there's never enough time to do all the nothing you want
these days of nothing are keeping me terribly busy doing a little of everything. i'm going to be exhausted come the new year (and can't wait, woohoo)!
current mood: chillin'

Buon Natale!
i went to midnight mass last night at our lady of the rosary in little italy. i was trying to decide between going to the polish mass or the italian one; my dad's side won out since it was closer to my house. it was a beautiful mass, packed to the brim, and full of greasy-slicked-haired, leather-jacketed, open-buttoned, gold-chained, cross-bearing italian men. i know i shouldn't have been laughing in the middle of such a solemn ceremony, but man. gotta love the roots.
peace to you and yours.
current mood: peaceful

the end of an era
i've collected reactions from panicked pleas of "don't go!" to high-fives about my departure, but it's come time to bid farewell to the stained carpets and fur-laden corners of my corporate office. it's been an interesting ride.
current mood: i'm all over the place, man

kickin'
3 plates of garlic cheese fries between 7 people... even the peppermint schnapps couldn't wipe out the garlic afterglow...
current mood: stinky

movin' on out
although i admittedly get a little ruffled from the "short-timer!" comments slung at me at work, i have a confession to make: it's totally true. my head's not here other than strategizing how to get the animals home and close up shop. holly and rick have adopted black, and she's having a great time at her new digs up north. i've still got the fish to worry about, though, and with the after-work activities i have planned (happy hour anyone?), i don't think it would be right to leave them in the car, even with a cracked window. considering tomorrow's my bitter/sweet last day and all, it's going to be even worse in terms of non-production. and when i say 'worse', i mean MORE FANTASTIC!
current mood: unfocused

pajama jammy jam
i've spent the last 2 nights up in the fresco esco with my mom, and it has actually been warmer outside the house than inside. for the record, this morning's outside temperature was 46 degrees...! i checked weather.com; they were warning of severe temperatures and possible icy conditions in the bathroom region.

(recent) life in photos

i like matching pajamas...


... and i beat people up occasionally (though not them, they'd KILL me)...


...but i clean up nice.

you know what i love about this time of year?

christmas always equals lots and lots of star-type decorations on sale. it's like the season of consumerism is selling directly to me.

tuesday affirmation

two weeks
my work email inbox is filled with hundreds of exclamation marks, and for a good great reason. i just sent out an email announcing my resignation from 'where the pets go', effective next friday.

and then i'm off to marry a rich athlete so my mother will be taken care of into old age. at least that's what she thinks will come of the new adventure...

never underestimate the whitey white girl
a pale girl in the tanned world of hawaii, foreign territory indeed. and surprisingly hostile when it came to this tournament. pack a ton of people into a gym from 8 in the morning till 6:30 at night, and, oh yeah, throw in some 90% humidity while you're at it, and you're bound to get a few grumps out of the bunch. my entertainment for the afternoon came from listening to 2 women talking some MAJOR trash about me right in front of my face... except they were speaking in japanese with absolutely NO clue that i understood every word that they said. when we were all standing around waiting for our ring, i started chatting to a teammate of theirs, an exchange student from japan. turns out her family is from toyama, near my 'hometown' of niigata... i saw the realization creep onto the face of the catty women as one of them grabbed my arm and asked (in english), "wait, YOU lived in japan??" (hai, in niigata). "so you understand japanese?"
i nodded my head and smiled as their look turned to uber-mortified at being caught red-handed in their trash-talking. All of a sudden, you never had met 2 sweeter women in the world.

fast forward to the competition itself, they were running kata by flags. what that means is that competitors go up 2 at a time, "red" on the left and "blue" on the right. the 3 judges hold up the flag color for who they think should win, and the head judge indicates the final winner by holding up the winner's flag/side. simple enough... unless your incompetent head judge has his flags backwards. first round in, i thought i had lost since the guy held up the other girl's color, but on my side. i bowed out of the ring and was immediately ushered over to the red side to go again, indicating i had actually won that round. thoroughly confused, i walked back into the ring, heaving from the first round, and began another kata. at the end, the judge held up my side again, again not my color. except for this time, he meant the other girl won.

i bowed out again, shooting puzzled looks to everyone. i saw the other judges approach the head judge and could see them explaining the proper way to do things. i also saw him shrug. oh well. the girl who "won" pretty much knew she technically had lost, but was hoping to cash in, so she also went to the head judge and asked "i won, right?" i heard him ask if she was on the left (no, i was), and then ask what color she was. "i was blue, and you held up blue" "oh, well, then i guess you won." right, sure you did chicky. whatever helps you sleep at night.

and that, my friend, is how i got a silver medal for winning kata, or as i like to call it, 1 1/2th place.

black and green and purplish-red
the three pre-dominating colors to describe my life at the moment. one to describe the color of the crap i've been hacking out of my lungs for the past couple of days, one to describe the color of belt i earned at my test on sunday, and one to describe the color of my face during said test. i'll leave it up to you to discern which one is which.

lesson learned - OR - adventures in air travel - OR - why i hate united
it was a huge leap of faith, but who am i if not adventurous? actually, the moment monica dropped me off at the airport and sputtered away, i realized i had failed to write down her phone number, you know, just in case. the reality of this tiny oversight hit hard last night as i flew into LAX to catch my jump down to san diego. the 10p flight had blinking red (why is it always so ominous in the blinking and the red?) departure time of 12:16a. actually, as i watched it, the departure time slowly climbed... 12:16, 12:32, 12:49... before it registered the 1AM mark, i hightailed it to the nearest counter and was joyfully told there was another flight leaving right now at another gate. with speedy feet, i made my way over there, threw in a couple of "but what about my checked bags??" to the already-flustered gate-attendant, and made my way onto the tiny plane. a little delayed but on our way, we get to take-off position only to be turned around and told that the particular plane we were on wouldn't be able to take off again from san diego once it was there, and it had other places to go... so sorry, get off, good luck.

i did what little negotiating i could at the ticket counter (wait for my original flight? rent a car and take the hit?) and was given the ominous BUS option. in the meantime, my luggage question hadn't been answered, and i had no way of getting a hold of monica since i didn't know her phone number, or even my own home phone number (i never use it!). in fact, i realized i only had 5 san diego phone numbers memorized: my parents, my work, doc, poncho, and sensei (the only one who would have had monica's number, but he was asleep at that point anyway). oh, and guess what? LAX doesn't have wifi, so all the lovely people with the lovely laptops were useless to me. i did manage to befriend a lady who let me email from her cell phone a very cryptic message to monica: it's britt. on bus. will take cab home. (it had to be short, she was getting on a plane).

in the meantime, where are the bags?? they're on the luggage turnstile waiting for their owners to throw them on the bus. that is, MOST of them are there... one particular one happened to be in san francisco. seems the geniuses operating this whole thing took the SAN on my luggage tag to mean SFO rather than its intended san diego. awesome, i didn't need that underwear anyway.

2 1/2 hours later, i arrive in san diego to a deserted commuter terminal 1 bag short and 3 hours overdue. i filed my baggage claim and asked the security officer to get me a taxi, where i pointedly told the guy "look, i'm going to normal heights. you either need to take credit or it had better be less than $15, cuz' that's all i have." he was nice enough to let my $30 fare be only 15 bucks, and finally, i was home.

other than that, hawaii was great! next time i'll have to tell you about how i got 1 1/2th place at the tournament...