Unnecessary Ego Boost

I was talking to my BFF Matt today about the dating world and he insulted a guy I was possibly interested in…

Me: Hahaha, you are so harsh. But it’s also kind of cute how all these guys I go out with just aren’t good enough for you for me. I mean, let’s be honest here. No guy will be as great as you. AWWWWWWW.

Matt: No one you date will I ever think is good enough for you.

Me: Fair enough.

I mean, Matt seems to always know best, even if it is drunken advice he gives after drinking two bottles of champagne. And if he doesn’t know best, he sure can pull it off, sounding like he does. I mean, he did get a BFA in Acting. So whether or not Matt is really filling my mind with good ideas, at least I can trust him to tell it to me like it is. As I always say about him, he is “brutally honest.”

LUUUUUUUUUUUUUKE!

First off, I just want to take a second to thank my dedicated readers and fans who still came to CAPSLove yesterday. I know that you, my faithful audience were in search of some sort of pleasantness to read or listen to, most likely to relieve you from the humidity and Metro woes of yesterday. I’m truly very sorry I was not able to provide any sort of blog post, but I have been absolutely swamped at work, so sacrifices had to be made. Thanks again for your dedication.

And now on with today’s post…

Many of you don’t know that I can be quite a fan of sports other than hockey. But when it isn’t hockey season, I need a replacement sport to get excited about. I have a history of liking baseball. I grew up an Orioles fan, and played on a Softball team for a number of years in my youth. So this summer my “anti-hockey” is baseball. I’ve already been to three O’s games and one Nat’s game and I’ve been having a lot of fun.

Since I’m always obsessing over one hockey player or another, I thought I’d introduce you to my favorite players in “the MLB” these days.

First off is the O’s own, Nick Markakis. He is number 21 and I have come to discover that really, most any player of any sport who has that number is bound to be good looking. (Brooks Laich is my case and point.)

Nick Markakis. #21.

Sometimes Nick looks very similar to Jake Gyllenhaal, which is not a bad thing. However, Nick has a wife and child, which is totally unacceptable in my books. But to my knowledge, the next guy is unmarried…

Every time Mr. Luke Scott is up to bat or makes a great play or save for the O’s, the crowd calls out his name, “Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuke!” The noise, sounds very similar to when Caps fans cheer on their coach with, “Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuce!” At the last game I went to, a friend commented, “Why are they booing?” Yeah, it does sound like the Orioles’ fans are booing their own player, but we aren’t. O’s fans love Luke Scott, as do I. That last game I went to (last Friday against the dreaded Nationals) was apparently Luke’s 32nd Birthday. An announcement was made and Luke appeared on the Jumbo-Tron. I really wanted the O’s to win their game as a sort of birthday present to Luke, and guess what? They did! Happy Birthday Luke Scott!

LUUUUUUUUUUKE!

Another favorite Orioles player of mine is Julio Lugo, although really, I am just particularly fond of his name. In my dyslexic thinking, I have come to discover that if you switch the first letters of his first and last name, you get the Spanish word for juice as his last name: jugo. Thus I have dubbed Julio, “Mr. Juice” or just plain, “Juice.” Ha.

Apparently Mr. Juice used to play for the horrid Red Sox, so all of his pictures online are from Boston.

Are there any baseball players I like who don’t play for the O’s, you ask? Well when I went to the Nationals’ game last month, they were playing the Cincinnati Reds. Since I refuse to cheer on the Nationals, I found myself closely watching the Reds. The player on that team that stuck out to me was Mr. Jonny Gomes. I thought he was a cutie and I liked his name. I liked that he goes by Jonny and not Jon. Nice!

Here's Jonny!

There are probably some other players out there who I like, but these are possibly the highlights. Maybe I need to go to more baseball games and develop more baseball crushes. (No, that’s not the only reason I go to baseball games, silly!) It also doesn’t hurt either that baseball players (at least compared to hockey players) wear hardly any padding, so it is easier to get an idea of what their bodies look like. Nice!

Side-Stepping Fame

Yesterday I encountered another brush with a celebrity! How exciting, I know! This particular celebrity has made his name known to us through one of the many TV shows on Bravo. This celebrity is a chef who was on the last season of Top Chef. Honestly I guess it would come as no surprise that I saw him in Chinatown, since Chef Mike Isabella has his restaurant, Zaytinya in the neighborhood.

Anyways, I was walking up 7th Street in Chinatown. I had just walked out of my favorite hipster hot spot, Urban Outfitters, and was heading North to cross the new, crazy diagonal crosswalk. While I was walking, I heard a man talking on his cell phone to my left. It’s not like this is something strange to encounter in downtown D.C., but I guess my “Spidey Sense” was tingling so I turned my head to see who it was. A man was leaning against a newspaper vending machine right on the curb of 7th St. and was talking about meeting someone for dinner or something. I saw a man who looked familiar but I couldn’t place his face. It wasn’t until I spotted his tattooed arms, that I realized it was the guy on Top Chef that nobody liked!

I didn’t want to make a commotion, and since whenever I see a celeb for the first time I get nervous and start to doubt myself so I kept walking, but much slower. I was trying to find my camera in the black hole that is my purse. As I was slowly walking and fumbling about, I didn’t see Chef Isabella start for the door to the restaurant I was walking by. I sort of got in his way, as he kind of half-tripped over my not walking swiftly enough in the current of the Chinatown evening rush. I felt bad, but quickly side-stepped to focus on retrieving my camera. By the time I had turned around with my camera, Chef Isabella had disappeared through the doors of the restaurant, Zengo.

Unfortunately, while I didn’t get direct proof of seeing him, I know that it was definitely him. Maybe next time I walk around the city, I’ll have my purse cleaned out beforehand, or at least have my camera more readily available. You never know who you’ll spot in D.C!

Drunk Dream

I have been known to have some pretty bizarre and memorable dreams. The craziness and unbelievability of my dreams just escalades when I go to sleep drunk. Sometimes I don’t know how my mind can come up with such strange situations. For example, take my dream last night…

I dreamt that I was hanging out in some run-down house. We were on the back porch of the kitchen and sitting around in cheap plastic chairs on the stairs. In my dream, I was hanging out with a guy who I know from the theater program back at my college. [In real life, we maybe only said a few words to each other since I was always intimidated by the way he always seemed much too cool for school. He was also really into the Frat he was in, the most well known one at my school.] Anyways, in my dream, we were best friends.

Apparently we were running late to some awards show or something. The show had already started as we made our way through the generic school gym space that it was taking place at. We were looking for seats, which there were plenty of, and I suggested we inconspicuously take two in the back. But this guy, kept boldly walking to the front of the gym, lined with rows of chairs. He finally settled on seats in the front row which seemed to be reserved for speakers. I was nervous we’d get caught, but when I looked to my left I noticed I was sitting right next to Alexander Semin and Nicklas Backstrom! Just as we were sitting down, Backstrom held a microphone to his face and in broken English was exclaiming how he was very happy to be there. (Of course, Semin remained silent, as he always does!) After a few minutes in our exciting seats, an usher discovered us and asked us to leave our “illegal” seats. And that’s when my dream took a turn for crazy town.

As we were leaving the gym building, the two of us were caught up in some inexplainable acid trip-like circus of Victorian dressed characters whirling by us. They kept flying in our faces with bright too-happy smiles, saying things like, “Cheerio!” and “Good day folks!” and “Jolly fun!” It was so weird. Both my friend and I were completely confused and a little frightened. We asked a passerby (who may have been their Ring Leader) what was going on. We were explained that this was the welcoming parade for the upcoming performance of, “Mary Poppins” at The Kennedy Center. Apparently the actors were bringing the excitement of the show on their way into the city, just like what happens when the circus comes to town. The parade was vanishing off into the background behind us.

And then I woke up from my dream.

Brain Drain

This is my brain:

This is my brain on summer vacation:

Yup. It’s official. My blog posts have officially been lame. And I’m an adult. I can admit it. It’s true. And I’m sorry. But Monday was the first day of summer and so my brain has turned to slush. (Or a fresh, smoothie in the above picture.) Maybe hopefully something exciting will happen to me soon that is worthy of my blog. Or maybe I will melt away in D.C.’s “why is it so hot so early” weather during kickball tonight. Either way, I assure you I have been searching through the papers for some kind of news.

…Oh right. USA’s soccer team won their game today in the World Cup in order to keep playing and not get eliminated. So that’s exciting.

Ok, well back to hydrating myself….

Kindess! My Only Weakness!

“Bullets! My only weakness! How did you know?”

For me however, my weakness seems to be that I am too nice. At least as of lately, and more specifically, in relating to those pesky volunteers who line the streets of D.C. asking you to sign some petition or another to save the whales, the earth, vote for such and such, or tell your representative something important.

In just the past few weeks I have obliged to these do-gooders and listened to their speeches and even acted like I care! The first time I stopped for a person was in Chinatown and I simply signed my name on some petition for something I probably forgot about shortly thereafter.

The other time I stopped for the desperate-looking volunteers was yesterday. I just was feeling especially mellow and easy-going, and didn’t feel like arguing with the girl’s persistence. Thankfully, I had my mirrored sunglasses on, to hide my disinterest. I tried to lie to the girl, saying that I think I had already talked to someone from their organization, Greenpeace.org. (The only reason I remember their organization is because the girl handed me a save the whales sticker for being a good sport for hearing her out, basically.) I thought I could get away with acting all non-chalant and blasé, but the further into her speech, I realized that I had gotten myself into a trap.

Turns out that not only did I have to stand around hearing this girl out, but she was also asking for money. I applaud her ability to sell her cause in a very outgoing and direct manner. She was politely forceful and stood her ground. It seemed as if I had to pay her the minimum contribution (they had a credit card swipe machine a few feet away!) or she would never leave me alone. Now, in the past, I would usually just go along and then cancel the payment once I got home or something. But I didn’t want to have to go to that trouble. So I had to think fast. I came up with some total BS lie about how I couldn’t afford the minimum payment (or didn’t know if I could pay it now, but I’d have to go home and check) but I was still interested so could I just visit the website. I got away with only leaving her my email address and name. If she bothers to email me, I can always choose to block her.

So that’s my recent debacle. Next time I should just fake a phone call (like the throngs of everyone else who when they see a volunteer, reach for their cell phone) or something. I mean, on one hand, I feel bad for these volunteers who always look so desperate trying to cling on to passers-by. But on the other hand, sometimes often I’m really just not interested. Does that make me a horrible person? I hope not and I doubt it. And hey- at least I have actually stopped the listen to them.

But really, I think this comes down to the fact that I tend to be overly nice, especially to those I am  not so close with. Be this strangers, dates, acquaintances, etc. It’s not the worst characteristic to posses, but it would be nice if I could better regulate my “niceness scale” too.

Career Change?

So I’m thinking of exploring a career change. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for a bit before. Thing is, since I don’t take well to changes in my life, I’m not sure how swiftly I want to go about this new direction of my life. I’m not even positive that changing the direction of my career is even something I want to do, but a career overhaul does somewhat intrigue me.

Currently I work as a Graphic Designer, yet I’ve always worked as a designer in an entry-level position, so maybe my frustration in this field is only because I have never been able to work in a higher up placement. I realize that there are better jobs in my field out there, but since I have yet to experience them, I do not have this direct knowledge. Graphic Design will probably always interest me though, so I think this is always a good thing to come back to.

Is there a different field that interests me for a career change? Well, I’ve always dreamt about being a radio disc jockey. I was a DJ for a student-run radio station while in college and loved every bit of it. The fact that that pleased me so much and that I looked forward to my weekly shows so much, makes me think that doing it professionally could be a lot of fun and rewarding. The same goes for party DJ-ing. While I don’t have as much “pseudo-professional” experience with DJ-ing in a social event, I have played the DJ for personal and family parties as well as at work, and have been praised for my music choices.

Another career field I have always been interested in, is Interior Design. Interior designing runs in my family, and the combination of art meets sociology meets design does interest and appeal to me. The field intrigues me and sounds like it could be quite a challenge, as it sounds like there is a lot to think about and consider when designing interior spaces.

Back in high school I fantasized about being a Meteorologist or a Storm Chaser. The weather has always mystified and interested me, so a career in that field was on my mind for while. –That was, until I realized that my poor math and science skills probably wouldn’t help me much in this field. Yet, the thrill of being a Storm Chaser seems like a neat thing to do as a living.

I’m not really sure what else I could do, thinking of specific jobs. As a thinking exercise, I’ll list everything I am passionate about (or at least have a deep interest in):

• hockey (The Caps)
• all things Disney
• music
• the entertainment/party industry
• sports
• visual art
• American history
• meteorology/weather
• traveling
• theater
• children… teaching?
• blogging…

So, that’s my current thinking. I think if anything, one thing that could be holding me back from pursuing a different field would be that it might be necessary to go back to school and get another degree. And while I do enjoy learning new things, it just seems like a lot of trouble to go to, if there’s a chance that that different career turns out to be something I am not fond of. (I know. I won’t know until I try. But it’s still something I think about that could hold me back.) Like I said, I’m not so good at actually implementing change into my life, so we’ll see what actually happens. But the gears are moving in my mind and I’m tinkering with these thoughts. Any input is welcomed! If anyone has any job ideas or knows of any job openings that could interest I’d love to hear from you!

I’ve Got Soul But…

Completely randomly, I was thinking of a song yesterday. I typed in the lyrics to YouTube and it turned out that the song I was thinking of was by The Killers. I was a little surprised because the song seemed like it was from an older, more classic band. I guess the chorus just sounded like some power rock ballad you could hear in the 1970s or 80s. Nonetheless, I found the song and listened to it a few times.

And then I found my new favorite video clip…

I soon learned a few things about this clip. For one, that is Justin Timberlake lip-synching the song. Secondly, the clip is actually from a movie called, “Southland Tales.” The movie is directed by the same person who made the cult classic, “Donnie Darko.”

One of the reasons I like this clip so much is because the scenes are filmed well and the cinematography is interesting to take note of. The scenes are long and there are few cuts as the camera pans through what is happening and follows Timberlake’s character. Another reason I like this video clip is because I really like the song. But most of all, I am especially drawn to the choreography of the girls’ dancing. They display some sexy moves while drawing the drunken character into interest.

So now, I am intrigued by this movie. I kind of just want to see the movie just to see how this scene fits into the movie’s story line. Since I am also a fan of the movie, “Donnie Darko,” I feel like “Southland Tales” could also hopefully be a promising movie as well.

Black Lovin’

I have a question for the guys again. What is it about certain races that attracts you to them? Mainly I am referring to races that are different than your own. I’m not condoning this notion of being attracted to other races, because I too can be attracted to other races (as I’ve stated in the past).

But something odd that I have discovered is that African American guys always seem to be attracted to me. (Sometimes Asian guys are attracted to me as well.) I say this is “odd” only because this is a race that I have never particularly found myself attracted to (save for a few exceptions). This is also not to say that I will never be attracted to black men.

I realize that I share a fondness for many black musicians and am also very interested by graffiti artists (who to my knowledge, tend to be black). But when a guy strikes up conversation with me at say, a bar, these are not aspects they know about me. What I am interested in, is what about me, physically, draws black men to me?

The Best Hot Dog

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of going to an Orioles game in Baltimore at Camden Yards. I love this stadium, especially because I grew up going to baseball games there, long after the Washington Senators had played in D.C. and before the Nationals existed.

One of the greater qualities of Camden Yards is the stadium’s food selection. You can’t beat authentic crab cakes and Old Bay and with the recent addition of an Attman’s Deli venue, with their world-famous, hot and juicy corned beef, This is the ballpark to really eat some good grub.

But the real highlight at Baltimore’s baseball stadium is the hot dogs. I know that everyone has their hot dog preferences, be it Hebrew National or Nathan’s, but hands down, the hot dog for me is Esskay. Last Saturday I ate quite possibly the best hot dog in my life and it was an Esskay dog.

When I told a friend this, he chalked it up to me probably just being really hungry, but on the contrary, I only thought I wanted half a hot dog. I was wrong. Usually I opt for the works on a hot dog: ketchup, mustard, sauerkraut. But this time I wanted to really taste the hot dog so I got it naked on just the bun. When I sunk my teeth into the hot dog I was in heaven. The dog was the perfect temperature of hotness. I think that Esskay should adopt the slogan for M&M’s: “Melt in your mouth, not in your hands.” The hot dog was succulent and juicy and with every bite it squirted pleasant tenderness into my mouth. (That’s what she said. I KNOW.) It was just the most perfect hot dog experience I could have ever wanted.

Thank you Camden Yards and Esskay for bringing me that blissful hot dog moment.