none of you will ever understand how brilliant of a moment this was. Damn you all for not embracing the horribleness of reality tv...
May I present Paula Abdul's critique of Jason singing...after he'd sang his first song of the night...
April 2008 Archives
I am reading the Diary of Anne Frank...
Several times during the book someone comes by the office where they are hiding and comes close to discovering their secret hiding place...
While reading this I seriously feel like I know exactly what is coming next...
Obviously, thinks Val, this person is going to stumble in to their secret annex, then the family will have to kill them and feast off the body...
...
I so could have written a better story than Anne...
1. Last night I met up with Nad for dinner. We went to La Magdelana and I had the yummiest Enchiladas Poblanas with beef and mole sauce ever! Afterwards we went back to her house (I finally got to see her house!) and played Smooth Moves on her borrowed Wii. It is the most insanely stupid yet awesomest game ever. You have to hold the remote in different ways and this porno/Jack Handy voice comes up to explain how to hold it. And then it gives you three seconds to do each task. And even though some of the tasks are as simple as sweep a leaf off the floor, it's hard because it takes about 4 seconds to figure out that that's what you're supposed to do. My favorite was the one where you had to hold the Wii in "mohawk position" and stab a piece of meat to eat. We called it the Pat Bertoletti.
2. Seriously, having scissors near a mirror is a bad idea for me. At least my bangs don't look as bad as the last time I decided to cut them myself...
Time for an exam. Please leave your answers in the comments:
1. It was announced today that they are adding a qualifying round for the Nathan's contest in Chicago. I am definitely going. I am considering competing but I think I would rather be known in the competitive-eating circuit as the girl who takes kick-ass photos of the competitions than as the girl who ate three hot dogs and then threw up in a competition. Thoughts?
2. I will have 7 3-day weekends this summer. What should I do with them?
1. Laura Bush doesn't blink. This bothers me greatly.
2. AI spoiler: Carly is gone! A dreadlocked dude who sang Memory and didn't realize it was originally sung by a cat and a crying girl who screwed up her song, was the only person in the history of the show to ask to start over, and then still sang badly are BOTH SAFE. That results show totally redeemed the season.
3. I've been having oddish dreams lately. I think it has to do with sleeping pantsless with the windows open.
4. Speaking of odd dreams I had a dream last night that I went to Amsterdam and at the end of the week realized I had done nothing there, and then my plane home nearly crashed twice. Do you think that's a sign?
5. I went to Billy Goats for the first time ever (b/c they have cheese sammiches) and they had fries. I was disappointed in that.
6. OMG!!!
7. OMG2
8. Everything's gone by the time I want it.
9. Everything I touch turns to pink. I just looked at my earphone buds and they are now pink instead of the original white. For serious. (actually, this probably has more to do with the fact that they've been resting in a box of fruit tea...but I like my theory better :-) )
one.
Last night MK invited a few of us over for a bbq. We ate burgers then I kicked everyone's ass in Rummy (seriously, that is the only game I know how to play and I'm awesome at it...did I ever tell you about the time Hood and I started a game of 5 million Rummy? And how our plan was to get our game televised? Yeah, we were awesome like that).
Here is a picture of MK bbqing:
Afterwards, despite the fact that it was 11 and MK's an old man who needs his sleep for work, he showed me his new old-man toy Cadillac CTS 3.6. Gotta say, it's kind of hot. Especially the TV that pops up from the dashboard James Bond style. And the hugest moon/star/sun/galaxies far far away roof ever. But he wouldn't let me watch a DVD. :( And he wouldn't drive me to a place where I could actually see stars. :( He did however take me on a nice little drive around the neighborhood where I got to see it action. And it was a fun ride...even though it's not THREE HUNDRED horsepower :-)
two.
I saw a really cute dress while looking for something to wear to Joelina's wedding but it was $380...this weekend I found it on sale for $115. Good enough for me.
three.
American Idol is a horribly crappy show. Discuss.
four.
In two weeks I leave for Amsterdam...I should start planning this trip...(no pun intended...)
I got an email from DePaul yesterday. They have received my request for degree conferral and are happy to announce that I have met the qualifications to graduate. Never mind that I applied for degree conferral in October of last year and never mind that I haven't attended a class at DePaul since November. It's OK though. The good news is that the government also doesn't think I have finished school till now and therefore I have another six months of not having to pay back school debt...
So I now officially have my Masters in writing. It doesn't really feel like I have a masters degree. Maybe because the classes felt more like classes I should have been taking long ago, or because I was only ever on campus for no more than three hours a week, or that I have no intention of looking for a new job.
It's weird because on one level I feel like I didn't really learn anything in grad school. But on another level I feel as if I learned things I may never have learned otherwise. Like that personal essays are a genre and a good alternative to fiction when all you ever wrote was thinly veiled accounts of your own life anyways. And there was that travel writing class that you took despite the fact that you'd never travelled anywhere before and the best you could come up with to write on an assignment on your experience with food while travelling is eating Dunkin Donuts in Milwaukee...or you write about a lovely gondola ride you took through the canals of Venice in Las Vegas. And your teacher thinks they're fantastic. And how after the class is over you want to travel somewhere new. And how after that it's now all you want to do for the rest of your life.
Those are the important things I guess i learned. I know. My grammar still sucks and my spelling is awful (yeah...before I spell checked this sucker I did in fact misspell awful...and now I misspelled misspell for that matter) but I'm now a wanderlust narcissist.
And I have this Masters but I've never been published. It's mostly laziness because I never actually finish anything I start. And lately I don't even have the willpower to start. And I blame someone else for my inability to write but technically that's unfair. And technically I would take the exchange of what I got in return for it sucking out my desire to tell a story that I used to feel the need to tell. Because, really, I started writing because I wanted to tell just one story. But now I'm rambling.
Anyways...so, I have a masters degree and not in the way I've been saying I have a masters degree for the last five months. Now it's official. I have an email to prove it.
Oh, did I mention that ten minutes after getting that email the person sent a second email that said "There was an error in the previous email you received regarding degree conferral." and I nearly died thinking that I didn't actually meet the requirements and had to take another class? It was just to say that the link for transcripts was wrong. But honestly, that is not something to do to a person.
p.s. once I actually get my diploma in the mail I am so throwing a graduation party...because I take any excuse to have a party in my honor. Watch for details.
Since it's offically official because its on Facebook (and apparently nothing is official until its on Facebook...although they kind of got it up there in record time...)...
Congratulations on your engagement Rob and Christine!
(p.s. I am engaged too!!! Jeff said he'd marry me when we're 45...I said 50 but he insisted on 5 years earlier...he so wants to marry me...i better get a big rock...)
a brief timeline:
February 12: I start coughing...a lot. It's really bad and my boss sends me home. The coughing is pretty bad, but I never have a fever or anything, just the cough...
March 2: My cough is almost gone. Then I do something stupid and jump into Lake Michigan in freezing temps and the cough comes back with a vengeance.
April 7: Still kind of coughing, it's mostly gone but I'll have an attack at least once a day. Sitting at work I yawn and all of a sudden I feel a crackle in my ear, then everything gets cloudy. Now starts the ears being clogged constantly.
April 14: Wake up at 5am feeling like shit. Get out of bed to throw up. Crawl back into bed and decide I am not going to work. For most of the day I feel fine. Then, as I am preparing to go to bed at 10pm a headache hits and I feel nauseous. I go to vomit everything I've eaten that day up. My head hurts and it's a worse pain than anything I have ever felt before. I am pretty much incapacitated on the floor of the bathroom and crying from the pain. I really feel as if something is really truly wrong with me.
At this point I decide that I should go to the ER. Once I get there I basically have to wait 2 hours before I even see a doctor. By that point I have thrown up everything I possibly could into the bathroom and my headache is basically gone. Did I mention that this is the same hospital that years ago gave me novocain then waited half an hour to do the stitches, at which point the novocain had been completely worn off?
Anyways...So I see the doctor. She looks at my throat and says she sees nothing wrong with it. (WTF? I've been coughing for two months now...) And then she won't do a throat culture. She looks at my ear and says she sees a little fluid in there. She makes me drink orange juice to see if I will keep it down and then says that if I don't they are hooking me up to an IV. Yeah, there was no way I was not going to keep that damn juice down. Then she prescribed me some Claritin...which I could get without a prescription.
So, there we have it. After spending the night (I was there till 2:30 am) in the ER: Official doctor diagnosis that despite coughing for two months straight, and despite not being to hear out of my right ear and despite vomiting up everything and having the headache to end all headaches...Val has nothing wrong with her. :(
I went to a Warhammer competition today. Hold your excitement, please. Basically it was a bunch of guys playing with little action figures they paint and rolling dice and that means something. I don't really know what it means but all I'm saying is that I don't see the point in playing when OBVIOUSLY the guy with the biggest tank could just roll over everyone else and be done with it in two seconds. Just sayin'
Yeah, and I was definitely the hottest one in the room.
I was also definitely one of maybe 7 girls in the entire place...
Yeah, if it was a room full of a different type of guy, that might have been a good thing.
Apparently they award points for your theme and the guys I know decided that their theme would be The Village People...
I managed to find one guy who had the good taste to paint his little pieces pink with butterflys...
Ummm...yeah, that's about it.
(val sleeping)
:-)
So, some of Rob's DC friends are in town for a Warhammer competition (stay tuned later for the "Val finds out what Warhammer is post...). The convention's out in Rosemont which is a town that I believe only has conventions, bad concerts, and Wolves Games.
So, Friday they were their plan was to come into the city and spend the day hitting up museums, boat tours, the Sears Tower, etc. etc...and then I was going to meet them after work for dinner...yeah...so I get out of work and give Chris a call...and they are just the LEAVING Rosemont! They have come to Chicago to not actually see Chicago. Turns out they were behind in getting their little men decorated and still had work to do. So...yeah...they came to Chicago AND DIDN'T SEE CHICAGO!
So, at least when I called they were on their way to the restaurant. So I wandered down State and bought some travel clothes and made my way to Weber Grill where they wanted to go. Eventually they got there and we got our grub (I just had a burger since I'd spent so much the night before). They tried to fill me in on what this Warhammer thing is about and thus far I have found that it is kind of like chess, you can paint your men pink and sparkly if you wish, the competition is kind of like Miss USA, and your guys get no advantage if say they are painted camouflage in the jungle over say a city. Something like that. :)
So, after dinner I dragged them all through Millennium Park, because I refuse to let anyone come to Chicago without at least seeing some of Chicago. So we saw the Bean and the fountain thingy, which was on but there was no water. But that's OK 'cause it was raining anyways. And so, that was basically their extent of seeing Chicago.
Is it OK to spend $60 on your dinner if the ballet you are going to was free? I think yes. It all balances out...
Em and I met up after work at One North. Her friend works there so we got a couple of special deals :)
We started out with a Duck Confit Fettuccini with black truffles and vanilla-honey butter (thanks to a free coupon...) and then split between us a Grilled Venison Flank with Caraway potato fritters, tricolore, and apricot-mustard sauce and the Crab Souffle Cakes with Hericots vert and citrus-mint salsa. Oh, I also had a sufficiently girly pom peche martini. Yum. After that we split a chocolate hazelnut torte because it was the only chocolate thing on the dessert menu. And I had a nice free cappuccino :)
After 2 hours of eating and conversing we headed back across the street to the opera house. American Ballet Theatre is in town, and with it came comped tickets to Sleeping Beauty. I was so excited for the ballet! Disney's Sleeping Beauty has always been one of my favorite movies, and it's definitely one of my fav fairy tales.
The ballet was BEAUTIFUL, but the last act could have been much shorter. I mean, once the prince comes and kisses his princess the story is OVER...you don't need another half hour scene of a party. And why was little red riding hood at your party?
4. My ear keeps popping. I yawn and I'll hear a crackle and then my ear feels puffy and I can hear whats going on in my mouth more clearly than anything I've ever heard before. Is this something that I should be concerned about?
5. The best band ever is getting back together. Jeff is dying to see them and promised me he'd go to their concert with me (he's so excited!) Who else is in?!?!?!?!
6. So...at my last Howl at the Moon party, not only did FIVE of my friends win parties of their own there, but I won another one for being a loyal customer. Score!
7. For all those on the edge of your seats in anticipation...the magic bug finally grew and was a ladybug, but ladybugs when 50 times their normal size, blue, and spongey look more like cockroaches.
1. You know who drives a Cadillac? Betty White. Just sayin'.
2. I have officially met a Pulitzer-prize winner in my lifetime. Tracy Letts just won and I had met him way back when I interned at Steppenwolf.
3. Official ticketing business=trying to get a magic grow bug to grow in an envelope licker bottle. It took entirely too long. In fact, I never actually saw results.
1.5:
Approximate number of hours I spent this weekend driving around the city trying and failing to find parking.
4:
Number of crappy apartments I saw. I had a good feeling because the guy showing me around had a pink tie AND pants with pink pinstripes...seriously if you saw the apartments I've seen you would see why I have not moved.
21:
Name of the movie I went to see with Nad and Bryan on Saturday. I thought it was good, not spectacular, but good. I had a few problems with the plot though (I suppose some are minor "spoilers" but really nothing that will ruin the movie for you...) FIrst, the geeky lead character in these movies is always way too hot. Not that I am complaining that I have to sit for 2 hours and watch a really hot guy...Second was that at one point Spacey lays out the "rules" on of them is that they all must take on new personas and dress/act the part...yet the lead guy was never dressed/acting as anyone other than himself. Third was that another rule was that they were never to be seen together, yet after they were done gambling they'd go out to clubs and they'd share a hotel suite. Fourth was that at one point the chick was comped a suite by the hotel...but if I'm not mistaken, her job was to sit there and bet only the minimum...no way are they comping a suite to someone who is betting just the minimum.
23:
Approximate number of hours I have slept in the last 45 hours.
So I did very little list-wise this month :(
But I can't say it was a failure of a month, because it was pretty kick-ass...I mean I did the polar plunge and that should be worth like 50 points alone. But I don't make the rules...wait...no...I do.
11. Leave the Country (5)
I booked a flight and a hostel :)
54. Go to a coffee shop at least twice a month to write (5)
Did this month.
61. Watch all the seasons of 24 (3)
I finished season 2, started season 3.
62. See 5 Dario Argento films (2)
I saw Opera, which is a horror film about opera...not to be confused with my life...
67. Watch 3 Fred Astaire movies I have never seen (1)
I watched Easter Parade and Royal Wedding, giving me my lone point this month :(
131. Finish my website (so many little things I never finished) (0.5)
I realized just how outdated my site was: it still said I worked at RE/MAX (quit almost 2 years ago) and still said I'm dying to go to Europe (I've now been to six countries). Still have ways to go to get it updated.
March total: 1
February total: 5
January total: 13
Total Points: 19
one.
Ron, the guy in ticketing whose desk I like to rearrange, interoffice mailed me a Ned Flanders doll today. It came in a manilla envelope. Did I mention that this Ned FLanders doll talked when you pressed a button? And did I mention that the mail guy had to walk down the hall with this big envelope that made noise every time it moved? Later Ron emailed me to tell me that his brother in Iraq gave him that doll and he needed it back. So I wrote boo on a napkin and put it over the doll and told Ron that Ned had died but came back as a ghost.
two.
My Garmin almost killed me. I was on Roosevelt and it said keep left and enter the roundabout. Ummm, I kept left although the street didn't split or anything, then the road curved a tiny bit, but was in no way, shape, or form a roundabout, then it immediately said in 40 feet, take the ramp on your right...WTF?
three.
Yesterday my financial advisor hosted a golf thngy where we got to go to a domed-driving range to hit some balls and a golf instructor came around to help us with our swing. Not that I needed any help...
OK, OK, more like, not that I've ever played golf before...
Like the good advisor he is he managed to let me know about the event just a few hours beforehand.
The instuctor came along while I was hitting balls and asked if I've ever played golf before. I told him only aiming at clowns mouths. He assumed I meant mini golf. Hahaha, what he doesn't know...
He gave me some pointers but told me I was actually pretty good at it considering I've never really done it before :)
He told me to swing my whole body when I swing, but not to fall off the edge (we were on the second level). The best advice he gave me though was when I asked him if golf was like bowling and whether I should wait until the person next to me went before going, but he said not to worry about that.
At one point I knocked a ball into one of the flag poles. I told my advisor and asked him if I win a prize for that. He said yes and handed right over a golf tool dealy! It looks like a Swiss Army knife but instead has nail tools like a little stick to push back cuticles and a nail brush! I was very excited about my prize...until I saw that he gave the guy next to me a prize too even though HE didn't hit the flag pole :(
Hood was there too and at one point I said that my goal of the night was to hit the ball into one of the buckets that was out there...and then, near the end of the night, what do you know, I actually managed to hit it in! :)
It was fun, except for the fact that my hands got gangrene :(
April 1, 198something
Valerie's glass of milk is blue. She is very confused. Turns out the cup was upside down.
April 1, 2000
Valerie's boyfriend Mat, who goes to school in another state, tells her he is staying in Milwaukee for Summerstock and will not see her all summer. She cries. He has to go and ends the conversation. A week later Valerie brings up the fact that she won't see him all summer. He is confused, then says "Oh, yeah...April Fools"
April 1, 2001
Valerie's ex boyfriend Mat tells her he is gay. She cries. He can be pretty convincing. He at least calls later that night to tell her he was joking.
April 1, 2002orso
Valerie reads in the Daily Illini that they are replacing Chief Illiniwek with the rest of the members of the Village People. She may have kind of bought it.
Ummm...yeah...
