On the first night I was in San Francisco, I slept on a futon in Sara’s boyfriend’s living room. There were three other girls camping out there as well, one on a futon diagonal to the one I occupied, one in the middle of the room, on the floor, in a sleeping bag, and Sara, who shared another futon with me.

We had a nice night catching up after everyone else had gone to sleep. It was around one in the morning – the two of us had snuck off to eat mozzarella and talk about men for about an hour on her boyfriend’s kitchen floor.

At two, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore and we tiptoed out of the kitchen and through the dark of the living room to our futon, tripping over strange electric cords.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” she asked me.

“No, it’s okay,” I told her. I had no idea where the bathroom was. But even if I did, I couldn’t see a thing – we had a light on in the kitchen and my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the dark. There was no way I’d find it, even if Sara did point me in the right direction. Read the rest of this entry »

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“What’s that you’re eating there?” The seven year old sitting next to me asks. I’m on a plane to San Francisco. We’ve just left Denver, and I’m sitting in seat 8F, the window seat. I’m trapped by the curly, brown haired seven year old who just asked me what I was eating, and another, younger boy sitting on the aisle that looks so similar to him that they could only be brothers. I am listening to all the songs on my computer with the word “California” in the title.

I take my earphones off and lean towards them with a look of extreme consternation. “What was that?”

“I said ‘What’s that you’re eating there?’”

Whenever traveling, I always say a silent prayer that I won’t be seated next to little children, babies, or someone who wants to tell me their life story. These boys were very nice and quiet until I pulled out dinner. In my prayer, I always ask to be seated next to a young man in his early to mid-twenties who looks very much like Adrian Brody and has a thing for pale-skinned, curly haired girls. But it’s always too late for my prayer to be effective; by the time I say my prayer, the seat assignments have all been given away. Read the rest of this entry »

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I read this book called “The Secret.” It is a book that strives to give hope to millions that thinking positively can pull them out of poverty, allow them to find their soul mate in a matter of seconds, or turn them into the most famous musician even if they haven’t touched their flute since they were kicked out of orchestra in 7th grade for dueling with it. This book tells them that nothing is impossible and with a simple, three-step process of asking, believing, and receiving, the universe will allow them to replace their bosses, find the parking spot in front of the club every Saturday night, or wake up in the morning with all of those pesky nose hairs having magically fallen from their noses, never to grow again. The universe can bestow upon them whatever they ask for in an expedient manner (if they so desire), just like the genie in “Arabian Nights” grants Aladdin his every wish. Read the rest of this entry »

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I love Sunday mornings. Even though I have to work around two, I get the most out of my day by waking up early and taking a forty-five minute walk down to Pearl Street Mall. I always dress kind of nice because hey, it’s Sunday, and I want to relax in style. This Sunday was no exception. I wore a nice, flax-colored sundress with matching sandals. I put my hair up and I strolled down to the coffee shop, where I sat and read Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.

At around one thirty, I packed up my things and made ready to leave for work. I wiggled my freshly painted toenails and thought of how much I liked my sandals, when it dawned on me that my boss wouldn’t like them; In the food industry, open-toed shoes are a health code violation. Read the rest of this entry »

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I wonder if I’m the only one who has crazy thoughts. Not what you would typically think of as crazy, unless you’re my kind of crazy. Some people define crazy as being violent, or making a stupid mistake, or being unintentionally dangerous. In my case, I have crazy urges to do things such as flap my arms at work as some sort of primitive expression of angst. I am smart enough to know I shouldn’t flap my arms in public – I don’t think too many people find me strange because I usually don’t tell anyone of these thoughts, or act on them. I’ve only flapped my arms at work once, anyway, and I waited until I was alone in the stockroom until I flapped away freely, undetected. I was refreshed afterwards.

But I have other crazy thoughts too. For instance, I was thinking the other day as I was going home from school (a half hour’s walk), that I really wanted to run as fast as I could the entire distance home. I don’t know why, it just seemed like it would be a fun thing to do. But not for exercising – I hate running as a form of exercise. Somehow it’s different than spontaneous running.

But that would just seem crazy if I was walking and all of a sudden I broke out running for no apparent reason. What would the occupants of the passing cars think? I couldn’t pass myself off as a runner, especially in street clothes and my backpack bouncing at a rapid pace against my back the entire distance. Read the rest of this entry »

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I went out with a new friend last Saturday night. Let’s call her Racine, because I can’t think of anything else to call her except for Sally, and she really isn’t a Sally.

She’s really cute: 5’2”, curvy, she has a round face with dramatic eyebrows that match her brown, curly hair. She isn’t your typical CU girl, either, which is probably why she goes to Sarah Lawrence. I’m not your typical CU girl either, which is why I was accepted to Northeaster and was going to move out to Boston last summer. Long story short – it didn’t happen and I ended up at CU amongst a sea of straight-haired blondies with impeccable physiques to challenge the latest contestants on “America’s Next Top Model.” The Playboy limousine is frequently seen roving around our campus and I’m not quite sure if its because Playboy is looking to recruit, or if it’s because Hugh Hefner’s son (who is reputed to go to CU) needs transportation. If Hugh Hefner’s son does go to CU, I’m sure it’s because in a group of ten girls, nine of them belong in Norwegian travel magazines. Read the rest of this entry »

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I live in a fairly nice condo. My last roommate, Angie and I moved in October of ’06 during a snowstorm. In our puffy North Face jackets and with the aid of Angie’s uncle and boyfriend, we scurried to unload several boxes and various pieces of furniture from the moving truck and into the house. We rushed to and from the truck as fast as we could so we could just close the door and get out of the cold. It took us about half an hour before the truck was emptied onto our living room floor. Boxes were everywhere; couches sat at odd angles that were surely condemned by Feng Shui experts.

The two men stretched briefly after closing the door and then asked which furniture we needed help bringing up the stairs. First they brought up each of our desks, and then followed with our mattresses and bookshelves. But when they attempted to squeeze our box springs up the narrow stairway, they encountered difficulty.

They tried my box spring first, and with a lot of frustration and dexterous maneuvers, they successfully pulled it through the narrow foyer leading to the even narrower staircase with walls on both sides of the steps.

“God, what size is this thing?” I was asked, as though it were my fault for making their work so difficult because I had purchased a bed larger than a twin, rather than the absurd narrowness of the stairwell.

“I think it’s a queen, or a double,” I told them meekly.

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The man directly in front of me in line, his back was identical to my grandfather’s. Just because of that, I was pre-disposed to like him. This isn’t really much of a story, but it doesn’t matter because I wanted to say that I really just liked this guy.

I paid for my coffee and walked over to the several coffee containers waiting on an adjacent counter to serve myself. I didn’t recognize the gentleman’s face when he walked up to me because I’d been so busy acquainting myself with the profile of his back a few minutes earlier. But he tapped me gently on the shoulder and leaned toward me with a wide-eyed expression on his face, as though he wanted to tell me something discreet. Read the rest of this entry »

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This morning, I wrote out a check for $270 and mailed it to my cell phone service provider. I have a 400-minute a month phone plan but typically only use about 200-minutes of it. This outrageous fee I incur every month is a direct result of being too lazy to change my phone plan to accommodate my need for sending and receiving unlimited text messages. As far as I’m concerned, I’d be happy never speaking to anyone over the phone and just getting information in short and concise sentences.

It’s not that I’m unsociable; I’m perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation. In person. In fact, just the other day I had a conversation with this girl I work with about how much I hate talking on the phone. Read the rest of this entry »

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My parents had been trying to sign me up for Brazilian Jiu-jitsu since I entered college, three years ago. It wasn’t until last week that my mother lured me out of my happy little apartment with the promise of an Americano at one of my favorite coffee shops down on Pearl Street.
Once in the car, she told me we would be heading to the Jiu-jitsu school immediately afterwards to sign me up for lessons. I decided I was too mature to scream, open the car door at a red light and sprint back home, so I wedged myself between the car door and my seat cushion and pouted, telling her I was “too girly” and that “I didn’t want to learn how to wrestle men”. “It’s for your own good,” she told me.

At the school, my mother paid two months in advance and the black belt sitting across from me – a gigantically muscular man with a cauliflower-ear and bruises on the hand he wrote with – slid a contract over to me to sign, stating that I had to make at least a two day, two lessons per week commitment.

So here I was, wearing a giant, blue canvas bag with giant, puffy blue sleeves called a “kimono.” Read the rest of this entry »

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