Pre-Vacation Stupor

We leave for vacation in one and a half days. And as of right now, I don't feel like I could make the trip to the bathroom let alone a trip to a different country. Man alive, am I tired! I've been trying to get enough sleep, haven't been partying it up. Maybe my body is going into hibernation mode to save up energy for the shenanigans to come? Yes?

In other news, let me tell you how to turn a $30 dress into a $100+ fiasco!

Step 1: Find gorgeous BCBG dress on ebay. Put in bid. Become shocked and amazed when you win $312 dress for $30 (plus $10 shipping).
Step 2: Purchase necklace ($11) and shoes ($15), both on ebay, to match the dress since you don't own anything pink and the dress just happens to be three shades of pink.
Step 3: Get dress. Dress is size 4 instead of size 8. Send many upset emails to seller. Return dress.
Step 4: Receive refund for size 4 dress instead of size 8 dress. Send many upset emails to sender.
Step 5: Send new payment to seller for size 8 dress.
Step 6: Receive shoes. Shoes do not match dress. They are also ridiculous crazy shoes in which no normal human being can walk. Wobble around house in them before finally admitting that I will likely break an ankle in them if I attempt to wear them on the cruise.
Step 7: Receive size 8 dress. Does not fit in boob area. Enlist help of friend to alter boob area (on dress).
Step 8: Receive necklace. Necklace does not match dress.
Step 9: Go shopping for new shoes to match dress. Find pair ($14.95). Get them home. They do not match dress. But they DO match necklace. Gah!
Step 10: Tell friend is she can please please fix dress, will take her out to eat at PF Chang's ($25-$40, depending on how hungry and boozy she is).

Total cost of stupid dress: $106-$121.

And if I do not talk to you again, internet friends, here is where I'll be:

Golden Globes Challenge

Thanks to Tiffany (see her in my links of favorite blogs) for such a fun idea! We're posting how we'd arrive, what we'd wear and who we'd bring if we were invited to the Golden Globes!

What I would arrive in:



What I would wear:



BCBG, how I love ya! I would wear the lining, though, so my underoos weren't exposed to the world.

And the shoes:




And, the date! in case Kirk couldn't make it (are you reading this, honey?!)



Goran Visnjic, of ER and Hottie-hottie-boombalattie fame.

Now you!

Envy Me, Oh Cruise-less Ones!

You see this? Yes? This is where I will be next week. Me, the hubby, my boss and her husband on a five night cruise. Five nights, stops in Grand Cayman and the Florida Keys. Lots and lots of liquor, smuggled on because we are cheap bastards. Lots and lots of food, NOT smuggled on because it is free and we are cheap, fat bastards. Lots and lots of shopping and gambling because, even though we are cheap bastards, we still like to spend us some money on vacation.

There will also be lots of me wearing the BCBG dress you saw in a previous post. It, however, does NOT look like it does on the model when I put it on my body which has curves in all the wrong places. What was I THINKING buying a strapless dress when I have no boobs to hold up said strapless dress?! My non-boobs are going to spill out the top of my ill-fitting, 90% off BCBG dress on a hoity toity cruise, but I'm not going to give a shit because I will be rip-roaring drunk on smuggled liquor. Oh, the excitement! Let's just hope someone has a camera handy so I can humiliate myself on my blog when I get home!

So where will all YOU be next weekend? Come on, tell me all your dull plans so I can feel even more superior and bitchy and like the luckiest cheap bastard on earth because did I mention? THIS CRUISE IS FREE!!!!!!!!

What the HELL Happened Here??

Joaquin Phoenix has always held a special little place in my heart, even after his creepy role as the sister-loving wannabe king in Gladiator. Maybe it's his dark good looks, perhaps it's his mysterious Hollywood-shunning personality or it could be that I feel a little sorry for the kid who found his brother dead from an overdose in front of the Viper Room. Whatever the reasoning, I always thought he was one hot hunk of man meat. I mean, look!



But apparently something terrible has happened this year because he's been showing up in public looking like this:



Gah!!! What happened? It looks like he and his Golden Globe have been on a merry bender of booze, drugs and Krispy Kremes. I'm not even sure a haircut, some water pills and a good round of detox will help at this point.

Come back, creepy sister-loving wannabe king! Come back!!!!!!!!

Yoga-Dumb

After a lifetime of being inflexible, I suddenly got it into my head, at nearly 29 years of age (gulp), that I wanted to change this. Simple stretching after my workouts wasn't doing the trick since I've been doing this for months and still can't touch my gah-damn toes. So I decided yoga/pilates was my best option. Already having one pilates tape, I purchased a yoga tape and a yoga mat (surprisingly NOT from ebay) and decided I was good to go. Ha.

I started with the pilates tape and soon came to realize that not only am I inflexible, I am criminally inflexible. I can't lift my leg straight up in the air. I can't keep my back straight. The easiest of moves on the tape are very VERY hard for me. It also doesn't help that every time I sit down, Hercules comes over and plops his hairy ass on my lap. Not that that has anything to do with my flexibility, but it is annoying...

So I decided to backtrack and go to the yoga tapes, thinking it would be easier. The first tape I got seemed to involve a whole lotta nothin' (lay on your back. Imagine your breath. Be aware of your body. Close your eyes. Breathe in.) with a background of very annoying new-agey chatter. Then I borrowed a Fat Blasting Yoga tape from my friend. Yikes!! She went through everything so quickly that I would barely be out of Downward Facing Dog while the instructor was through Sun Salutation and into Monkey Peeing on Tree (or whatever the hell the next pose was called). Obviously, I need something in the middle of those two tapes that will push me, but won't make me feel like the most inflexible, yoga-dumb person on earth.

Any ideas, readers? Have some good yoga or pilates tape ideas that will help me touch my flippin' toes?

Ebay Binge

The last few weeks, I've been on a major Ebay binge. It seems like I go through phases with this site. There are times that I don't even visit ebay once in three months and other times when I'm on it every day. Probably due to the fact that we are set to go on a cruise at the end of the month, I've been a crazy Ebayer as of late. And lo and behold if I did not find the perfect dress. Behold:



Isn't she beautiful? And the best part: I got this $312 dress for approximately 1/10th of that price. But there's always a catch isn't there? I got my lovely BCBG dress yesterday and giddily took it home to try on. Took it out of the package and throught, "Hmmm, this looks pretty small." Tried to put it on and couldn't even get the damn thing up my thighs. Thinking I'd somehow packed on twenty pounds overnight, I looked at the dress in confusion and I saw that instead of a size 8, as I'd bid on, the company had sent me a size 4. GAAAHHH! Luckily, I have enough time to send it back and get the right size, but still. What a letdown.

So tell me, reader(s), what are some of your Ebay experiences?

365 Days of Sitting on my Ass

2005 was a pretty good year in terms of the books I read. I spent quite a few days curled up on the recliner, whiling away the hours with a book. All in all, I completed 68 books in 2005. There were more than I ended up skimming or didn't finish, but I didn't count those. So here, in no particular order, are my favorites that I read this previous year. All entries received 4.5 stars out of 5 (didn't get a 5 star one this year--hopefully in 2006).

1. Alone by Lisa Gardner. A sniper kills a man he thinks is threatening his own wife and child, then becomes involved with the wife. But was the killing the heroic act he thought, or does the wife have something to hide? This was one of those books that I could not put down. I think I finished it within two days.

2. Prodigal Son by Dean Koontz. This was the first in his Frankenstein series and I loved it. It was written with a co-author (can't remember his name), which I was initially apprehensive about, but it appears the co-author helped Koontz get back to the fine form he was in years ago when he penned my favorite book, Watcher.

3. The Pig and I by Rachel Toor. A non-fiction title, this book made me cry more than once. It's the story of a woman and how she has had relationships with pets her whole life but could never form a relationship with a man. The parts in the end where her dog is getting old and close to dying are heart-wrenching. A must-read for any animal lovers.

4. The Innocent by Harlan Coben. Coben's books are the epitome of 'page turners'. It's so hard to put these books down. However, thinking back on it, I can't even remember the plot of this one. But I know it was a great thriller that will keep you up through the night.

5. Girls in Pants by Ann Brashaeres. The third in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, this YA book makes you laugh, cry and thank God that Brashaeres keeps writing.

6. Good Grief by Lolly Winston. A touching, sad book about a woman who loses her husband to disease early in life, then desperately tries to find a way back into the land of the living. Hopeful, amazing and even funny in parts, this is a must-read.

7. Velocity by Dean Koontz. Another good one by Koontz. I'm glad he came out with this one and the Frankenstein books because they almost make up for the trainwreck that was Forever Odd. What a stinker that was.

8. Waiting for Birdy by Catherine Newman. What a wonderful book. Another non-fiction book about a pregnant mom with a young child. This is one of those books that I found myself marking passages, reading pages over and calling friends to read portions of it to. I'll definitely be re-reading when I get knocked up.

9. Dead Sleep by Greg Iles. Iles is my designated 'vacation author'. I always take one of his books for plane trips because they make the time go by so quickly. This one is about a photographer who walks into an art gallery in Asia and sees a painting of herself--or of her long-lost twin sister. Amazing.

10. The Butcher of Beverly Hills by Jennifer Colt. A hilarious chick-lit mystery novel in the vein of Janet Evanovich's number series.

11. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. A woman falls in love with a man who has never met her before--yet she has known him since she was a child. This wondrous, unique tale will have you wishing you could come up with plots like this.

And there we are. When I look back through my list, there were only a few books I read last year I hated. So all in all, it was a pretty damn good reading year. So what were your favorite books you read in 2005?

Back to the Ol' Grind

After three days off (well, I really consider it a week and a half off because who really works in between Christmas and New Year's, whether you're at the office or not??), it's back to the office (and reality). Here are some of the glorious things I did with my 'lazy time'.

1. Slept. A lot. How much sleep can the human body take? That question was tested and tested hard this past holiday. I tell myself I'm saving up for when we have kids. The truth? I'm a lazy slug.

2. Read. A lot. There are few joys more joyous than sitting in my recliner, coffee by my side, reading a novel while watching the Monk marathon on New Year's Day. Ahhh, that's the life.

3. Nearly killed the dog. So as I'm trying to enjoy #2 (the #2 above, not the #2 you do in the bathroom), Hercules got into everything possible. The sink. The poker chips. My slippers. My stability workout ball. Etc. Etc. I know he just wanted to play, but I was trying to read, dammit!!

4. Did no shopping for myself. Can you believe it?? Neither can I. I did make one trip to Target, but I got stuff for a family member's birthday, stuff for the dog and cleaning supplies. During the course of my shopping trip, I actually had two articles of clothing for myself in my cart, but put them back before I hit the register. Is this a hint of things that will come for the New Year? Nah, I doubt it.

5. Decided that I really, really need more magazine subscriptions. My subscriptions for Shape, Us Weekly, The Week and Fit Pregnancy (shut up, I'm pre-planning) have almost all ran out. I miss my magazines! Anyone got any good suggestions?

So, now that I'm back at work, I'm working hard (blogging is hard work, right? RIGHT?!)