Thank goodness I'm a country girl

I am going to my second country concert in a twelve month period tonight.  Keith Urban is playing at the Fillmore and I will be there.  He's all about charcoal again, which is why I get to go.  Better question is what does he sing?  All I know about him is he has very metro hair and is married to Nicole Kidman.  So he's basically a country Tom Cruise.

 

See, sometimes exciting things happen to me.

Long time no post

OK it's been forever, but I am really grasping at things to talk about. I've been in Arkansas quite a bit, but that's more about work and less about moonshine and hog farmers. So that's not an interesting topic. I did have a "Stupid Julie" email this week, and Whitney helped me craft a response. I was proud enough of it that I felt it merited posting. The brilliant part is that the woman who sent the original email had entered the name associated with my email address as "Julie 'The Bride'" followed by her last name.

Original email:
"I promised Leslie that I would keep us moving in her absence. She suggested that we each select invitations we like—one for the shower and one for the Meet Michael party—and at the 4/16 meeting decide which ones we like best. I’ll start the ball rolling---I like this one from Wedding Divas---elegant, like Julie, and I’m thinking we could do one color for the shower (a more feminine color) and another (more bisexual—no, wait, that didn’t come out right—neutral? nongenderspecific?) for the Meet Michael party. But I’m not strongly invested, eager to see other’s favorites, and most interested in getting the ball rolling."

So presumably this is a wedding planning committee involving Julie the bride. We took her awkward expression around the concept of 'unisex' and ran with it.

My response:
"I agree that we should save the whole bisexual theme for the Meet Michael party - everyone knows all people are born bisexual until we inundate them with our societal gender constructs, but the shower is probably not the right forum for this particular soap box. I'm actually thinking we ask the Meet Michael guests to come as either Barbie or G.I. Joe and really bridge the gender gap...but hey, they don't call me Julie "The Bridge" D(last name redacted for blog purposes) for nothin'.

"I also think we should have linen napkins at the shower, but on this point I'm more flexible."

24 hours and no responses, despite this being a very lively thread prior to my interjection.

Riot Days

I keep getting sent home for work because of riots. There's a terrible story playing out here in Oakland about a fatal shooting that appeared to be unjustified by a BART (our subway) police officer on New Year's day, and the community has been marching in frustration. Unfortunately, it's impossible to have a peaceful demonstration in Oakland with that much anger pent up, so last Wednesday there were fires, broken windows, and many arrests. The next day, they sent us home at 2pm because they were concerned there would be another riot coming out of the march scheduled for the afternoon. Yesterday they sent us home at 3pm because there was a march in the city, and they were concerned BART service would be affected and none of us would be able to get home (fun fact: you cannot walk across the Bay Bridge). And they've asked us to not come in tomorrow because there's another march planned.

All this means is a terrible event has led to a lot of free afternoons. And it was 75 degrees in the city yesterday, so it was quite lovely to go home.

It's also meant a reminder of how RIDICULOUS San Francisco protesters are. At least the Oakland ones, while violent, have remained on topic. This is from the Chronicle's chronicle (hee!) of yesterday's protest in the 415:

"The rally began calmly at the Civic Center Plaza around 5 p.m. with about 100 demonstrators who said they were protesting brutality against the citizens of Oakland and Greece, as well as the Palestinians."

WHAT? Greece? And yes, there is a lot going on in Gaza right now, but do the BART police have much to do with that? Pick a topic, ONE topic, and please please stick to it.

Two-a-Days

Twice in one day!  I have two more points to make today:

 

1. I told you so about the Razorbacks basketball team.  Poor Longhorns (I watched this game and it was exciting.  One of my counterparts is out there right now and got to go.  Unfortunately, he's a UT alum.).

2. Phew!  It's OK if he's not a Dodger, but he cannot be a Giant.

 

Fortunately or Unfortunately

I hate NYE, which is why I announced to everyone who asked that I would be sitting in my apartment eating a steak and drinking wine, and if they were so inclined they could join me. Unfortunately or fortunately, 11 people opted to join. Unfortunately for sure, I broke my camera by dropping it at an unfortunate angle when the lens was open. Fortunately or unfortunately, my friend Rob took three pictures, none of which are at my house or at the dinner, and one of which features the largest palest arm you will ever see in your life.

Here they are.

Happy Birthday To Me?

This is what Trish is giving me for my birthday (all of this to take place at her fancy gym):

 

"OK, so here's the plan. There are two spinning classes on Saturday: one at 9:15 and the other at 10:15.  I'm not familiar with the teachers, but my guess is we could do both, or we could opt out of the second and do a body conditioning class with...balls, bars and bungies (but I'm sure it's not as hard as the one we did at Canyon Ranch).  Then, at 11:30 we'll have a little break (shower, eat, steam, hot tub, sauna or whatever) until 12:00 when I've scheduled us for a pilates session with John, my trainer.  Depending on how busy the studio is, we may use the allegro machines, which will be fun and interesting for you to try.  We're done at one at which point we can do a power walk with Satchel if it's not raining or whatever."

 

My favorite part is the half hour break.  Pray for me.

Just the 2 of Them

Calendar Boy

My dog walker gave me the most amazing Christmas present in the history of presents, so everyone else can rest easy because I don't need anything else. I came home the other night to find a calendar called "Satchel 2009", featuring 13 pictures (12 months plus a cover) of him having all kinds of fun during the day while I'm at work. I am completely obsessed with these pictures, so thankfully she also gave them to me on a disk. Enjoy the cuteness. Oh, and side note-- every time I've taken him to the beach, he's been terrified of the water. Once I got in the water up to my knees, and he barked at me until I got out. And I knew he was getting wet from time to time at group because at night he was still damp. But I had NO IDEA he was a full-fledged Michael Phelps.

Enjoy!