One of the gifts my parents received when I was born (I believe from Aunt Enid) was a blanket that had Peter Rabbit all over it. With a small book of the story of Peter Rabbit. And hence, my childhood obsession with Peter Rabbit began. My blanky and that book were my favorite things (and I still have both).
To my delight, Google (unknowingly) honored my childhood security blanket on their home page in honoring today as Beatrix Potter’s birthday:
Sweet memories.
Rob is always so good at coming up with "classifications" for the latest trends in fashion and social cliques.
His latest brilliance:
Pee Wee Herman-Liberace-Metro
This is the classification for a male who is generally really skinny and dresses in really tight, pencil, jeans (all the way to the ankles), really tight jackets (sometimes too short) and vans/chucks. Their hair is usually very stylized.
On February 16, 2008 I reached my 10-year anniversary with Microsoft. Kind of hard to believe. I actually forgot my anniversary until March 14th when I receive a mail saying that I had been awarded the customary 10 shared of Microsoft stock in honor of my anniversary. Yipppeeee!
Then, last week, I received a box on my chair. I knew this box was coming – I just didnt’ know when (they mystery around the whole thing is awesome). In the box was:
A phallic crystal statue designed by Hybrid 3 and produced by Weinberg Glass (the top point is so sharp I almost cut myself on it).
A cloth for cleaning my statue. Which reminds me of an article the Onion did about rappers that have "people" that clean their gold.
"One young rapper I spoke with told me that he ‘be trading women like Eddie Murphy trading places’ and that he ‘got b****es cleaning my house, cleaning my gold, doing my shoelaces,’" Danziger said. "For a relationship to thrive, there needs to be a sense of shared responsibility and mutual respect. When one partner is cleaning the other’s house and gold, the partner who is doing the cleaning is likely to experience feelings of resentment over the imbalance. Inevitably, this will drive a wedge between the pair."
A banner sticker (that I think I’m supposed to put on the window of my office, but won’t).
A fold out card / banner thing and 2 additional cards personally singed by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
Awesome!
While the celebration of my anniversary was rather anticlimactic I did bring in the customary but-load of M&Ms (1 lb for every year) and bagels. I also sent some mail out to the people I have worked with over the last 10 years – I do feel indebted to all of them for the experiences and positive growth I have accumulated. The response I got from people in email and in marker on my office window was the most meaningful of all.
The questions that still plague me:
I think if I’m here 15 or 20 years I get a blue phallic statue that matches the green one (so they can be…like…friends, I guess). It reminds me of when I used to have …
Recently, I leant MC my Felicity DVDs and I’ve been meaning to ask for them back. And this got me thinking of my obsession with Felicity…and all the ways I’m like Felicity…and why Keri Russell and I should be best friends…well, we should be – right? I mean, I did meet her in the airport when she was pregnant. What else could it mean when I happen to meet the only famous person I know in the airport? J.J. Abrams-style fate would say that we’re destined to be BFFs.
Anyway, if you know me at all, then you know that Felicity is my all-time favorite TV show and that I basically stopped watching television when they took Felicity off the air (though, admittedly, due to my allegiance to the brilliance of J.J. Abrams, I have picked up all 3 seasons of Lost on DVD – and I’m holding on Season 4 – so DON’T TELL ME ANYTHING. LA LA LA – I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!).
I think the reason I love Felicity so much is that the show somehow mirrored my life so much that I identified with it very deeply. For instance:
1. If you morph picture of me and my sister together, it would look a lot like Keri Russell.
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2. My best friend Fiona looks a lot like Amanda Foreman (Felicity’s roommate, turned best friend, Meghan Rotundi) and is much like the character of Meghan Rotundi (though she denies this part).
3. I had a Javier in college.
4. Rob (my husband) is basically Scott Foley and Scott Speedman
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5. My identity crisis in college involved an art major.
There’s a bunch more, but I’ll have to get to them later.
In the meantime, MC – I need my Felicity DVDs back!! What’s up? Are you hooked or what?
OK, granted, this was around superbowl time, but still….this is so cool! She is my idol!
If it wasn’t for the fresh pow I’m going to shred tomorrow morning I’d be fully depressed.
So, my sister and I have this thing with IKEA. We get tricked into going there on occasion for various reasons: need to revamp a room, just moved and need some new things for the new diggs. Whatever the case, we always thing IKEA is a great place to go. And then we get there….and we’re lost in the maze of IKEA – spending way too long in each of the floor model rooms – we’re filling our cart up with random things and we’re not even sure why we’re adding them. We make our way through the entire warehouse with carts full and get to the checkout line. Then there is the pause before getting in line. A pause long enough to have the thought, "what the hell am I doing will all this stuff?" We had this feeling all along while shopping and felt like if we persisted on something good would come of it. But, no. At that point, we usually look at each other and, in synchronous motion, abandon our full carts in line and walk out the door.
We’ve recently coined this event with the term "Banana". That means, if you’re out shopping, particularly at IKEA and you’ve got that feeling (your cart filled with absolutely nothing you really need but somehow tricked into putting in your cart) you just announce "Banana!" to your shopping partner and that is the code for "get the heck out of here and go to a place of serenity not anywhere near here".
The other day my sister called me and asked "Can you call ‘Banana’ on your life?"
Too funny. I wish.
Happy New Year!
This past summer, Rob and I invented a ritual for ourselves that was inspired by our attendance at the Gottman Institute weekend workshop for couples. The ritual was designed to incorporate travel as a core value in our lives and is something we believe we’ll pass down to through our family. The ritual we invented is this:
On New Years Eve we will each enter our top 2 destinations in the world we’d like to visit. The entries will be written on paper and folded up. We will put the entries in some container. On New Years Day we will draw one of the pieces of paper and that selection would determine our trip for that year. The trip will be 2 weeks (minimally) and at the time of year of our choosing. To celebrate our selection we will go to a restaurant of that region. And we will plan activities in preparation for the trip – for example: we might choose to learn the language of the region we’re going to or we might sign up for a class to learn skills we might want to have for activities in that region (i.e. Avalanche training for back-country snow sports).
This was our first year to try out our new ritual. Things didn’t go entirely as planned.
We had torn the house apart painting the entire downstairs (minus a few rooms) and Rob got sick. So we didn’t have a lot of time to create our container and submit our entries on New Years Eve. So, after a day of cramming in as much painting as we could on New Years Day we finally sat down to submit our entries. It turned out that we both really wanted to go to either Tibet (with time in Nepal) or Ecuador (with time on Galapagos Islands) over all other places on our list. So we decided to narrow our entries to those two choices. We put our entries into a hat that Rob bought in Italy and Rob drew Ecuador / Galapagos Islands. In that moment we both realized we really wanted to go to Tibet and agreed that we would disregard the accidental drawing <wink>. So that’s it!
TIBET 2008!
This will likely include time in Nepal as well. We’ll be looking to all of our family and friends on advice for traveling in these areas.
Yay! We’re going to Tibet! This weekend we will look for a Tibetan restaurant to celebrate our choice – though we’ll probably go to multiple throughout the year. Right now Annapurna Cafe and Tibet First are the top contenders.
Clearly we have some things to work out in our new ritual, but it’s a great first start!
