Tales from La La Land

I barely even knew it was spring break.

I only realized it when I got up to go to work on Monday and Laef – almost sporting a full beard to go with his mustache – didn’t budge or make any attempt to think about waking up for work.

Me: “Are you getting up? We are leaving in 30 minutes. Can’t be late.”
Laef: “I’m off today.”
Me: “What the fuck?”
Laef: “It’s spring break.”
Me: “What the fuck?”

Apparently, when UCLA students depart for spring break, that includes all of the track athletes that Laef tends to on a daily basis. So he has to work like two days this week.

Whilst he was at home binging on WoW and Cheez-Its, there was a knock on the door. It was the UPS man. He was standing behind five boxes from Macy’s. Big boxes. Immediately Laef rang me up.

Laef: “WHAT DID YOU BUY????”
Me: “Nothing.”
Laef: …
Me: “Well, I bought a pair of running shoes! But, they were on sale and …”
Laef: “Well, these aren’t running shoes. These are boxes from Macy’s.”
Me: “Ohhh…the must be wedding gifts.”

This shit NEVER happens to me. One of my greatest joys in life is getting mail. I like letters in my mail box. I like knocks on the door with surprise presents. I don’t think I’ve ever been at home and had a UPS man drop off one box, let alone five.

Laef decided to wait until I got home from work so we could both open them. As I ooohed and ahhhed at our new towels, dishes, and sheets, he barely looked up from his game. I realized that wedding registries don’t really suit guys. Laef definitely knows that we need new sheets, but he doesn’t exactly explode with glee over receiving them as a gift.

My excitement reached a peak a few weeks ago when we received a food processor. I pulled it out of the box and showed Laef. It was our very first wedding gift and it was definitely something that would be used right away.

His response: “We already have a blender.”

The Sanch is with me on the whole presents thing as empty boxes make his world go ’round.

If Macy’s carried any of the following, they’d be on our list to make the Bossman smile.

1. Girls Gone Wild, Vol. 1-37
2. Girls Gone Wild, Special Spring Break Edition
3. The Man’s Guide To Conquering WoW
4. Bud Lite
5. Instant Blueberry Pancake Mix
6. Economy Sized Box of Cheez-Its
7. Wild Things, Unedited
8. Porsche 911
9. Monster
10. Round trip tickets to Vegas

Another week bites the dust.

Why do I feel like as I’ve gotten older the weeks seem to fly away in furious fashion? I swear to gosh I was just enjoying my winter break. I have no idea what happened to January and February.

I may or may not have mentioned that we’re in the midst of March Madness. I think I twittered (or is it tweeted?) 97 updates about the tourney. I finished yesterday picking 15 of the 16 games correct. I am happy, but the first round doesn’t really mean shit. And, the last time I bragged about my standings in a sports-related league, my team quickly shit the bed.

Which means I am fully prepared to go 2-for-14 today.

A few people (Kel) have mentioned that they have no interest in the tourney or college basketball. I agree to an extent. I watched exactly one college basketball game this year and it was complete poop. Granted, it was the Ducks (worst Pac-10 team this year) vs. Washington (best Pac-10 team this year) so there wasn’t anything exciting to see.

I am not a basketball fan. Hate the NBA. Don’t love college hoops the way I love college football.

But, it’s the tourney people!

Even the President has a bracket.

You can know jack shit about all 64 teams and STILL care about Western Kentucky, VCU and Butler. Last night, I watched as UCLA nearly lost to VCU. I was sweating that shit out big time. I picked UCLA because 1)I work here and 2)I really didn’t think they’d lose in the first round. But a lot of the experts picked VCU.

The Bruins clung on to a one-point victory in a game that came down to the last second. As I was celebrating and dancing around, the Western Kentucky vs. Illinois game came on. I hadn’t been too concerned with this game because WKU led by as many as 14 at one point. But, suddenly in the last few seconds of the game, Illinois had a chance to win it. Again. Sweating. It. Out. WKU hung on to win it.

These games that come down to the wire are what it’s all about.

Especially when there’s money on the line.

Well, it’s my favorite time of year.

March Madness.

Bring on the crazy.

Um. Last year I had Pitt vs. Clemson in the final. So, I was basically pissed off and out of any sort of money very early. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking.

This year, I am playing it a lot more conservative. There are no 12 seeds in my final this year. The problem with having all No. 1 seeds in the final four is that a lot of people take that approach, so winning money is equally as hard.

I picked a few upsets along the way, but don’t have any of them advancing very far.

Somehow I ended up with Louisville vs. Carolina in the final. It’s risky. Last year was the first time that all four No. 1 seeds actually reached the Final Four. History shows that one (or more) of them will stumble along the way, but I’m not smart enough to determine which one it will be or against who.

So this shit will be consuming me for the next few weeks. And, I am sorry to tell my nephew Brady that I will be watching games during his 1st birthday party this weekend. Sorry, bud. But you might as well get used to being neglected for sports because I’m pretty sure your daddy is a fiend for Sportscenter.

Speaking of neglect. I have been seriously neglecting this blog, my Twitter account and my IM.

But I totally thought of all my internet peeps yesterday when I was behind the following mini-van:

I really wanted to call ya’ll up and talk about this. Then I thought, damn, this might be Lamb is six years. I could totally see her birthing 8 babies at home. And putting them all in matching cloth diapers.

My question regarding the smorgasbord of stickers on this van. Actually, scratch that. I had several questions. But there was one that was burning eternal until I got home.

Did she birth the family bunny at home as well?

I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I am not good at shopping for clothes. Part of it has to do with the fact that I never have extra money to shop with. And, at some point in the last five years, I have learned that putting shit on your credit card does not equate to having money for shopping.

I got a pretty good tax return this year and The Bossman said that I could keep half of it to do whatever I want with. Part of me was thinking of blowing the whole thing on a shopping spree to revamp my tired-ass closet. But, I haven’t taken the plunge just yet. I would also like to use some of the money to take a few trips to see people I can never afford to see.

There are a few events coming up in the near future – Bridal Shower and Bachelorette Party – that I was thinking of getting some new outfits to rock. So the other day, I ventured out for a little shopping spree.

It was depressing. I can’t believe how expensive everything is. T-shirts for $86. Jeans for $225. Shoes for $110. I have a pretty simple style so I wasn’t picking out anything exciting. I was obviously looking in the wrong place. I am terrible at sale shopping because I don’t have the patience to sift through the sale racks. They are usually a giant cluster.

At one point, I picked up a light blue button up sweater and carried it around for a while. Eventually, a tiny little sales girl came to talk to me. She was wearing a plaid mini skirt, black stockings and some rocking shirt. Per usual, I was wearing yoga pants, a sports bra and an icky t-shirt. I looked at her, looked at the sweater I was holding, and thought, “What the fuck am I doing? Why do I insist on buying clothes that are a)nowhere near hot and sexy and b)made for a 74-year old?”

She took the sweater from me and I said, “It looks grandma-ish, huh?” You would think that she’d want to close the sale and say, no, but even she couldn’t refrain…”Yes, it’s definitely made for someone older.”

What the hell is my problem? I have always chosen comfort over hotness. When need be, I can totally wear a dress and heels, but in my day-to-day life, I have definitely let myself go. So, I promptly went up the escalator to the Brass Plum section, which is made especially for PYTs.

I bought a pair of white skinny jeans, some skin-tight black leggings with zippers on the bottom and blue nail polish. And, I feel all, fuck yeah! today. There are no grandmas wearing skinny jeans. A mini-ode to Fashion Friday:

The fact that we lost an hour yesterday made waking up on this particular Monday even worse.

When I woke up on Sunday, I reached over for my phone to see if I had somehow managed to sleep past 8 a.m. (Try as I may, I can not sleep in on the weekends). It used to annoy me that I would be awake so early on a Saturday or a Sunday because ALL week I think about how awesome it is going to be come weekend time.

“I’m going to sleep until NOON!”, I tell myself.

But, I have grown fond of my early-rise hours because it gives me that much more time. Free time for myself. No work. No traffic. No obligations. Last week, I spent a total of about two hours per day awake and not at work. So, waking up early on the weekends just makes my free days longer.

I was disgusted to see that it was 9:30 a.m. when I woke up yesterday! WTF? I have not slept past 9:30 a.m. since Annett came to town and we had about 74 shots of shit.

By the time I got up, went for my run, picked up some groceries, and made breakfast, it was 1 p.m. Normally all of these logistical things are done by 10:30 a.m.

Alas.

We did our usual Sunday stuff and enjoyed the last half our day very much. I watched the season-finale of The L Word to cap off my night. One less show to watch, which I guess is a good thing. Until they spark up a spinoff.

So, this morning, the alarm came about one hour too soon and I’ve got a serious case of the Monday’s multiplied by whoever decided daylight savings time is still a good idea.

I feel so … accomplished.

The workshop that our office put on this week is coming to a close. It was all week and had about 100 attendees. It is by far the biggest event I have ever put together. Even my wedding will be less complicated.

My French coworker and I really pulled this off and it feels kinda good. The same way the half-marathon felt good. I had to be at work by 7 a.m. everyday and often didn’t leave until close to 8 p.m. I thought for sure that I’d wake up one morning and not have the energy. But I kept pushing through and took a lot of pride in each day.

It sort of reminded me of five days in a row of a football game at Autzen.

Except this was my press box:

And my gameday view was this:

Which is not quite as exciting as this:

But, dude. We had fun. I don’t know how or why, but there were a lot of laughs, and I’m going to miss this meeting room come Monday. There were some highs (an insane amount of scones, cookies, coffee, desserts, salmon lunches) and lows (13 hour days), but it was a success!

There was one minor hitch during the week. On Wednesday, we had the most number of people register. The registration fee was $165 per person, and there were at least 60 people register with cash that day. I’m too lazy to do the math, but I’m pretty sure it equals way more fucking cash money than I normally see with my own two eyes.

Anywasted, after packing everything up that night and finally getting the fuck out of there, me and Frenchie started walking back to our office. Halfway there, we realized that we left the cash in the meeting room with the night staff that had arrived to clean up the room.

We retrieved it. It was all good. And it was at that point that I quit patting myself on the back for doing such a kick-ass job and realized that I am, and always will be, a GIANT CLUSTER.

And here we are at Friday. I proclaimed to Laef this morning that we WILL be going out to dinner tonight to celebrate surviving this week. I have stumbled across a new restaurant that I absofuckinglutely adore and have been dying to take Laef there.

I was super giddy all morning envisioning the seafood enchiladas at La Sirena because they look like this and are fucking delicious.

So, anyway, I kept thinking of how I can’t wait and how excited I am that Laef will actually be there with me. (He is almost always on travel during this time). Finally, I won’t be that girl dining alone on a Friday night.

And then I remembered that fucking mustache. Super fucking awesome.

TGIF!

I don’t have any words. Laef and his coworkers are sporting ‘staches in March. Which is cool until it’s Sunday and you’re at the beach and nowhere near your coworkers.