Monday, March 31, 2008

Survey Says

I received the following survey over the weekend. Thought it might be fun to answer.

What is your favorite:

* GUM: Orbitz Spearmint
* RESTAURANT: I've recently fallen in love with Flemings, a steak and wine bar in San Antonio. Delicious!
* DRINK: sweet tea or Coke...tough choice!
* SEASON: Fall
* TYPE OF WEATHER: 60s or 70s...cloudy or sunny, doesn't matter
* EMOTION: excited
* THING TO DO ON A HALF DAY: cook-out on the back porch on a fall or spring night
* LATE-NIGHT ACTIVITY: playing games or watching tv
* SPORT: to play - football or softball to watch - hockey, football, soccer
* CITY: wow, I love a lot of cities!
* STORE: Target

When was the last time you:

* CRIED: last month
* PLAYED A SPORT: November...gosh, that was forever ago!
* LAUGHED: Today
* HUGGED SOMEONE: I randomly got a hug at an event yesterday. The florist hugged me good-bye and said "God bless you" Guess he thought I needed a hug and a blessing!
* KISSED SOMEONE: yesterday
* FELT DEPRESSED: last month
* FELT ELATED: two days ago
* FELT OVERWORKED: this one made me laugh! I feel overworked about once a month
* FAKED SICK: months ago...a really long time ago
* LIED: hum...a little lie, today. A big lie...I can't remember the last big lie I told.

What was the last:

* WORD YOU SAID: Bye
* THING YOU ATE: Chicken roll from Joes Pizza
* SONG YOU LISTENED TO: Something in the car last night
* THING YOU DRANK: Coke
* PLACE YOU WENT TO: Meeting in the Campus Center
* MOVIE YOU SAW: Mad Money
* MOVIE YOU RENTED: I can't even remember
* CONCERT YOU ATTENDED: Bette Midler in Vegas

Who was the last person you:

* HUGGED: The florist in San Antonio at our event yesterday
* CRIED OVER: Gosh...I can't remember
* KISSED: hum...getting a little personal here!
* DANCED WITH: I car danced with Caddie last night on our way back to Abilene
* SHARED A SECRET WITH: Jes
* HAD A SLEEPOVER WITH: Not really a sleepover, but Caddie and I stayed in a hotel this weekend in San Antonio for an event
* CALLED: Teena
* WENT TO A MOVIE WITH: My mom and sister
* SAW: My student intern
* WERE ANGRY WITH: Caddie
* COULDN’T TAKE YOUR EYES OFF OF: hum...again with the personal questions!
* OBSESSED OVER: If I obsess over anyone, that would be Dolly Parton! :)

Have you ever:

* DANCED IN THE RAIN: Not danced, but I've played in the rain
* KISSED SOMEONE: Yes
* DONE DRUGS: Not the illegal ones...maybe someday!
* DRANK ALCOHOL: Yes
* SLEPT AROUND: No
* PARTIED ‘TIL THE SUN CAME UP: Oh yes
* HAD A MOVIE MARATHON: Yes! I love movie marathons!
* GONE TOO FAR ON A DATE: Uh, yes
* SPUN UNTIL YOU WERE IMMENSELY DIZZY: Yes!
* TAKEN A SURVEY QUITE LIKE THIS BEFORE: Why yes I have!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

A Friendly Encounter

Do you ever meet someone and instantly know you want to be friends with them? You've enjoyed their company so much on your first encounter, you hope to run into them again. Go to dinner with them, go to a movie with them, go to a party with them. This feeling of connectedness has only happened to me a few times in my life and I'm happy to say that I'm friends with those people still today. I broach this subject because I had such an encounter tonight...Thursday, March 27, 2008. The date is only relevant for two reasons...My friend Caddie turns 23 on March 27, 2008 and in a year when I re-read this blog, I'd like to remember this exact date.

The description of my encounter, or should I say, our encounter:
Since it was Caddie's birthday, I felt we should have a night on the town...you know, good ole' Abilene. While we were out, we met two of the most fabulous men. Now, when I say fabulous, I don't mean gorgeous, "I want to marry him", "I want him to have my babies" fabulous...I mean fabulous like he could pick a great pair of shoes, design a room, tell me all about Barbara and Judy fabulous. Get my drift? So, for the next 2 hours, Caddie and I sat chatting and laughing with two of the most fabulous men in Abilene. We both instantly loved them! How fun?! Two stunningly delightful men, devilishly charming, and wickedly funny. Could you ask for anything more? We have several of the same friends, run in the same semi-circles, our paths have just never crossed. Well, I can assure you our paths will cross again! We will simply have to rendezvous with this fabulous couple once again!

Much love to our new duo!
A Not So Tiffany's Moment

Ok, so it's really just coincidence that my most recent entries have been stories from other people. I really can write my own material, I just couldn't help but post the last story and now this one.

What you're about to read really did happen. The girl in this story, I'll call her Cari, is related to my cousin by marriage, so we've hung out at family functions, weddings, etc. Cari is dating a guy...I'll call him AC.

AC plans a nice date for Cari last weekend. He arrives at her apartment and before he goes to the door, he takes off his sports coat and hangs it in his car. He then went to her apartment, waited a few minutes for her to finish getting ready, and then off they go, out the door to his car. When they arrive at his car, they see that all of the windows are busted out and several things are missing, one of them being his sports jacket. He's devestated. Whether they go to the police station or the cops come to the apartment, I do not know. What I do know is that as AC was giving his statement to the police, Cari overheard him say that in his sports coat pocket was the Tiffany's engagement ring he was going to give Cari that night! He had plans to propose, but sadly, things didn't work out as he had imagined.

Truly a tragic story.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Interesting Story

A good friend of mine recently sent me the following story. While it doesn't completely follow my life or the lives of all of my friends, I still find some truth in the words written by this seeker of a perfect life. Whether or not it speaks to you or portrays the path you are headed down, we've all had similar thoughts or know people who have struggled with the same dreams of grandeur and dignity.


For the most part, my women friends and I were kids of
upper-middle-class privilege, raised to believe that, with hard work
and a little courage, the world was ours. We climbed mountains at
summer camp, went to Europe on high-school class trips and took family
vacations to New York City and the Grand Canyon. Our parents, like
theirs before them, told their kids they could go anywhere and do
anything. We took them at their word.

By the time we hit adulthood, technology and globalization had brought
the world to our doorstep. Now in our mid-20s, we're unsteadily
navigating a barrage of choices our mothers never had the chance to
make. No one can complain about parents who started sentences with
"When you're president..." But we are now discovering the difficulty
of deciding just what makes us happy in a world of innumerable
options.

Three years ago my friends and I barreled out of the University of
Wisconsin ready to make our mark on the world. Julia headed to France
to teach English. I started law school in Minneapolis. Marie and
Alexis searched for work in San Francisco. Bridget started an
internship in D.C. Kristina landed a job in Ireland. The list goes on.
Scattering to our respective destinations, we were young enough to
follow our crazy dreams but old enough to fend for ourselves in the
real world. At a time when our lives were undergoing dramatic changes,
so was America. Three months after receiving our diplomas, the Twin
Towers came crashing down. We realized that, in more ways than one,
the world was scarier and more complex than we'd ever imagined.

Since graduation, we've struggled to make our own happiness. It seems
that having so many choices has sometimes overwhelmed us. In the seven
years since I left home for college, I've had 13 addresses and lived
in six cities. How can I stay with one person, at one job, in one
city, when I have the world at my fingertips?

Moving from one place to the next, bouncing from job to job, my
friends and I have experienced the world, but also gotten lost in it.
There have been moments of self-doubt, frantic calls cross-country.
("I don't know a soul here!" "Do I really want to be a __?")
Frustrated by studying law, I joined friends in San Francisco to
waitress for a summer and contemplate whether to return to school in
Minnesota. Unhappy and out of work in Portland, Molly moved to
Chicago. Loni broke up with a boyfriend and packed her tiny Brooklyn
apartment into a U-Haul, heading for Seattle. Others took jobs or
entered grad school anywhere from Italy to L.A. Some romances and
friendships succumbed to distance, career ambition or simply growing
up. We all lost some sleep at one point or another, at times feeling
utterly consumed by cities of thousands, even millions, knowing that
even local friends were just as transient as we were.

Like so many women my age, I remain unmarried at an age when my mother
already had children. She may have had the opportunity to go to
college, but she was expected to marry soon after. While my friends
and I still feel the pressure to marry and have children, we've gained
a few postcollege years of socially accepted freedom that our mothers
never had.

The years between college and marriage are in many ways far more
self-defining than any others. They're filled with the simplest, yet
most complex, decisions in life: choosing a city, picking a career,
finding friends and a mate--in sum, building a happy and satisfying
life. For me and for my group of friends, these years have been
eye-opening, confusing and fabulous at the same time.

The more choices you have, the more decisions you must make--and the
more you have yourself to blame if you wind up unhappy. There is a
kind of perverted contentedness in certainty born of a lack of
alternatives. At my age, my mother, whether she liked it or not, had
fewer tough decisions to make. I don't envy the pressure she endured
to follow a traditional career path and marry early. But sometimes I
envy the stability she had.

Once again I've been unable to resist the lure of a new city. So, as I
start my legal career in Chicago, I'm again building friendships from
scratch, learning my way around a strange new place. Yes, my friends
and I could have avoided the loneliness and uncertainty inherent in
our journeys, and gone back to our hometowns or stayed in the college
town where we had each other. But I doubt any one of us would trade
our adventures for that life. I have a sense of identity and
self-assurance now that I didn't have, couldn't have had, when I
graduated from college. And I know someday I'll look back on this
time--before I had a spouse, a home and children to care for--and be
thankful for the years that just belonged to me.