FOUND MY CATS BUTTON!!!!

FIST PUMPS!!!!!

I met up with my friend Emily tonight for dinner and beer in Fredericksburg. We went to JMU together and I haven’t seen her in a few years. Above is a picture of her feeding me a roll of Smarties while we danced at a party at my friends Julia, Janice, and Laura’s place. They lived in one of the two houses in Harrisonburg named “Narnia,” but they named theirs Narnia because there were a lot of closets (some which led to other rooms). The other girls named their house Narnia because they were Christians. (Martha and I sublet two rooms in the OTHER Narnia the summer after our sophomore year. It was called the Straw House then because the girls who lived there said that it looked like it would be the first house on the street to tumble over. We were kind of bummed when we went by there to get our unforwarded mail and saw that the new group of girls painted their rooms pink and hung up inspirational posters. Boooo.)

ANYWAY. Emily is super fun and we talked about old times, specifically ones that involved alcohol because who are we kidding? We were drunk the majority of the time we spent together in college. My favorite story that involves Emily happened at this party down the street from the MILC house (so-dubbed because the girls who lived there were named Melanie, Irene, Lindsay, and Christina). Kristin and I were over there hanging out with Emily and Melanie and we decided to walk down over to T__ L___’s house.

The party was really BORING and after we drank a few cups of keg beer I said, “Hey, we should all steal stuff from this party.” Kristin took a picture of a fox that was clearly a page from a National Geographic that one of the dudes in the house thought was tasteful enough to put on a wall. I pulled a Maglite keychain from a set of keys; it was broken so I didn’t feel so bad about it. Melanie took a sink drain; she rationalized it by pointing out that those dudes had two kitchens and she only had one, and her kitchen did not have a sink drain. Emily stole a scented candle from the bathroom. She didn’t even bother blowing it out. SHE GOES HARD, Y’ALL.

(PS. Don’t steal from people, it’s not nice.)

sweatydeath:

yeshairy:

this is tonight people

 There’s no business like show business.

HEY CHICAGO. If you didn’t see this tonight, you must see it next week. I CAN’T SEE IT AND I AM SO SAD. It stars my friends Kellen and Wes and it’s directed by Christina, my best friend in the whole wide world. Go give them hugs for me.

(via spiegelman)

I was out in the backyard earlier and I decided I wanted to climb a tree. After I got up there I decided I wanted photographic evidence that I could still do it. It’s very difficult to take pictures of yourself in a tree when you’ve just got a digital camera with a ten-second delay. This is the best I could do. Happy GPOYW.

It’s finally time for the fun part of my time home in Virginia!

Tonight I’m going to have dinner with my friend Emily from JMU. I haven’t seen her in almost five years since she and some other buds came to Chicago for New Year’s.

On Friday I’m going to Richmond to hang out with Kristel, one of the two people from high school I still regularly talk to!

On Monday I’m going to Charlottesville to see my college roommate Martha! And our friend Erin will be there!

On Tuesday I’m driving over to Harrisonburg. I haven’t been there since the summer after I graduated! And I’m having lunch at DAVE’S TAVERNA with Dr. Cash, my favorite English professor! We’re going to talk about Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor and gossip about the English department! And then I will probably drive around to see all of my old living quarters (Dingledine Hall! Converse Hall! Rockingham Hall - formerly a Howard Johnson’s! The JMs! I hope the Puberty Sandwich is still there!) And then I will feel old and weird and maybe cry.

“We’re still in the early stages of bedbugs showing up in these less-conventional places like clothing stores and libraries and movie theaters,” [Michael Potter, professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky] says. “People should probably be unconcerned about encountering bedbugs in those types of places at this point. Is it possible? Certainly it’s possible. But what’s happening is the news media attention focusing on these isolated infestations here and there creates a huge concern among people and I think we have to keep a bit of this in perspective.”

OH REALLY? THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS. (PLEASE READ MORE AT NPR.ORG.)

pterodactyls:

[wolf whistle]

Vicky:  how long would it take you to regain that haircut?
Vicky:  I mean, the 90s are back
me:  um, a few weeks?
Vicky:  all right
me:  all I need are three weeks and a comb
Vicky:  (three weeks and a comb: the tyler coates story)
me:  brb, mom wants me to unload the dishwasher
me:  GODDDD
Vicky:  MOOOOOOOM, I’M TALKING!!!! TO A GIRL!!!

Digging deeper and deeper into the archives.

We were rummaging through my closet and found this picture in a frame on the top shelf.

Mom: “Oh, look! Your first gay picture!”

Me: “…”

I just found this important relic from my adolescence. I can’t wait to move to NYC with this.

Krucoff is just mad because I don’t like old people.

Carolyn wins a prize for best email of the day.

Nanny told us that my dad once told her sister that he never loved her and always preferred their other sister better. “I thought I was going to die,” Nanny said, “I was so embarrassed.”

My mom and I laughed. “How old was he when he did that?” I asked.

“It was just a few years ago!” she shouted.

And that, my friends, is where I get my sense of humor.

My mom and I visited my dad’s mother today. She will probably live forever and drive us all nuts despite constantly complaining about being sick and tired (of being sick and tired). In short: you would not want to read her blog.

Nanny is never the bearer of good news. On Christmas morning we stopped by her house to open presents; afterward she sat in her recliner and listed off the names of her dead friends, the names of her sick friends, and the names of her friends who had recently fallen (because old people - at least the ones around here - are constantly toppling over). Then she asked me if I had a girlfriend, at which point my brother and my mom left the room, leaving me to fend for myself.

Today she told us about her sister - the only one of her siblings who is still alive; she’s 92 and in an assisted living facility. Nanny and her sister aren’t very close (I don’t think they ever got along very well, and I only saw her about five times in my life), but it’s still a bit surprising to hear someone talk about a relative with so much distance. A few weeks ago my mother’s friend was talking about her mother who never seemed to remember her. She seemed a bit blasé about it; “Oh well, we had a good run, and now my mom doesn’t know who I am. Pinot, anyone?”

This could have something to do with the fact that I lost my dad early in my life, and also because my mother was telling me that she should look into retirement communities in the next ten years so my brother and I won’t have to worry about her when she gets too old to take care of herself. My mother is only 56! I think she’s jumping the gun a bit, especially because she doesn’t think of herself or her friends as “being old.” They aren’t, really! I mean, they are to me, because they have always been old. But when we went to see Get Low over the weekend my mom turned to me and said, “Man, Billy Murray looks so old!” I replied, “He is old, Mom.” And she snapped, “HE IS NOT.” (He’s 60.)

Anyway, this is all interesting to listen to when I’m about to turn 27 next week. Nanny said to me today, “You are getting old!” Lady, don’t say that to me! (She also told me that I need to change the way I eat when I told her I had pizza for lunch. “On account of your health,” she added. OK!)

“Old age is Hell,” Nanny said. I guess that’s true! I don’t really worry so much about getting old - I think I associate it more with the wisdom and the generally CHILLING OUT that comes with age. But this was more of an unfortunate reminder that your body doesn’t really chill out along with you: it gets pretty pissed off at you, apparently, and then getting old isn’t fun.

Nanny has the portrait pictured above hanging up in her dining room. I can’t decide if something like that would be fun to see every day or if it would a really shitty reminder of how it fucking sucks to get old.

(Note: I should probably read The Picture of Dorian Gray, or at least watch the movie. Hmm.)