week. end.
i'm starting to really despise friday afternoons. it seems many a crisis (uh, hello, more like POOR PLANNING) springs up on fridays, for immediate action, and people come running from all corners of the company, slightly panic-stricken, hoping i can get communication out to the stores to do... whatever it is that this person forgot to ask them to do on a timely manner. after visiting me, their fears are calmed and their weekend begins... and i'm still here, trying to tie up their loose ends. booooo to that.

at least i have a spa day tomorrow. that should almost make up for it. the wedding on sunday should make up for the rest!

oh, hey, by the way...
did i tell you i had a date this past weekend? like a real bona-fide date... yeah, crazy, huh?

i'll be your private dancer
do me a favor while you're sitting there reading this: try to move your rib cage, just slide it to the left and then to the right, and back again. Nice little stretch, good to get some movement, right?

okay, now try doing it without moving your shoulders or hips.

my midsection (especially my back!) is so incredibly sore because I spent 2 hours on saturday trying to master this impossible skill. the key to belly dancing is isolation; those best at it can move all sorts of parts without effecting other parts. Crazy. At least this time the teacher was a little more normal... err, comparitively, I guess. She's a rather large woman with tri-color hair and was wearing a tied-up shirt as a bra. And she's definitely all about the belly in belly dancing (yeesh). But her pedagogies were a little more identifiable. The lady I had last time was this incredibly skinny, tall blonde thing who told us to "just follow along." She started sashaying around and shimmyshimmyshimmying all over the place. The rest of us were running into each other and going into convulsions (shimmy?) trying to emulate her movements. Worst, we're in a many-window room in the front of the athletic complex... and i happened to be the model (i was closest to the window) for the many on-lookers we attracted. Join us next week as we attempt to figure out the difference between a shake and a shimmy!

i should know better

the southern draw(l)
so, what day is it today? i'm all discombobulated, having spent the better part of the week not exactly at work. i went to New Orleans (herein referred to as 'Nawlins') on Friday night to cheer on my karate fools out in the Big Easy. Only the city could be called that, as my trip itself was not so much. A total of 5 hours in delays and layovers added on to my round-trip, but at least i can say that i am now intimately acquainted with Houston Internat'l AND Minn/St. Paul airports. YES.

i was lucky enough to have a personal tour guide (a friend from work) on Friday night brave enough to escort me through the very core Bourbon St. He was out there for a bidness trip, and we happened to cross schedules for just that one night. Saturday was spent at the tournament, watching the kids get robbed of their rights to beat up on others, etc., followed by some of the best food, dancing, drinks, and general debauchery i think i've ever had. Sunday was back to the tournament to witness some straight up corruptedness (bitter, d'ya think?) and was super low-key as i wandered around the French Quarter and wound up at Preservation Hall for an awesome jazz session. Sadly, my karate fools had to leave on Monday, which meant i had to work: (( personal rah-rah: mad shouts to fiona for setting up this trip (and moving my hotel to some swanky digs in the heart of the action!) and letting me go under the guise of work-related importance. )) i found my way to Kenner (home of the ONLY starbucks i could find in Louisiana) and pitched in at the petco we have there. What a great learning experience, though there was only so much i could take of the creepy manager whose eyes didn't get above chest-level once. ((shudder))

So what did i learn? i learned that i want to compete in karate even less after what i witnessed. i learned that poncho is a pretty pretty princess when it comes to food (oh wait, i knew that already : ) i learned a little voodoo. i learned that people in LA are much friendlier than people in L.A. and even when the people i knew left, i had friends around. By the way, there's a blue-eyed blonde southern boy named Lance who thinks he's coming out here... to marry me. i apparently am quite the catch outside of Cali state lines.

i'm meltiiiiinnnnggg...
current temperature in new orleans, according to weather.com is 94 degrees, but it feels like 119 degrees. WHAT?! Really, once you get past like 105, can you really tell the difference??

Anyways, i'm off to galavant, err, I mean travel, I mean BUSINESS TRAVEL, (or something, niner, is this thing on...) in naw'lins in just a few short hours. In a few, not so short hours after that, I'll actually get there, hook up with J and Conor, hook up with the karate crew, hook up with some No-Doz (just kidding!) and hook up with some Petco stores deep in the Dixie. Catch ya on the creole, yo.

something...
i've been spending these past few days trying to do 2 weeks worth of work in 4 days, as i will be taking off to naw'lins on friday to be a cheerleader and a regular ol' store associate. in the meantime, i'm trying not to pile a ton o' work onto val who will have to fill my shoes for a few days, which makes me wander around the halls o' petco mumbling "something...", as in "there's something i'm missing...". it's a bit unsettling, but makes it worth it when things like "a crisis of cats" comes up in normal work convo. keeps ya on your toes.

gayly forward
Before I joined my friend for her bachelorette party Friday night, I took her fiancee to the airport so she could fly to SanFran off to her bachelorette party (confused? don't worry 'bout it). As we were weaving our way out of their neighborhood, she was giving me directions of "right", "left" and "gayly forward". Naturally.

Debauchery commenced: line dancing was learned, the bride was graffiti'd by strangers, Ji was kissed by our ginormous waitress (I was merely felt up), there was a bare ass somewhere in all this which I missed because I was off at the bar getting an appletini for the bride, a very cute drag queen solicited us to be in a bikini contest (bride and i were all over it, ready to go, but we left before it started), and then there was the strip club. All I can say is that wasn't what I expected. Nope. Not what I expected. Even with all the movies and episodes of 'g-string divas' i've seen.

Last night debauchery (on a much smaller, more tame scale) continued as an ecclectic group got together to celebrate with me for bday fun. Being around friends just makes me happy, throwing in some karaoke, and it's like nirvana. Special guest star suzee was such a great twist to the evening's line-up. The other amazing discovery of the night? 'bohemian rhapsody' turns out to be a fantastic karaoke song.

flusssssssssssh
sadly, donatello has joined raphael in that great fish bowl in the sky. Now i only have michaelangelo and leonardo left at home, and the world of evil just can't be fought by only 2 ninja bettas. I do have to say that it's a little embarrassing to have to walk through the halls of petco HQ with a dead fish in your hands, especially after being dubbed a "betta expert"... that title was given to me after the "hamster expert" one faded away... don't ask.

go shawty, it's my birfday

whoosh.ugh.
i can't believe it's july. already. i can't believe i've been home for 10 months. already. and tho this year has been whizzing by and warp factor 9, this has been the slowest week ever and it's still not done! Perhaps it's because i've been in a perpetual food coma, having eaten out (or in, but out) every day this week. I've had lunch meetings and personal meetings at lunch and today we went out to celebrate my bday (okay, we're a little early, but who's counting?) with some dim sum and boba. Talk about food coma; i'm kind of regretting introducing Fiona and Val to the wonder that is boba. These girls need to know when enough is enough. Speaking of which, 'Auntie' Fiona once again tried to set me up with a complete stranger: in our pre-coma visit to REI, Fiona was getting help from a friendly sales guy when she turned to him, brandishing her revolting looking boba cup, and said "You have beautiful eyes." The poor boy looked scared to death. I'm pretty sure i adopted that same look after she asked how old he was (25), and then pointed to me and said "Our little britty is turning 25!". i would have admonished her, but my stomach wasn't up to it.