be sitting in the right section. Amazing. So that was my Coldplay experience.

Today my neck is completely killing me, and for once I have no plans to be productive. I'm spending today flat on my back with occasional trips out of bed (like right now). Ryan is on his plane to D.C., which only makes things worse. I trust him, but I can't help feeling completely jealous and morose while he's out there having lots of fun dinners and drinking events without me. I know I should be mature about it, but the truth is just that I hate it. HATE it. I put off looking at his itinerary until today, and while he has said that their schedule seemed pretty full with work, I think he basically mistook all the social events for work. They hardly have a few hours scheduled for work, and there's actually a day where the schedule goes: breakfast, 2 hours of work, lunch, party, beer tasting. And that's the whole day. That definitely makes me sulk. On a related note, I think I'm starting to hate the Angels, which is unfortunate since Ryan and I are going to a game in August. It's not like he hasn't already gone with everyone else he knows, so I think it's lost some of that specialness for me. Anyway, I'm due for another Motrin. This pain better be gone tomorrow.

Three big things happened on Iraq this week. They could mean the beginning of the end of the war.

But since the media have mostly ignored them, I wanted to make sure you saw what's going on.

Here's the scoop:

Iraqis want U.S. Troops out. No one was expecting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to speak up in favor of withdrawal—after all, he's close with the Bush administration. But with elections in Iraq coming up, and a great majority of Iraqis opposed to a prolonged U.S. occupation, Maliki can't afford to toe the Bush line. So he's surprised everyone by standing up this week for a timetable for troop withdrawals and a date certain to end the war. The LA Times headline reads, "Iraqi prime minister advocates withdrawal timeline."1

As a result, the "endless war agreement" Bush has been pushing fell through. Since January, hundreds of thousands of us pushed Congress to stand up to President Bush's proposed treaty with Iraq, which would have tied the next President's hands and made it much harder to get out. This week, the Washington Post reported that that agreement has fallen through—Iraqi leaders are putting their feet down and demanding a much shorter agreement.2

And now even the Pentagon is considering faster timelines. According to reporter Michael Hirsh at Newsweek, "a forthcoming Pentagon-sponsored report" will recommend a big drawdown of troops—suggesting "that U.S. forces be reduced to as few as 50,000 by the spring of 2009, down from about 150,000 now."3

In other words, it's now clear: Most Americans are for a timeline, and so are most Iraqis. And even experts in the Pentagon agree.

For his part, Barack Obama is using these developments to hammer home the point that John McCain and President Bush are now isolated in their resistance to any kind of timeline for withdrawal. He wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times yesterday that reaffirmed his commitment to a timeline that would have all combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months.


It concludes, "Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea. . . [F]or far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender. It's not going to work this time. It's time to end this war."4

It's important that we all work to get the word out about these developments. You can even start by just forwarding this email. Most Americans still don't know that the Iraqis want us out. And that may be the single most important fact to share at this point in time.

I'm always shocked when someone points out that it's been six years since we first started working together to prevent an Iraq war. This week, we're turning a corner in that fight. Bush's permanent war agreement has fallen through. The Iraqi politicians are speaking up. And if we keep working together, we just might see the remaining holdouts in Washington coming around as well.

Thanks for all you do,

–Eli Pariser

PS. Minutes ago, Barack Obama finished making a major speech on Iraq and foreign policy. Here's how he described the Bush-McCain approach:


George Bush and John McCain don't have a strategy for success in Iraq—they have a strategy for staying in Iraq. They said we couldn't leave when violence was up, they say we can't leave when violence is down. They refuse to press the Iraqis to make tough choices, and they label any timetable to redeploy our troops "surrender," even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government—not to a terrorist enemy. Theirs is an endless focus on tactics inside Iraq, with no consideration of our strategy to face threats beyond Iraq's borders.


You can read the speech here:
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3939&id=13247-8695423-kVZbWex&t=1


Sources:

1. "Iraqi prime minister advocates withdrawal timetable," Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2008.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3940&id=13247-8695423-kVZbWex&t=2

2. "U.S., Iraq Scale Down Negotiations Over Forces," Washington Post, July 13, 2008.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3941&id=13247-8695423-kVZbWex&t=3

3. "Who Says Less Troops?," Newsweek, July 21, 2008.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/145848

4. "My Plan for Iraq," Barack Obama, New York Times, July 14, 2008.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3942&id=13247-8695423-kVZbWex&t=4

Things I meant to write about but time twittered away

• 07:05 Location Services are MUCH more accurate with iPhone2 even on my old iPhone. Triangulation is down to within about 4 houses - was 10+ blocks #
• 07:08 @jonathanbruder yeah....but i bought the durn thing anyway. 2 clients, one to do list is too appealling #
• 07:09 @davidgwallace Servant Leadership is a wonderful thing. Forcing people to do things "in their best interest" is liberal claptrap. #
• 07:11 @ScottElias may it all go smoothly and quickly #
• 07:48 my handwriting is getting smaller and messier. #

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I'll be posting all the updates here, but if you're on youtube, subscribe to me!
www.youtube.com/user/NinjaPoetry

Liliana is such a trooper...and for that matter, so is her big sister Julia.

We are home from the hospital.  Her levels are down.  I'll post more later about the ordeal.  I am tired.  I just wanted to thank everyone for their positive energy.  We couldn't have done it without you.

 

“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.”

-- tom robbins, still life with woodpecker.

So, is groovr broken for everybody, or just me?

This is really a visual story, but I have to try and re-tell it because I laughed my ass off when Anthony told me.

So Anthony is outside of his job, smoking a cigarette. The guy from the nail salon next door says that he has a package that somebody needs to come get from him, but the person cannot come until later. The salon is about to close, but Anthony's shop stays over for a couple of hours after they do. The guy asks Anthony to keep the package with him. They proceed to talk for a few more minutes, and Anthony walks away.

Oops! Anthony forgot the package. Crap. He walks in front of the shop and sees the guy through the window. He gestures in front of himself, mouthing: The box. Do you have the box?

I guess the guy couldn't hear him, because he kept reiterating the motion and saying: The box!

The movement he's making looks like this, except obviously closer to his chest.




Then he pokes his head inside and asks again. The salon guy says he'll get it later, and Anthony nods and walks back towards his job.



( The omfg funny part )

I tend to do very, very bizarre things when nobody else is around. Fuck, I do bizarre things when people are around... but it only gets stranger when I think I'm not being watched.

The problem with having a comfort level with your partner is that they will eventually bear witness to such events. I'm used to strange looks, for the most part.

My boyfriend is awesome #1:

The other day I sat in front of my computer and started telling a story about how my dog (Lady) was a chef, and she prepares a most delicious eggroll, but that is the only thing she knows how to cook. I described her tiny little chefs hat and everything. Anthony just sat there looking at me, smiling, and didn't say anything.

A couple days later he looked directly at Lady and asked her to make him an eggroll.


My boyfriend is awesome #2:

I have pretty terrible allergies. Sometimes I know what triggers things, sometimes I don't. The other day I had a sudden allergic reaction to something. My eyes were swollen, and my nose wouldn't stop running.

I shoved two small pieces of issue into my nostrils and lay on the couch, miserable. I tried covering my swollen face.

Soon Anthony walked up to me, handing me an ice pack. I noticed that he had shoved tissue in his nostrils, so I wouldn't feel ridiculous. He then lay on the couch with me.