Ella Ella Eh Eh Eh

There’s pretty much NO way I can work today because:

a) It is currently 59° outside.
b) It’s Friday.
c) We made an offer on a house this morning and I’m waiting to hear back from the owners.
d) One of my oldest Jersey friends, Pilipoy, is visiting Boston tomorrow.
e) Beau and I are hosting a dinner party (read: shit show) tomorrow night and when my liver hears the word “party” it starts sending chemical signals out to my brain that say “HOLLAHHH - CRANK UP UMBRELLA AND START DANCING AROUND!!”

I’m forcibly resisting the urge to take my swivel chair outside in order to tailgate in the parking lot. It’s taking all my will power just to stay in this cubicle. I have no energy left over for silly tasks like counting or filing or doing anything else that I’m currently being paid to do. So instead, I'll tell you a random story.

Earlier this afternoon, the controller, president, and vice president took me out for lunch (technically my welcome lunch which has been postponed for a couple of months because they have real jobs, which I totally understand). Here’s a sample of our conversation which may help explain why I love this freakin’ place:

VP: So what kind of wines do you like?

Me: Cheap ones… pretty much anything with an animal on the label. I bought an expensive one recently that tasted horrible so, now I pretty much stick to Yellow Tail.

Controller: I love Yellow Tail!

VP: Are you more of a cocktail person? What’s your signature drink?

Me: Bacardianddietcoke [Yes, I told this to senior management without any hesitation whatsoever and practically before the vice president had finished his sentence]

President: I love Mt. Gay rum. I could drink that stuff straight.

Then the conversation turned to a discussion of rum and rum-based drinks for the next 5 minutes and I kept grinning from ear to ear and thinking “I am never going to leave this place.” At the end of our meal, we clinked our sodas together in cheers and they welcomed me to the company again.

Me: Just pretend there’s rum in here

President: We should start bringing flasks to lunch.

LOVE THIS PLACE. Anyway, have an awesome weekend! Full report of party shenanigans on Monday. And for any of the invitees who read this, don’t you dare flake out! We have Guitar Hero and a camera all set up.

The Game’s Up, Scarlet. There’s No More Bullets Left In That Gun

I simply cannot wait for the end of the year to summarize the awesomeness that is 2009, so let me share with you what’s going on in the life and times of Dangerous K:

New Jobs = 2
As you already know, I now have a job that doesn’t suck ass and I’m very pleased to announce that Beau officially resigned this morning from the Evil Accounting Firm in order to join Happy- Fun-Time-Angels-Singing Company in two weeks.

House Purchases = 1
Since Landlord Man unofficially evicted us after our tame little Christmas party, we decided to take the plunge and buy a place while the market was tanking and the government is giving a sizeable tax credit to first time home buyers.

Puppies to Adopt = 1
About 5 minutes after we move into our new yet-to-be-determined house, I’ll be supplementing our family with a new character: a mutt. I’m now accepting name suggestions.

Baby Showers to Plan = 1
I’ve been put in charge of Bologna’s baby shower. Normally I’m not put in charge of anything because I’m irresponsible, lazy, and usually drunk, but regardless – in what I can only assume was a fit of hormone induced tenderness – Bologna asked me to spear head the thing so here I am, interviewing strippers and placing orders for an immense supply of cocaine when who should step in to help? My big fat Italian family from Long Island which is sure to cause lots of drama.

So, sorry Misty. Looks like we won’t need you this time.

Weddings to Attend = 2
Jay Aitch proposed to Chairsy in December and they will wed in October AND I get to be a bridesmaid! Yay more inclusion!

Beau’s sister She-ra is also getting married this fall and she’s doing so …

Humans to be Birthed = 1
… the same week of Bologna’s due date which means I should probably refrain from get tanked at her wedding just in case I get the call at 2 am and need to start driving to Jersey in my Sunday best. I can already envision that police stop: me in a pink taffeta gown with mascara running down my cheeks while I explain to the officer that I am driving at 90 mph down the Merit Parkway because my Bologna is hatching her Nugget RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT AND I NEED TO BE THERE WITH A BASEBALL MIT TO CATCH THE EMISSION.

So all in all, that gives this year a total of (two plus one plus one plus one plus two plus one) EIGHT!! Eight which happens to be my favorite number and doesn’t even include the charity walk that I’m doing with the Quatro this April or the numerous visits from out-of-town friends over the next few months or any other events that might pop up.

Best year ever!

They’re Lethal At Eight Months, and I Do Mean Lethal.

Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to keep a secret? It’s hard. Like REALLY hard. I’m not a secretive person. It’s just not part of who I am. I have no air of mystery about me. I like to share every thought that crosses my mind with everyone I know. I told the entire class the day I got my first period. Jabbering to my loved ones and practical strangers in person isn’t enough anymore. Now I feel the compulsion to publically discuss my bowel movements with the internet via blog.

ANYWAY. My point is that I have been harboring a secret for two whole weeks and it has been gnawing at my innards with such vehemence I thought it was going to chew its way out of my brain and expose itself to the world without my permission. Now I have official written consent to share and let me tell you, it is as cathartic as a hangover pooh:

BOLOGNA DONE GOT HERSELF KNOCKED UP.

Technically, she’s not knocked up because she is lawfully married in the eyes of Yahweh and also the state of New Jersey but that does not change the fact that she is growing a human life form in her private parts which will join us on the outside on September 3, 2009. The rest is just semantics.

I obtained this intelligence when I went to visit her for her birthday last month in the Jerz. While I hung around imbibing my post-sketchy-Amtrak-regional-train rumndietcokes, she showed me her ultrasound which looked something like this:

So it is with great pleasure (and my sincerest apologies to my future niece/nephew) that I introduce Nugget, my sister’s fetus who she thought resembled a dino chicken nugget on the sonogram. Everyone give Bologna a hearty congrats for doing what Michael Crichton envisioned and prepare yourselves for an overload of Jurassic Park quotes!

Seemingly Popular Despite The State Of My Ankles

Ah, sweet interweb, it feels good to go out carousing on the town after months and months of self inflicted hibernation. It feels good everywhere but in one’s head the following morning.

After seeing five houses on Saturday morning with Beau (two of which we plan on returning to see again with his parents next weekend), I traveled into the city to dine with Notorious and Face at Pour House which features half priced burgers every Saturday. Per usual, our intentions of eating a quiet dinner and consuming a reasonable number of drinks were side tracked by doing the exact opposite. I assume this occurred because we haven’t been able to get together in close to a month and we had lots of womenfolk updates to catch up on. Also, we have absolutely no willpower. Except for Notorious who demonstrated amazing willpower in ordering an extra dinner to take home to her boyfriend and then successfully fighting me off as I repeatedly tried to assault the container for a single French fry… or alternately, his entire burger.

Eventually, she brought me with the ladies’ room with her because I could not be trusted near the food in question. We read graffiti to each other to pass the time until I nearly leapt out of my seat from sheer excitement at finding the BEST graffiti ever. If you’re ever at Pour House, I suggest that you to use the first stall on the left in the women’s lavatory and look to your left once seated because you will see the following message scrawled on the partition:
After a hearty laugh, we returned to Face to tell her of our discovery and, being the brains of the operation, she told me to return to the bathroom to take a picture of the graffiti. I returned but couldn’t work up the chutzpah to take flash photography in the women’s room because if the roles were reversed and I was the one taking a tinkle when I noticed the flash of a camera, I would freak the fuck out and probably stab someone.

From dinner I condoned a move from the hipster college-kid orgy that exploded inside Pour House to a quiet book lined corner of Lir and from there we went on to The Globe to meet up with another friend. In this way, I broke the cardinal rule of drinking which clearly states that barhopping is stupid when it’s cold outside and you are wearing your boyfriend’s boots because yours are soaked through because you’re too vain to buy REAL winter boots instead of cute fuzzy Sherpa boots. Anyway, despite the temperature and the blisters forming on my calves, we walked to the Globe and along the way, I had the opportunity to cock block Notorious from giving a quarter to a sketch ball. She earned that damn quarter and that’s more than could be said of him.

Somewhere around my seventh rumndietcoke and the arrival of our party’s addition, I found myself in a cab going to The Washington Square Tavern in Brookline to join yet more people at a fourth bar. It would seem seven rumndietcokes is the threshold where I cease being Dangerous K and begin introducing myself as Shania.

I fell into bed around 2 in the morning and was woken by a smirking, judgmental Beau at 9 to brunch with Chairsy and Jay Aitch, our favorite engaged couple who enjoy stealing chairs with me from people’s front porches, and chasing mice around my apartment. I struggled through the day with sunglasses and arrived successfully at dinner with the Italian.

Those series of events are my best explanation for why I didn’t have time to shave my legs this weekend which resulted in my current predicament of accidentally wearing high water slacks that reveal my Clydesdale-like blister-covered ankles.

Don’t look at me. I am a monster.

Lessons from the Metro Boston Roadways

After merging into the left lane during this morning’s commute as many other drivers do every day of their lives and will continue doing for the rest of time, the owner of a light-green high-end minivan floored his vehicle in order to tail me as if to say, “I know there was an appropriately sized gap in front of me that was perfect for your automobile, but still, your presence in this lane will not be tolerated despite the fact that you are clearly keeping up with traffic.” To clarify, I didn’t cut him off. This individual sped up AFTER I was already in front of him and proceeded to tail me at what appeared to be less than a foot of space at 60 mph.

In response, I righteously displayed my middle finger for his viewing pleasure. He retorted with an elaborate hand gesture of mock-fellatio. He continued to tail for several more minutes, even after I tapped on the breaks nearly causing him to nearly hit my mid-90s boat with his Mercedes. Eventually, he tried to pass me on the right and failed miserably when the semi in the next lane cock blocked his ass.

Traffic moved on without the fellater but it left me thinking about all that I have learned by driving in and around Beantown:

Boston Road Repair Fund Minus $22-Billion Big Dig Equals 22-Billion Potholes

Boston never EVER fixes their roads. On the blue moon that they DO decide to fix a pothole, they will do so on a Monday evening at 5:30 pm so as to inconvenience the highest number of people. They will post between two and seven police officers to stand ominously on the side of the road and watch the progress so as to maximize wastefulness.

The “Here I Come” Principle

In my homeland of the Dirty Jerz, the root of all bad driving is impatience. People will tail you because you’re holding up traffic and they need to go somewhere. The appropriate speed for the left lane on the Jersey Turnpike is infinity. You are expected to go as fast as possible in that lane. If you allow anyone to catch up to you when there is no one is front of you, it is their civic duty to let you know that you have failed society. That’s why the Jersey Sweep was invented – to get around Virginians doing 80 mph. Come to think of it, I wonder if Mr. Let-Me-Show-You-How-I-Put-Penis-In-My-Mouth was from the Jerz?

In Massachusetts though, the root of all bad driving is obliviousness. This phenomenon has come to be known in my household as the “Here I Come” principle (as in “ready or not, here I come”, as in “I don’t know exactly where you are, but I’m probably coming in your general direction right now”). This phrase was coined after Beau, a native Bostonian, took a mostly blind left hand turn from the right hand lane in a highly populated downtown area and my subsequent caterwauling. As a general rule, Bay Staters have no idea what’s going on when they are behind the wheel. They are completely unaware of their surroundings, usually on the phone, and just plain don’t notice that there are other cars on the road.

The Hypotenuse of “Why Don’t You Look Where I’m Going?”

With all that obliviousness comes a certain amount of implied trust. They trust you not to rear-end them when they cut you off without looking, and you may pass that trust on to the next driver when you park your car at a green light to get out and inspect the effect of a carwash on your rims. In Jersey, it is your responsibility not to get yourself into an accident. In Massachusetts, it is everyone else’s responsibility to make sure you don’t get into an accident.

Rotaries Equal Retardation

I used to go through three rotaries on my way to work. Each one backed up every single day, at every time of day and the inside resembles a mosh pit for cars.

As a preliminary effort to head off reactionary hate mail comments, I challenge you to take a toodle around Boston to check it out for yourself before committing yourself to an eternity of my ridicule by whining that I’ve stereotyped horribly and you are personally offended. Should you chose to refute the facts stated above, I require specific examples as well as your license plate number so I know to avoid you on the roads.

Just Like “House of 1000 Corpses” Except with Fewer Corpses and More Humiliation

It was only a matter of time before I got into trouble here at my new office. Three blissful weeks of uninterrupted professionalism and sobriety were just too much for me to ask of the Universe. I’ve been waiting patiently to do something dreadfully embarrassing like flip a driver off in traffic only to find out in the parking lot that it was my boss. That’s why today, day 13 of my new job, I was not surprised when all that waiting came to an end.

I was lost in thought this morning on a routine trip to the lady’s room, probably pondering the supreme existential questions of mankind like where on the unattractiveness spectrum does ugliness end and deformity begin. Still deep in contemplation, I entered the restroom and approached my favorite stall. My reverie was cruelly disrupted when I saw before me a toilet with a lifted seat and urine spatters along the raw, exposed rim. Huh, I thought, here’s one I haven’t seen before. Some women are real freaks I guess.

My eyes widened in panic as it occurred to me that that may not be the case. A more reasonable explanation presented itself. I might have overshot the girl’s room by one door. As a result of my own spaciness and a case of massive autopilot failure, I might instead be in the men’s room. Like, for males only. Coincidentally, the gender of the CEO, President, and Vice President of my new company. All of whom were getting out of a breakfast meeting any minute and were no doubt, full to the brim with coffee.

These disturbing mental images flashed through my mind as I stood just inside the stall, completely frozen. Then the main door to the bathroom opened and I slammed the stall door closed behind me and attempted to shrink to an eighth my normal size while cowering next to a sullied toilet that despite more serious prevailing concerns, continued to noticeably skeeve me out.

Instead of the click-clacking of stilettos across the tiled floor, I heard the soft padding of flat shoes. Like the scene in a slasher movie just before a stupid blonde is murdered, the footsteps moved casually past the sinks, excruciatingly slowly past the crack in the door jam that I was desperately trying not to watch, and finally into a neighboring stall. With my heart pounding in my ears, I ripped open the door and flew out of the restroom.

As I paused for breath directly outside like the complete and utter moron that I am, the President appeared in the hallway before me. My face fell into a look of abject horror to have been caught exiting the men’s room. Thankfully, like all good senior staff members, he was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice that I appeared to have just soiled myself in his presence. He smiled benevolently before passing me and entering a door to my left.

I spun around and saw that I had been in the women’s room after all. My trustworthy autopilot had not failed. Shaking, I double checked the skirted symbol on the door and reentered, making sure to avoid the tainted stall of terror which I may never be able to use again.

Where's Waldo? Let Me Show You.

Ya know what pisses me off, Interweb? When your next door neighbors go away for two weeks at the end of December and turn off their wireless router so that you are bereft of Interweb access for HALF A BLOODY MONTH. And then they come back and lock the network so that you can't mooch off of it anymore. How uncharitable is that at this time of year? Seriously, my neighbors are the opposite of philanthropy. You can blame them for me not blogging much recently.

I suppose you could also blame my new rockin' job which keeps me super busy during the day but I would prefer if you didn't come down too hard on them. Granted I've only been working for two weeks but I absolutely adore the new gig. The days fly by since I'm not just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, I get to commute by car in my new pimpin mid-90s whip, the office is filled with girls my age who invite me to lunch every day to discuss our favorite available-only-on-TV merchandise, and there is free Diet Coke available in the fridge. If I can figure out how to sneak Bacardi onto the office supply ordering list, I'll absolutely be in 9-5 heaven.

In addition to Interweb issues and working for a living, Beau and I are now house hunting in earnest. The morning after our Christmas party Evil Landlord politely asked us to vacate by March instead of staying till the end of our lease in June. He insisted it wasn't because we were blasting Bette Midler until 3:00 am but instead because his sperminated wife will be spawning in the early spring and they'd like to move her mother into our apartment. While this is a massive inconvenience for us, I don't particularly want to live one thin layer of floorboards above a screaming baby. Plus, I imagine our landlord's life is about to suck big time if his mother-in-law will be living in the house. I take some twisted comfort in that. But, don't worry. We're not being evicted and we haven't put anything in writing. We're just trying our damndest to get out of here before the Seed of Evil Landlord is birthed.

At any rate, Beau bought us our very own Interweb connection so I'm free to babble to my heart's content. And now that I'm done with what was intended as a quick introduction to get you up to speed on my enormously interesting life, I see that it has actually evolved into a fairly lengthy entry unto itself so instead of launching into further revelations, I will instead say goodbye for now and promise to post again within the week.