I'm just a girl with a Plan

(not so) Secret Operation Drink Off

I've decided to challenge Levi in a drink off sat night. pint for pint. I've informed Leslie and Charlotte, but I'm afraid to tell Levi. It might be secret operation drink off--or maybe I'll tell him later--or maybe he'll read my not so secret blog--or Charlotte might tell him. At first I figured OK, I've totally got this---what does he have that I don't? I joked that we were about the same size, so its probably fair, But then Charlotte pointed out that he's about twice my size and was in the Navy. So its now Thursday and I have two days left before the drink off, so I'm pretty much only left with one option: Train. So I think maybe after work today I'll just start training for the big event. That's what real athletes do right? I can do repetitions of car bombs chased with shots, that's probably the smartest thing to do.

The only thing that *might* hinder my abilities that day is the race for the cure that morning. To someone who hates exercising its the equivalent of running a marathon. So if I lose, or give in, or just get caught up in the awesomeness that is Leslie's birthday, or the randomness that is the Irish times, I hereby declare that my loss will be solely because of the race, and not because of my inability to hold up to Levi. That's not too bad right? I mean losing for a fundraiser for breast cancer research and treatment? I'd say I win no matter what!


Team B.O.O.B(Beating Our Odds Beautifully) Part II
Last night a bunch of us who are participating in the event got together Chez Sweeney and Martin to decorate our shirts. It went surprisingly well. Everyone was super creative! We had shirts ranging from "team B.O.O.B." to hand prints covering the boobs saying "do you feel me?" to "¡B.O.O.B!" (to give this an international feel)...and many more, just look for pictures next week.

Oops [she] crapped [her] pants: The office edition

Before I get into the weird and disturbing blog that Leslie convinced me to write up I'd like to wish Manny Ramirez a happy birthday. Here is a pic of Manny being Manny (running in his home run at monday's game, nice 10th row view huh?)


On to the weird. Thursday afternoon all my online friends had gone home and Jim and I were trying to finish up our work so we didnt have to come in on Friday, when I start getting frantic IMs from Chris and Brett (two co workers not on my floor). Chris informs me that there is a rumor that there is a turd on the floor of the 7th floor ladies room and he wants me to investigate.

I refused to go since being the one of the only girls on the 7th floor i didnt want anyone getting confused and thinking there was even a remote chance I had pooped on the floor. Eventually I agreed to go and barely peaked my head in and declared it was all a lie.

A few minutes later Brett comes running into my office saying clearly i didn't look carefully (he had checked himself), so Michelle (the IT lady) and I went back, and sure enough there it was. a little turd sitting just far enough away from the toilet that it really made no sense how it could have possibly gotten there.

We all agreed that there was a good chance it was this one lady who isnt always with it. It was suggested that "she's not too coordinated so it could be her". Brett was quick to point out that really how much coordination does it take? Esp since there is a fully equipped handicapped stall.

theories:
- someone just blatently missed the toilet
- someone threw it or placed it to where it was as an act of terrorisim
- someone had an accident in thier pants and while walking to the toilet a little bit fell out onto the floor (eeeew)

Just another day at the office....

Ground and Pound!

This weekend was pretty busy as usual. Three highlights from the weekend I'll write about

1. Pirates of the Carabean was pretty good....very long, but good. Plus orlando is HOT. I wish we had gone to an earlier showing b/c points in the middle I had trouble keeping my eyes open, but the end woke me up again.

2. "accidentally" watched the UFC tournament or whatever its called sat night. Ended up in a bar in leesburg which seemed like a better idea than it was. Gonzo's Nose was playing there so we figured how bad could it be (they are a pretty good cover band) well unbenounced to us (and the band) they turned on the UFC sound for 2 hours. Dylan got pretty into it and the rest of us just kinda hummored it and made the best of the situation. I usually picked the winner before things began, so maybe I should get into betting on this. I've decided that I'll start using the UFC lingo in every day life (like the title of this blog). So look out for more.

3. Found my way to Boston for a few hours, and managed to squeeze in a great Sox game at Fenway! Sox won 5-3 to the indians. It was a little nerve wracking in the end when we went through about a million pitchers, then bases loaded Trot Nixon (no longer a Red Sox) got up to bat, I was afraid it was all over...Luckily they eventually brought in papelbon and he Dominated the Octagon! (see the UFC lingo at use again) ...Oh yeah, to all my Yankee readers out there all I gotta say is 13.5-- I usually hate it when people get personal like that about baseball rivalries, but you know what? its my blog so i'm gonna do it.

Oh yeah, and my pool is now open :) visitors welcome! (got invited to a certain neighbor's pool party next weekend...saddly I'll be at the irish times celebrating Leslie's bday Shucks)

Big Decisions

I've taken friday off to do a whole bunch of things. One being go back to GW and get my hair cut. Yes I still go to the same guy i've gone to since freshman year when I frantically needed a local hairdresser to do my hair for a semi formal. But he's pretty good, so he stuck. And much easier than flying home any time I need to get my hair cut.

Well my hair has gotten to be fairly long and its time for a cut. Should I do something drastic? or just a trim? maybe something in between? I thought i'd ask all you crazy kids out there on the intraweb what I should do. Any suggestions are welcome.

New Pictures, New Lifestyle

First and most importantly, I've finally posted new pictures (www.angelfire.com/theforce/res)

Second, I've taken the first step to getting in shape. I've found myself a personal trainer! so watch out everyone I'm about to have a totally hot body in no time! He seems pretty nice, and he lives down the street from me....so really that helps when you have as little motivation as I do.

Also I think I'm gonna start tracking what I'm eating and send the list to Katie Sweeney (director of a health sciences program at a major national corperation) and get her to help me find a more nutritional lifestyle.

Its gonna be great, you will all be so impressed....so prepare yourselves for awesome!


side note....lets see how long this lasts......

photo mosaic

If you have ever been to my apt you know that I like photo mosaics....I currently have 3 and once this one is printed I will have four :)

Fake moustaches on chickens? why not!

Another busy weekend in the life of Rachel

It all started at Irish Times with tristan and leslie and chris. A few drinks later we wandered down the street to the union pub to hang out with a whole lotta other people. From there we moved on to big hunt and eventually to sign of the whale where I dont think i've been since college. seriously.

Sat night was Jen's Birthday at Roxanne's. The bartender was hilarious and made awesome drinks. He was making fun of people at the bar from the second we walked in, luckily he wasnt making fun of us. The highlight of sat night was when we were sitting at dinner over by like 18th at T and this car stops at the light right next to our table and we see a girl motionless with dark glasses and a fake moustache, holding a rubber chicken out the window also with a fake moustache. Probably the funniest thing i've seen EVER. Just picturing it makes me laugh.

Also you know how leslie and i never are attracted to the same guy? well this guy walks in the bar sat night and the two of us both thought he was hot. that NEVER happens...turns out he is our friend's brother....AND HE IS IN HIGH SCHOOL....great, we finally agree on a guy and he's in high school. awesome.

Sunday I watched Frisbee practice for three hours, which was surprisingly fun. I thought i'd stay for a little and then go home, but it was such a nice day I ended up staying the entire time.

And the weekend ended by watching shrek the third. Kinda short, but funny.

And then my car was where I left it on the street this morning which made for a good start to the week.

Best.Date.Ever.

Last night I went on possibly the best date ever. This came as a bit of a surprise to someone who called me mid date to see if I wanted to hang out last night....once I explained the date i was already on was with Leslie noone seemed too concerned.

Leslie and I went to pentagon city shopping, then out to dinner, then back to my place to watch the season finale of the office.

Lets recap:

Shopping---gooood
Dinner---gooood
The Office---goooooood
Leslie---gooooooood

Leslie wondered why she has never tried this tactic before....clearly its not a date you can turn down! Also the season finale was so great! I dont want to ruin it for the people who havent seen it though, so go watch it!

As a side note my dermatologist was NOT a sex offender as channel 4 tried to imply, AND i dont have psoriasis (doesn't mean i wont fret about it in the future again)

Starwars meets Jamestown

So I went a little crazy buying stamps. I don't send letters, I don't mail out bills (all electronic), and I don't use stamps for anything else. But for some reason I just really like stamps. So I bought the new Jamestown (not jonestown) commemorative triangle stamps, and I pre ordered two sheets of the Star Wars stamps...don't judge me if i frame them. Anyway I intend to use the Jamestown stamps, and one of the sheets of star wars stamps. Now I just need something to use them on. So if you would like a letter from me just send me your address! I have new stationary with Sandy-esq pictures on them (clearly i bought them before she died), and I'm now ready to use them. So expect a whole lotta letters!

In June some new lighthouse stamps come out too which I will probably buy as well. So I'm totally serious when I say just give me your address and you'll get some form of snail mail communication.

Disappearing Act

I'm not sure this is a sad R.I.P. post, but I figured I'd mention it anyway. So I took a slight detour on the way to work this morning through the capitol hill area and on the way back onto 295 I noticed something was missing...Nation! Well there was still half a wall there, but everything else was gone.

They shut it down a while ago and it just stood there empty I guess. Maybe it will be the new parking lot for the nationals? who knows. The stadium is coming along well and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger every time i drive by there.

It was kinda fitting that coincidentally I was listening to Alkaline Trio as I drove by...that was the show I went to the week the club closed.

as a side note, I just ran spellcheck and this might be the first post ever where I spelled things correct first time around! Gold Star for me!

my X-family...pet edition

Leslie and I were talking about various name options and I decided I want a whole zoo of animals so I can name them all names from Xmen. Here is what I have so far, feel free to offer suggestions.

My future pets:

-big dog: Wolverine
-Albino Rabit: Storm
-Cripple cat: Charles Xavier
-Bad Tempered hamster: Phoenix (alternatively it could be dark suit spiderman...) or if i like spiders which i dont i could get a dark spider pet and name it pheonix since there is that parallel there.
-Penguin: Ice Man
-Non cripple cat: Pryde
-Random bird (i hate birds so i dont care what type it is): Angel
-Chameleon: Mystique

let me know if you have any other ideas. i might need to get an entire house just for my school for the gifted pets :)

Weekendness

I'll write a brief weekend blog before I run to the labs where I don't want to be.

Lets see, I had dinner with the bones and crew which was fun. Went to Puja and Sunjeev's going away party before they move to cali and get married. Gonna miss my MAE chick :( Went to the space exhibit on the national mall, went to the Swedish and French Embassies, went to the Zoo and saw the baby (teenage) tigers which were super cute!

Alright sorry for the short blog, already late for the lab.

Ben's Chili Bowl

Yesterday Laurie was in town. She's a fellow MAE chick. And how did she want to spend her one night in town? Yes, that's right. Ben's Chili bowl. We ended up sitting there chatting for FOUR hours. That has to be the longest I've ever spent in there.

Part of the reason we stayed so long is that the other patrons were amusing. We sat in the section where you needed 4 or more people to get service. Two men sat down at the table next to us. Both large men, one dressed in a track suit and the other in a full suit with a nicely folded handkerchief sticking out of his pocket, and a band aid on his nose as if he had been in a recent fight. They were not pleased that they couldn't get service with only two people so the man in the suit (who claimed to be cousins with one of the famous people on the wall) got up and coerced two employees to sit with them through the duration of their meal! Problem solved, another employee came over, took their order, and served them. The conversation was hilarious too, but I cant remember exactly what was said. All i know is that we stopped our own conversation to listen in, and decided that this man had to be part of the mob.

Any night at Ben's is a great night!

Mail Mixup

My apt number and my building number are the same, so quite frequently I end up with mail for everyone else in the building. I don't notice till I get up to my room. Well this week I got an interesting one....Penthouse magazine. I've never seen one of these before so I flipped through (how could i not) and thought some of the non photographic portions of the magazine were hilarious. This magazine is hands down the most "guy" magazine ever.

I know what you are saying...No Duh, This magazine is of naked chicks, how could it not be directed towards guys....But I've seen playboy and maxim (at friends houses) before and neither of those struck me as overly masculine. Penthouse on the other hand had articles about hunting, technology, slabs of meat...anything else of interest to a guy that you could picture grunting and saying "me make fire, me man" was in this magazine. Even the write in letters were all about straight girls dabbling in lesbianism, as if that's what all girls do.

Interesting side note (from a couple years ago) is that no store in Columbia heights seems to sell porn, in fact in the shady stores the sales men seemed to be offended and appalled when Chris or Rob went up to ask if they had any. weird.

Traffic cops vs street lights

You know what I hate? when street lights appear to be functioning properly, but they have policemen directing traffic anyway. Really it just always makes things worse.

This morning they seemed to take over the streets around the capitol. Is it like that every morning? If it is that seems like an immense waste of money.

but seriously, its dumb. Lets say you are stopped at a red light, but then the police man decides its your turn to go anyway, it will take you a few seconds to realize whats up and then you can proceed, but by this time the cop is already mad at you that you aren't going so he starts aggressively waving his hands and blowing his whistle. I feel like the only thing that gets accomplished with this type of system is light reversal, they make you stop at green and go at red. Is today opposite day and no one told me?

Its an unsafe job too, remember the guy (who was always mean) in Georgetown that got killed by a car? That was another place where I never felt it was necessary to have a traffic cop. And now no one is there and things are just fine. Lets just recap
Old system: Traffic cop, traffic jumble-fuck, chaos, death
New system: street lights, a little traffic, general order, no deaths

Now don't get me wrong, its very sad and unnecessary that he died...but I think we should learn a lesson from this...no more traffic cops.

Weekend Craziness Part II

As most of you know Breast Cancer Research and Treatment is one issue that I like to donate my time and money to. This sunday was no exception. Sunday morning bright and early (a bit too early if you read yesterday's post) Leslie and I had volunteered to help out at the finish line of the Avon 36 mile, two day, walk for breast cancer. They raised 7.4 million dollars from that walk alone.
Some highlights:
*My favorite team name was "saving second base"
*My favorite little kid's shirt had a pink ribbon and the words "fight like a girl"
*One lady was trying to pick which size shirt to get and her husband jumped in with "the bigger the better" he then thought a second and add "oh wait, I was talking about boobs"

The crew of ladies we were volunteering with were hilarious. One in particular was my favorite. It was this little old lady with a rub on pink ribbon tattoo on her cheek. She started out behind the table, and realized that she could more easily give EVERY walker a hug if she stood outside the confines of our table area. She made it her goal to embrace anyone within arms reach from her.

The entire day had a good feeling to it. There was just a lot of emotion going around. For the most part it was about strength and fighting. Every now and then there was a sad or bittersweet moment, like the lady who crossed the finish line marking her one year after treatment and broke down crying, or the gentleman who crossed the line and then sat down with a glass of champagne and a sign dedicated to his wife who had died in 1984. There were many sad stories and lots of ribbons and lists of names...but overall there was also a lot of hope. June 2nd my friends and I will be partaking in another fundraiser, the race for the cure. come out and join us :)

So here I am feeling so good about people when leslie starts trying to get my attention, i turn to what she is showing me and i see a mother duck leading about 10 fuzzy baby ducks through the crowds, people were jumping out of the way letting the duck do her thing. I questioned how the day could possibly get cuter when we see this little puff ball of a dog jumping around and playing with two platinum blond children that were about the same height and giggling.

Lastly, Happy Birthday to Diana and my grandmother!

Weekend Craziness Part I

Wow, one blog certainly wont do this weekend justice. I'll blog about sat in today's blog, but stay tuned tomorrow for Sunday stuff when Leslie and I volunteered at the Avon walk for breast cancer treatment and research. All I can say is that with everything added together I am in as much pain today as I was after white water rafting...if not more.

Alright, well sat was awesome. Basically I've wanted to go to a Horse race forever, so Gina, Molly, Evan, Dylan, Pat, John, "pops" and I went to the Virginia Gold Cup in style. Us girls wore sun dresses and straw hats and the boys all wore seersucker suits. The tickets we bought came with a bus to and from as well as a four huge tents, food, our own toilets, and most importantly more alcohol than you could ever imagine with a totally open bar. The heavy handed mixed drinks were a little hard to go down at first, but fine as the day went on, and there was a self serve beer truck with like 4 taps and endless beer. It was basically the best thing ever. Gina and I made friends with one of the bartenders, Calvin, and right before the bus home we asked to take some home with us, and ended up with an entire sealed handle of rum and two bottles of soda.

Although we weren't allowed to officially make bets we placed our money on Mr. Boombastic. It was a photo finish and after some discussion among the officials it was announced that our horse came in second place. Not bad for your first race, unfortunately it didn't win us any money though.

After a fun bus home involving me thinking its a great idea to draw in marker on the necks of the guys that passed out, i went home briefly, booted and rallied, and headed back out to a Diddy De Mayo party. It was a white party in true p.diddy style. After that we moved on to a throw down in chinatown to catch the fight. I didn't particularly want to see the fight, but I wanted to see some of my friends so we went.

I'll post weekend pictures soon I promise. I have a lot more to say about the race but I probably shouldn't blog about it, so feel free to ask me :)

Slow Talkers Are The Worst Thing Ever!

seriously! i cant think of anything more frustrating than that! I know some of you who might read this are slow talkers, and you are my friends and I still like you, but sometimes it makes me want to SCREAM!

at 5:45 Thursday night I was staying at work a bit late and trying to leave to meet Tristan and Leslie for dinner when my slow talking co worker calls me up. Usually he works from home, but he has spent all week in my office getting on every last nerve of mine. He's finally gone back home, but manages to call in juuuuuuuust as i'm trying to finish stuff up to leave.

He is the worst type of slow talker b/c he is quite loquacious and also doesnt get questions. So if I ask "what color is the sky?" and its a day with not a single cloud in the sky he'd have no less than 10 follow up questions to verify that I did in fact want him to answer "the sky is blue"

So here I am, thursday evening at the end of my rope. Its been possibly my most stressful week ever and its just getting to me. So I started finishing his sentences for him trying to get to the chase...This tactic DOES NOT WORK. he'd say "the....sky....." and i'd jump in with "BLUE! THE SKY IS BLUE!" but that would just prompt him to start his sentence over and try again.

Can I just hang up the phone? is that rude? What if I just claim its a city wide power outage?

Can I Interest You In An Orgasm?

That was the opening line for one of the sales vendors at "girl's night out" sponsored by Sheckey's.

Last night Leslie and I found our way to the DAR constitution hall and wandered through maybe 50 vendors. We got to one with lingere and leslie saw it first and she turned back to me and said "i think i found one you'll like". It turned out to be the vendor for Slumber Parties...the party that i've been to a few times, and its lots of fun. I need to organize another one soon. to any ladies reading this who is in???

Hands down the BEST part of the event was when we accidentally wandered on stage where some liquor vendors were set up. I turned to Leslie and go "do you know who was standing RIGHT HERE?"...Yes, Thats right. Dave Grohl. I could feel his presence. We quickly located where we had been sitting during the show and found out that you could clearly see our seats. Obviously Dave saw me that night and is totally in love and is now desperately searching for me. I'M RIGHT HERE DAVE!

randomness

Trying to break in my new shoes yesterday wasn't my best idea because little did I know i'd go on a really long walk from Dupont through foggy bottom, hitting most of the gw highlights and on to the Einstein monument before heading back to the foggy bottom metro stop two minutes after the last train left. ooops. needless to say my feet aren't all that happy with me today. The weather was perfect for being outside though so it was ok.

Lets keep our fingers crossed that the weather stays this nice! I'm not asking for it to get any hotter...just stay exactly like this and I'll be content. Oh and I'd like my pool to open soon...I cant wait the two or three weeks till it actually opens!

Teamwork is Dream work

I dont know how many of you watch the show "Run's House" but I was watching it last night and at the end of every show he composes a memo of his thoughts to send out...kinda like my blog. He does his in almost every episode on his sidekick while sitting in his bathtub taking a bubble bath. When you read my blog I'd like you to imagine the same thing. (not in a dirty or kinky way) Just know that I write all these chilling out in my marble bubble bath with a glass of champagne and a plate of grapes...thats just how I roll.