BRB

Matt and I are going away again on Tuesday and will be back on August 11. I'll give you a few hints:

1. I ate a gyro.
2. The salad from Saturday's wedding had olives in it.
3. I'm reading the Bible--in Greek.

If you guessed rainy Oaxaca, Mexico, you're right!
In lieu of my usual freakout, I've already packed. Yeeehaw.

Fore Score and Twenty Hours Ago

What's that, Sri, a golf tee in your hair?!
Why, yes. Thank you for noticing. I did a little golfing* yesterday in the blistering heat of Fred Richards' course.
The hair ornamentation totally upped my street cred among the local pros, which I really needed since I missed the ball 5 times before making initial contact.
As for the other players:
Matt threw a club. Carly made par (once). Poppa did not get a sunburn.

*Officially, I hit one ball far and a few putts. Really, very little golfing, but I did walk all the holes.

Mason Jennings Sang Me To Sleep (or was that a movie on Hong Kong Nihilists?)

Acer's mouse is on a 5-second time delay, which acts sort of like a parental control for bedtime.
"Are you sure you need to blog now, honey? Shouldn't you put down the computer and step away from the internet(s)*?"
No.

A list of things I memoed in the last 48 hours to tell myself and you, the internet(s)**:

• Sexual harrassment from the custodians
• Physical Tuesday--don't be awkward--male doctor
• I always forget my galoshes when it f*#74ing rains. Whyyyyyy?
• Why do children of police get in trouble with the law? For attention? They think they're above the law? Cue Arnold Schwartzehrehhherrgerrr (sp?): Nobody is above the law. Nobody.
  
• Matt: music stand
  
• Irritable bowels ruined my night--ask male doctor, but don't be awkward

*That one was for you, Rin.
**And that one was for Eric.

Just Like That Gwyneth Paltrow Duet

Air Conditioning Not Included
Originally uploaded by Sriracha.

Colleen and I passed this Sea-Foam Wonder on 94 last weekend.
We turned to each other to celebrate the rural American glory and both of us without our cameras. What are the odds?*
If you recognize this truck or know these people, please send them to me. I want to put them in and their tigerlillies in my pocket for all times.

*Sidebar: I went to college with a kid who wrote a book called What Are The Odds. People were always making that joke. I tried to find new ways of saying it: "What is the likelihood that this specific event occurred at this specific moment?", "How unusually serendipitous!", "You're joking if you think that would happen ever again!", "Eh! I'll take two."

I'm An Idiot. [Reprise]

"Shoot."
"I cannot see a damn thing."
"What does that say?"
"Not unless I hold my eyelids to the side like this."
And today Dr. Mike asks me if I "might be wearing them in the wrong eyes?"
"I might."
I was.
For a month.
A month of headaches and squinting and sweaty glasses slipping off my face rather than wear those [expletive] contacts for one minute more because what kind of doctor prescribes the completely wrong thing and another thing why is this industry taking me for all the money in my uninsured vision life?
They're not.
Ass.

But They Protect Me From Nighttime Monsters

I never used to sleep with sheets (I originally wrote sheeps,* which is also true. That hasn't changed. I still don't.) Until...
Now I've lost my train of thought. "Join hands. Start a thought train. A thought train." [Giant train comes barreling through my room now filled with conventionally pretty strangers and mountains].


*Word does not exist

Oracle of Delphi, where are you now?

Before She Set Off
Originally uploaded by Sriracha.

Motto: "Saving the World, One Fashion Misstep at a Time"
Special Powers: this pose, perfect grilled cheese, curiously good aim at tennis, pointing her toes, talking to strangers
Tragic Flaw: Inability to see her own clothing choices

Very Anonymously Recounted Conversation with Unnamed Sister

"Objects in mirror appear closer than they are."
"No, objects in mirror are closer than they appear."
"Oh, thanks... [pause] That could have gotten me in a lot of trouble."
"I'm making a memo of this."
"If I had a blog, I'd make a memo of the fact that you're blogging this."
"Do it."
"Fine."
"Good."

He's Your Man

Danimal shared a free ticket with me last night for the Leonard Cohen biopic--a little heavy on the Bono--but overall very enjoyable.
The experience:
Crowded theater = seats in the second row.
Too much U2. And Bono says "chasm" as in "chhhhasihhm." (Ali, I'm sorry. But you will love it.) Why do I want to rip the sunglasses from his smiling Irish eyes?
Everyone is huge. HUGE. Not sure how much that has to do with sitting in the second row.
Martha Wainwright has such a lovely voice. At first I did not appreciate its simultaneous smallness and maturity. But I could have stuffed her into my bag, if it had not been full of saltine crackers and Sharpies.

At Least They're Honest

No internal filter. They get that later when they learn to be ashamed of their natural tendencies and their bodies.
In this discussion of organic farming, did you happen to mention corn? Because, "once I was in a corn maze and I wasn't even most of the way through and then my sister Natalie went back into the corn maze to find my mom and me..."
"I have to use the potty. Right now."
"So she found my mom but she didn't even find me, even though I was hiding right behind a corn wall..."
"If we're not there yet, are we close to there?"
"And when I came out of the maze it wasn't even dark yet, even though we were in there for a really long time...."

Water-Logged Brain

At least once a wedding/shoot/day I say something that makes everyone around me supremely uncomfortable.
For example, at our fake bridal hair-and-makeup session last week Matt suggested taking the models to a lake when I piped up with, "What, like a lesbian wedding?"
[Silence]
"Cool!"
And then I tried to explain even further, saying, "Because seriously, if we take it to Calhoun everyone will be all, 'I just saw a lakeside lesbian wedding. Oh, we're so metropolitan.'"

And Knee-High Boots On Order

Lauren Weisberger's Unnamed Prada-Wearing Devil Book: Have some more Diet Coke and then we'll talk...
Me: No. I won't read any more of you. You anger me.
LWUPWDB: No. You love me. I'm Dan Brown for girls who don't bother with ancient codes.
Me: Argh! You don't impress me with your designer references or Starbucks drink orders. Andy drops $20 on an $8 cab ride and expenses it. I can't take your fabricat--
LWUPWDB: You want fabric? Miranda Priestly spit on this fabric once. It's still worth 10,000.
Me: What? No. Just give me some elegant prose. Something deserving of the English language.
LWUPWDB: My recitation of street names isn't enough for you? Lex, Madison, Sixty-seventh...That's not what you said last night when you read 80 pages before bed.
Me: But! Wait! I was under the influence of caffeine. I totally felt like Andy; I could barely keep my eyes...oh.
LWUPWDB: Aha.

Eye Shouldn't Be In Charge... Or, Eye'm Not Blind Yet. But Maybe By Lunchtime

Last night as I enjoyed the fluorescent festivities, I had an idea: cosmic tennis. The balls, the lines, and the rackets would all be neon and we'd use blacklights (naturally) to make the whole thing go. Like bowling, but better.
I was in a great mood until I took a glow-stick-bracelet to the eye this morning. Technically it was just the inside of the bracelet.
Stop, drop,--No, wait, that's for fire! Get back on your feet! You can't reach the sink from down there--flush.
I learned my lesson in Stoneberg's class. If something enter your ocular cavity, you must remove it immediately, preferably in a yellow two-spouted sink, but not if you're being a little jerk. Only if you really have chemicals in your eye. This is not a playground.

Before-Dark Patriot

I used to cry at fireworks. Many years ago. But not so many that it wasn't a little strange that this oldish child was publicly freaking out about some thunderous booms.
And now that I am grown up (in years, not inches) I realize that it probably won't kill me with its sound waves, even if I am sitting directly below the spot where, one year, Anthony's mom got a piece of shrapnel in her eye!
If the idiot neighbors who set off the noisy shit with NO SPARKLING of any kind can't control themselves, I'll exercise my constitutional right* to call the police.

*It's probably in here somewhere.

She Practiced Her New Signature

Sara's Ring
Originally uploaded by Sriracha.

Sara J and Adam got married today.
We had plenty of time for everything, since the hair began at 8.
And Apples to Apples began at 10:30.
The heavy drinking began shortly thereafter.
It made me wish I hadn't dropped my 50 mm lens on a cobblestone last week.
This picture is, thusly, older than today. Before there were bands to match.