Sweeping, didn’t know
a room could have that much dust
Mother is coming
Goin’ viral FOR CAMP
Hey friends that are still faithful to me even though I’m awful and never post because all I do is come home, fall on my couch, and fall asleep because ugh.
This is something that I think you might enjoy: http://now.msn.com/only-a-camp-counselor-will-understand-these-27-things
All this hoopla has made me sure of one thing: I’m really glad to be doing what I’m doing but also really really sad to not be going back to my favorite place in the entire world. If you haven’t figured that one out – it’s camp. BIG HOWEVER, I am so proud and happy and thrilled that my lil sis KRISTEN GEE I’M NAUGHTY will carry on the Gianotti legacy this summer as a camp counselor. I wish I had the words to describe to her what a wild ride of a summer she’s about to have. I’m very jealous of her and I know she’ll be awesome because duhhh.
Also, I really am sad that I’m not doing a good enough job on this site. Somebody slap me and tell me to do a better job on this site. Whenever I sit down (as I am doing now) I ask myself, MICHAELA WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?! Well, I should be writing more here. And not lying on my couch so much. I’m supposed to be training for a marathon or something. Luckily for everyone, Mama Gianotti is coming into town this month to whip this girl into shape. Because that’s what she does.
Hope you are all as excited for the three day weekend as I am. It will be my first official “day off” since entered the “no days off” world.
Announcement!
I just signed up for the Portland Marathon. I will be completing it with my Mother (for the second time), her friend Carrie, my sister, and my brother-in-law! FAMILY MARATHON THE DREAM LIVES WOO HOO.
But the sad thing is I’m nowhere near as diligent (nor as free-time-a-plenty) as I was the last time I trained for a marathon. So this will be interesting.
I did my first non-official-sort-of-official training session on Saturday. And for some reason I decided to start with hills.
Have you heard? Seattle’s hilly. And no it’s not just little hills, it’s big monstrous hills that keep going and going because every freaking neighborhood in this city seems to be build on it’s own little mountain (or sometimes two – I mean you, Magnolia). I thought it’d be great. I normally love busting my ass up a big hill, because WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE? But oh god the pain. Oh god the agony. Thank god I brought my bus pass because after eight miles of climbing mountains I WAS DONE.
And I fell asleep on the bus on the way back…
Hills vs Ass
The hills win.
I’m excited about this new adventure. And I’m hoping I can make it work. I just need to stop crashing on my couch every day when I get home from work, pulling out a jar of sunbutter, eating it with a spoon, and going on my computer … like I’m doing right this very moment.
FAMILY MARATHON WOOO HOOO!
Gross haiku du jour
This is dedicated to Kelsey Dewey:
They say no hair there
But I found one in my toe
Little tug such bliss
SPRING WEEKEND!
It’s Spring Weekend, bitch.
This past weekend, my friends and I drove to Seabrook, WA to enjoy a (rainy) (awesome) (much-needed) vacation. It is kind of a weird thing to go away to the coast for the weekend. It feels like something that adults do, not a bunch of mildly employed 20-somethings. But whatever, SPRING WEEKEND!
I have only good things to say about the place we stayed, the things we ate, the beer we drank, and the hikes we went on. Only good things.
But I have a lot of things to say about some other things…
Seabrook is about a mile south of another beach town called Pacific Beach. My friend Julie spent the previous weekend at Pacific Beach vacationing with her brothers, and understandably, had a few opinions about Pacific Beach. For starters, it’s not that nice of a place. In fact, it really just sucks. But Julie said there was one place in Pacific Beach that was an absolute MUST – a roadside Pacific Beach “antique” shop called Wacky’s Warehouse. She only told us later what she really thought of Wacky’s Warehouse – that it was literally the grossest thing like ever ever.
Now I love thrift shops. I even love terrible thrift shops. I have a high tolerance for awful. But this place THIS PLACE was so bad, so bad, that I took one shower for every minute that I spent in that God forsaken place (FIVE). To paint a picture: alongside the dusty piles of ancient mixtapes, broken mirrors, crumbling paintings, and moldy kitchen appliances were piles of dirty t-shirts ($1), buckets of rusty screws (15 cents a piece), and I KID YE NOT a shelf of used underwear (Price is irrelevant, never buy used underwear).
Enough was enough. I needed to get the eff out. As we were leaving, my boyfriend, who is generally much nicer than me, whispered under his breath, “Michaela, I think they are literally burning shit in that fireplace.”
I would have agreed with him. The fireplace in the center of the room was giving off a scent that I would not describe as smokey. But then I turned and saw a woman bent over browsing the used book collection who literally had shit on the part of her pants where shit would be if someone were to shit their pants.
Enough was really enough. We had to get out. Unfortunately, as soon as I stepped out I got shit on by a seagull.
SPRING WEEKEND!
First Easter in four years
I ruined my chance of breaking my record of four consecutive years without Easter by not allowing myself to get to five consecutive years without Easter. I did it for my mother, really.
Not being in college meant I was not swamped with work/school/theater over the holiest days of the year. Instead, I was just swamped with being an angsty 20-something getting used to a 9 to 5 and drinking too many margaritas on the weekends – giving me basically no excuse not to celebrate Easter.
The Easter holiday was spectacular in Seattle, mostly because the WEATHER WAS SPECTACULAR IN SEATTLE. It’s a well-known fact that when it’s sunny in Seattle, the city goes absolutely insane. Everybody goes outside, the restaurants are packed, the city parks are like the beaches in Southern California with hipsters competing for blanket space, and as of November, the city gains a certain odor that is both pungent and legal. WE LOVE THE SUNSHINE.
My friends and I went to my roommate’s Amanda family’s house for some homemade brunch and strongly made Bloody Marys. After stretching the limits our stomach circumference and our drinking ability in the morning, we packed up and headed to a nearby park for a day of sunbathing, games, and laughing at all the hip young Seattle parents drinking in public with their naked children running around them.
We stuck to some cleaner fun.
Games! Fully clothed! And if you’re a camp friend, YES, that’s Kelsey Dewey right there.
After getting our fill of the sun, we went home to dye Easter eggs. And this being the Pacific NW, we decided to dye them using natural ingredients LIKE SPINACH AND PAPRIKA because that’s the kind of stuff we do all the time for no reason other than just to do it.
It generally worked pretty well. Tumeric made a nice yellow dye. The spinach was disappointing.
And in a moment of bad planning, right after we dyed the eggs, we peeled them, mashed em, deviled em, and ate em. Actually, I won’t call it bad planning. Who wants to stare at cute little Easter eggs without eating them?
I hope your Easter weekend was more Easter-ish than mine. I also hope it was better than these Seattlite’s Easter.
Haiku du Jour
Eating Mini Wheats
Sleeping friends fill apartment
All work, play Friday…
Learning to ride a bike again
When I went to Walla Walla, I was there to see my friends of course. But everybody knew I was really there for only one extremely important reason – to pick up the bike I left behind in May. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, BUT IT WAS KIND OF A BIG DEAL. First of all, I didn’t want to leave it, it’s just hard to fit a mattress, bed frame, arm-chair, kitchen table, collection of all your college memories, suitcase of giant coats, and sparkly lamps in the back of a car and then stick a 50 lb beast of a schwinn in as well. So, I left it.
And I have not been allowed to forget about it. Every couple of months, I’d get a nice reminder from my roommate last year (and caretaker of the schwinn) that my bike was well, but lonely… and taking up a lot of space in her apartment. When I got to Walla Walla, I knew that I had to take the bike. If I didn’t, things could get ugly. But the only problem was, it wouldn’t fit. Again, the thing’s a beast. Fenders to the gills, handlebars with the wingspan of an eagle, and screws that haven’t been adjusted since 1965. After lots of sweat, a hammer, a monkey wrench, a screwdriver, a few tears, and an hour – I managed to fit the thing in the car to take back to Seattle.
But the thing is, I can’t ride it. It’s a 50 lb, single speed, gearless, pedal-braked piece of glory that would not stand a minute against Seattle’s hills. The thing is meant solely for cruising.
So yesterday, I got fitted out with a friend’s extra road bike. After a bit of adjusting, I was good to go. But I’ve never ridden a road bike before and LET ME TELL YOU it’s very different from the comforts of a wide-wheeled, pedal-braked, giant cushy seated cruiser. VERY DIFFERENT. I got used to it. I only ran into 3 inanimate objects and 1 animate object. I didn’t break any skin, and I managed to navigate a freaking mountain of a hill, the Ballard locks, 100s of beach stairs, the city bus bike racks, downtown Seattle at 5:30, and Pike St. all the way up to the top of Capitol Hill. Again, I only ran into 3 inanimate objects and 1 animate object. The animate object didn’t mind too much. I’d say success.
I can’t wait to get out there again and sincerely hope that my butt feeling as sore as it does is only a temporary side effect.
Okay okay
After three weeks on the new job, I’m finally starting to fall into some sort of normal schedule.
1. Wake up at 6:45.
2. Play the morning game that goes like this: how much coffee can you consume before you have to leave.
3. Ask myself if my outfit makes me look like a 23-year-old who has never worked a 9 to 5 and really has no clue what she’s doing.
4. Change outfit.
5. Run to the bus stop. The bus follows no real schedule, so I feel like if I run, I won’t feel as guilty about missing the bus because I tried my hardest and waiting 8 minutes until the next one is enough to time to catch up on breathing. That makes sense right?
6. Transfer buses (More running. See above.)
7. Get to work, play the game that goes like this: how much coffee can you consume before it’s lunch time.
SIDE NOTE: my office has free coffee, free soda, a ping-pong table and an x-box room. Did you hear that? FREE COFFEE!
8. You know, do my job all day.
9. Bus home, recognize that I am in fact starving but I do not in fact have any groceries in my cupboard.
10. Try to solve that problem.
It’s definitely taking some time getting used to, but I’m loving the challenge/thrill/terror of it all. I’m also thinking of enrolling in some night time Zumba classes to keep my working butt in shape. You know, because sitting at a desk all day is not good for the booty.
Pssssst, if any of you readers want to follow what I write at work, I’m going to try to post them on my Twitter page. (You don’t need a Twitter to see it). Search @MichaelaAtWork
This week/end
I’m leaving the office to drive with my roommate back to Walla Walla, Washington to see friends and see theater. The last time I was in Walla Walla, I was packing up a car with everything I owned and thinking OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT now what? I have since filled in some of that “what,” but heck, I’m still as angsty as ever. Maybe I’m more angsty of just feeling like I really don’t belong there anymore, in a place I’m so used to belonging to.
But on a less angsty note, I’m completely excited. I have a list of things I want to do.
1. Eat a burger at 124 – the one with the bacon and the cheese and the oh my god goodness. I have only had one once, and that was on a day when I thought I had failed my senior major exams. I’m hoping this will be a less desperate occasion.
2. Eat the fries at The Green (the college town bar) because SRSLY they’re the best ever.
3. Sneak attack a few of my un-graduated friends. They’re all in a play (hence me going to see them), so sneak attacking might be difficult. But I’m going to try my darndest.
4. Sleep in my old apartment building. I’ll be staying with my former roommate, and I couldn’t be more excited. It’ll be just like old times except we won’t be living below three of the loudest dinosaurs of human beings on the planet. (Tillie moved upstairs after I left).
5. Avoid everybody else. You know, the people who don’t know me and thus will be asking questions like, “What are you up to these days,” because they don’t know me.
I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m hoping to take some good pictures. I’m also hoping to be wined the whole weekend, so we’ll see how those photos turn out.
