Unapologetically Mundane

The Yankees Apparently Won the World Series

plumpdumpling — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:10:57 +0000

The Awesome Part About Working in Downtown NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: My office building overlooks the parade, so I can watch it from our balcony without having to actually stand amongst the stinking masses.

The Awful Part About Working in Downtown NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: I don’t actually care about the Yankees or even baseball in general, yet I had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all of the cheerful fans this morning on the train. Grand Central was flooded with people in jerseys who had apparently taken the day off for the parade, which makes me a little sick to my stomach.

The Idiot Thing I Did in NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: I wore baby blue pants with a baby blue shirt and a navy blue track jacket. If one more person says something Yankees-positive to me on the train today despite the fact that I’m wearing headphones and reading a magazine, there will be blood.

Based on the Photo, He’s Likely Also from Ohio

plumpdumpling — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:34:02 +0000

I received a notice from OkCupid’s QuickMatch function this morning that one of the following nine men gave me a high rating:

I looked through them, considering which is most likely to want to bang me, and decide that really, any of them would make a suitable replacement for Kamran if ever a Kamran replacement was needed.

The first guy is at a sporting event, which turns me off, but at least I know he’s likely not one of those house-bound fatties who needs to be lifted through his roof with a crane every time he needs to leave.

The seventh guy looks a little unwashed, but he’s wearing a shirt that appears to say “Iron Lung”, which means he either likes Radiohead or iron lungs in general, and either of those is fine with me.

The second guy reminds me of Randy Travis in profile, but he’s in a plane, and I appreciate a world traveler. And I’m assuming this guy is a world traveler and not an NYC-to-Ohio-and-back traveler like me.

The fourth guy isn’t even necessarily a guy, and that mask is exceedingly stupid, but it leads me to believe the person is into art, which is great, even if it’s dumb art.

And so on and so on. With all of the daydreaming I was doing about my potential relationships with the relatively normal-looking gentleman, it took me several minutes to actually process this guy:

I love the picture, because it’s one of those that keeps him from having to write a single word about himself in his profile. He has a mullet and a mustache and is CREEPILY PEERING AT YOU FROM BEHIND A BUSH. Or a tree. Whatever. The point is that you know all you need to know about him and his late night lady-watching habits from that photo alone.

Which means he’s obviously the one who chose me.

If the World was Fair, Candy Pumpkins Would Be Available All Year

plumpdumpling — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:52:58 +0000

This is all that’s left of Halloween, but it sure was good while it lasted. Kamran and I spent Friday night watching horror movies instead of, you know, piecing together a simple costume so as to not disrespect our friend Anthony’s party the next night.

To make us feel extra bad, Anthony seriously went all-out for this thing. As if we weren’t impressed enough to actually know someone who owns a house and can therefore have a legitimate house party (even if it was out on Long Island), he had the place covered in cobwebs and bathed in creepy lighting with awesome additions like strings of razorblades hanging in the doorway to the dining room. His friends all had elaborate costumes, and he went around the party in an H1N1 emergency response team uniform, drinking what he said was germ-ridden waste.

I ended up wearing a pink tank top with a black shirt covered in stars over it and said I was aurora borealis, while Kamran wore a striped sweater and said he was Freddie Kreuger had he gone straight, stopped murdering kids, and gotten his PhD. No one was impressed, but we brought a box of thirty assorted candy bars with us, so we didn’t get egged.

Of course, we ended up eating at least half of those thirty candy bars ourselves and stuffing more in our pockets for the long ride home on the Long Island Railroad, but no one was sober enough to notice.

This Ain’t Yer Mama’s Cookin’ Show

plumpdumpling — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:24:30 +0000

My post on donuts4dinner.com today is too good not to share here.

It’s gross, funny, and sexy all at the same time. And I’m really surprised it made it onto TV.

Playing It Cool

plumpdumpling — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:29:10 +0000

I posted on Examiner, and it’s really too short for me to paste an excerpt here.

I would turn comments off so you didn’t feel obligated, but Feedburner puts the comment link at the bottom of the entry no matter what, so it’s moot.

PUMPKIN ANUS

plumpdumpling — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:44:22 +0000

Am I right or am I right?

Geocities is Dead! Long Live WordPress!

plumpdumpling — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:46:10 +0000

Sunday night around 7 p.m., Kamran just happened to be napping, and I just happened to be wasting time with my Google Reader when I happened upon this article from “Huffington Post” about Geocities shutting down on October 26th, the very next day.

Horrified, I went to the Geocities website and read the entire FAQ where they said something to the effect of if you don’t right-click on each of your individual pages and save them to your hard drive, your information will be lost FOREVER. Not for a second did I think about how annoying that was going to be or how a much better use of my time would be creating a new website, because my Geocities homepage was my LIFE from 1998 to 2002, and the Internet would be a sad, sad place without pages such as

the one in which I rate facewashes by how gross they taste,

the very first “blog” entry I ever wrote online in 1998,

and the one in which I have potential suitors fill out an application to marry me.

So I went through each of my maybe 100 pages, right-clicked, saved, and breathed a sigh of relief knowing that someday, I’d be able to go back and read the online diary that used to get me in so much trouble in high school whenever someone found out I’d called her a skank in it. Only when I got about 30 pages in, I started getting an error on every page telling me that it couldn’t load. I started flipping out again, searching the Geocities website for an apology about their overloaded servers and the promise that they’d keep the sites up for an extra day so everyone could have time to save their PRECIOUS MEMORIES. What I found was that Geocities had an hourly download rate, and that I’d surpassed it and had to wait to access more of my pages. I was prepared to sit in front of my computer until midnight on the dot, still downloading as the clock ticked from 59 seconds back to 0.

Hours later, I finally finished grabbing everything I could, including the pages that weren’t linked from anywhere and that maybe two people in the entire world had seen accidentally via a Dogpile or Metacrawler search back in the day. I started thinking that maybe it was a good thing the site was disappearing. Maybe I didn’t want the world knowing how I referred to myself as The Katie™ not infrequently or how I had an entire series of connected pages chronicling how perverted Mister Rogers is. Now that everything was safe within my hard drive, it didn’t matter that no one would ever fill out my Application for Husbandry again.

But then I woke up on October 26th, and the site was still there. I kept checking, and it kept being there. I almost got pissed off. That’s my private writing! Who does Geocities think they are, keeping that stuff around?! Ten minutes ago, in the midst of writing this, I checked again, and sure enough, there it was. I typed my address into the historical record of Geocities, and it was there, too.

But two minutes ago, I checked again, and now it seems to be officially dead. The historical record is showing the first page and then “Not in Archive” error messages when I try to click on anything from there.

I’m relieved. I’m saddened.

Shoes Like Papier-Mâché

plumpdumpling — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:45:58 +0000

I bought my first pair of Converse Chuck Taylor low-tops my sophomore year of college and wore them for the next six years. They were probably two sizes too big for me, because I was somehow under the impression through high school and college that my feet were much, much bigger than they actually are. Had they been the correct size, the rubber reinforcement strip around the front of the shoe would have kept the canvas top from peeling away from the sole, but things being as they were, I developed holes on both sides of each shoe within weeks where they curved every time I bent down.

I wore them every single day. (Unless, of course, I was wearing something that went with my neon pink or teal blue Sauconys, but that was rare, as you can imagine.) When the sole lost all of its minimal padding after a couple of years, I bought padded inserts. When I found a giant hole in the back of the right one in a couple more years, I ignored it. When the balls of my feet actually wore holes in the rubber sole of each shoe, I replaced the padded inserts with waterproof gel inserts that kept the rain out (for the most part). The shoes got wet so many times that the canvas actually got hard, like papier-mâché.

My parents came to visit NYC two years ago and asked what they could buy me for my birthday while they were here. It hurt, but I decided to have them purchase my very first replacement pair of Chucks. Reminding myself that my feet are actually quite normally-sized, I went down a couple of sizes and enjoyed the freedom of not worrying about wet socks for the first times in years.

A few days later, I had developed blisters on the sides of my feet where the old Chucks hadn’t rubbed but the new Chucks did. I assumed my feet would get used to the smaller size eventually, but two years later, I was still having to rotate them out of my wardrobe every couple of days and actually wear dress shoes or something to give my feet a day off from the pinching.

The other day, though, I finally told myself, “THESE ARE $40 SHOES. Surely you can afford to buy new ones that don’t hurt.” And I did, one size between the originals and their next-of-kin. I’m wearing them now and working on dirtying them up so I’m not THAT GIRL with the new Chucks, and it’s a delight. And you know what? Moving on didn’t bother me one bit. Apparently I don’t get attached to things that hurt me.

Except men and ice cream.

I Love Miley Cyrus, and I’m Not Even Sure It’s in an Ironic Way Anymore

plumpdumpling — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:35:19 +0000

If you don’t work with me and don’t receive a daily instant messenger reminder from me to listen to it, you may be surprised to know that my favourite song at the moment is Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.”.

I first heard it months ago in the background of the Max Azria/Miley Cyrus Wal-Mart collection commercial and could only make out the words “the butterflies fly away”. Naturally, I ran to Google and typed that in but kept coming up with a song called “Butterfly Fly Away”, which was decidedly not it. Not having heard a lick of Miley before that, I had no idea that this was apparently some hit from her Hannah Montana movie.

I later found the right song, listened to it on repeat all day every day, and dreamed of the day they would make an official video for it where Miley would be wearing short-shorts and cowboy boots and would be singing into a corded microphone out in the middle of a field where there’s obviously nowhere to plug that thing in. And then they did:

SO HOT! Then, yesterday, I hired a painter to re-do the lobby of my company’s office, and he randomly started telling me that he’s also currently painting the home of the guy who wrote the new Kelly Clarkson song. I was like, “Oh, I don’t really listen to popular music,” but he assured me I would’ve heard this song, and when we pulled it up on YouTube, it turns out he was right. After enjoying that, he said practically as an aside, “This guy also wrote the new Miley Cyrus song, if you know it.” I was like

IF I KNOW IT?! So what I’m saying is–there’s three degrees of separation between Miley Cyrus and me, which practically makes me one of those friends in her video. Probably the Asian one in the red bikini top.

Zombies v. Old Lady Genitals

plumpdumpling — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:45:22 +0000

I saw Zombieland, and like Adventureland, it was entirely meant to showcase how much better than Michael Cera Jesse Eisenberg is. Kamran was worried it was trying to be Shaun of the Dead, but in most ways–many of them involving the lack of puny British accents–it was better:

1) The rules for staying alive.
2) The slow-motion death scenes.
3) The non-lame love story that actually made me like that chick from Superbad.
4) Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson.
5) But mostly Jesse Eisenberg.

The heavy metal soundtrack was an added plus, as was the hilarious cameo by the superfamous actor, which I don’t want to ruin for you in case you, like me, didn’t know it was coming. Woody Harrelson never made me cringe from bad acting, and Abigail Breslin never made me cringe from teenage acne, but a lot of the zombie killings had me wincing. In a good way.

My friend Jack’s Romanian friends thought the movie was disgusting and were shocked that the rest of us liked it, but this was the same night we saw the woman peeing in the street, so maybe we’ve just been desensitized to these things. Go see it and decide which you think is grosser.

The Canon S90 Has Been Released, and I Can Finally Move on with My Life

plumpdumpling — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:45:18 +0000

On Clint’s recommendation, I spent all summer waiting for the Degustation review turned out so much better than all of my other food photos just because of a little light difference, I realized I had to suck it up and find an alternative so I could move away from my four-year-old point-and-shoot.

What I found was the Canon S90, a digital small enough to fit into my tiniest clutch but with manual controls and a low-light setting.

The camera hadn’t been released when I ordered it from Adorama, so I was just going off these reviews. They promised a mid-September release, and it was the beginning of September, so I expected something akin to immediate gratification.

AND THEN IT WAS OCTOBER, AND I STILL HAD NO EFFING CAMERA. I seriously was Googling the release date every day and getting no results, calling Canon every day and hearing them know nothing, checking my bank account to see if the money had been withdrawn and finding I was still rich.

But then, on Thursday, the day after Canon told me the S90 would be in stores in a few weeks, it arrived on my doorstep in all of its compact manual glory. I’m still too scared to actually use it, and I may just be leaving it on auto for the first six months after I start, but YAY!

Making Friends with Perry Farrell

plumpdumpling — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:20:34 +0000

‘member how I said that I’d legitimately never stood next to someone listening to music and recognized the band? That was less than a month ago.

Wednesday morning, I was on the green line on my way to work, and the air conditioning suddenly turned off despite the fact that the subway is UNDERGROUND in an entirely ENCLOSED SPACE that doesn’t get ANY NATURAL AIR. Without the whooshing from the vents, I was able to hear the music coming from the headphones of the guy in front of me. I listened in for a second and dismissed it as some hip-hop crap, but during the bridge, I realized that I not only knew but loved the song!

Read the rest here.

Nom Nom Nom

plumpdumpling — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:45:56 +0000

I mean, I’m the last person to judge a person’s parenting skills, but maybe your baby shouldn’t be teething on the dishwasher.

Unless I can take pictures.

A Post Basically Posted for the Sake of Fast Food (18)
Latez (10)
There’s No One for Me in Arkansas (5)
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Take Somebody to Applebee’s, and Give Them Hot Wings (10)
Poop of Love (3)
BFFs in o-HI-o (10)
The Week of Tracey’s Wedding Minus the Wedding Itself (6)
Another Wedding in Ohio Yay! (17)
You Know You’re Famous When (4)

Another Birfday

plumpdumpling — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:58:17 +0000

Happy birthday to my big juicy Kamburger!

It’s a pleasure to spend another birthday with you, Kameroon, and not just because you’ve agreed to do all of the things I want to on your special day.

Terror on the Elevator

plumpdumpling — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:47:49 +0000

I always get a little freaked out when I get into an elevator and push the button for my floor, and then someone else gets on after me and doesn’t push a button. I wonder, “Does he really need to go to my floor, or is he going to follow me to my apartment, tie me up in the bathtub, and drip acid on my naked body for nine hours?”

It happened yesterday as I was going to Kamran’s apartment after work. I stepped in, pushed the button for my floor, smiled politely at the man who came in after me, and then glared at him menacingly when he didn’t push anything. In my mind. I pictured myself jabbing my keys into his eyes if he came too close, snapping my compact mirror around his balls if he stopped near Kamran’s door.

But just before the elevator doors closed, an extremely hot girl walked in and pushed the button for a floor two below Kamran’s. She was taller than I am, thinner than I am, wearing fewer clothes than I was, and had a less butch haircut than I do. She was chatting obnoxiously on her cellphone, and when the elevator stopped at her floor, she didn’t even notice that the guy followed her off instead.

And I cheated death another day.

The Do-It-Yourself Public Restroom in Times Square

plumpdumpling — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:55:22 +0000

Last night at 8 p.m., Kamran and I exited a movie theatre in Times Square, accompanied by our friends Jack, Beth, and Nik, Jack’s friend Chris, Jack’s friend Alex from Romania, and Alex’s Romanian girlfriend, Simina. We were walking down 42nd Street, trying to decide which is scarier: the flesh-sucking monsters we’d just seen in Zombieland or NYC tourists. Mid-conversation, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone bent over with liquid spilling all over her legs and the ground. She was out in the street, facing traffic, with her back to the sidewalk we were on, and I just assumed she was vomiting. She had wavy, shoulder-length black hair and a black suit jacket on. Her bottom half was nude-colored, but I just assumed she was wearing peach leggings. I couldn’t imagine a middle-aged woman wearing leggings without a long shirt covering them, but that seemed much more likely than what was actually happening, which was that

THE WOMAN HAD HER PANTS DOWN AND WAS PEEING
IN THE STREET.

In Times Square. Which, if you’ve never seen it, is basically the center of the world. We’re talking thousands of people milling around a few blocks at all hours of the day and night, with enough lights on every building to make it seem as if the sun never sets. And mostly people who don’t live in NYC, which means a woman with her pants down in the street is about the most exciting thing they’ve ever seen. Traffic was stopped right in front of her, so people in cabs had their noses pressed to the glass not two feet away from her bare bits. The lights glared off the urine clinging to her flabby backside. People stopped and pointed her out to each other, and Kamran yelled for me to get my camera out.

But it was too late. She finished, pulled her pants up, and walked into the subway unashamed.

The Day That Belongs to Me and No One Else, Especially Not the Other 18 Million People Born on This Day

plumpdumpling — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:45:22 +0000

Oh, birthdays. I never thought I was one to flaunt THE EXTREMELY SPECIAL DAY THAT’S ABOUT ME AND ME ONLY, but as it turns out, I’m actually very much into flaunting it. As early as October 1st, I was writing e-mails to everyone in my office to tell them things like, “Your monthly subway passes are in, and oh yeah, my birthday is October 9th.” Strange.

So far, the two best birthday wishes I’ve received have been from:

1) My best friend, Tracey, who wrote this amazing birthday blog post for me. And I use the word wrote very loosely. As you’ll see in my comment, I first read the post from my BlackBerry this morning and had no idea that someone out there was actually making cakes that look like babies. The creepiest babies ever at that.

2) OkCupid, who sent me this e-mail:

This is the third year in a row they’ve had to send me the “sorry you’re in a relationship” e-mail thanks to Kamran being great. But I really love how they can’t help themselves and have to include links both for me to login instantly and to find my birthday matches. Way to wreck relationships, OkCupid.

I’ve invited my ten closest friends to a marathon of karaoke tomorrow afternoon, but tonight, I’m going to have a quiet evening at home with Kamran that will involve pizza, several kinds of chips, cupcakes, ice cream cake, and playing with the Wii we bought each other for our joint birthday.

Stop Making Me Question My Taste Thx

plumpdumpling — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:54:24 +0000

When I first moved to NYC, I was dating this great guy named Todd who had this terrible friend named Sarah. On my first night in the city, she took us to eat at the Sea in Williamsburg, which would later become the neighborhood I’d move to and live in for three years and counting, even though I’m not even sure I knew we were in Brooklyn at the time. I thought Sarah was a little bit bitchy and a little bit glamourous, which is exactly what I look for in friends, and I assumed we’d be likethis soon enough.

But then Todd came home from hanging out with her one night and told me that Sarah said my taste in music was not indie but singer-songwriter. As I’d prided myself up until then on knowing all the music my friends didn’t, I was super-offended that this Goldfrapp-loving rich girl was calling me “not indie”. When I thought of singer-songwriters, I thought of John Mayer and Jack Johnson, who I just don’t consider my guys.

The other day, though, I realized that actually, yeah, I’m totally not embarrassed to like certain singer-songwriters:

But I hate all the others, and I’m totally indie, so there.

I Basically Just Mention These Things So One of You Will Be Compelled to Start a Food Blog, Since I Hate Everyone Else’s

plumpdumpling — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:00:14 +0000

In case you generally hate reading about how surprised I was to find out I’m not completely grossed out by sardines but love furthering your Tom Colicchio fantasies, my latest donuts4dinner.com post is for you.

Blowin’ in the Wind

plumpdumpling — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:00:44 +0000

My office building is built to be flexible so that it doesn’t topple over in the wind gusts that roar over the tip of the island in Battery Park. On bad days, the building groans as it sways back and forth, and I know to have my lunch delivered so as to not mess up my hair. On really bad days, the door in our 25th floor lobby won’t lock because the two walls around it are so far from where they’re supposed to be.

This fascinates me.

Unapologetically Mundane

The Yankees Apparently Won the World Series

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