I forgot to charge my iPod last night, so I was forced to plug my headphones into the gym tv/audio system. The person before me had left the TV turned to the in-house music video station, so I decided to give it a shot. It was an interesting mix of old school 80's videos, some new stuff (actually quite a bit of stuff from the record label I work at as well) and in terms of genre was completely across the board, rock, metal, alternative, pop, rap, definitely a good work-out mix. I was trotting along just fine until a rap song by the Artist Fabolus (I think) came on. The video and lyrics to this song nearly knocked me off the treadmill. Basically the song is about a man who is cheating on his wife with another woman. He's praising the "other woman" for being so cool, and not hounding him to spend more time with her or to leave his wife. "you know my situation and sometimes I know you get impatient, but you don't put on shows to get ovations", "You aint ever step out of line, Or get out a pocket, So i made sure canary sent out your locket". I was appalled at this video and the lyrics. Is this really the message people feel is appropriate to send to our children. Boys see this and think it's cool to have extramarital affairs. Girls are taught that status as "the other woman" is not only acceptable, but acceptance of the position is rewarded. It's ludicrous. I hate this society we live in at times.

"Cause the entre ain't as good without something on the side ya' know."

I got tagged..

I got tagged (whatever that means...I'm still newish to all this) and apparently I'm supposed to list 6 weird things about me. Anyone who has read my blog knows WAY more than 6 weird things about me already, but alas, I'm doing as I'm told.

1. I won't eat red meat, fish or pork, but I have a secret love of salami, and sometimes indulge.

2. I'm terrified of the post office. I buy my stamps online and send everything I can either FedEx or UPS. I will NOT go into the post office.

3. When I cook (stop laughing), I do the dishes BEFORE I eat. The kitchen must be clean before I'll sit down to eat my food.

4. I absolutely love doing laundry and ironing. Its very cathartic for me.

5. I own hundreds of books, yet I refuse to put them in any order. I like the hunt when I'm looking for something specific.

6. I'm a photographer, yet I absolutely can not stand to have my own photo taken. I loathe the thought of someone having a photograph of me in their posession.

A true nightmare.....

I rarely dream, or at least I rarely remember my dreams, but last night I dreamt I was in love. I've never had a dream like this before. I don't know how I knew I was, or even who he was, but when I woke up I knew I had just dreamt love. I'm not someone who believes that dreams mean anything, but this one really shook me up for some reason. I've never dreamt an emotion before...it's a very powerful thing.

Everyone is out at meetings on Thursdays, hence the excessive blogging.

In my infinite boredom, I've been blog browsing on blogger.com...it's an exercise in humanity and I like being reminded that there are other people out there with the same crazy thoughts and habits as I have.

One of the things that came up in something I was reading was the concept of a "love language". It was a definite "light bulb moment" for me as Dr. Phil says. We all absorb things differently. I consider myself a romantic, I respond best to actions of love, while some people respond better to verbal expressions of love, or physical expressions of love. We get upset when people question our feelings, yet we don't acknowledge that everyone has a different heart and a different way of not only expressing it, but also of believing. I say that nobody has ever loved me, and yet I can't help but wonder if perhaps they did, I just didn't see it.

Oh the memories......for you Caryn....

I was chatting online with a co-worker this morning and the subject of college antics came up.....Now by no means am I wild....for me the typical weekend includes scrubbing the bathtub and watching old episodes of the West Wing on DVD in my pjs, but like most people, I've done some stupid things in my life. Unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose) one of my roommates in college, was into photography and captured many of my moments, so for all eternity I can be reminded of my stupidity. Normally I'm terrified to have my picture taken. I absolutely loath being in front of the camera and always volunteer to take group photos when I can, but during my college years I didn't care, or didn't notice and I have a wonderful photo album filled with memories. (One that I will hopefully never have to share with anyone, ever). I happened to flip through it last night and couldn't help but laugh at my favorites.....Deciding it was going to be a fantastic idea to sled down the stairs of my apartment on my hardcover sketch book (great idea until I hit the wall at the landing where the stairs turn).....Staying up for 3 days straight drafting and being so irritated by the large tree-like weed growing out side the window next to my drafting table that I did some 3am pruning....with a butcher knife.....trying to solder my circuits project after 2 days of no sleep and burning my fingers to a crisp.....and of course my favorite....taking my roommates desk apart using only a hammer in order to get a stuck drawer to open....Various roommates took part in their own antics as well. Mike who once tried to scare me by putting a paper bag over his head and charging at me with the Dustbuster (which didn't work but I have a fantastic photo of him trying)...Adam who once set the kitchen on fire, to which his only course of action was to say "whoa"....Andy who once forgot to remove the wrapping from a frozen pizza and put it in the oven.....and Erin who dressed her boyfriend up in my high school homecoming dress and took him to a party. Not to mention there is still the issue of the missing colander...which I'm pretty sure can be found at Curt's house...but I've since replaced it and am trying to let that one go...It's ok...we got them even in one of the best snowball fights in the history of winter....

I miss those days. I definitely don't have as much fun as I did back then. I miss being surrounded by creativity and artistic-minded people. I don't know if I appreciated it back then...but I definitely miss it now.....

Thanks for the trip down memory lane....

So....I was thinking...

That it probably isn't normal to be cleaning the stove at 3am....but yet, that was exactly what I was doing....the street outside my window was quiet...no noises from the elephants upstairs, just me, my bottle of 409 and a scrub brush.....

Ok...it's official. I'm weird.

First, Last, Next

FIRSTS:

1. First kiss: Age 16, Patrick someone in the high school band room...LOL
2. First love: Still waiting
3. First heartbreak: My high school bf Scott...he cheated on me
4. First car: Blue Mercery Tracer
5. First pet: Moon my one-eyed dog
6. First word: Doggie
7. First concert: Emerson String Quartet....
8. First sexual partner: C at the age of 20
9. First alcoholic beverage: A wine cooler
10. First time you stayed out all night: High school....I liked an older guy and wanted to show him I was grown up...LOL
11. First best friend: Kylene in grade school, Aaron in high school
12. First job: Stagehand
13. First school: Wow..no clue....
12. First movie you watched in a theater: Bambi with my mom
13. First thing you really saved up money for: A drafting table LOL
14. First run in with the Law: Speeding....didn't get a ticket though.
15. First date: Still waiting LOL...hmm probably Scott in high school...movies or something

--------------------------------------------------------

LASTS:

1. Last kiss: No comment, but he was HOT!
2. Last person you hugged: A co-worker I think after a bad day.
3. Last person you spoke to: My boss's wife.
4. Last alcoholic beverage: Wine last weekend
5. Last sexual partner: No comment, see #1.
6. Last movie: Rush Hour! It was on TV last weekend.
7. Last person you thought of: See #1 and 5 LOL
8. Last school you went to: University of Illinois
9. Last person you said " I love you" to: Nobody
10. Last run in with the Law: Car accident a few years ago..
11. Last fight you were in: Verbal? a few nights ago, physical - back in college.
12. Last bar/club/concert/party you went to: Cipriani Wall Street
13. Last person you e-mailed: Grace
14. Last thing you ate: Rice and peas
15. Last thing you saved up money for: Car
-------------------------------------------------------

NEXT

1. Next person you want to kiss: The last person I kissed.
2. Next movie you want to see: In her Shoes
3. Next person you want to go out with: CH
4. Next car you want to have: Ford Escape Hybrid
5. Next time you're going out: Monday night I think
6. Next time you're going to move: In 2 years or so back to IL.
7. Next thing you are going to save money for: Car
8. Next time that you will drink alcohol: No idea.
9. Next person you are going to call: Grace probably
10. Next place you'll take vacation: London
11. Next thing you are going to do after filling this survey out: Go back to work.
12. Next thing you are going to eat: No clue...
13. Next time you plan to be drunk: My birthday
14. Next thing you are going to do outside: Walk to the subway to go home.
15. Next person you'd like to see fill this out: Caryn

I'm a single gal....

I'm a single NYC gal, good job, supports herself, buy books like most women buy clothes, drug free and have no more than the normal amount of insanity that ones has to posess to live in NY, so why on earth is it THIS hard to find a date in this city (or any city for that matter). Could it really be that I have dated ALL the eligible Asian men already? According to yahoo personals, eharmony and match.com, I have. Upon filling out the sometimes extensive profiles required for registration, I'm constantly matched with the SAME guy (Andrew)...who has already had the experience of dumping me and is probably not all that eager to repeat it. Aside from wanting an Asian man, I am extremely open minded about the type of man I want to meet. I'm not even really looking to "date" whatever that means to the kids these days, I'm looking for someone to have a cup of coffee with over the Sunday Times, someone to walk through Central Park with on a sunny Saturday afternoon....grab an ocassional drink with after a hard day at work...Can I really be at the absolute bottom of the NYC dating pool? At this point I'm not even IN the pool, I'm in the locker room stuck trying to figure out if I have my suit on backwards or not....

I'm tired. Not the kind of tired that goes away after a 20 minute nap, not the kind of tired where you'll catch up after a good night's rest, but the kind of completely exhaustion that only goes away with a good close the drapes, turn the phones off 15 hour hibernation kind of sleep. Let's hope coffee can stave this off until the weekend....

Opened the new car/moving savings account today. A friend suggested that I have a separate (non ATM linked) account and I found one with no minimum and a decent interest rate, so I went for it. I need to be better in general about saving and this is definitely a great way to start. I've also GOT to replace the camera that got stolen. I definitely want that before my trip to London this summer.

Here officially begins my stint in frugality!!!!

The new bookcases arrived! Even though I had to spend my entire weekend attempting to assemble them by myself (a task that with help would have two hours tops) it was well worth it. I have empty shelf space again! Hurrah!

Off to browse amazon.com...it's a vicious vicious circle...

I'm tired of being the pool you are dangling your feet in. Either jump in or leave.

What extreme boredom at work makes you do....

pry off all the keys on your keyboard and clean the crumbs out...now if only I could remember where the letters go....

Ok. Enough with the snow coverage already! Yes, we got a lot of snow. Yes it's difficult to walk in. Yes it cancelled lots of flights, but we GET it....Snow is hard to deal with, but we're all going to be ok. This is not Apocolypse Now. CNN, NY Post, Daily News...please go find some real news. Like tratracking down prominent lawmakers who shoot friends for sport on the weekends.

The concept of baggage came up in another forum, but I didn't want to post my thoughts there. Baggage is the stuff that makes a person real. It's the lessons of their past, the scars from their experiences, their triumphs, their accomplishments. Without baggage we would be empty, an unused suitcase with no travels or scratches.

Some people search for an ideal in a mate. They want someone who is flawless and settle for nothing less than their definition of perfection. I seek the scars of another person, the marks from a life lived. I want someone who doesn't hide their history, who has a story to tell and who wants to hear even the ugliest facets of mine. I want someone who is real.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in teh breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Sonnet 130 -W. Shakespeare

Expectations....

Someone asked me recently if it was possible to be just be friends with someone you have/had romantic feelings for. I absolutely think it's possible, but not without a LOT of torture, tears and heartache. It comes down to whether you feel that the moments of friendship that you do share are worth the moments of sadness that will accompany them. It baffles me that we put ourselves in these situations. How many friendships never came to light because we destroyed them with expectations of romance and dating and were dissapointed? How can you even truly like someone before you know them? You meet someone who kind-of might be cool and jump straight in to "potential relationship mode". It's not the qualities of the person you are attracted to, it's the idea of a relationship and hormones that are calling the shots. I'm definitely guilty of falling in love with ideas and not people. Maybe not so much ideas, but with possibility. A lot of times we fight for the concept of a relationship and not the actual person. One person tries to change the other into the ideal and that is almost always the beginning of the end. I am so sensitive to being altered. Maybe it's my innate stubborness, but as soon as I feel as though I'm not accepted for truly who I am, I bail. I'm the first to admit I suck at relationships, but the one thing I never do is try to make someone into someone they are not. People are complex. They are made up of parts that annoy you, parts that you admire, parts that you hate, parts that you couldn't live without....Relationships (for me) are about loving the sum of the parts, the bigger picture. The whole person. Unfortunately, people get to chose the parts of themselves that you get to see. The "bigger picture" is still cropped. We all have secrets we'll never tell, parts of our history that will always remain just ours. The trick is finding someone's core self, finding the pieces of them that affect everything else. When you find those elements of a person, that's when it becomes something real. Your relationship stops being about similar interests, taste in food and starts being something strong. I'm not defined by my hatred of tomatoes, my love of Ocean's 11 or my obsessive organization and I certainly don't want others to define me or pigeonhole me based on those things. You have to want to search. Getting to know me is a journey and one that many come ill equiped for. Perhaps I should give out a compass, a canteen and a weapon at the door. We're too quick to categorize people I think...to put them into sections of our heart "friend" "romantic interest" "weird guy". You'll never know what someone is meant to be to you if you don't abolish expectations from you mind and focus on getting to know who they are. I need to try harder to listen to my own advice. I see a gorgeous Asian man and immediately my mind swirls with possibility and hope. Its the hope (and the hormones LOL) that destroys the possibility in the end.

NY Odd sighting #1

This morning on my subway ride to work there was an Asian man in his 30s reading an erotic story. Not a book that had steamy parts, but a computer printed out erotic story. Now I'm all for freedom of speech, but really isn't 8:30am a bit early in the AM to be reading such things? Seems more like reading material for the ride home...

Before last night I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard I cried. Around midnight my friend Grace called me to turn on Animal Planet. I thought she was insane, but I did it anyway and discovered this show called "Puppy Bowl II". Basically it's THREE HOURS of puppies running around in a pseudo mini football field. It sounds boring, but it's strangely enthralling. For hours I sat glued to my TV watching puppies play. Ocassionally a "ref" of some sort would come out throw a flag on the field (which usually a puppy would promptly steal or pee on) and announce something ridiculous like "5 yard penalty for illegal "pawffence". Grace and I were in TEARS watching the whole spectacle which included a riveting half time show of horror stricken cats sitting on scratching posts getting bombarded with buckets and buckets of confetti. It was pure comedy from start to finish. It's good to laugh like that every once in awhile. Check your Animal Planet schedule for repeats. It's not something one should miss.

Another addictive book site...

http://www.bookcrossing.com/

*at least this one is free :-)

Some thoughts on dating..

Now I'm not a person who actually gets asked out on dates, and actually can't even remember the last time I had anything even resembling a date, but lately I've been thinking about dating and the various ways that people meet and fall in love. When you meet someone on-line or go on a blind date, you go into the experience with all these expectations of "Mr. Ideal" and it's easy to write the person off when they don't possess all the qualities you have in your head that you are looking for. I truly is a job interview of sorts, the job being "husband". When you meet someone in a different context, at work, school, on the street, you don't have a preconceieved label for them in mind already. You take your time, you get to know them slowly and fully and a relationship of definition forms on its own (acquaintance, boyfriend, friend, strange guy I'll never talk to again, etc.).

Patience truly is a virtue. I know I am sometimes guilty of looking for labels and not for people. I'm guilty of having an ideal in my head that I'm starting to realize isn't that important to me. There is a new book out called "The Year of Yes" where this woman decided that for a year she would go out with every man who asked, no matter what. Now granted this woman got asked out more times in this one year than I'll be asked out in a lifetime, but the concept is intriquing. I haven't read the book yet, but apparently she did end up marrying one of the guys she normally would have rejected "on spec". I wonder sometimes if the quest for Mr. Ideal causes us to lose our open mind about people. We stop looking at people as a whole person and instead section them out into "things we like about them" and "things we don't like about them" categories, instead of remembing how they make us feel. The older I get the harder the struggle between practicality and emotion becomes. It's a fight to think less and feel more. I just hope its worth it in the end.....