They Call Them 'Crushes' Because They Hurt

Crushes: I hate to love them. I can't chose who I'm crushing on, when or for how long. It's not a matter of race, class, religion or even gender. There are girl crushes, friend crushes and unrequited crushes. Food crushes, dog crushes and then there is always Orange Crush. I wish I could banish crushes from my mind altogether, but it's impossible. I can't go all Eternal Sunshine on every person I have ever had a crush on. Because then I wouldn't know the greatness President Obama or Jon Bon Jovi. Or sushi. Or Burt's Bees chapstick. Chances are, if we have had a meaningful conversation or have seen each other in-person or in photos, that I've had a crush on you.

Today, for instance, I had a crush on Justin Bieber. For five entire minutes. What is that all about? And the worst part is that my crush was not brought on my his music, character or even him. My crush was brought on by this blog: Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber. I'm glad that phase of my life is over.

Last night I had a crush on this Etsy store. And right now I have a crush on the guy who made my sandwich at the deli today. Sometimes, on occasion, I will get a crush on someone or something, and then we fall in love and magic happens.

For instance, these curtains:

These hair products:

This friend:

But sometimes a crush is ill-fated from the get-go. And it can be so embarrassing and a little bit devastating. I'm working on a doozy right now. On paper, my crush looks great. In person, too. He's my age, motivated and very good at what he does. He's handsome, but not intimidatingly so. He's mixed-ethnicity, so our babies would be super pretty and he's got a great job that pays well. And, yes, he had that whole marijuana scandal thing, but we live in San Francisco - if you inhale on a windy day here, you're smoking pot. And, no, he doesn't exactly know who I am, but that has never stopped me before. The problem is...sigh...he bats for the wrong team - the San Francisco Giants, that is.

I give you Tim Lincecum:

And he likes dogs. Be still, my beating heart.

Please don't tell Jose Reyes or the rest of the New York Mets.

Sit on my Facebook (Internet Love Song) by The Scribes

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce the internet's newest viral video which stars a man I briefly worked with and co-stars like 30 people I met once at a party. I think most of them went to Stanford, but I can look past that.

Enjoy!

Mad Men Craze

So, I don't watch the television show Mad Men. I know that someone in the cast is named January Jones only because that is the best name ever. But, even though I don't own a television, I still find myself getting caught up in the new season hoopla. And it's my pleasure to get you caught up in it as well. So, please oblige me as I take a trip down memory lane. It will be a short trip, as the story begins in June.

I met this super sweet girl at my Cal student orientation (aka Calso) named Audrey. She was the only one in our group who brought her mother along to the all day event, and her mother was also pretty rad, and quickly stepped up to the role of 'group mom,' snapping pictures and making us exchange emails, even though some of our group was closer in age to mother than daughter. Didn't stop her. And Audrey, for her part, wasn't embarrassed and clearly loved her mom and it was touching. Really. I'm not being sarcastic here. Anything negative you might sense is jealousy because I want that kind of mom! Oh, well. It gives me hope for when I'm a parent.

Ok, no more time for waxing nostalgic over here. Moral of the Audrey story is that she is running for a walk-on role in Mad Men in that Banana Republic contest, and she's doing quite well. Or, she has been. Recently, we (yes, we - I vote for her every day) slipped drastically in the rankings and SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP! Come on, look how dang cute she is:

All you have to do is click here to vote for her. And then come back and do it again tomorrow. You can consider it a personal favor to me. Plus, it will help me be popular in my new school, and you don't want to be responsible for me being a loner, do you. Do you?!?

Don't be a jerk. Vote for Audrey.

Things I Like

I like when you put your arm on the table, perpendicular to your body, and then you arch your shoulder juuuust the right way, and you make a really deep crater with your armpit. Try it sometime.

Or, better yet, the next time you hang with me, I can do a demonstration/tutorial. I'm cool with people touching my pits. Actually, I think it would be awesome because I paid thousands of dollars to have my Jewish armpits lasered and I want people to be able to appreciate how hairless they are as much as I do.

What? I'm not weird. You are.

Fun Crap I Do When I Should Be Studying

Last night was fun. Super fun. I had one beer too many, and I wrong texted a man with a fancy beard, but other than that, I wouldn't change a thing - pig bladders and all. What? Shhhhh.

Not only did I get to hang out with my super awesome friend who I haven't seen in way too long and I was starting to really miss, but I also ate some delicious nibblins in The Mission here in SF. But back to my awesome friend. I haven't seen her in over a week! I usually text this woman between two and thirty-eight times a day. Not seeing her was getting pretty tough. I think it was harder for me than for her. Codependent, much, Melanie? Who typed that?

We started off at The Mission Statement, but not because we wanted to make funky, arguably hip fashion choices. We went to jam out with our...(don't write 'clam out,' don't write 'clam out') colorful tee shirts. And jam. Like, spready stuff that goes on crackers. Dafna Kory of INNA Pickle/INNA Jam was there, handing out sweet samples.



My aforementioned friend may or may not have some influence over a fancy local store who is looking to 'revamp their jam section,' so we talked to Dafna for quite awhile. And she is so nice. And so cute! Plus, she doesn't drive, just like me! Well, I think she doesn't drive because of the environment, while I don't drive because it makes me cry, but, still - she is going on my personal list of 'Heroes Who Don't Drive,' right after David Sedaris and Zoe Milgram.



As an aside, sometimes, in my head, I say 'Jam it in the jammy hole,' for no real reason, and I can't stop saying it right now. I think that is because I jammed Dafna's jams in my jammy hole last night. I never really thought about it, but I guess a jammy hole is a mouth. Oh, that sounds dirty. It wasn't.

Anyway, look how cute she is!!! And look at her jam/pickle delivery bike!



Wow. I did so much other stuff last night that I want/need to write about, but it's 12:30 PM and I have done nothing on my To Do List, except 'eat breakie,' which is a lame ass task because I never forget breakfast, but I always put it on there so I get to cross at least one thing off.

So, for now, I will leave you with a picture of this girl I may or may not know and/or love getting ready to jam some jam in her jammy hole:

Meat Me For Dinner?

I am no longer a vegetarian.

You can tell because the other night for dinner, I helped cook this:



The wildly attractive head chef knew this was my first time preparing my own meat in this half of my life, so he added a sense of humor to the job.

Please note: the meat smile is made of kielbasa. Holy hell. Have you ever had a kielbasa? That shit is A-Mazing. So salty and juicy and yummy and I loved it and now sometimes I think about it when I am alone.

Tofu is all like, 'Hey remember me?'

And I'm all, 'Shut up you stupid hippie food, I'm thinking about kielbasa right now.'

Although, to be honest, sometimes I am thinking about prosciutto. Or homework.

I loved my happy meat dinner so much that I texted that pic to my friends. You can tell they are my friends when this is what they text back:

Coffee Winner!

Well, it was a long, hard road to determining a winner of this coffee contest, what-with there being seven contestants and all, but after hours of toiling during the commercial breaks of an episode of Law & Order: SVU that I may have already seen once today, I have come to a winner.

Here's a hint as to who it is:



No, it's not a fuzzy, wuzzy reincarnation of the 9 Lives kitty...it's my friend David Morris! I won't post a picture of him here because I haven't asked him about it, but I am personally under the assumption that he is the human version of Morris the Cat. Oh man. The urge to post a picture of David here is really strong. Like...Nutella and banana crepe strong.

Sorry I left. I had to troll David's Facebook page for a picture where he REALLY embodies Morris. The cat. Not the man. Who is David. Wait. I've even confused myself.

The moral of this story is that David won the coffee. Even though he doesn't really drink coffee. Isn't it ironic? Don't ya think?

One day I will write a detective novel about a main character based on David that is a badass detective like Dale Cooper, but instead of real coffee and pie, the David detective will drink decaf and sugar-free muffins. But still solve crimes and rescue Audrey from One Eyed Jack's.

Here is the story, in case you missed it! David, I'll bring you the coffee next time we hang out. Thanks for saving me the shipping charges!

I don't have a very loving relationship with coffee. If anything, I prefer a cuppa Joe at a diner, black. But even this can get to be too much, due to my extreme sensitivity to caffeine (symptoms include inventing things and hearing voices). So often times I'll just order a decaf (taken black, of course. Publicly I drink my coffee black because the bitterness reminds me of the bitter tears shed during the exodus, but privately it's because I hate trying to maintain the proper proportion of cream and sugar as the mug is refilled throughout the meal).

Anyway. I only have a couple of incidents that could remotely qualify as any kind of coffee story. There was the time I tried making coffee at the office and things went so badly I ended up having to run away. Or the time in college, after having studied the strange power of the placebo effect, that I secretly substituted my girlfriend's sister's coffee with decaf on the night before her final, but then didn't say anything when she kept frowning at the coffee and saying, "I think they accidentally put in decaf".

But I think the one I'll go with isn't so much a story, as it is a visual. Basically, one day on my bike commute to work, I got the idea in my head that it would be great to grab a cup of coffee from Philz on the way to the office. I figured: hey, I'm a good biker, I can hold a cup of coffee steady. It went pretty well, until I got to my shortcut behind the Best Buy.

The path that runs behind the Best Buy is, like, beyond bumpy. I think it was paved when asphalt was first invented and pretty much left untouched since. Through internet magic, you can actually see precisely what I'm talking about.

As I turned onto the road, a little voice somewhere in my head coughed politely and mentioned something about maybe this not being a good idea. But this voice was drowned by another, stupider voice, who was all like, "Hey don't listen to him! Woo, pina coladas!" (Lesson: never heed the advice of the voices in your head who are lounging around drinking pina coladas all day and making rude remarks to the waitresses. Those are LOSER voices.)

Well. So. If you were a passerby that morning, you would have seen a nerdy white guy slowly riding a bike while spilling scolding hot coffee all over his arm, screaming. Curious as to why he didn't stop or anything, but continued to keep spilling the coffee on himself the whole length of the street, you might have asked him why he did that. To which he probably would have said something like, "For some reason, I felt I had to just push through it, you know?"

Oh and it was awesome to read everyone's stories and I will maybe do another giveaway soon. That is, as soon as my unemployment check clears. Yeah. That's why I'm giving away cheap shit.

Oh and, also, David went to Berkeley, which is where I want to go, so now, David, you have to call them and tell them that I scratched your back, so now they should scratch mine. But only on the bottom half because the rest is really sun burnt.

Finally, second place was Owen (at the last minute), but all the stories were really fun to read. And Owen doesn't get a prize for second place, just cool kid points on my blog, which will translate to street cred after I publish my first novel.

I Love Weddings

So most of my girlfriends know that I love weddings. They make me so happy. I love the idea of them, and the planning, and the invitations, and even the seating charts. I LOVE love, too, which really helps. And I love all kinds of weddings. I love when old people get married, when boys marry boys, when my mom got married for the second time - anything! I think it is such a happy occasion and I tend to cry my eyes out.

I've kept this obsession a secret for a long time. I thought that it might scare off boyfriends or potential boyfriends or friends or my family because I'm 27 and my biological clock is ticking and this wedding insanity appears to the uneducated outsider to be my Jewish spinster neurosis kicking in. What's changed, you ask? Nothing. I have just realized that if I am going to find someone that I love enough to marry then they will HAVE TO DEAL WITH MY WEDDING OBSESSION. They do not have to share in it, but they have to realize it's there, and if it scares them off, then they weren't the right man for me anyway. Plus, loving weddings is probably one of my least weird neurosis, so if they can't handle it, then they would probably shit bricks when they learn how I feel about bunnies and cleaning my ears. Don't ask.

Are you still reading? Well, then you are probably my friend Valerie, and that's OK, because I love you. And I just wanted to point out that even though I hate camping and barns and rain and dirt, this rustic ceremony made me get all teary eyed and want to have a hoe down in a barn. Ok, not totally the second part, but I think they did such a good job! And they did so much of it themselves. And that girl is SKINNY!



I hope I am that skinny on my wedding day, but that I am not in a barn in Utah.

I absolutely love the chalkboard mural:



I wish I was that artistically gifted. If I tried to create something like that everyone would probably think that I gave some retarded children finger paints and let them go hog wild on my wedding decorations. Which would make me look like a caring, sweet person who is spending time with children with special needs. Shit. Maybe I should do that for my wedding.

I also love how beautifully the rain worked for them. The shots of them in the woods with the umbrellas are surreal.



Although why anyone would ever want to go hiking is beyond me. Especially on your wedding day. But, hey, to each their own. I usually feel bad for couples when it rains on their weddings, but this really worked out.

The final thing that I love are the wedding cakes. Again, I don't love logs, but they used them so nicely!



I also like it because they were able to have a variety of different cakes and there was no cheesy wedding cake factor to their sweet desserts. I will bet they tasted amazing, and if I was there I would probably have had like six pieces. I mean...one piece.

Oh, and they had board games at their wedding. I love board games, but I would think they would be bummed out if anyone played them, no? Although it would be hilarious if, when you opened them, they were all changed to be about the couple. Like Scattergories, but the lists would be like 'Things Suzy Doesn't Know About Johnny.' Ok, maybe that wouldn't be funny.

I feel a lot better now that my secret is out. I think I will post about weddings more often. And a special thanks to the fabulous Joanna Goddard for first posting about this wedding. And for being a great blogger. I hope one day I can meet her. Or that she just knows who I am.