i need clogs!

For the first time in years, YEARS, I think I want a pair of clogs for the winter. Not ugly clogs like these:


But cute clogs like these to wear with skirts and such:


Can you picture it? Those clogs with a denim skirt and one of the super cute, 3/4 length sleeve sweaters I got at Banana Republic. Ack, it's too much cute for me.

Sorry guys, wish I had more to say, but right now I've got something on the downlow that I'm not at liberty to blog about. Maybe in a few days.

10 foot restraining order against jparks

The past few times I've been to the acupuncturist, she's asked about Jason and my's choice for birth control. And every week she forgets that, no, it's not a condom, it's the IUD. And, no, I don't plan on having it removed anytime soon. And, no, I really don't want to have a baby by this time next year. And, no, I don't hear my ovaries screaming as they slowly dry up and die inside me.

At my appointment this week I was, yet again, asked about my form of birth control, and was, again, told to not wait much longer to pop out a baby. The difference was, this week I don't think the doctor much cared that I don't want to have kids and stuck four needles in my belly to "help my woman parts." But before the needles I had a pretty rough session with the massage therapist. So my new theory about the acupuncturist is this: She doesn't care much that I don't want kids yet, so she's having the massage therapist knock the IUD loose and then she's helping my "lady parts" work more effectively.

I don't know how powerful Eastern medicine is, those needles in my belly might work. So, much to my mom's and my mother in law's chagrin, I think I'm going to make jparks stay 10 feet away from me at all times for a little while, just to be safe.

my mom's second name choice for me

Barista: "Can I get your drink started?"
me: "Yes, I'll have a venti, nonfat, iced latte"
Barista: "And your name?"
me: "Regan"
Barista: "Okay, it'll be at the end of the bar"

Only when I get to the end of the bar there is no nonfat, iced, latte for Regan, but there is one for Bargen. I've had my name misspelled and mispronounced lots of times, but this was by far the worst. Ever.

monday night football

I've never been interested in football. I used to think the best, and only, reason to go to a game was for the big cups of beer and the giant pretzels to soak up some of that beer. But tonight is the home opener for the Saints and the first game in the Dome since Katrina and I've got to say that I'm really interested in football at this moment.

I hate to admit it, but I want the Saints to win. But it pains me to admit that because over the years I've rooted for the Saints, only to have my heart broken by their loses. And I think the city needs a win. It needs something positive to focus on while it still struggles to move towards normalcy.

For the first time in 40 years all the home games are sold out. That may not sound like anything special, but it's a huge deal for New Orleans, especially considering how much of the population has moved on to new cities.

My family used to have season tickets to the games. They really were great seats, right at the 50 yard line, about 10 to 15 rows up, on the away team's side. Most of the people around us had their tickets forever, just like us. Some of these people could remember seeing me as a little kid joining my Grandad at the games, and because of this it was more like hanging out with friends than going to a game. I wish that we still had those tickets and that I still lived in New Orleans. I really wish I could attend this game and pretend nothing has changed.

U2 and Green Day playing half time are definitely fueling my desire to want to attend, but really it all boils down to pride for the boys in black and gold.

Geaux Saints!

last chance!

The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is tomorrow and I still need someone to donate $10 so I'll have reached my goal.

Come on folks, it's only $10. That's maybe 3 lattes, you can make coffee at home three times so some woman can have a better chance of surviving breast cancer, can't you? Or $10 is one trip to the movies, you really don't need to see Jackass Number Two, do you? Give the $10 to a good cause and stay home and watch tv.

So come on, click here and donate $10. You can do it!

BLT, but better

According to this book you don't care what I had for lunch, but I'm betting that you do. In fact, I'm betting you were just sitting there wondering what I had for lunch and that thought was consuming you.

Yesterday I had a heavenly sandwich and I would have never thought of putting it together myself. It was avacado, cream cheese, and, wait for it, bacon! Can't you feel your arteries hardening just thinking of this sandwich?

The bacon was salty and greasy and the avacado and cream cheese were so cooling and creamy, I fell in love at first bite. I think I managed to eat both halves of the sandwich in under 3 bites and I'm not really sure there was any chewing going on. When I finished the sandwich from Heaven, I was ready for another.

I often wonder why I'm overweight. I guess it's one of those great mysteries.

warning!

Thank god they have a warning because erasers are so tasty, some times I can't help but dip them in paste like tiny chips. yum, office supplies.

Santa Cruz Sunday

Sunday I took a trip to Santa Cruz with the girls to get some shoe shopping done see the delightful beach town I had heard so much about.

Well, I've got to say Lauren and Ewa weren't so thrilled with Santa Cruz, but I was really won over by the town. The downtown area was cute, with a locally owned bookstore that made me swoon, and enough shoe stores to make my head feel disconnected from my body. wedges, and sandals, and mary janes, oh my.

Whitney tried on a pair of 14 eyelet Doc Martins that I really wanted her to get. They were just so awesome and if I bought them jparks would have divorced me, so having a friend own them is almost as satifying as having them myself. Alas, she didn't get them, so they are still up for grabs.

After shopping we went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. I must admit, this I was skeptical of, but once there I actually had quite a bit of fun. I mean, how can you not have fun while eating an ice cream cone and enjoying the incredible busy feeling on a beach boardwalk? We even rode a ride, the EZ Glider, which was just a perfect fit for the laid back day we were having.



Look ma, there were sailboats not far off the shore of the beach.


I must say, Santa Cruz won me over. I would consider going back, especially when I am in need of more shoes. Or an ice cream cone. Or if I should ever completly lose my mind and want to put on a bathing suit and hang out on a beach.

The mysterious case of the meddled with lip gloss

I'm in the grasp of a crisis and I need Scooby Doo and the rest of his cronies to come help me solve the mystery of the lip gloss.

I keep two little pots of lip gloss on my desk at work since my lips tend to get rather parched in this dry California climate. One is your standard Smith's Rosebud Salve and the other is also a Smith's but it's Strawberry scented and wonderful and, as proved over the weekend, impossible to resist.

When I came in this morning I grabbed my strawberry lip gloss and was about to apply it when, egads!, I noticed someone had used it. I was so immediately grossed out that I couldn't even function enough to put the little pot down. I just sat there, very confused, wondering what kind of sick person uses a stranger's lip gloss. And I'm sure it wasn't my boss or coworker that used it, so that leaves the cleaning crew. Let's summarized shall we? A complete stranger stuck their finger in my irresistible strawberry lip gloss and swiped it across their mouth. And they possibly stuck their finger back in for another go. The worst part of this whole situation is that I just bought that lip gloss and had only used it, maybe, three times.

I bet you're wondering how I know someone used my lip gloss. Well, I guess this is when I finally reveal to the world that I'm a little weird about certain things. Some people have noticed that I take the second thing from the shelf when shopping. I'm not big on buying the only shirt in my size from a store; if possible I want a fresh one. Display shoes? Yesterday I bought a pair of shoes that were on display and it took quite a bit out of me. And when I got home I noticed the toe was scuffed just a teeny tiny bit and I said to myself "You shouldn't have bought the display pair, others have tried them on." And display makeup? Well, I have too many rules to even get into here.

The thing with my lip gloss pots is I only use one small area of the gloss. I like to leave the rest smooth and shiny and new looking. See here:

I only use that one little scooped area. And the rest is all shiny and new.

And here is the strawberry lip gloss as I found it this morning

Look at the disregard for my scooping system. The whole pot was shiny and new before they used it, did they think they wouldn't be caught?

And just because, here is the evidence side-by-side

Oh, the horrors! And please note that the darker lip gloss also has a second little splotch in it. I didn't do that, so basically this person used both of my lip glosses.

I know I may seem like a nut job, but lip gloss stealing is a gateway crime, it leads to harder ones like baby seal clubbing and crack dealing. This person needs to be stopped for their own good. Scooby Doo, where are you?

rotten apple

I know I'm late on the new iTunes 7 hating bandwagon but my complaint is different than most folks'.

On the 12th Apple released a grand new iTunes and I went ahead and downloaded it. At first I thought it was okay and I could live with the changes. I even downloaded some new songs to celebrate (okay, I was going to download then even if a new iTunes wasn't released, but whatever). The next day when I plugged in my iPod to update, something went wonky. It continued to update for 30 minutes. And when I tried to eject the iPod, iTunes refused to let it go. I had to manually quit iTunes to break the grasp it had on my poor little iPod.

Jump to the next day when jparks starts investigated what's up with iTunes. It turns out that some how, when iTunes updated, it lost a bunch of my songs. Or it had them but couldn't locate them. I'm not really sure, but if you really want to know, jparks can explain it to you. And (here's the heartbreaking part of this tale) the only thing jparks could figure out to do was move my whole library off iTunes onto the computer's desktop and then move them back to iTunes. And this was going to cause me to lose my playlists, my perfectly constructed, time consuming to create playlists!

So here it is, five days since iTunes was updated and I'm still fixing my library and playlists. I am very upset with Apple. Damn it Apple, now when I see your witty little "Hi, I'm a Mac" commercials I won't be so quick to laugh at them. You have created a little black spot in my heart of love for you.

seasons change

Holy crap on a stick, I think I'm experiencing a thing I've only ever heard about: the changing of the seasons! I mean, I don't want to jinx anything by getting all excited but OH MY GOD IT'S COOL OUTSIDE AND I CAN'T HELP BUT YELL.

Now that I've got that out of my system, COOL WEATHER I TELL YA, okay now I'm really done, I can only think God will punish for getting excited by sending a very unseasonably warm spell to this area. Please, God don't punish me, I really want to wear my sexy boots. Ohh perhaps I should not mention sexy boots to God. But then again, He must know they are sexy right? God, please don't send me to hell. Wait, I'm sure my Grandmother already made some deal with him to get me out of hell when I first lived in sin with a boy. Yay for MawMaw saving my soul, I'm not going to hell. I can do whatever I want! Hey God, don't make it hot again or else!

Like I was saying before, it's cool here. Cool weather means when I go to stores and see cute fall outfits I won't get mad because sweaters in New Orleans are pointless. Unless you want to sweat away a few pounds, then they are awesome. But sweaters here are good, cute, and functional.

Really I just like fall clothes better because it's easier to hide pockets of fat under a sweater than under a sexy little tank top. And knee high boots are typically more confortable than strappy sandals.

And cool weather also means drinking hot cider. Ohhh, and mulled wine.

Yay for fall!

ugly shirts have feelings too

Last night I almost bought the ugliest shirt ever. This shirt screamed ugly so loudly that other shoppers' ear drums were bleeding just walking by it. But me, I saw this blue and orange plaid shirt and thought "I don't own enough bedazzled shirts, I should buy this one." (did I mention it was bedazzled? And embroidered? Yeah, it was the trifecta of ugly)

The only reason this poor shirt didn't come home with me is because I couldn't subject it to the ridicule jparks would have given it. And it was $35, which I can't pay for a Target shirt. $35 is too much, it just seems unnatural.

You know you want to see this shirt. You're having a hard time picturing plaid and jewels and floral embroidery. Okay, calm down, here's a picture:



Don't you just want to puke, but then hug it and tell it that everything will be all right? I'm pretty sure that the model wearing the shirt is holding an airplane sickness bag in her hand because she has that exact puke/love feeling going on.

Ugly shirt, just know I am very sorry I couldn't give you a home, but I'm sure someone else did and you'll love it there.

potty talk

Here at work we don't have a private bathroom, we share a bathroom with the rest of the office park. Does this suck? Yes. Do I regularly cringe when I have to use the public restroom? Yes. After using the bathroom do I ever wonder what the hell is wrong with people? Oh God Yes!

I understand the courtesy flush, and every time I hear the courtesy flush coming from another stall I say a very loud thank you in my head to that person. "Thank you so much for sparing me while I try to pee and get the hell out of here before you kill me with your fumes. Thankyouthankyouthankyou"

What I don't understand is do people think the one courtesy flush is enough? Do they think that anything that happens after that courtesy flush will magically disappear and therefore, why flush again? I'm right on the verge of making signs that explain "You still need to flush AFTER your courtesy flush. We don't have little toilet gnomes that will flush for you once your ass leaves the seat. Really all it takes is a second flush to help save my sanity. And if you do it, I won't have to wait outside the bathroom to make you flush. No one wants that."

Just call me: Regan, protector of bathroom etiquette and flush monitor.

I need a hobby.

cowlicks are cool

I bet you're wondering how my delightful cowlick is growing out.

It's not.


The one on top is not getting better, but at least it's not getting worse like the one right in the back of my head. As that one gets longer it sticks out more. And don't even get me started about when I put my hair into a ponytail.

The good news is: I recently found out that the woman that did this to me is no longer allowed to cut hair, she's been downgraded to pedicure girl. Ah, sweet justice.

that thing I mentioned before has come to pass

You remember that thing I hinted at before? Well it's over and it sucks. Confused yet? Want to know what the hell I'm talking about?

Okay well, about a month ago this site, Oh My That's Awesome, posted an opening for a reviewer. And I jumped on that chance immediately. And decided I reallllly wanted that job. And got my hopes all up. Do you see where this is going?

I managed to keep my big mouth shut and didn't tell anyone I had sent in an email application for the job. But when I got an email back saying I was moving on in the application process, I opened my mouth. And spewing from it came words about how much I wanted this and how excited I was about it and tons of other things I should have known I would later be forced to eat.

I made my three test posts and checked my email and the test site constantly to see if I had earned any comments from the owners. Nothing. After not hearing anything for a few days I got an email asking for another test post so there is more of my work to judge. Then came an email saying the owners are finalizing the decision and we would know soon.

Up until this point I had been feeling really good about my posts. But when they asked for a fourth post from me, I noticed two new test posters appear, and this was a giant, red, neon, blinking sign that said "Regan, give up the dream, you're not getting hired." I think the sign might have even had a siren blaring. It's not that I thought the new girls were better writers, but damn, their products were good. Here I sunk all my time into creating funny, witty test posts and had not put much thought into my products. Don't get me wrong, my products were good, but not as good as the other folks'. And somehow I just knew that no matter how good the writing was, it wasn't going to make up for lackluster products.

And boy, sometimes I hate being right. On Thursday I got the rejection email and, darn, I was heartbroken. So now I'm a web reject. woot!

hello sexy

Everyone meet my newest family member: a super sexy Nikon D80.



I nearly crapped myself when I picked it up from the store. And I told the salesgirl that I loved her. Who knew a camera could make a person go stupid?

In keeping with jparks and I's "if it cost more than $300, it has to have a name" policy, she needs a name. Any suggestions?

so tired

Since we've come back from our mini vacation I have not been able to get a good night's sleep. It's horrible and I can't take it any longer. I need some sleep, dammit! Good, quality, deep sleep, preferably 8 hours worth, but I'll take 7 if that's all that's available.

Part of the problem is that I can't get comfortable. No matter how I lay it's not the right position and even my favorite positions feel uncomfortable. Add Lily and jparks both trying to sleep pressed up against me and you have even more discomfort and heat. Good lord, those two are like thermal heaters that I can't escape.

And then there are the nightmares. First I dreamt jparks took me to a haunted house. I had been before and I knew it wasn't scary, but they had updated it and added in robot dogs. Robot dogs that were supposed to pretend attack, but they were malfunctioning and were really attacking. I was trying to fight them off but it wasn't working and they kept biting me with their metal pointy teeth. Stupid robot dogs.

The next night I dreamt I had someone following me and they kept grabbing me. And it was even one of those dreams that make you jump in your sleep. Like when you dream you're falling and you kind of seize up and wake up. That's how this dream was. I would run from the guy, he would catch up, grab me, I would jump, wake myself up, ask jparks if he had just grabbed me, ask him to go lock the front door, and then try desperately to go back to sleep. Once asleep the whole stupid dream would start again.

I have an acupuncturist appointment today, maybe I can ask her to put a needle somewhere on me to guarantee a good night's sleep.

more to come

Sorry I haven't told you about the fun jparks and I had on our weekend away, but I've been too busy with another thing. What thing? I may or may not tell you in a few days, we'll have to see how I feel about the outcome.

The big news of the week is that my new sweet, lovely, super awesome camera will be here (hopefully) tomorrow, or maybe Thursday. If it takes longer than that I might die. Seriously, just lay down in a fetal position and die.

yet another reason I don't go in the ocean

you: "What? Regan, you really don't go in the ocean? Ever!?! That can't be, you're insane."

me: "Oh really, I'm insane? I think you're insane for getting in the water. Jaws might not be real, but there are plenty of other things to get you."

Goodbye Steve Irwin, animal lovers the world over will miss you. It's a shame you got taken down by a stingray, would have been more fitting to see a rattlesnake get you.

Crikey!