Rule #10 - Only Buy Clothes That Make You Feel Like Doing A Small Dance

Today, happiness is...

• weighing 8 pounds less than I did last week.
• finding a dress in Forever XXI that looked so good on me it actually made me do a little dance in the dressing room. (The dancing may have also had something to do with Kate Nash being on the radio in the store.)
• that dress being a MEDIUM.
  
• discovering an old $20 store credit for Forever XXI in my wallet, making the dress cost $10!

The diet is working! I look and feel great! I just had rolled up slices of turkey and sliced cherry tomatoes for lunch, but I don't mind so much! Last night I had an amazing diet dinner. Apparently the secret to this diet is to use balsamic vinegar in everything :) I was actually bummed that it was too rainy for my daily walk (tho I did hustle the 18 blocks between my office and Forever XXI). Wait a minute, I'm starting to actually like exercise? I think there's something wrong with me.

But who cares? I look fabulous!

Have a Good Weekend!

I <3 Toast

The diet is going OK. It's seriously hard, but I haven't cheated  yet and I think I can make it. AND I think it's working. My happy thoughts have been looking forward to the next meal and thinking about how thin I will be and sharing laughs with Sarah over how we can't eat available non-diet food because it's been somehow tainted. When either of us is tempted, the other comes up with a comical reason why she can't eat it. My favorite so far has been that I couldn't stop in Penn Station for a Krispy Kreme because rats crawled in the case overnight and pooped all over them.

Nothing special to report. I'm in that mad dash to the finish of a play craziness that leaves little time for anything other that work, rehearsal, and sleep. Details on the play are forthcoming.

Please go vote for my boyfriend's band. They could win a chance to open up for Toad the Wet Sprocket in concert. Go to G-Rock Social, scroll down till you see the pic of Toad and choose Schocholautte from the dropdown menu under the picture. Go do it right now! Then do it again tomorrow and the day after that and...you get the idea.

And if you are free, go see them at the Trash Bar tonight. I can't go, but, ya know, you should.

In case you get blog fatigue (I know I can be wordy), let me put this at the top. Go to G-Rock Social and vote for Schocholautte. They could win a chance to open for Toad the Wet Sprocket. Vote frequently. In fact, vote constantly. (In case you can't figure it out, just go to the home page, scroll down and you should see a pic of Toad and then a dropdown menu for voting. All you have to do is select Schocholautte and click Vote.)

• Here's a short, sweet, little (beautifully edited) Office montage that proves that John Krasinski is one of the most attractive people on earth. (omg! I embedded a youtube video!)
• My company was awarded a good-sized job. Originally, we thought we were just going to get it unchallenged. Then, we found out there was another vendor bidding. Then, we thought they got it. Then, we found out that we did. Yay! It's good times for my company, always nice to get more work, we've been kind of slow and this will keep us working for a good long while.
• As you may have heard, after three drinks on Thursday night, my friend convinced me that doing a shot of Jaegermeister, my first ever, was a good idea. We went to the bar, we bought the drinks, we shot, and returned to the back room to continue watching the band and drunkenly dancing. I tossed my wallet back in my bag on the floor off to the side before rejoining the crowd. Or so I thought. Cut to Saturday afternoon when I'm getting ready to run some errands, go to grab my wallet and it is not anywhere. (Remarkable that I can go a day and a half before I notice my wallet is missing eh?) Anyway, I checked all my cards online and there was no untoward activity, so I crossed my fingers and left a message at the bar, in hopes that it was still there. The message was returned yesterday by a very kind angel by the name of Bebe and last night after work, I recovered my wallet completely intact. There are still good people in this world.
• I completed Day 1 of the Scarsdale Diet successfully, giving me the feeling that I can handle all 14 days. Sarah is a great support, doing this together with me. I don't love it, but I do feel like it will be effective.
• I am blonde once again and tan. Despite being unable to drive legally or access my money until 7 pm last night, I managed to conduct all the errands I needed to in order to show up to rehearsal tonight fully prepared to look the part. Plus, ya know, I know my lines. Excellent.

Best of Friends

It's a gorgeous Spring evening and I've just spent a couple hours sitting in my yard after spending an hour walking my neighborhood. I didn't go into the office today, I had a rockin' good time last night, and I have the house to myself tonight. I am just the happiest cat on earth.

I'm suddenly in a play again, coming to the rescue of a friend who needed to replace an actress on short notice. So I'll be playing the young girlfriend of an author who come to his wife of thirty years to ask her for a divorce so he can marry me in Best of Friends, by James Elward, with the Radburn Players.

In. Two. Weeks.

This doesn't really freak me out, but it is kind of crazy. I know I'll be able to learn the lines and the blocking and all, and the cast is great, so it's really no problem. Except that I am going to have to focus all available energy on it for that time, eating, breathing, and sleeping the play, so sorry if I'm not around much. I'm going over my lines again and again, getting together costumes and makeup. I'm gonna hafta go back to full blonde so all those hoping I'd finally go back to my natural color can suck it. And I'm getting the company to pay for a fake tan as that is part of the character and I am clearly not tan. 

There is one thing. And it's not really that I don't want to do it, so much as it is that I don't really look forward to the reaction I know I can expect. I have to go on a diet. Well, I don't  have to. No one is making me. But if I'm going to be seen on stage and I'm supposed to believeably be a 24 year-old grad student so hot that an older man's willing to divorce his wife and marry me, I want to slim down. I have been recommended a *medical* safe healthy diet that should allow for quick weight loss without any damaging effects that shouldn't be very hard to stick to, especially since it's only 2 weeks.

I can hear it already. You're beautiful. You don't need to lose weight. You're starving yourself. I'm worried about you. Look, it's really nice of you to be concerned and maybe you're just trying to be nice because "yeah you are kind of porky" isn't a very nice thing to say. But listen to the following: I never said I wasn't beautiful, I won't starve myself, I can't make you not worry, but there's no reason to. And most importantly, oh yes I do. People don't believe me. There are like 3 people I can think of who believe me when I say I need to lose weight. I'm blessed with an attractive figure and I'm not hugely overweight so a lot of people don't think I look like I need to lose any weight.

Look people. What do you picture when you think of a woman who weighs 159 pounds? Now put my face on her because that's it. I'm not saying that I just hate that number. I hate the way my body looks at that number. I have flab all over. I have no muscle tone. Clothes that should fit me, don't. And I do not look like a perky 24 year-old rich hottie. 

So I'm walking, every day, trying to get in an hour every day, and I'm going on the Scarsdale Medical Diet and I'd appreciate it if everyone would just let me do and in return, I promise you I won't damage myself in any way by doing this and I'll be much happier when I'm done and thinner and healthier.

That aside, I'm really excited to do this play and I hope you'll all come see it. Assuming any of you still want to be my friends after I've just bitched you out for being sweetly concerned about me :)

Little Things and Looking Forward

Today started out terrifically shitty. I woke up late, people were particularly rude on the train today, I fell and scraped my hand in Penn Station, I put every penny of my Christmas bonus in the mail and sent it off to the US government and I still owe them more, and I got my period. Not even a chocolate Krispy Kreme helped my mood. But then little things did.

• A smile caused by a friend who suggested a 9:30 am shot of tequila for my troubles.
• The fact that, though My Office Nemesis prattled on for about 20 minutes about how she accidentally opened her roommate's phone bill and she was afraid her roommate would be mad, I have the ability to pop in an earphone and tune out that nonsense. 
• The fact that, even though I don't get to spend my Christmas bonus on myself, I do get to be rid of my tax problems. 
• The fact that, even though Kris doesn't understand what it's like for a woman to go through this monthly cycle, he sympathizes, doesn't get frustrated with me or patronize me because of it, and tries to make me laugh. 
• The fact that I am going to see and old friend from college on Thursday and go to dinner at Sarah's on Saturday. Yeah, today sucks and I don't want to be doing what I'm doing and it's probably going to be more of the same all week. But at least I can look forward to a time when I'm happier and having more fun. 
• That I can be happy. I just read a blog post by one of my favorite musicians who has dissociative disorder. It makes me really sad for him, but it also makes me appreciate that in recent weeks and months I have learned how to be happy most of the time and I am. 

Who Would Win In A Fight Between The Hulk, Godzilla, and King Kong?

A lot has happened in the last week. I am practically incapacitated by it.

• Thursday and Friday, the band played shows to audiences including his family and my family. It was really fun and a good time was had by all.
• I completed Round 1 of the NYC Midnight Madness Screenwriting Competition. A lot of people have been confused, thinking this is the thing I do where I have to make a movie. Nope, this is the one where I had to write a script. I spent 5 days on one concept, trying to make it work, before scrapping it entirely and starting over with a new concept on Thursday afternoon. In 4 drafts, between then and Saturday night, I wrote a 15-page mystery that I am pretty proud of and I have to wait 6 weeks to see if it qualifies for the next round. If you wanna read it, holla. Big thanks to my beta readers, Kris and Sarah.
• Saturday was really the main event of the weekend. The band was to play a house party in Brooklyn. They had done one before, to great effect, so this time I decided to come, knowing it would be a late night (I was told they would go on at about 1 am). A carload of Kris's friends came up from South Jersey and met us at the house. We loaded up the kit and drove out to Kris's store to meet more of his friends/employees. While waiting for everybody to show up, we determined that, since this gig was gotten through friends of friends, we didn't actually know anyone at the party. One of our friends got to the party ahead of us and we imagined what it would be like if someone questioned her right to be there:

"Who are you?" 

"I'm Kat."

"Kat who?"

"I'm Sean's sister."

"Who's Sean?"

"Kris's friend."

"Who's Kris?"

"The drummer for the band."

"What band?!"

Any. Way. We finally got all our crew together and took off. I rode with the car who had neither directions nor a GPS and we almost lost our lead car. We made it there OK and loaded in the gear. The opening  "band" (a guy in zombie makeup and a cowboy hat with a guitar, a tambourine, and an ipod backing him up) was...well we decided to explore the neighborhood. We came upon a place called Barcade, which had old-school arcade games and alcohol, the perfect place for Kris and I :) Having located the money-dispensing game (all you have to do is put in your card and your secret code :) I got a couple drinks and started to feel much more comfortable. We hung out all over the party, watched some of the other bands, danced, chatted. Eventually we felt comfortable enough to take advantage of the house bar. It had been a long time since I had that much cheap-vodka-and-OJ-in-a-big-plastic-cup, but it helped. At some point we learned that one of Kris's friends kissed one of Kris's employees and it was the employee's first kiss. He celebrated by raiding the party's fridge and coming away with the prize of a jar of jelly. Argyle Johansen played a set and then Schocholautte went on, almost 3 hours after their proposed 1 am start time, and played for an hour. Rarely have I had such a time. Everyone was dancing (instead of me being the lone idiot at the front of an otherwise empty dance floor) clapping, singing, sweating, having a wonderful time. The band left every ounce of anything they had on the stage and I left it on the dance floor as well. We loaded the equipment and the people back up and headed for home, making it to bed, after a quick stop at the bagel store, at 7 am. 

Three. Hours. Later. Kris's phone rings with my favorite type of call, the "Hi, It's The Manager Of The Video Store Next To Your Store, No One Is There To Open The Store" call. Of course, one of the idiots who came to the party was supposed to open and didn't wake up. Tried to go back to sleep but an hour later, my overnight guests were awake and yapping so I rolled out of bed. I had big plans to make breakfast, which were leapt upon by one of Kris's friends mere seconds after I appeared out of the bedroom. Eventually I woke up enough to cook and we made a huge feast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes before our guests departed.

It was, without doubt, one of the most fun weekends in recent memory, worth any amount of aggravation, stress, or sleep-deprivation, which, except for sleep-deprivation, there wasn't much of. We laughed almost continuously and had a good old fashioned fun time. I bonded with Michael P's girl Haley over our mutual uncomfortableness in large groups of strangers. She's really a cool fun girl. It was, in the end, a most amazing weekend.

Which, let's face it kids, I'm pretty old and I won't be having another one of these for a WHILE. So it's good that I appreciate it as much as I do.