I'm bringing sexy back.

Well, not exactly. I am bringing the blog back though. This Saturday I'm leaving for Washington DC for the next 12 weeks or so for an internship and I thought it would be the perfect fodder for blogging to discuss what happens when you take a girl out of Boston and stick her in the nation's capital. In 25 years I haven't really ever ventured out of the Commonwealth for any extended period of time. To use the words of Tucker Max: Julie leaves Boston, hilarity ensues. The adventure will begin this Saturday when I drive down to D.C. with my dear friend Julia who is about as directionally savvy as I am. In other words, neither one of us can find out way out of a cardboard box. People may want to start placing bets on where we wind up. If nothing else, the trip will be an adventure and hopefully will be a great experience as well. Get excited.

Things that I love.

It is not uncommon for me to email witty top ten lists to various friends of mine during the day to entertain myself (it is worth mentioning that I have a close, personal friend who actually contributes to Letterman's Top Ten List on an almost daily basis. I envy her.) More often then not I have many prolific lists about things that I hate. For instance:

To: JG
From: Bloggerita
Subject: My list

of things I hate. In no particular order:

1.) animals licking themselves (such a good call on your part--I used to throw things at my cat and/or dog when it was done in my presence)
2.) women who wear rings on every finger or nearly every finger. It's creepy. Particularly the thumb ring on adults. Why?
3.) people who chew with their mouths open and/or talk with their mouths full
4.) ketchup (closely followed by every other condiment)
5.) diet soda and my social obligation to drink it based on my gender (see the coke zero on my desk despite my desire for a regular cherry coke)
6.) when people say "what" even though they heard you (for instance "Where are you going?" "What? Oh, I'm going to the mall." Why would you say "what" if you heard me?)
7.) If someone interrupts you telling a story and then isn't considerate enough to get back to whatever point you were making prior to the interruption. A courtesy "I'm sorry, you were saying?" should be mandatory with a public stoning as the punishment for all those who fail to comply
8.) Being talked about and or referred to as though you're not in the room (e.g. if I were at a meeting and I heard two supervisors conversing on the point that "the intern drafted a memo on that very topic last week." 1.) I have a name and 2.) I'm sitting right here).
9.) Foreign hairs--I actually borrowed this phobia from a classmate--the more she pointed it out, the more it bothered me. If I can't identify a hair as my own, it makes me want to hurl. If there is hair stuck on the back of your sweater, I want to remove it all because it grosses me out to look at, even though I know it's more likely than not yours.
10.) Girls wearing skirts with leg warmers. They aren't cool now, they never were and if you don't want to be cold WEAR PANTS!

As you'll note, from this list a blog was born. The point is that lists like these take me no time to craft. In fact, I'm almost positive that JG and I exchanged an additional list of ten things we hated that same afternoon.

Now, in an attempt to be somewhat optimistic, I attempted to create a list of things I "love" (I use that term much more loosely than hate, which is actually pretty messed up if you think about it). I started the list a week ago and I just found it in my "drafts" folder in my email. I have copied the list as is to this post, below:

To: JG
From: Bloggerita
Subject: Things I love

in no particular order:

1.) Seeing my name in print. I have saved every name tag that I think I've ever been given that has my name printed out on it, which includes my college orientation name tag. It is 100% guaranteed I'll save a name tag if it's laminated. I have also taken my name plate from prior jobs and plan to do so on the last day of my current place of employment.

2.) Deleting my spam mail file. I find it to be a very gratifying experience to click "delete all messages." Then you get that great message that says "hooray! no spam here!" It's wonderful.

3.) Swings. There is nothing better to sitting on a swing--seesaws are too violent (we've all had that experience when someone jumps off the opposite end prematurely, causing you to plummet and slam your ass into the half of a tire put there by the genius playground contractor who thought that would somehow cushion your fall) and slides are just plain dangerous (who hasn't had their ass scorched on a searing hot slide?)

4.) String cheese. It's one of the greatest snacks ever created. You can't just eat it though, you have to dissect it one string at a time, it's the only way. Some people think it makes them more adult just to go for it (think of Ryan on The Office from The Injury episode). Not so. You're still eating a child's snack so you might as well eat it the right way.

5.) Re-reading my own emails. I find a strange satisfaction in re-reading an email that I've sent out to a friend that I personally felt was witty and humorous. And when I read the email I tend to act like I've never read it before, and laugh at those parts that I find particularly funny. I'm so obnoxious.

That's it. That's as far as I got. And for the record, I added number 5.) just now as I started searching for this very email exchange with JG and got caught up re-reading funny things I had written to her in prior email chains. I can't help that I find myself hilarious. More importantly, how is it I can only think of 5 things that I love, one of which is string cheese?

I think this says a lot about me as a person and I have to admit--it's nothing good.

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane...

Kudos goes to my friend "JG" who shared this email gem with me, which I will now share with the world and/or the 5 people brave enough to come forward and recognize themselves as "followers" of this blog. I could not have written this better myself. Pure literary magic.

To: Bloggerita
From: JG
Date: Today

My journey back to California was surprisingly smooth and uneventful. Well, except for one thing. I could spare you my moralistic rant on travelling etiquette but (1) that wouldn't be any fun at all, and (2) if anyone in this world will understand me here, it will be you.

So, as you may know, one of the perks of flying Jet Blue is the free in-air satellite cable. It's all real-time, so when I watch Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, I'm watching the same show as the same time that everyone down on earth is watching. It's pretty glorious. Now, I understand that political talk shows – especially uber-liberal shows like Olberman and Maddow – are not everyone's cup of tea. In fact, I realize that on a flight to Oakland, the tea of choice is most likely going to be the 49ers game. Fine. Ok. The beauty of personal TV screens and individualized sound systems is that I need not force Olberman on everyone in my row, and in turn I can expect that the testosterone-oozing segment of the plane will refrain from thrusting body-slamming overweight men on steroids upon me.

But no. See, the thing about armchair football is that the fans themselves feel the need to participate – to sweat and yell and hit things at various points in the game. Which is totally acceptable and, in fact, part of the fun of sports, when such sweating and yelling and hitting things takes place in a stadium or even the comfort of your own laz-e-boy. If you want to risk choking on seven-layer dip to cuss out a bad call, far be it from me to stop you – so long as you're holding your sticky plastic cup of Coors in section D of an outdoor stadium and not seat 27A of a 747.

But unless the pilot has just announced that, no, we're not going to crash into a mountain after all, an airplane is no place for spontaneous eruptions of applause. I don't want to hear your boos and hisses if it is not a direct response to Sally Stewardess charging $15 a peanut. Save your play-by-play for the field, kids, because on a six-hour flight I want to be able to doze off without being rudely awoken by the collective shouts of angry frat boys.

The only, I repeat ONLY time it is EVER acceptable to wake me up on a plane is if it is on fire. Even then, you'd better be sure there's something I can do about it, because if given the choice I'd rather than go up in flames asleep than in an irritated panic. It's not ok to tap my shoulder to see if I want to pay a dollar for flimsy headphones. It's not ok to stumble over me because you were too slow to request the aisle seat and now realize that downing 5 cups of free coffee is inevitably going to make you rush to the bathroom. Do not hit me with your snack cart. Don't point out cloud patterns like you're a weatherman and I care. And DO NOT , I repeat, DO NOT put your hands together in applause that registers on the Richter scale because the 49ers got a second down. It will anger me.

The problem, of course, is that if I say anything to anyone about how horribly rude it is to treat Jet Blue flight 1252 like it's Candlestick Park then I become the soulless bitch who can't just let the boys have their fun. So I'm forced to resort to completely ineffective passive-aggressive measures like the quarter-turn/ half-turn/ whole turn, and the "accidentally" whacking fans on the head as I stumble in a sleepy stupor to the WC. The latter measure – whacking fans on the head – is vaguely gratifying, but in the end what I really want is for these people to know how wrong and rude they are. As is the case with most things in life, however, the clueless offensive people get to go on being clueless and offensive while the rest of us have to suffer in quasi silence. (I say quasi not only because of my passive-aggressiveness, but also because I clearly derive some joy from ranting to you.)

Moral of the Story? People who make excessive noise on airplanes – including football fans and babies (I'll spare you my diatribe on travelling babies for another time) should be shot. If Jet Blue feels that execution is too severe for rowdy passengers, at the very least they should hook their TVs up to some sort of a shock system. My dog used to have a collar that zapped him every time he barked too loudly; I have absolutely no qualms with using the same technology on flights.

When it Rains, it Pours.

The MBTA is worse in the rain for all of the following reasons:

1. It never operates according to it's normal pace and/or schedule when its raining (it essentially operates in reverse) and thus it makes everyone late. This makes for infinitely more people waiting for the train on the platform when you arrive, even if you arrive at your normal time. This is true of traffic in Boston as well. It's always worse in the rain. Rain actually generates traffic in the Commonwealth, but that's a theory for another day.
2. You are wet upon entering the train.
3. Puddles = wet feet = complete misery for all those like me who didn't get a seat this morning and just stood there. With wet feet.
4. The windows fog up from the humidity generated from all of the wet people crammed inside the train.
5. Rain jackets trap in body heat and lead to excessive sweating and overheating.
6. Everyone is carrying a wet umbrella and they feel the need to either shake it out on your legs or hold it so it drips for the entire ride onto your ankles /feet / legs. And if it's not dripping its pressed up against you because the person carrying it doesn't want to put it in their bag and risk getting anything wet, especially their blackberries. God forbid.
7. The train moves at a pace which I could exceed on a unicycle between every single stop thus further elongating my personal misery.
8. For anyone that owns a pet which sheds, the instant one's coat covered in pet hair gets wet, one then smells like a wet animal. This is unpleasant for everyone around that individual, including me. Who wants to barf on you.
9. Upon exiting said T station, people feel the need to carry golf umbrellas which could adequately provide coverage to an Asian family of 11. This makes it impossible to pass said pedestrian without fear of losing an eye from the spokes. And for anyone else carrying an umbrella that needs to pass such a person, forget it. You're screwed.
10. I am prone to higher levels of irritation and sensitivity to stupidity just by virtue of the fact that it's raining. This makes all 9 of the above-mentioned reasons significantly worse and more irritating to me.

Have you seen my pants?

As a brief side note to today's long overdue post, I think that this cartoon perfectly encapsulates one of my major grievances against heavy breathers--their insistence on doing so in my presence. Many thanks to Lowen for bringing this to my attention today via email. There is nothing worse than having a person hovering over you on the T, or anywhere really, breathing down your neck causing your hair to sway in the breeze. What is wrong with breathing strictly through the nose? I had a classmate that I used to refer to as Darth Vader based on how loud she breathed throughout class. No idea what her real name is.


The main problem that I have become all to aware of lately when walking through the streets of Boston that I find particularly troubling and noteworthy of comment: leg warmers. What the HELL is wrong with people? Leg warmers were NEVER cool. Sure, maybe if you're a ballerina and you require warmth on your legs--maybe. I imagine a tutu doesn't offer up much warmth. I suspect this is how the monstrosity that is leg warmers came into being and in fact, I just verified it on Wikipedia. But in this day and age I think people should be smart enough to identify and locate PANTS. We have warm ups, sweatpants, capris, and dare I even suggest it-- leggings. There is really no need for the gaudy awfulness of leg warmers. Is keeping your calves warm really going to make a difference? No, jackass. Just wear a hat if you're so concerned with losing body heat. If I see one more set of leg warmers prancing around the city, I swear I am going to lose my shit. Even if we put aside the sheer ridiculousness of what some might call a "fad" (I would feel more comfortable categorizing it as a social crisis), the most important thing to note is that it's not that friggin' cold out yet. If you're from New England, you know better. This is nothing. There has been one day that was particularly cold in the city in recent weeks that I can think of offhand and even then, it didn't warrant leg warmers. In fact, arctic temperatures don't warrant legwarmers. If your legs are cold WEAR PANTS, moron.

Bottom Dweller.

It's time to introduce a new element of my life into the world of blogging. No, it has nothing to do with my continued aversion for all things MBTA nor does it involve my abhorrence for all food items categorized as condiments. This is a little slice of my home life that I'd like you all to share with me. I would like to open the virtual door into my humble abode and introduce you all to my dear neighbor of Apt. 5, whom I have never met, but would like to tell you about.

Apt. 5 has very diverse interests. For instance, he is a huge fan of talk radio. He loves all this radio and all things talking. Thus, he likely considers the a.m. radio God's greatest gift to earth. He has a special affinity for Howard Sterns and also the Toucher & Rich show on WBCN. Now while I could do without Howard Stern I do love me some Toucher and Rich. Those two idiots, along with Crash Clark and Adolfo are completely hilarious. I highly recommend it. They have a segment where they do drunken Red Sox / Celtics recaps. Hilarious. Anyway, 5's interests don't stop with Boston sports, they include the equally well-respected world of professional wrestling (think WWF). Who doesn't enjoy that, right?

Now you might ask yourself, Self, what else does 5 do with his spare time? Well, I'm glad you asked. He's a very regimented man. He wakes promptly at 6:30 and then goes into the bathroom where he turns the fan on. He exits the bathroom at approximately 7:00 a.m. when he returns to his bedroom to get ready for a day at work. While getting ready for his day, he loves him a little morning talk radio. At the end of his work day, around 5:00 he arrives home from whatever employer he works for in his POS white car, which comes complete with dents, one working tail light and all the latest amenities every car should have, such as a disc man plugged into the tape deck. He goes to bed anywhere between 10:30 and 11:00 and drifts off into dream land listening to his favorite late night satellite radio show.

Now at this point of the post you might be a little bored. You might want a snack or you may want to abandon this site to cruise to Boston.com or Facebook. But for those of you that are perceptive you might wonder how it is that I can tell you all this without having ever met Apt. 5. I know all of this because Apt. 5 might be the loudest, most horrendous neighbor ever to wonder the face of this planet. I know his schedule because he moves about his apartment as if his shoes were full of lead and his hands were covered in oven mitts. He slams everything--doors, cabinets, walls, floors-- and whether he's listening to the TV or his precious GD radio, that sucker is on full blast. ALL. THE. TIME.

This really isn't even the best part though. This is really all just the tip of the ice burg. The real kicker is that this douche snores so loud that I feel like he is sleeping directly under my bed using my dirty laundry as his pillow. It is completely unbearable. I can no longer sleep on my side because the noise created by this man's face goes right through my ear, into the cerebellum and directly into my brain. I think I'd prefer Chinese water torture or paper cuts between each of my fingers given the choice between either and sleeping above 5's bedroom. My sister and I have tried EVERYTHING. The sound generated by this foul beast has defeated ear plugs, head phones and a fan kept on full blast. The summer months were quasi bearable because luckily for us, his air conditioner muffled the ruckus enough to allow us to sleep fitfully. The day that AC came out was among the worst days of my life. It's right up there with the time that my sister made me kiss the carpet at the top of the stairs of my childhood home, which coincidentally, was my dog's favorite place to nap. Imagine your lips covered in dog hair. Moving on.

It has gotten to the point that my sister and I are taking desperate measures in an effort to alleviate the aggravation of living above this man. At one point it was getting to be that I was sleeping out in the living room several nights a week on the couch just so I could try to get a few hours of rest. We typically have to stomp on the floor 3-5 times per evening at various times in an effort to disturb 5 just enough so he chortles himself awake and rolls over. Sometimes this maneuver backfires though like the time he started wailing on the ceiling the other night so much that my bed moved. Oops. In another brilliant move my sister got so pissed at approximately 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning that she took her i-pod, chose the most annoying song she could think of (Gwen Stefani's "Whatchu Waiting For"), put it in her Bose speaker and blared it face down into the carpet for the full duration of the song while she waited in the living room. Meanwhile I was having a heart attack in my bedroom trying to figure out what the Hell was going on. Of course the d-bag was still snoring though at the end of the song so it didn't make a difference whatsoever.

I have contacted my landlord in an attempt to get him evicted but thus far no actions have been taken. I mean how do you tell someone that he has an insufferable snoring problem when you don't even know him? He could have something very very wrong with him which could only be cured by his dying in his sleep. That's awful and I'm not willing to tell him that to his face (yet) or in even in an anonymous note (I failed to mention the fact that I've already slipped several of those under his door over the last year). So what to do? Last night I tossed and turned until 4 listening to the SoundTrack of Apt 5's throat and then slept out on our sofa until my cell phone alarm went off at 7:00.

This is no way to live.

Larry and October have a love-hate relationship

It has been brought to my attention by the Sugar Free bloggerita that several of the readers think I am her friend named Andy. Let me assure you that I am not said Andy. I am Larry. I have also heard that this Andy fellow is the world's tallest midget with a raging Napoleon complex and is balding at the tender age of 25. Tough times Andy, but Boston already has a Dustin Pedroia, and I am sure he makes more money than you. Hope you are reading along and things work out for you though.

On to my post….

Soxtober Fest.

Here in Boston, we have been blessed with the success of our sports teams over the past several years. The rest of the country thinks we are spoiled and hates us for it. I agree; we are spoiled brats. I am glad that you hate us, because we don't like you either. Boston is the center of the Universe. Deal with it.

As the Sox are my favorite Boston team, October has been a particularly enjoyable month during most fall seasons since 2004. However, there are many pitfalls to this fun-filled month. Don't get me wrong, I would never trade the gluttonous, Boston sports-induced excitement for anything in the world, but there are some things that are really starting to chap my ass.

Unlike most young professionals, I do not drink coffee or any other forms of caffeine for that matter. During this month, like most citizens of Red Sox Nation who stay up to watch the late games, I am miserably sleep deprived. Lack of rest without caffeine is not a pleasant combination. Today is definitely no exception. (Sider: Last night's win was amazing, by the way. Fenway finally felt like 2004 allover again.) Further, this October has been much worse than others on the sleep deprivation scale. My job as of late has been treating me like a 120 lb man in a maximum security prison when it comes to hours spent in the office. You may have guessed that I work in finance. You would be correct. Despite the long hours, I'm just happy that I get a paycheck every 2 weeks because I know others are not as fortunate. Whatever, at least the unemployed get to sleep until noon.

Last week, in an effort to curb my sleep deprivation, I went back to my dark mistress (the coffee bean, brewed & served over ice). It was a bad decision, but desperate times call for desperate measures. The experience has been like resurrecting an old hook-up. Despite the fact that I knew it was a horrible idea, she has brought me happiness albeit short term. It will be quite difficult to wean myself off our early morning romps in a couple weeks, but she continues to beckon me for the booty call each day. I am really looking forward to the caffeine withdrawal migraines in a couple weeks. I imagine these raging headaches could be like realizing the resurrected hook-up left behind the most heinous STD possible. Awesome, can't wait. Just for the record, I don't have any STDs…clean, disease-free, and very single in fact. Ladies, contact the blogerrita if you are interested.

Now, one would think that my reintroduction to coffee would better temper me for public consumption throughout the daily grind. Not true. I have become even more agitated with the things that annoy me on a daily basis. For instance, I am sweating even more on the T despite the fact that the conductor has the A/C working properly. This makes me angry and I can't figure it out. Maybe I need to see my primary care physician. Anyway, the morning T rides to the office are still miserable. I am usually late because I had to pick up a DD iced coffee. My tardiness ensures the train to be even more crowded with equally miserable and sleep deprived Bostonians. However, the evening T rides over to Kenmore for the games have been utterly unbearable. Last night, I was packed on a B line train sans A/C (but no heat either, thankfully!) with a couple hundred of my new closest friends.It was a sweaty mess and this was truly a motley crew. Our demographic was approximately: 70% Sox fans headed to the Fenway area,25% Brighton/Brookline area young professionals commuting home, 4% drunk college students, and 1% morbidly obese couple violating my personal space while they swallowed each other's faces in the throws of passion. I'll leave my hatred of PDAs for another post, but please get a room. That was just plain disgusting and everyone on the T car needed to take a shower to wash away the bad memories when you were done. But I digress.

Generally, I always support the commuter over the tourist when it comes to friction among these groups on the T. I am a commuter and tourists are typically a pain in the ass as the blogerrita has previously discussed. One could argue that Sox fans emulate tourists on the T. Sox fans are giddy with anticipation often telling loud and obnoxious stories to their friends while headed to the Park. True, this can be annoying. However, after last night, I support Sox fans over Brighton/Brookline commuters any day of the week. Nothing is more annoying than the filthy looks of disgust and displeasure on the faces of the Brighton/Brookline commuters while their T car is inundated with rabid, playoff-ready Red Sox fans. NEWS FLASH for Green Line commuters who reside west of Kenmore Sq: You consciously made the horrible decision to live over there. Do not take your poor decision-making out on us Sox fans. Actually, many of you are probably Sox fans too so don't be Debby Downer that we are actually enjoying this playoff run. I promise, we will be out of your precious T cars by November 1, and you can go back to getting normal amounts of sleep and living miserably among to the BU & BC students. In the meantime, I'm going to search for a new, non-addictive coffee alternative and buy some commercial grade antiperspirant. Go Sox.