digressive rambles

This is how I feel right now. Weekend’s just move too darn...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:58:47 -0500

This is how I feel right now. Weekend’s just move too darn fast.

7 Charged as F.B.I. Closes a Top File-Sharing Site

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:37:38 -0500

7 Charged as F.B.I. Closes a Top File-Sharing Site:

Federal authorities said Megaupload was a global enterprise based on Internet piracy, and four people named in an indictment were denied bail in New Zealand on Friday.

This is nerd warfare and I LOVE IT. “Mr. Dotcom… retreated into a safe room, and the police had to cut their way in.”

The concept of a fat, Finnish-German piracy king who legitimately changed his last name to DOTCOM sitting on piles of money and scrambling into his safe room just to have police use a chainsaw to cut a circle into the wall and extract him from his secret lair absolutely kills me.

I literally laughed out loud.

I love advertising humor, Ryan Gosling, and Monday afternoons....

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:02:19 -0500

I love advertising humor, Ryan Gosling, and Monday afternoons. Thanks, Meg.

Something Terrible Has Happened.

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:19:20 -0500

I got information-greedy and started rapid-fire googling the girls on The Bachelorette and accidentally spoiled the entire season for myself.

Curiosity killed the cat. The cat was my Monday night for the next seven weeks.

The office bar is almost finished being built… Bet you...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:53:47 -0500

The office bar is almost finished being built… Bet you wish you worked where I do.

Update: another winless trivia Tuesday has passed. 51 weeks left to achieve that goal.

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:54:44 -0500

Update: another winless trivia Tuesday has passed. 51 weeks left to achieve that goal.

Resolutions

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:12:00 -0500

Each year I like to make new year’s resolutions, tell all my friends and family about them and build up a lot of hype, and then not even remotely try to keep them.

But this year, things are going to change. I’m going to make more of a to-do list with reasonable goals and see if I can’t knock a few of them out over the next twelve months. Some of them are petty and insignificant, and some of them are daunting and probably impossible for me to ever accomplish. But without any further ado, I present to you, my 13 new year’s resolutions.

1. Focus on being the happiest gal in the city of Chicago. The goals that follow all play a role in this. I know it’s a lofty one, but I already am an extraordinarily happy girl with the greatest friends, family, shoes, and dog on earth… so I think that this could be attainable within 6-7 months. I will probably be the happiest gal in the country once Kyle Korver realizes he has made a terrible mistake, gets a divorce, and begins courting me instead. I’ll give that goal a time frame of 1-2 years.

2. Stop talking a big game and seriously move out of my childhood bedroom. This one really can and will happen. I adore my parents, our house, and my pup— I truly do— but I need to be a big kid and take the plunge into moving out. I’ve got a big kid job, some willing future roommates, a food processor, crock pot, and working can opener, and a bed so comfortable that it literally makes me uncomfortable even talking about it. I have all the right pieces to make this happen, and it is GOING TO HAPPEN.

3. ACTUALLY stop talking a big game and start working out more, eating right, and taking better care of my health. This shouldn’t be as hard to do now that our agency has moved to a building that isn’t directly across from the French Market and Saigon Sisters, but I still need to eat better. But gosh, am I going to miss ~~my husband~~ my favorite rice bowl at Saigon.

3a. Run more, and enlist my friend Margaret to train me for some races. Sidenote: nothing crazy. If I do a half marathon within the next decade, I’ll probably be pretty content.

3b. Cook more. Whenever I cook, I make things that are surprisingly healthy. Cooking saves money, relieves my stress, and makes me (and usually whoever I am feeding) profoundly satisfied. Few things make me as glad as feeding other people good food.

3c. Care, in general, about my health. Less drinking, cigarettes, and stress are probably a good move for anyone who wants to like, live. Period.

4. Work my tush off and be thankful to be at an agency that I truly adore with people I respect and genuinely love working with. That sounded a little gush-gush but really, if you can imagine liking the people you work with so much that you beg the upper management to let you share a cube with them so you never need to face the separation anxiety of being apart… then you’d understand.

5. Trim the fat. Not just off my body. I need to let go of some relationships that are just poisonous to my well being. Focusing on leaving behind all of the spare losers that I’ve encountered in my life is a top priority for being the HGIC. That’s a new acronym I just came up with for the Happiest Girl in Chicago. Feel free to use that.

6. Spend as much time as I possibly can with my friends and brother. Congratulations to all the rest of you who’ve made the cut and are not spare losers! I love my friends. I need to tell them that more. There is a direct correlation between the amount of time I spend with my biddies and boys and the size of the smile on my face. This sort of corresponds with #2, and moving out will make things a bit easier for me to see my friends when some of them live across a hallway from me or down the block. (This will also make me feel less guilty about living at their apartments 5 days out of the week and eating all their food and using all their conditioner and not paying for the heat that I am constantly turning up.)

7. Win something, anything, at State’s Trivia. Every Tuesday we go to trivia at this bar in Lincoln Park, and every Tuesday we leave downtrodden and empty-handed. Is it tacky to put something like this on my goals/resolutions list?

8. Visit people. Chicago has spoiled me in the way that living here makes it a pretty attractive place to visit with a lot of familiar faces and fun things to do. Approximately 90% of the people I went to college with have moved here and that makes it quite convenient to never, ever want to leave. However, there are some folks I am due to visit and I need to stop hoarding my money under my mattress like a troll and pony up for a flight to Boston. And NYC. And Cleveland. And a tank of gas to Indy.

9. Vegas. This isn’t a goal or a resolution. This is just something that WILL be happening and needs to be on my checklist.

10. Read more. There is another direct negative correlation here between the amount of time I spend watching The Bachelor and my intelligence level. I mean, obviously I will never stop watching The Bachelor… ever, duh, but I’d like to also maintain some level of sophistication and read some good books this year so I can speak to other well-read yuppies and feel like my brain isn’t made of cupcakes and unicorns and Essie nail polish.

11. Write more. I get lazy and busy and tired and sassy and bratty and boring and feel like it’s totally cool to neglect writing, but it’s not. This is one of my favorite things to do, and since that’s the case, I should probably do it more often.

12. Swear less. Like, way less. I have a compulsive cursing problem where I casually drop the F bomb about once every 4 minutes. Every conversation I have is like a scene out of Casino. The word is used 398 times in that movie. I use it like 398 times a day. I HAVE GOT TO STOP. I am not Nicky Santoro.

13. Grow up. This year I’d like to focus a little bit on being a little more mature. I need to stop being a baby about stupid little things and accept some more responsibility for my life. This again links to #2. My parents can’t coddle me forever. Even though… I’ve seen the life my dog leads and it seriously could not be more perfect. She doesn’t have to pay for ANYTHING. No paying off loans for obedience school, no cost for room and board, food, getting her nails done, unlimited shopping sprees on stuffed toys…?

It’s fine I’m not jealous I just… yeah. I need to grow up.

I’m pretty stoked for this year. I think it’s going to turn out nicely.

Ohhhhh sometimes.

I get a good feeling.

Merry Christmas to all of you beautiful people! Hope it has been...

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 21:25:17 -0500

Merry Christmas to all of you beautiful people! Hope it has been the greatest one yet!

Wittle blue ornie on the Fio family tree

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:51:07 -0500

Wittle blue ornie on the Fio family tree

I am getting so excited for Christmas. It’s noon on a...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:01:00 -0500

I am getting so excited for Christmas. It’s noon on a Wednesday at work and all I can think about is baking cookies, buying presents, and listening to Nat King Cole. Where is all the snow at?!

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON, TWO (by MARCELTHESHELL) In case...

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 17:14:59 -0500

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON, TWO (by MARCELTHESHELL)

In case you haven’t seen it… watch immediately.

There’s really only two things I care about in this life. Treats and snoozin. Snoozin and treats.

ALL MY TWINS YAY

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 23:26:00 -0500

fml.

Paula Deen's Red Velvet Cupcakes

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 16:24:09 -0500

Paula Deen's Red Velvet Cupcakes:

To make or not to make… that is the question.

It was one of my favorite boy’s birthdays yesterday and I need to make sure he has a special day tomorrow.

Love you Philly.

Wishlisting

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 20:18:00 -0500

Such a crazy, busy, fabulous week. After a little over 3 months at the agency of dreams, I was offered a full time position last week. Couldn’t be more excited.

In the haste of my excitement I decided I need to buy myself some congratulatory gifts.

1. Need: Fur-trimmed parka. If I’m going to survive this winter, I need to up my outerwear game.

Mackage Adali Coat via Bloomingdale’s

OR Andrew Marc Embrace Coat via Andrew Marc

2. Need: Ankle strap wedges. Does anyone understand that no matter how many habanero martinis you drink, you can ALWAYS walk in wedges? Especially ones that are anchored to your legs with a Lindsay-Lohanesque ankle bracelet? I could probably run a half marathon in these:

Matiko Kasey wedges via Piperlime

3. Need: A case of self tanner to get me through the winter as a functioning member of society. If I get pale, I will become an introverted recluse and curl up and die.

Also, a lot of you who know me ~~in real life~~ ask me what I use to maintain my I-still-have-a-pulse color. This is my holy grail.

St. Tropez Self Tan Bronzing Lotion via Sephora

4. Need: A super cute iPhone case for my new best friend, the anti-blackberry.

Can’t decide between the absolutely precious Kate Spade “Charm” cases or the funky palette of the Tory Burch Lucio case.

Kate Spade via Nordstrom

Tory Burch via Shopbop

5. Need: Winter accessories with dual-word condensed names:

J.Crew Hearthstone snood and glittens via J. Crew

Bold colored snood and glittens. ALL ABOUT THE SNOODS AND GLITTENS. I look like an old Polish babushka when I walk to the train in the morning because I don’t want my hair to be a hot mess when I get to my office and could give two damns less about who I see in Oak Park at 8 AM on a Monday morning.

(Me: )

And now, off for a date with my girlfriend Margaret to see Breaking Dawn Pt. 1.

Judge me.

Kitten screams. Add that to my list of favorite sounds.

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:48:22 -0500

Kitten screams. Add that to my list of favorite sounds.

Book Club: To Be Successful Again, Lindsay Lohan Must Die(via @Gawker)

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:23:23 -0500

Book Club: To Be Successful Again, Lindsay Lohan Must Die(via @Gawker):

The title of this article literally made me laugh out loud.

Let it be known through all the land that tonight I made the...

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:41:30 -0500

Let it be known through all the land that tonight I made the greatest mashed potatoes of all time.

Train Surfing

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 23:25:53 -0500

I want to touch on a really important topic tonight. It’s probably my favorite game in the whole world. I like to call it train surfing.

It’s a super cute thing to do when literally no one will give you an ounce of pole-grab-room on the green line L train and there are no seats left so you just have to go with the flow and try to surf the train without falling into someone.

It might sound like it’s fairly easy to an average, ignorant, non L rider, but if you’ve ever witnessed the ACTUAL deals of the thirty to zero jerk stop when you’re pulling up hot to the Ashland station… you know that things get a little complex when you end up in the largest-woman-you’ve-ever-seen-in-your-life’s bosom or the been-on-the-prowl-since-you-stepped-on-the-train creepy one toothed dude’s lap.

Here’s how points work.

10 points for every station you arrive at while still maintaining your balance/swag factor.

5 points for every station you make it to without awkwardly groping someone’s shoulder/elbow/messenger bag/baby for dear life when the train stops/starts, but with minor stumbles and “Oops, sorry’s” when you step on someone’s Timberlands and/or orthopedic shoes, whichever the case may be.

1 point for every time you fall into the half-glass divider between the entrance to the train car and the “priority seating” and the person sitting on the other side of the glass judges you.

Priority seating is bullshit. And I “priority” seat myself like 9 times out of 10. Because a) I’m selfish, b) I’m lazy, c) I like people watching and it’s way easier to do when you can see in both directions out of your periph…

Anyway, -10 points when you land in said hefty bosom, creepy lap, or a stroller.

I think my high score last week was like a 3.

Can’t get this song out of my head. You know what else I...

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:01:00 -0500

Can’t get this song out of my head.

You know what else I can’t get out of my head? This miserable headache that has haunted me all week long. I think the cure for it will be a nice long day at work tomorrow. Definitely.

ryangoslingvspuppy: Who’s cuter, Ryan or a Puppy? Reblog your...

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:42:00 -0400

ryangoslingvspuppy:

Who’s cuter, Ryan or a Puppy?

Reblog your choice.

I don’t even know if Lady Puff could compete. Ryan can’t lose.