McDreamy

So I first fell in love with Patrick Dempsey when I was 10 years old and watched "Can't Buy Me Love." I really think he was the template for my taste in men. It's no secret I'm a sucker for goofy, nerdy men with big noses. Since then, anytime I would see him in a movie I'd be the only person in the theater going, "Oh my God! It's Patrick Dempsey!!!" Now that he's such a big name thanks to his McDreamy role on Grey's Anatomy, he's everywhere. And I'm loving every minute of it. To be honest, I HATED Grey's Anatomy when I watched the pilot. The only reason I continued to watch (on mute for a few episodes) was to see my darling lover boy Patrick. But now I'm completely addicted to this show. I'm even seriously contemplating buying a McDreamy shirt. Yeah, I'm a geek.

Here are then and now pics of my darling lover boy. Yeah, he makes me wanna do bad things.

And the letdown...

So the weekend o' dates never materialized. Homeboy from Seattle called Saturday afternoon to say his friends were having a barbeque (on a drizzly day? yuck) and if I'd like to go. Uh, drive way out of my way to Lawndale (double yuck) to who know's what kind of situation to hang out with a bunch of people I don't know? No thanks.

Then Sunday, what can I say, I bailed on biker dude. I just was never enthused by this poor guy, and then I REALLY wasn't feeling adventurous enough to go on my first motorcycle ride with this cold ass weather. I felt really bad for him, but let's be honest, I felt worse for myself. It's all about me right?

When it rains, it pours...

I've noticed that when it comes to guys, there will be extended periods of drought when NOTHING comes my way. But every few years (yes years, when I was younger it was every few months, but now gravity and time are leaving their marks), there will suddenly be a convergence of interest at the same time. Today, Valentine's Day 2006, I have had 3 men express interest. THREE.

#1 A guy at the hospital asked me to be his Valentine and gave me a bag of candy. I don't know how I feel about dating someone from work.
#2 Someone I went out with year asked me out for Sunday and just happened to be in my area today. Hmm.
#3 A friend of a friend who will be flying into LA this weekend.

Why can't these things be rationed out? My sister says it helps to keep one from being desperate. Maybe.

I know that none of these will go anywhere. But it is nice to know I'm not yet completely repulsive to all guys.

So as my sister often tells me, a girl's gotta eat.

Hitting a Spinster Milestone

Today after running some errands, I realized I hadn't eaten in about 20 hours. Remembering that I had nothing to eat at home and standing right in front of Olive Garden, I decided to have a meal at a sit-down restaurant alone. ALONE. I've never done this. Sure, I enjoy spending time alone and running errands by myself, but going into an actual restaurant, sitting down, and eating sans company, that is a first. But I figured, hey, it was only a few years ago that I started going to the movies alone and that turned out to be a great thing, why not try dining alone?

It was immediately obvious that I was a thing to be pitied. Here are some of the choice comments from my excursion.

Greeter outside: "Are you meeting anyone?"
Me: "No."
Greeter [opening the door]: "Oh." (This "oh" was just a beat too long).

Hostess: "One? Is that right?" (Hostess looks genuinely anguished by this)...
Me: "Sure is."
Hostess: "Let's see what we can do for you." (Hostess is very cheery now)...
(A minute later...)
Hostess: "Is a table ok?"
Me: "That's fine."
Hostess: "Oh, let's just get you a booth."

(Upon arriving at booth, Hostess takes away the extra settings)...
Hostess: "Sorry." (The sad emoticon inflected in the comment.)

Server: "I'll get your meal as soon as possible." (Insert another sad emoticon).

Later...

Server: "Are you still ok?" (The day's last sad face.)

Now maybe I was just being sensitive, but I really don't recall quite such comments from restaurant employees. It made me chuckle a bit. I'm really proud that I actually did it, and enjoyed the experience. I could have done without most of the pitying gestures, but like I said, it's a milestone in my spinsterdom. No doubt there will be many occassions when I'll have to dine alone, I'm glad I picked today to test it out. Overall it was quite an enjoyable experience, thanks to the scrapbooking mags I had with me. I was able to plan out some simple layouts for a gift I'll be giving on Saturday.

Now vacationing alone, THAT will be my spinster magnus opus.

My life is monumentally boring...

and my blog is broken yet again. Fuck this.

10 Everyday Items I Couldn't Live Without

So fellow Pea and Foxy Michelle posted this challenge on 2Peas like 2 seconds ago, so I promised her I'd put it on my blog.

The 10 Everyday Items I Couldn't Live Without are:
1. my computer
2. Silicone Glove lotion from AVON
3. Labello lip balm
4. my shower radio
5. bras
6. Nitrile gloves
7. nail polish
8. color in any shape or form, i.e. colored pens, SB supplies, clothes
9. warm socks
10. my comb for "ethnic hair," as my hair is quite enthusiastic ;)

And here's another challenge I saw on 2Peas.
What are 5 Things That You Consistently Worry About Each Day?

1. my fake tooth flying out of my mouth
2. my Shooting Butt Pain (aka sciatica) acting up
3. any manner of bug flying into my mouth
4. locking myself out of my apartment
5. Ok, that's it, I just don't worry that much I guess. The things I worry about are kinda lame, but that's a good thing right?

I got tagged by Bucket a while back, but I'm barely getting around to this. Sorry.

Four movies you would watch over and over again (in no real order):
Say Anything
Dirty Dancing
Singing the Rain
Grease

Four places you have lived:
in LA-Highland Park, Lincoln Heights, South Central, Atwater Village
and El Paso, Texas

Four T.V. shows you love to watch:
Medium
Lost
Gray's Anatomy
How I Met Your Mother (LOVING THIS!)

Four places you have been on vacation:
Cancun
Puerto Vallarta
Italy
Greece

Four web-sites I visit daily:
only FoxyCroppers
but almost daily, TwoPeas

Four of my favorite foods:
Buffalo Wings
French Dips
Picadillo (a type of soup)
anything with lime

Four places I’d rather be right now:
at the movies
on a beach in Cancun
in New York watching Wicked
in new York watching Martha Stewart live

Back from Mexico

So I'm back from Zacatecas. I took about 400 pictures, not very good ones I'm afraid. But here is the absolute worst picture I've ever taken, and of course, it's of someone I really dig. "Vampiro" from Jaguares, whose butt inspires lust in my otherwise pure soul, was on my flight from Mexico City! He walked passed me while getting to his seat, but slowly enough for me to think, "Damn, that scruffy guy is cute." Then I thought he looked familiar, but upon glancing at his backside I immediately recognized him. Jaguares are playing at the Anaheim HOB this weekend and somehow I missed knowing about it. Damn. Oh well, I have to work anyway. So homeboy was just sitting on the bench at LAX waiting for his ride when I took this picture. I'd have had a perfect shot of him at customs but didn't want to risk undue attention to myself (had some contraband in my luggage, nothing crazy though). So anyway, that trip ended on an exciting note.

So I came back home and found out my college roommate Katie is now a mother! Her little guy Will looks absolutely adorable. I made him a little present so hopefully I'll get to send that out tomorrow.

I'm really lazy right now and I have to go to work tonight, so I'll add a couple of pictures from my trip tomorrow.

This was on fellow Foxy Erin's blog. Yeah, I'm swiping it.

This is me - A to Z

A-Age: 28
B-Bed size: Full
C-Chore you hate: Taking out the trash
D-Dessert you love: Warm apple cobbler w/ ice cream
E-Essential start your day item: Shower
F-Favorite actor(s): Tom Hanks
G-Gold or Silver: Prefer silver but I only ever wear a gold crucifix
H-Height: 5'4"
I-Instruments you play: the recorder, but only one song
J-Job title: Clinical Nurse II
K-Kids: NONE
L-Living arrangements: Just me in my slum
M-Mom's name: Herminia (Mina, Mama Medina)
N-Name something you love to do: Sing at the top of my lungs in my car
O-Overnight hospital stay other than birth: None
P-Phobia: Worms
Q-Quote you like: Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of my own mind.
R-Right or left handed: Right
S-Siblings: Sister (35 yrs)
T-Time you woke up today: 9am (NOT like me at all!)
U-Unique habit: I put things in order at stores (obsessive compulsive trait)
V-Vegetable you hate: bell peppers
W-Worst habit: Procrastination
X-X-rays you've had: right arm, right foot, left hand, teeth, thorax
Y-Yummy food you can make: Turkey
Z- Zodiac Sign: Pisces

Another Crafty Day

Made this altered canvas wall hanging at a class taught by fellow Foxy Cropper Lisa Spiegel. Just love how it turned out. The Basic Grey paper I chose is a little crazy, but the black and white picture I'll use will tone it down a bit. One of the ladies in the class said she'd love to see the picture for it (she must have thought it would be kinky). It'll be a prim and proper picture of us at my friend's wedding this summer.

Last night we had our 12th Annual Groupie Christmas Get Together. We've been doing this since Senior year in high school. Last night those punk asses pulled a mean trick on me. I'd worked Friday night and hadn't slept at all on Saturday, so I fell asleep while watching Elf. Gracie woke me up to tell me that everyone had opened their gifts and had gone home while I slept. Being the gullible oaf that I am, I totally fell for it and was so disappointed that I'd missed all the presents. While I was trying to wrap my mind around their having left, they were busting up in the kitchen. Meanies.

So I got my present after all. Nga got me some comfy pajama bottoms and stinky soaps for my bathroom. It was awesome to get what I needed, but I like the fun of doing the gift exchange White Elephant style. This year I wasn't the only sleepy one there, so we didn't get as imaginative with our pictures as last year, but had a nice time just the same.

Feeling crafty...

and frustrated that I lost my post. And that my pics didn't go where I wanted them. Aargh.

Anyway, I've been in a crocheting frenzy this week thanks to inspiration from joining the Atwater Village Stitch n' Bitch a couple of weeks ago. I have enough expensive hobbies, I don't think knitting will join them anytime soon. For now crocheting (the tackier of the two) is enough for me. Here are the scarves I made this week.

Today I went downtown with Bucket and Crystle to shop for fabric and ribbon and bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Yum. Anyway, I'm thinking of making tote bags a la Bungalow 360. Really digging the Michael Miller and Alexander Henry fabrics. We searched high and low for Amy Butler fabric but had no luck. Here are my fabric finds. Somewhere in my craft closet I have a pile of cute flannel I'd earmarked for pajama bottoms, but thinking of all the stuff I have to get done before the holidays, I may just put that off for next year.

My mojado...

So Katie, you asked who my mojado would be. Here he is. Papacito!

I'll never say that out loud, swear.

Yesterday Bucket and I made these aprons and they only took us 5 hours! It goes without saying that neither one of us is an expert seamstress, but I think we did well. Now that we know what we're doing, it'll go much faster next time. We're both really happy with our little aprons and can't wait to make more. I actually picked the same fabric that Bucket made hers out of, but I was feeling "stripey" yesterday. I have those two fabrics and another lime green and pink paisley fabric, so I'll have an array of aprons to choose from to match my clothes when I work at home or go to a crop. Now if I can only figure out a way to insert a picture. Let me try. Ok, apparently I squished in my post between 2 pictures but that's ok. I'll do it better next time. ;)

Don't you hate it when...

you go to sleep drunk and you're still drunk when you wake up? It's the worst feeling in the world, well almost as bad as say, I don't know, puking into a trash can outside your apartment and getting it on your hair, jeans, and glasses.

That was my fun Tuesday night. My friend Adrian and I finally went to see Liz Phair and I made the mistake of adding rum to my usual drinking regimen with disastrous results. I haven't had a binge like that for 5 years. And I wil NEVER EVER do it again. I'm serious.

So the show was great. I fell in love with Liz all over again. And she finished off with one of my all time favorite songs, Fuck and Run. When I was 17 I didn't want that to be my anthem. I think I overdid it with my conservative choices, yet oddly enough some of those lyrics still ring true. Liz Phair and I are at opposite extremes of the spectrum, but I can still appreciate her perspective. I wonder if she'd be able to reciprocate.

Say Anything baby...

To know Lloyd Dobbler is to love him. Diane Court is about to know Lloyd Dobbler.

Your Life is Like

Say Anything...

What John Cusack movie are you?

I'm a 70 year old lady at heart

So check out the goings on of my last 10 days. I was a hermit for a couple of days last weekend (see post below). Then I went to my sister's house a couple of days, to see the kids in their Halloween costumes, and Wednesday to pick them up from school and make dinner. The little one was sick on Monday and decided to sneeze directly on my face. I knew instantaneously I'd be sick in a couple of days. Sure enough, Wednesday my throat started to hurt, Thursday and Friday I had to call in sick to work, and Saturday and Sunday went to my Photoshop class (I'm going to miss it) very groggy and sniffly. After class on Saturday I came directly home and played around with Photoshop for a while. No partying for me, nope, it was all about blowing my nose and rubbing Vicks Vaporub on my chest.

Then at some point the last few days I joined a Stitch n' Bitch group, actually 2, one for metro LA and one for Atwater Village. I took crocheting classes a few years ago, made a couple of unintentionally trapezoidal afghans, and then got a boyfriend and to hell with the crocheting. Well, I'd been meaning to take it up again the last couple of years, make myself a proper spinster. I'm really looking forward to going to the meetings, ESPECIALLY since the AV group meets within a 2 minutes walk from my house. I always have to drive to the Valley or Santa Clarita for craft-related events. This will be a really nice way to get to know people in my neighborhood.

Next item. I went to the Vicente Fernandez concert last night, with my mom and aunt, both of whom are in their 70's. Of course if you mix Chente, 6000 Mexicans, and beer everyone is bound to get shit-faced. Everyone but me. No, I was still blowing my effing nose!!! Seriously, that venue blasts the AC, and last night all of it apparently was directed at my chest. I may be buxom, but I found myself thinking, "I'm going to catch my death in here." WTF?!?

All of the above is a testament to the fact that I'm a little old lady sans wrinkles.

Being at that concert and seeing all those masculine men (as opposed to the pansies that are endemic to the US) made me seriously rethink the possiblity of getting myself a mail-order husband. I've heard of women (allegedly) getting paid to marry some poor mojado and then staying together. That would make a great movie. Oh wait, it's already been done. I think it was called Green Card. Of course in that movie since it was Gerard Depardieu (sp?) and Andie McDowell, it was cute. If such a story involved an American woman and a Mexican man you know all the bigots in the border states would blow a gasket.

Anyway, I was watching some of the couples dance and, as always, it made me wish I had learned to dance like that when I was young. I know it's considered chuntis (tacky), but I love how it looks. I've only danced like that once and that was last year in Mexico. Hopefully I'll have the chance to do it again when I go to Zacatecas in December for my cousin's wedding.

On a sidenote, my dumb ass finally figured out how to link within my comments. DOH!

I broke my blog

I don't know what the hell I did, but it's all wonky, I'm missing a couple of posts, not that they were all that fascinating, but just having them disappear into oblivion bothers me to no end. I LOATHE losing things, even if they aren't real.

So it's Saturday night, and I'm feeling keenly pathetic. I slept all day after working 3 weeks without more than one night off in a row. I woke up, showered, looked kinda cute if I do say so myself, and did NOTHING. Well, I took my mom to Borders because she's on the hunt for a stupid book about some kind of bull dog for her friend. Apparently it doesn't exist. I frankly am not that motivated to help her in her search. But I digress...

While my friends Luz and Monica are off dancing tonight, I'm sitting here at 8:40pm seriously contemplating going back to bed. I've got terrible cramps and am really bitchy. Why unleash my ferocity, short-lived as it may be, upon the world tonight when I can just stay home and feel my ass grow wider? I hate feeling this way and I know it's because it's the 1st day of my curse, but after 14 years I know I have to isolate myself today. It was due to people like me that women were banished to the outskirts of their villages during their menses. Why oh why does it have to be a Saturday night?

Really, I don't ever do typical Saturday night things. I used to love going dancing, and while I still like to dance, I hate having to prep and pay for it. Getting ready, blowing out the hair or shampooing it in mousse, applying makeup, donning the hoochie garb and shoes, paying for drinks (I don't like letting guys buy me drinks because they always expect something), dying in aforementioned hoochie shoes, getting all sweaty and not having any room to actually dance...all of it is at this point in my life supremely annoying. Not so when I was a teenager and in college, even a couple of years after college I still partook of the partying. Now I'd much rather go to dinner, see a movie, watch a concert (one without teenagers as they annoy me to tears now as well), or read a book.
When did I turn into such a boring homebody?

"So if you care to find me...

look to the {Eastern} sky"...because I'll be in New York! Well, not until April but still. My sister and I had been planning a trip to New York to see Wicked with my niece. She was really bummed that the tour moved on to San Francisco without her being able to see it. Last night I bought the tickets for April 11th. So now to book flights and accomodations, but as long as we have great seats to Wicked, I don't care where we end up staying. I guess it would have been easier to just go to San Francisco to see it, but we've been wanting to go to NYC again and since Gabbie is turning into such a theatre geek, we figured we'd make a whole trip of it. And we're taking my mom since she's never been. My friend Raquel has also signed on. I wonder what adventures we'll have this time.

So RENT is coming out soon, day before Thanksgiving I believe. Gabbie and I fully intend to watch it the first night. We'll be Rentheads, even though she's only interested in Idina Menzel at this point.

Ghost Sites

I found a most interesting website, a collection of final screen shots dating as far back as 1998(truly historic times). I've been perusing its list of defunct websites, most owing their demise to the dotcom bust.
http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/mef.shtml


Here's a funny one.
http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/show_exhibit/brainimplants

And this one is strange. I guess at one point the pedophile-and-skank infested myspace.com was shut down.
http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/show_exhibit/myspace

This one was really interesting. http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/on_top_of_the_world.shtml

Why is it...

that in any given class there is always The Annoying Guy? Seriously. Usually the profile is the middle-aged, probably divorced, know-it-all guy who erroneously thinks asking tons of questions makes him look inquisitive when it really exposes his ineptitude. I'm taking a Photoshop class, today being the first of 4 weekend classes. This asswipe showed up 20 minutes late, making all kinds of ruckus, proceeded to ask about 7 questions that, if he'd been there on time, would have known the answers to. For the remainder of the 3 hours he proceeded to ask stupid questions, not pay attention, get ahead of himself, and hog up the instructor's time by screwing up. Then when class was done (20 minutes late thanks to Mr. Asswipe's questions), he had the gall to ask if he could stay through the lunch hour to practice. I felt like applauding when the instructor told him half the lunch hour was gone already and he didn't feel like staying cooped in the same room all day. The lady next to me told Annoying Guy to let the guy eat in peace. Ah, good times. I hope he gets the point and doesn't pull the same shit tomorrow.

So I took my mom to see "In Her Shoes" with Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, and Shirley Maclaine. To be honest, I hadn't really wanted to see that particular film (most chick flicks are wait-for-the-DVD fare). But there wasn't much else to see that I thought my mom would enjoy, and she's a sucker for anything with mostly female casts. Well that damn movie was really good! Plus, I was drooling over Mark Feuerstein the whole time. I really dug him on "Wake Up, Miami" a few years ago. Ok, I don't know how the hell to insert a picture here. I'm retarded. Anyway, I think the guy is smoking. He's on my Top 20.

After the movie, we hit Barnes & Noble. I started Christmas shopping for my niece, picked up a Photoshop book which turned out to be the wrong version (oops), and got the Joel Osteen book I've picked up about 17 times. He's on my top 20 too, which is really bad because the guy is a married minister, and I ought not to covet my neighbor's husband. Whatever, it's not like I have any hope of seducing the man, so it's not so much coveting right? Besides, like I say, lust is not a sin I struggle with. Unfortunately.