Mission Debauchery!

Contrasting Life on Track is "Mission Debauchery". This program is pretty much me having a good time and doing bad things not found on the Life on Track list of activities. Mission Debauch. was in full effect two weeks ago when Emily, Lindsey, and Alicia were all in town together. Emily arrived first and had already registered in advance for the festivities of being bad. We hit the grocery store and had a cart full of cereal, beer, champagne, and trashy magazines. We then went to the ABC store. We had a good night: dinner with boys, a thunderstorm, and Emily decided to go ahead and squeeze a week's worth of bad behavior into one night. It was impressive.

The next day we hit Va Beach for our annual "Girls Day at the Beach". It was picturesque. We read magazines, ate at Wawa, and almost drowned a few times in the ocean. That night we ventured out with Blake, who can always have a good time. Emily managed to have a boy buy us drinks within about 45 seconds of walking into a bar, which I think is possibly a world record. Girl knows what she's doing.

Saturday we picked up Lindsey, saw "Superbad", and started prepping for the party. We had decided that the party was my Season Finale (involving many other characters, of course). I was a little nervous, never having thrown a "real" party before. The parties we had in college involved us making a boatload of vegan food, cakes that were disguised as things like litter boxes or flower pots, and taking about $50 of Polaroid pictures. (We were untamed back then, I swear it). I was also a little sad Mary was out of town for the party, because she brings a party wherever she goes. Despite this, we got the tiki torches going thanks to Eric, Emily made a special (dangerous) punch, and the Season Finale began.

Now we had anticipated many things for this Finale. Plane crashes, love triangles, unexplained pregnancies, transsexual outings, the works. And while there were some dramatic events for the main characters, the one everyone thought would have a crazy end to some storylines (me), in true Season Finale fashion, kind of ended the night with a let down. Like the dramatic moment where you think it's all going to come together, and the person is left standing in the doorway after the love interest has left, with her hair blowing in the wind and she starts to say something and it fades to black and you have to wait until next season. Yeah, it was like that. And I was there at 3am, sighing, in my party dress, scrubbing red wine off the walls.

Despite this, the party was a big hit. There ended up being and odd ratio of dudes to girls, but hey, you don't see me complaining about that. There was an all girl dance party, I got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while, Matt brought a tiki torch in the house, there were some sweet party mix CDs made, and I got the highest concentration of BFFs together in a really long time. I had a blast. We did Mary Killmon proud. The next day we got up, cleaned up (somewhat), had brunch at 821, had a quick photo shoot at the top of the city, and went thrift shopping. Then we truly felt the weekend we had experienced and rushed back to bed. And then of course made it out for one last night on the town and dinner with boys.

It was an amazing few days. I never knew so much could happen in such a short amount of time. It's taken me a week and a full weekend of sleep, and infinite bottles of water to recover. I'm on vacation next week, and looking forward to it, but in a different way. I'd rather dance with Emily to "She's an Easy Lover" and drink some Andre out of the bottle. But honestly, who wouldn't?

Life on Track!

I've embarked on a program I call "Life on Track". The program consists of me, doing good things for myself and in general getting my life, (as you may have guessed) on track. I water the plants before work, use the Dustbuster, spend my Sundays cleaning, I make little lunches for myself, I try to be responsible with my money, and I try to go to the gym or do a home workout at least 3 days a week. Life on Track works pretty well when you are single with a lot of free time. It also feels good to have all the scraps in order. The program was enforced firmly once an alternate program ("Ginny Dates Boys (Which Causes Drama)") started getting too intense.

At any rate, I was hitting up the gym one day with Erin, and Shaun asked if we wanted to do some "circuit training" with her. I said sure, let's do it. Yeah, I have no idea what that means, but I'll do it. I want to be buff, why not? So, we did our obligatory cardio, and headed to the "circuit training". Hmm. This is where it started to go awry. Turns out "circuit training" really means exercise class called "Body Conditioning". First off, I haven't taken an exercise class since sophomore year of high school. And even then I just kind of wandered around trying to look like I was busy. But, we were all doing the class together, and we figured if it was awful we'd leave. We got in the gym and staked out a spot by the door, in what we thought was the back of the class. Oh, no. It was actually the front. Directly in front of the wall of mirrors. Our instructor came in an put on some intense techno music and told us to get basically one (or two) of every piece of equipment the modern gym has to offer from the supply room. Other than weights, I had never even seen most of these contraptions. We then began the class with some "light" aerobics, which was pretty amazing to witness, I'm sure. And since I was in the front, not only could everyone else see me attempting to make my body move in synch with the teacher's, I could also watch myself in the enormous mirrors. Awesome. We then proceeded to work every muscle in our bodies. The teacher came around and tried to help everyone out. After the first few moves she just stopped coming around to Erin and I. I think she knew it was more than she could handle in an hour.

The class ended with us pairing off and passing a nylon disk we held between our feet back and forth with our partners. Erin has some sort of orthopedic gym shoes she claims can't grip well. The class ran over a bit and briefly I thought I had actually died and was in my own hell. Shaun looked over and asked, "Are we still friends after this?". I was pretty out of breath at that point so I don't know if I answered. The whole thing was quite hilarious and probably an existing episode of "I Love Lucy" or something. I was sore for the next few days. Now it's back to the normal workout for me. Although I might consider a Yoga class soon. Unless it involves light aerobics.

I am not a negligent dog owner.

It's awful, I know. I've practically given up blogging. I've been on simultaneous missions I like to call "Mission Debauchery" and "Life on Track" (more to come on both, later). I've had some interesting occurences lately. The first involves me in my most natural environment, my home. I am a self-professed hermit and homebody, and I am really enjoying the "single girl who lives alone" lifestyle. To some people this might mean late nights and parties and boys, for me it means I come home and I can take off my pants if I want, and I can listen to some pop music, and there's no one here to stop me. Now occasionally Mary and I might do what we call a "Barge-in", which is more involved than a "Drive-by", in that this is where you actually literally "barge in" to someone's house and pay them a visit. We do this to the boys once in a while. They always look normal, act normal; like they are totally cool. If this happened to me, it would be a whole different story.

One night in particular, I got back from the gym, put on a truly heinous pair of boxer shorts, an equally awful rag of a tank top, and sat down in a sweaty heap on the couch to eat my dinner (which just happened to be the classic mac and cheese) and watch "Flight of the Concords". Then the doorbell rang. I froze. I crept to the door and through the peephole I saw a boy with a beard and glasses. Well, since that is essentially every boy I know, I panicked. I was in my natural state, not fit for other human interaction. I ran to get some pants and a bra at least, and then he was gone. I came to the conclusion it was the neighbor.

The next day, I had a note on my door from an anonymous neighbor. It read, "Dear, Neighbor. We're concerned about your dogs being out in the 103 degree heat!". I was too, obviously, since I don't have dogs. "Your dogs are running around! One almost got hit by a car! We put him back in your yard and gave him water, since it seems no one else will". Again, this concerned me as now there might be unidentified dogs in my yard at this time. I looked, and there were not. "If you don't want your dogs, here is the number for the SPCA. Let someone else who is able to care for them give them a home". Now I was just kind of insulted. I mean I don't have dogs, but if I did, I would treat them right. I made a guess as to which neighbors left the note, and left them a reply note, politely explaining I did not own a dog, but that if I saw this alleged rogue dog, I would turn it over to the proper authorities. Mary had seen what she said was a stray at the house on Monday, and she had it in the yard with her. And she had her 2 dogs at the house when she lived here, but they hadn't been in the yard in months. After I left the note, the doorbell rang again. It was another random neighbor. "Oh, hey, I've got your dog in my backyard", she said. Hmm. Did this dog have my picture on his collar? I explained it wasn't my dog and thought that was the end of it. One more random person rang my bell that night, after it was dark, and I didn't know who they were, so I didn't answer the door (hey, it's like screening a phone call). They wouldn't stop ringing the bell and I was freaked out. Someone probably told them I had their dog in my yard.

Eventually I guess my name was cleared in the neighborhood. And I never saw this dog. The experience has made me a little paranoid and I do wear most of my clothes while I'm enjoying my single girl (crazy cat lady) activities. But I don't like it.