a picture tour of my life this week

this is the canal in downtown richmond. it was a pretty walk but not what i had expected at all. the book that told me about the canal gave me the idea that it was more of a tourist attraction with little stores and opportunities for buying ice cream and less of a... well... canal. i'd like to go back some time when i was more prepared for walking around a canal and less thinking i was going to disneyland.

this is what i call the black tongue. it looks even crazier in real life. how do you get the black tongue? by eating chewable pepto bismol. why do i eat chewable pepto bismol? b/c stress gives me heart burn. thanks a lot stupid job. work is going well but i get stressed and have the black tongue most days.

some times i pretend to be a flight attendant in my free time. this is 'pre-wanting-to-punch-a-teenager.' anne is wearing the purple sweater and arianne is on my right. one time at my work people thought arianne was my sister and when we said no my coworkers called us liars. i do suppose any combination of the three of us could be thought to be related.

these are some guys who like to pretend to work for tsa... or maybe the mob (except the happy one).

this is the hat i got for free at the baseball game in baltimore with jon. it was probably the most boring baseball game i've ever watched. the best part was when the hotdogs raced. mustard won. and oh yeah the nationals did too. i think jon's dad might be a secret agent. also, i think jon may have been in fight club. i'm just sayin'.

bring it, what?!

i wrote this. it's called d&b beastie rap, and works best with 2 or 3 people. it's done in the styling of the beastie boys with the front man saying the words and the guys in the back shouting the rhymes. i dreamed this so you know it's awesome. it's done to a snap, snap, clap beat. here ya go:

I'm Elaina D and I'm here to SAY
Come to Dave & Buster's to eat drink and PLAY
We're a restaurant arcade and BAR
located in Short Pump, that's not very FAR
We open for dinner, happy hour and LUNCH
you will love us I have a HUNCH
The servers are friendly, bartenders are CUTE
I not only rap, I plan the parties to BOOT
We do meetings, team building and MORE
Your next party will not be a BORE
Holiday parties happen once a YEAR
We do that too so have no FEAR
So come one down don't be HESITATIN'
At Dave & Buster's we'll be WAITIN'

ding don't

what i love about life is that every day is a new and exciting adventure. yesterday at work i was in my office with the general manager, our amusements manager and ann and we we're talking about spaghetti-o's and i said that spaghetti-o's make me want a ding dong. my gm said what's a ding dong? and i said it's the hostess snack cake that looks like a hockey puck and comes wrapped in aluminum foil. and the amusements manager said no, that's a cupcake. and i said no a cupcake has the white curly-q of frosting on the top. and she said no a ding dong is the long yellow one. and i said NO that is a TWINKIE... raise your hand if you grew up next to the hostess factory!!! (i didn't feel like mentioning that ding dongs were just about the only thing i ate for all of seventh grade). she seemed unconvinced so at that point i decided to pull out the last card i had... google. so we surfed over to google images where i entered "ding dongs" and came out with like a cartoon drawing of a ding dong man with a baton who generally looked like what i had described if what i had described had suddenly become the leader of a band. to further illustrate my point i entered in "twinkie" where we saw a picture of what she had been describing and she was convinced. at this point ann says well then whats a hoho? so typed in "ho ho" and google said excuse me do you mean "hoho" and i said yes and we got to see a picture of a hoho. and so i thought maybe i should have typed "dingdong" and what should pop on the screen that ann, the amusements manager, the general manager and i were all staring it at but... naked asian men. ASIAN PORN. i screamed and closed the browser immediately as everyone bust out laughing (mostly at the fact that i had instantly turned red... and not just my face but all of me was completely red) and i made them all swear that if IT tried to fire me they were my witnesses that i was just trying to look at snack cakes. the moral of the story is never search google images for "dingdong" (unless you're into that) and also i have an absurd amount of knowledge regarding the hostess snack cake line (because i'm into that).

yesterday i was leaving a business seminar and i got lost (but not really lost b/c the gps was telling me where to go but it wasn't a normal way b/c i turned the wrong way even though i have a gps) and i came though on the most wonderful road i've ever seen. the trees created a tunnel around the road and i just wanted to be there forever. it's the little things.

i'm feeling really good lately.

tomorrow i'm having dinner with a friend at nacho mama's. NACHO MAMA'S. i've never been there before but i love it based solely on the name. they could serve me a microwaved tortilla with a kraft single on it and i would still love it.

all the boys think she's a spy

so it turns out that the hula hoop is a lot more difficult than i remember. it is helpful for keeping sylvie running in a small space. take that, hamster!

so my mom told me she ran into michael "cool" rhodes at a farmer's market last weekend. at this point you may be asking yourself, 'who is this michael "cool" rhodes?' is he someone who sells shaved ice at farmer's markets? maybe an old friend from the glory days? a fictional character elaina created to blame her problems on? nope, nope and NOPE! he just happens to be the magician who rented a room in our house while i was in high school. note to self of the past: never tell people at high school that a magician lives in your house.

today i want to a workshop taught by Jim Roman. Jim Roman Jim Roman Jim Roman. he taught me how to 'run your business without it running you.' i also heard him speak last week. and i'm going to hear him speak tomorrow. i'm a Jim Roman groupie. he says that a person is the average of their friends. "so if you hang out with a bunch of losers, you're probably an average loser." i almost fell out my chair. i was by far the youngest person there by a good 20 years and he just called this room of grown ups losers. you don't get to see that every day. at chamber events. when i grow up i want to be Jim Roman.

when i was 5 i wanted to be a ballerina. one day i took my homework to kindergarten on ballerina paper. and the teacher said do you like ballerinas? and i said yes i want to be one when i grow up. and she said do you take ballet lessons? and i said no. and my dream of being a ballerina DIED. way to kill dreams kindergarten! kindergarten will not, however, stop me from becoming Jim Roman. another time in kindergarten my teacher said i worked too fast. no one complains about my fastness now! sucka!

yesterday i wore my glasses to work and was harassed endlessly. glasses apparently send the message 'say whatever you want to me b/c i'm too big of a nerd to do anything about it.' and it's true. ::sigh::

it's big, it's heavy, it's... wood?

ren and stimpy was such a horrific cartoon. i don't know why we ever watched it. if i ever get ren and stimpy flashbacks they're never good. it's generally involving whizzing on electric fences or pink eye or something young children shouldn't be watching.

saturday i went to walmart to buy a mop so i could clean my floors finally. after i went to walmart i went to the pizza place (goodness knows i wasn't about to clean AND cook on the same day). anyway, i'm sitting there waiting for my pizza and the delivery guy shouts from behind the counter "you were just at walmart!" and i didn't say anything but i was thinking 'am i supposed to say something?' and then he says "yes you were, you bought a mop!" and i said 'yeah and now i have to clean my floors.' and then he explained to me how he's not a stalker but really who is going to believe that after a random man tells them where they have been and what they bought there.

saturday i had three netflix arrive. it was very exciting. however, i don't know what i was thinking when i lined up my movies last week. the movies i got were:

henry poole is here - guy finds out he has 6 weeks left to live and decides to binge on booze and twinkies until his new neighbors intervene

ghost town - after technically dying on the operating table man can see and communicate with ghosts and is given a second chance at life

the bucket list - two men who have cancer find out the only have a short time to live and decide to live life to the fullest before they die

sensing a theme here? i totally didn't realize it but i must have been having a morbid moment. or maybe my subconscious is sending me a get a grip on your life message. ha. at any rate i got a good laugh after i opened the netflix envelopes. maybe it's because of my fear of a brain tumor. who knows.

a few random thoughts:

1. in case you ever think to ask yourself 'is elaina socially retarded?' the answer is yes, yes she is.
2. i am eating a chocolate puddin' cup. be jealous.
3. if anyone ever randomly offers you a carrot, say no. it will only lead to shenanigans.

i was going to go into work saturday to get caught up on some admin stuff (paper work, data entry, all the fun stuff) but i woke up saturday and i said to myself 'self, you are being ridiculous! stay in bed until noon. do not be a workaholic!' and so i did. the good news is i will definitely have plenty of work to keep me busy all week. YAY!

here is something i don't understand. i've noticed it a lot since i moved out here. i don't know if it's an 'east coast thang' or maybe it's a new trend for '09 or maybe it's b/c a lot of the people i meet here have recently moved here from some where else... anyway i've noticed a lot of guys have what they call "quasi-girlfriends." i'm unsure if it's b/c they are only partially human or partially committed. i don't know. my whole thing about this is, dude if she's only a quasi cut her loose. in relationships, i think you're either in or you're out. you can't be kind of some one's boyfriend, just like you can't be kind of pregnant or kind of in jail or kind of dead. those should be yes or no in my book. additionally, she's a big girl and she's better off without some guy stringing her a long. to use a 'ewing-ism', i "need to be enlightened" as to why anyone agrees to this. do these women know they are quasis? is quasi the pc term for friends with benefits? as someone who thinks she could possibly have been referred to as a quasi in the past it would have been so much better to have been told 'see ya later' and moved on.

my other thought is this is a ploy... a way to say 'women are into me, i could have one if i wanted or i could not have one if i wanted.' this reminds me of high school. at one point laurel and i decided that this very line of thinking was indeed the best way to catch a man (or, really, a boy). anyway, we didn't want to go around saying we had quasi boyfriends b/c when you're in high school people know your business and if you randomly start saying you have a boyfriend people are going to ask questions and know you're a liar (and there's nothing worse than admitting you have an imaginary boyfriend). no, we decided the best way to get guys to think we hung out with other guys and therefore were wanted by guys was to... smell like guys. and so we started wearing her brother's cologne. i don't particularly remember whatever became of that. i don't think it lasted very long but i know for sure it didn't work. oh the kooky hi jinx of high schoolers. the moral of the story is that elaborate traps rarely work (please note: i didn't say never... though they've yet to work for me... after all i'm going for a man, not a rabbit).

if anyone has an ideas for things that are good to do with a wheat thin please let me know. so far my ideas are:
1. sliced cheddar cheese on top
2. dipped in strawberry yogurt
3. with a diet coke
4. with pizza sauce, grated cheese and microwaved (though this seems a little labor intensive with small pay out ie low roi)

i am DYING to go to a baseball game. DYING. if anyone wants to go please let me know.

angry chocolate face

Felicity's 2nd Birthday Party! Wish I could have been there!

slowly i turn

i love that episode of i love lucy with the slowly i turn bit in it... the one where she gets sprayed in the face with water. i also like the one where she sets her nose on fire. and when she has to eat her cheese baby.

today is my dad's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! my favorite dad gives business advice story: when i was probably about 13 my dad told me to never fire anyone at lunch b/c then people will be afraid to go to lunch with you.

i wonder if it is better to fire someone on a monday or friday. maybe split the difference and go for wednesday?

last night i went for a bike ride. i went just as the sun was starting to set (that's about 9 PM here... weird, isn't it?). as i rode around i saw fireflies around the trees. that's a very special treat, i think. we don't have those in ca. fireflies aren't as magical as the red tide in ca but it's probably second place. i guess i just enjoy things in nature that glow. anyway, as i would see them light up i thought to myself 'this is like being in love.' i have absolutely NO IDEA what that even means but i thought it and now i'm sharing it with you.

tonight i miss dan. i wish i had someone to go get ice cream with me. dear dan, i miss you. please come visit soon. love always, elaina.

today at work i was given an indian burn. what has this world come to? he was trying to illustrate how he intimdates people... and left a red mark on my arm for about an hour. i was so shocked when it happened that i didn't say anything, i just walked away. in other work news, my boss almost made me puke today. i had to get up and run out of the office and out the back door of the building. and of course he followed me saying 'where are you going?' and i had to come back and be like listen you make me want to vomit! it really wasn't his fault... i just have a very, very sensitive gag reflex. in order to stop myself from vomiting i have a little mantra & visualization trick i use. i say to myself "puppies and rainbows, puppies and rainbows" and picture cute little puppies running around underneath a rainbow. and it works. clears the mind. it's hard to vomit while picturing a puppy running under a rainbow... unless super cuteness makes you want to puke.

today i was on a conference call with the sales manager from north carolina and one of our corporate people. the lady from nc asked me how things are in richmond and i said "IT RAINS A LOT HERE." i don't know why that is always the first thing that pops out my mouth when ever someone asks about how things are going here.
how are things going in richmond? IT RAINS A LOT HERE.
how do you like richmond? IT RAINS A LOT HERE.
are you adjusting to life on the eat coast? IT RAINS A LOT HERE.
do you miss your family? IT RAINS A LOT HERE.
want to go out for dinner? IT RAINS A LOT HERE.
and people always say 'it doesn't normally rain this much.' but really i think normally they don't have someone pointing it out so much. even if it's just a dewy wind in the morning i make sure everyone i see that entire day is informed that IT RAINS A LOT HERE. i also make sure that they know IT'S NOT LIKE THAT IN CALIFORNIA. i find myself saying that a lot. i like to tell everybody here about the way we do things in ca. i'm sure it's super annoying about i can't make myself stop. eat, breath, talk about the way we do things in california, sleep.

the other day i had someone grill me about why i call the parking structure a parking structure. i guess out here it is only acceptable to say "parking deck" or "parking garage." if you say parking structure suddenly people will have no clue what you're talking about. which is odd b/c if i was in ca and someone said "it's free to park in the parking deck / garage" i would understand what they meant. i wouldn't feel the need to explain that both decks and garages are things that are attached to houses and there isn't one located next to the building but that it was ok b/c i already parked for free in the parking structure.