Blowin' in the Wind

I know that we had to be prepared, but after today's "storm", Irene was the most overhyped Hurricane ever.  On Friday, as I was working my half day from home, I got three phone calls from my dad, and finally decided maybe it was a good idea to go to Associated for some groceries.  But instead of buying water and non-perishables, I thought it was more critical to buy ice cream, yogurt, and swiss cheese (oh and Diet Coke and Sprite Zero.)  The supermarket was like a zoo, you'd think we'd be trapped for weeks the way people were stocking up.  Anyway, they didn't have the chips I wanted, so I dropped the bags off at home and headed back out to Trade Fair.  I did then to decide to buy a 3 liter bottle of water amongst the panic, the chips (though still not the ones I wanted - apparently there is a shortage of Baked Tostitos Scoops during hurricane season), and some more totally unnecessary perishable items.  In the evening, Dave didn't feel so hot so we went to C Town to buy orange juice (we have 3 supermarkets within a 3 block radius in case you were wondering.)  The lines were absolutely insane again so we gave up.

Yesterday morning we were still awaiting the storm, which wasn't coming until the evening now, so we decided to take a walk around 11 am.  Realizing we only had one dinky flashlight, we thought it might be a good idea to see what the local 99 cent stores still had in stock.  We bought some more batteries, water, and lighters (we have about 75 candles thanks to a bag of tealights and the fact that my mother-in-law now works for a candle company), but had no luck finding a battery-powered radio.  After coming home, we did actually realize that our alarm clock takes batteries (duhhh), so we headed back out and bought a 9V.  It had started raining lightly at this point, but the 99 Cent stores all still had long lines of people buying duct tape and saying "I can't believe you don't have any flashlights left??"  The storm was coming in a few hours, I mean really.

We anxiously awaited this pain in the ass by playing Xbox games (ilomilo, The Beatles: Rock Band (I still have to write that out properly), some make-your-own-Bobblehead-that-looks-nothing-like-you game on Kinect labs), Scattergories, cooked, did my nails, tweezed my eyebrows, and watched Party Down.  I also read two magazines from my tremendous pile and finished The Hunger Games (disappointment, sorry peeps.)  It had been raining at a normal level until the middle of the night when I heard it coming down hard. Then this morning it was seriously like nothing?!?  When Dave and I headed out to take a walk around 1:30 pm today, the ground was actually dry!!  We went up to 30th, had brunch (all of the brunch places were open and packed), and walked back.  It's still a bit windy and the sky is gray/grey? but the temperature is pleasant. There were some fallen branches but nothing crazy.  Here are a few photos of the most extensive damage we saw -

Not bad at all

Unless you own this car

I like the effort Duane, you've finally impressed me

I HAD to get Parmesan cheese (we made bolognese and chicken parm this weekend so obviously it was necessary.)  This was the bread aisle in C Town today.

There were leftover Toast R Cakes which I just still can't believe.

Anyway, I guess I should give a shout out to the Earthquake as well. I had my headphones on when that started, so I couldn't hear people discussing anything, and I literally thought the skin on my butt was twitching. After about ten seconds of that I got up and everybody was like "Uh, do you feel that?" I made the smart decision to switch from heels to flip flops, grab my bag, and head to our safety point on the floor. Most of us decided to go down the 80 flights of steps (which I actually did once before when I worked on the 41st floor during the blackout.) Me and my jelly legs got to go home after that, so thank you Earthquake! Why Irene couldn't show up on a weekday, and instead faked us out during my only Fire Island weekend which was totally non-refundable, is still beyond me.

So, I started reading books again, yeah! I also joined a book club in which we just discussed "Gun, With Occasional Music", and I hated it. Next, I'm going to read the book I suggested for the September meeting but lost in the vote which is Rob Sheffield's "Talking to Girls About Duran Duran."  Now that I have finally started using my eReader, I think the thing is absolutely amazing.  And, I took out the latest book out from the Queens library digitally - it simply expires after 21 days and wipes from the device, so easy!!  I also need to read "Super Sad True Love Story" as that's next for the book club, and the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy even though I'm still disappointed by the first.  Where was all this sexual tension I kept hearing about???  Unless it's in books two and three, the Twilight series blows these out of the water.

Pumped Up Kicks

I'm finally trying out Spotify.  I don't understand how it works yet, though it looks fairly straightforward with a purty interface.  So far I've been listening to Ellie Goulding and the whole album has been playing with a few ads.  What's the difference between this and the version you pay for?

I've been stuck in the house all day because of the pouring rain.  One thing I did was trash a garbage bag full of clothes.  Despite having only worn most of these shirts during the 2001-2003 Sutton Place era, they were hard to part with (what if I one day suddenly had the desire to wear them again?)  On the plus side, there is a TON of space in the closet now.

Hey, did you hear that The Stills broke up?  Too bad.

I've been watching more Locked Up Abroads lately as well (best show ever.)  During the commercial break while I was tensely awaiting the Brooklyn teenager's sentence for trying to smuggle heroin out of Colombia, I saw an ad for a show called Break Out. Apparently, its reenactments of jail breaks!!  I am so shocked at how amazing the National Geographic channel is, and I haven't even watched anything about nature yet.

Check out this wack-a-doodle bike I saw in LIC:

A few weeks ago Dave and I went to see Man U at Red Bulls arena. On the first day we got to see their practice which was awesome because it was first come first served and no one was there, so we got to sit in the third row in the middle.  Also, all of the players were out doing their Rockette-like drills and played a mock game.

In case you didn't know, Michael Owen is still as gorgeous as ever.

I took a photo with him back in the day.

Also, here's a quick video of the team walking past the crowd.

The second day they played the MLS All-Stars and I got to see David Beckham do his thing.   Chicharito and Giggs didn't play, nor did Landon Donovan.  I figure for a $90 ticket, I surely am owed approximately a $15 refund.

So, I've got 6 weddings to go to this year.  And that means a lot of connected events.  I'm not posting bachelorette party photos directly on Facebook, so instead I'll post them indirectly on Facebook through my blog.

For Rachel's bachelorette we went to the wineries.  We stayed at her friends' house in Jamesport which had a tennis court, a pool, a ping pong table, a giant Elvis statue(?), and it overlooked the Long Island Sound.  In other words, it was kind of amazing.

We took a limo from winery to winery.

Wine junkies

Go Rachel Go!

Back at the house we decorated penis cookies.  In case you were wondering, there will be more penis cookie decorating, penis-shaped dessert, and penis-destruction to come in this blog post.

Whee!

Hi

I'm all shook up

The next bach party was the following weekend in the Hamptons for Erica.  We stayed in another amazing house for this one.

Every good hen do starts off with a fly swatter fight.

Jackie T. had the biggest shoes I've ever seen.

Yay penis straws!

And penis cake! (Not creamy inside.)

There was also a jacuzzi on the left and the canal behind the pool, plus two outdoor decks and an entire outdoor kitchen.  My back got nice and toasty while laying out (aka bright red and blister-popping good.)

Not sure who that guy is?

Julie's bachelorette was in the city.  We took a striptease class and I'm definitely not posting any photos of that.  Before going out for the night, we destroyed a penis pinata.

Then there was some dancing on the pole action (but not what we learned in the striptease class.)

Speaking of stripping, at the risk of sounding like a grandma, I absolutely cannot believe what girls wear out to clubs these days. On one pole, a girl was thrusting against it like her life depended on it, with some guy ramming his crotch into her from behind (clothed, but still totally unnecessary.) The other pole was much worse - some chick in a skintight black dress was also doing the thrust, with less force but enough so that her dress shifted all the way up to her waist!!  Her friend told her to pull it down, and she barely did, then kept dancing with it up.  Some guy saw me and Vicki hysterical (I'm talking projectile tears flying off our faces from laughing so much), that he stopped me just to say "DO YOU SEE THAT GIRL'S ASS??"  Yes, yes I most certainly did.  When I was going to bars at that age we wore jeans and a tank top and still managed to pull guys while keeping our dignity in tact and our asses covered.  I met Dave in a turtleneck and bellbottoms, I mean are these 2011 non-outfits really a necessity??

Non-hos at da club

Afterwards we got pizza and Julie's sister Erica was taking photos of all of the ingredients, as if it was this new food phenomenon.  The guys who worked there were really confused but it was funny if you were drunk like us.

Glenna's bachelorette party was on a Thursday night and I had work the next day, so naturally I participated in the open bar and flip cup portions of the night.

I probably should have stopped playing after the tenth game or so. 

Her sister had a bag of little goodies for everyone like giant gem rings, rings with doggies on them, and butterfly barrettes.  The next morning I woke up with a full face of make up and all of the accessories on my fingers and hair, plus I was still drunk, so work was awesome that day.

The final bachelorette party of the summer was Jenn's.  This one started off with our car breaking down right as we crossed into Delaware after having driven for 3 hours.  This is us eating KFC in front the gas station while we were trying to figure out a plan for not being stranded in the middle of nowhere.  

We wanted to get 40s to complete the scene but they don't sell beer at gas stations in Delaware (BOO.)

Cheap gas and girls on a rock in the 'ware

Long story short, after about an hour trying to figure out how the hell to get out of New Castle, DE, a random AAA truck showed up and saved the day.  This guy put our car on the flatbed and drove the 5 of us an hour and a half to the house at 1 am which was kind of a miracle.

Then we made penis cookies.

I still don't know why Kristine put the food coloring pen in her mouth but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was an accident.

The weekend was pretty standard.  A couple of people fell on the floor in the bar, a few puked, one of my friends came home minus her dress (you know who you are), I almost got our asses kicked by another group of girls because of my big drunk mouth, there was one door-slamming-in-the-eye incident thanks to the bouncer, a dance party on the counter with the bachelor party we'd met at the bar (while the bachelorette slept on the couch right in the middle of it), random guys showing up and fighting in our house, and some girls dissing us by saying "What are you, 28??"  Ha, we wish.

On the last day, four of the girls had to go an hour south into Maryland to pick up the now-fixed car.  The rest of us made two trips in the heatwave to the next town over to return all of the bikes we'd rented during the week.  The logistics of the operation forced Ilyssa to sit in a car seat for one of the rides back to the house.

This was Operation Deflate Tubes Before the Psycho Cleaning Woman Comes Back.

By the way, what the hell is this electric slide dance that everyone in the bar was doing?  I was so boggled that I took a video.

Current Music: Beyonce - Best Thing I Never Had