A Very Hairy Birthween is the new awesome

Some of you may remember that Betsy's birthday - or "birthween" as we like to call it - falls on Halloween and usually means that the parties we throw for her involve people dressing up weird. Since this was my last chance to help throw Bets a party before it turns into Steve's permanent responsiblity, we decided to do it right: A Very Hairy Birthday.


Everyone was instructed to get all dressed up in some hair that wasn't their own. Big wigs. Beautiful bouffants. Twirly mustaches. Hairy Chests. It didn't matter how everyone came dressed as long as they were sporting some sort of hair that Mother Nature didn't bless them with (but that you wish that she had).

We were pretty strict about the hair policy.


I came over to find Bets and Steve dressed like pizza makers in their matching Pizzaria 712 shirts and Mario mustaches.

Then bets changed into a hamster colored mustache that she felt a little more comfortable in, and matched her own coloring a little better.

(Which doubled nicely as sideburns as well).


We had a lot of good hair come through over the course of the evening:

Big hair.

Pink hair.

Perv hair.

Sharpie hair.

Eye hair.

Hot hair.

The wrong kind of mullet hair.

The other wrong kind of mullet hair.

Best from the side hair.

Lopsided hair.

Compensation hair.

Gross hair.

Fear of hair. (Robyn had a tough time at this party)


We also got bets a delish birthween cake and sang to her.

And betsy and steve practiced for next week.

Happy Birthween to all, and to all a good night.

Moving on is the new awesome

So. Since it appears that bets is serious about this whole wedding thing, I decided that I had better come to terms with it and get myself a new roommate. Her name is Aubrey. She moved in last week, and she is both new and awesome, and I am almost afraid to post about her because I am pretty sure that you will all have superhuman crushes on her. Because I kind of do.


It is always sort of fun living with someone for the first time. Even if you knew them before, when you actually share living space you see sides of them that you never did before. These are a few things that I think that you should know about my new roommate:

* she is a photographer, of the extremely talented variety.

* she doesn't eat animals, but she also doesn't give me dirty looks when i eat bacon.

* she looks really good in stretch pants.

* she has promised to teach me how to drive a stick shift. maybe in the parking lot of Safeway or something.

* she has a little nose piercing, and sometimes i walk into the bathroom and find her sticking some tweezers up there. she says she is just making sure that everything is clean, but i don't know about that.

* she does not believe in social networking sites.

* she wears these pajama shorts to bed that have a big saggy butt and look a little bit like a diaper. (or a lot like a diaper)

* she takes one bite of whatever piece of fruit she is eating, and then puts it back into the fruit bowl.

* she says the word poop whenever she can

You will probably be seeing much more of her, so prepare yourselves.

To Grandmother's House We Go is the new awesome

I was in Southern California last week helping to clean out my Grandmother's house - the house that she has lived in and that has remained unchanged for the past 40+ years, and that I have been visiting since I was born. It was a move to an assisted living home rather than a funeral that obliged the task, so it wasn't as somber as cleaning out a house could be, but there was certainly still a sense of mourning as I had to go through all the things that my Grammy has collected and loved and treasured for her whole life, and in the space of three days decide what got to be thrown out and what we had room to keep.

However, as you might imagine, there were all sorts of things behind cabinets and other closed doors that a Granddaughter wouldn't usually have reason to find under normal circumstances.

The obligatory handgun in the sash drawer:

The secret stash of booze in the wrapping paper closet:

And the book called Boners on the top shelf of a bunch of old books (actually printed in 1931 and illustrated by Dr.Seuss)


Best of all, though, were the personal items. The love letters that my Grandfather had written her. Old highschool yearbooks. Family portraits. Look at some of these gems:

My Grammy and my Grandpa, back when they were first married. (Check out how good my grandfather looks in a uniform!)
Zowie.
This one of my mother as a little girl making a happy face really killed me. You would be amazed at how many photos she was scowling in. Or maybe you wouldn't. My mom never has much liked getting her photo taken.

See?

My mom might kill me for putting this one up:

But I can make it up to her by putting up one of my own. Looks like nerdy glasses are hereditary.

My parent's wedding:

And of course, lots of baby photos:




I know it was hard for my Grammy to know that we were going through her possessions, and that the way that she has been accustomed to living independently for the past 96 years was changing rather dramatically. But I think it made her happy to know that we found things in her house to remind us of her, and that so many of the things that she had loved were going to stay with people that had loved her and appreciated her beautiful things.

Don't worry, Grammy. This is what I had to take my portion home in (and I could have used a bigger one to hold all the memories):

Missing you is the new awesome

Sometimes you decide to get married and it turns your whole world upside down. Not because you're one of those bridezilla kinda brides but because the art of getting married requires lots of change. Some that's fun, some that's scary, most of it stressful and some sad too.

I feel like I've been out of the loop with most of my friends for the past month or two and the funny thing is when I see them, they all say "oh you must be so busy with the wedding!" And each time I have to say "actually no, not really." The wedding planning for me has been great. My mom and my sisters have done just about everything and I get to approve or veto things. It's been the best ever. And since I'm none too particular, it's been pretty easy. You can see pictures of my last trip to Utah including the wedding shower my family threw for me here.

The thing that took up 3 solid weeks of life was finding a new apartment in San Francisco. Steve and I weren't prepared at all for how tough it would be. We thought with our combined income and our stunning good looks we'd have our pick of places. Not so. We quickly realized we were competing with 25 other "Steve & Betsy's" for every $1900/mo. 1 tiny bedroom dump posted on craigslist. It was really discouraging. In the end, with the help of our friends Andy and Emily who were vacating their super sweet, split-level, complete with roof deck style loft in SOMA, we were able to slip right into their place. I'm so thrilled to be living where I'm living now (hello dishwasher, garbage disposal, washer/dryer, guest bathroom!) but that means I moved out of my apartment with Bex two weekends ago and that pretty much makes me want to cry. Thanks to the new awesome our escapades will go down in internet history but it's the things that didn't always make the blog that I'll miss the most...talking about boys and life and jobs and junk while eating nestle refrigerator cookie dough...Bex's incessant watching of Rachael Ray cooking shows...you know, the good times.

Well, the new awesome isn't dead yet so in true new awesome style, I present to you a bunch of pictures! Last Saturday my best girlfriends threw me an amazing shower here in SF at a restaurant called Maverick. Thanks Jules, Kat, Bex, Linds and Court for planning and thanks to everyone else that came. What a great day. I love my friends.

Before the shower Jules, Kat, Bex & Linds took me to a spa in my new neighborhood for a pedicure!



Then we met up with everyone for the most delicious brunch ever.






And a nice game of True Love Bingo!


And presents!

Vanity is the new awesome

Ok, so I don't have too much against Dave Matthew's Band or their fans, but I saw this plate while visiting my grandma yesterday and had a good laugh. I get what the owner of the car is trying to say on their vanity plate. Rather than a 'DeadHead' they are a 'DMB Head." Just a serious DMB fan. Okay. Do you think that the owner of this car realizes that most of the people when reading their license plate without getting close enough to read the frame are just going to assume that they wanted their plate to read "dumbhead"?

I think vanity plates are a little like tattoos. You see a lot of bad ones and wonder why people paid good money to get them. Moral of the story: Think long and hard about what you are going to have yours say (tattoos or vanity plates), because you probably don't get to change it until you buy a new car or get a new body (or laser surgery).

Fessing up is the new awesome

So, maybe you have been sitting there at your computer thinking to yourself "those TNA girls sure are getting lazy" or maybe you might wonder if the mob came over and broke our internet fingers or if our computers exploded because we were downloading too many mullet photos. Because, seriously, we haven't been blogging. Well, actually it is a lot less exciting. Things have been kind of going crazy lately with bets' impending wedding and, gulp, mostly with MOVING. That is right. Betsy moved out. Of our apartment. And left me all alone.

Believe me, I am still sort of in shock over it all. For a few days straight, the old lady in a straw hat and i just sat in bet's empty bedroom and stared at eachother sadly in silence.

Then I got up and decided to assess the situation in the apartment. The first thing I noticed was all of the things that I used to use all the time that apparently were not mine. Like, once Betsy took all of her food out, our fridge looked a little sad and lonely. Granted, I had been in Russia for a few weeks, so I hadn't been shopping, but my fridge hasn't been this empty since college. Now the cold empty expanse of the fridge is just a physical metaphor for the current state of my heart.
Also, she took all the spices with her, and just left a few that I had my initials on them. Does it seem strange to anyone else that the only spices that I own are Marjoram and Celery Seed?

Apparently I don't own any pots or pans, either. (Not that it matters, since apparently I don't have any food to cook in them anyway). I have plenty of plates, and silverware, and pretty bowls to display prepared food in. But no pots and pans. So I have had a good excuse to buy all sorts of pretty kitchenware.

I also had to buy a new couch, and new tv, and a new tv table, and some new shoes, and have been painting the living room to try to make my apartment look like normal again.

So, maybe all that explains why we haven't been blogging much, but now we have all these saved up photos to talk about, so I think TNA can get back on track. Maybe bets will even post her photo of October cat, since we are a little overdue there and I think Nathaniel has probably worried himself sick wondering what this month's cat looks like.