more nostalgia

Forgive me for this incredibly random post.

When I was writing my last post, I started thinking about all of the things I've ripped out of magazines. I wondered if I could remember, in my long history as a magazine consumer, the very first thing that screamed at me to be placed on my wall.

I remembered immediately.

I think this may be the exact poster I tore out of Bop magazine in the 90's.

I've started to realize that when my friends were kids, they were catching up on classics like Dirty Dancing or The Breakfast Club. Not me - I was a fan of the juvenile sports movies. Little Big League, Angels in the Outfield, Little Giants, and the best one of all: Rookie of the Year. With my long, easily fumbled last name, I felt a special connection to Henry Rowengartner. Thomas Ian Nicholas lived (in poster form) to the right of my canopy bed for a long time circa 1990-something. (FYI, said canopy bed 's bedding was covered in rows and rows of primary colored hearts. I possibly was too old for my bedding.)

Eventually, Thomas Ian Nicholas was replaced by a few of my other true loves:

Does the phrase "Can I keep you?" make anyone else giddy? I can't possibly be the only girl-child of the 90s to wear out my VHS copy of Casper by rewinding to the part where he turns into a boy.

How unoriginal, right? What girl didn't stay up all night wishing she would win a pair of JTT's autographed shoes from Bop magazine? What? That's just me?

Do tell: whose Bop (or Big Bopper, if that was your drug of choice) centerfold was on your wall?

All photos in this post are from ztams.com. Bosses of anyone who came of age in the 80s and 90s, I apologize for making my readers/your employees aware of this site because they could probably spend hours there. The best part is that whoever labeled the pictures was clearly very excited and went out of their way to make the visitor feel very creepy. For instance, that Thomas Ian Nicholas poster was labeled "YOUNG BOY!!!!!!"

PS: WEE PETE CAMPBELL!

a carol convention recap

A few years ago, I ripped an article out of a magazine and it made things happen. The kind of things that you normally agree might be fun and then you just talk about for years and years.

I'm always ripping things out of magazines: from posters of male celebrities in middle school to wedding dress inspiration and recipes. I take great care to make sure each item is organized the way I want it, then I put it in a corresponding binder: recipes, home decor, entertaining inspiration... teen idols.

It's a huge waste of time. I've never looked at those things.

Until Real Simple's executive editor wrote about her and her friends' Great Escape-- their yearly vacation planned by one and kept a secret until the very last minute. My friends and I had just returned from a weekend full of marathon sessions of laughing until we couldn't breathe. I felt like we needed to do that yearly.

Although I e-mailed my friends pretty regularly, I made actual paper copies of the Real Simple article and snail-mailed them with a sticky note. Let's do this.

Who knows, maybe the actual paper made it feel more like something real and less like just another article.

A few weeks ago, I returned from the second episode of our very own Great Escape: a summer weekend in central Texas.

Where I experienced a short and sweet taste of Austin and its live music for the first time. (I'm excited to go back in September!)

Where we had to forgo fashion to avoid foot fungus at a water park.

Where we floated a river; a giant party on tubes. My favorite part was when we floated underneath the water park and the entire river cheered as the next victim was lifted to the top of a sky coaster. My least favorite part was cramming two giant tubes the size of my Prius into... my Prius.

One night we visited a teeny town called Gruene which, while undeniably charming, is running the risk of turning into the next great city turned tourist trap, a la Gatlinburg. The first sign: a ye olde timey photo studio. I predict a tacky t-shirt store and a few pancake houses within 5 years. I'm glad we visited while it was still charming.

We were in Gruene to visit the oldest dance hall in Texas.

One of us wore cowboy boots. One of us had really sweaty ankles.

(It was me.)

After a night of Texas beer and dancing (mainly with each other), we found a real live cowboy to draw the name of next year's planner.

While in Gruene, we found air conditioning in an antique store where one of us bought a phrenology head. Looking back, I'm not sure why we didn't return from our night out and read the bumps on each others' heads.

Probably because we were too busy laughing until we couldn't breathe.

Other Carol Convention posts: 1, 2, 3

Clownin'

I want to share this, um, compliment the janitor in my hallway gave me earlier today. It's pretty much verbatim.

(you know I love to share when my wardrobe choices attract attention)

As I walked out of my office, the janitor was speaking with my coworker, but stopped mid-sentence and gawked at me.

"Look at her!" she exclaimed, "She clownin'! Look at that little belt match those little shoes - you profilin'! You just like a sista! Look at those shoes! Those are shoes a sista wears. You a sista now!"

So, friends, today I am a sista (my coworker assured me that I was striking an appropriate pose). I hope your weekend is off to as exciting a start as mine is.

re: your wife's diarrhea

Last weekend we were at a wine tasting party discovering the wonders of chocolate wine (it tastes like chocolate milk!) and "pregnancy" wine (it tastes like melted plastic!), when Y started to feel ill and we had to leave.

Later, the host of the party (a fellow medical student) texted Y and asked, "Your stomach hurt? Did you end up vomiting or having diarrhea?"

It occurred to me that if I had been the one to leave the party with a stomachache, his friends would have asked the same question about me. And I'm guessing Y would have told them, because intestinal issues are just intestinal issues, and we're all human.

I imagine, in normal life, that friends don't ask friends about their wife's (or their own!) diarrhea. I certainly don't tell my friends about anything of that nature. I know these guys have seen it all, and upset stomachs are probably on the low end of the grossness spectrum. But... it weirds me out to think that my medical issues could be fair game for discussion

What do you think? Would it weird you out for your husband's friends to know your bowels' every move... even if they were doctors?

i'll miss you... crape myrtle?

I'm pretty sure the three trees in front of our house are crape myrtles. Regardless, they're the best indication of a change in season in our mainly hot climate and that's why I love them so much.

Having never lived anywhere in the US north of Tuscaloosa, having trees that even hint at fall excite me. Plus, the purple flowers float to the ground like summer snowflakes and make it feel a little cooler when it's 103 degrees.

That's a lie. But I can pretend.

i'll miss you... archive:

what is it?

roundabout

coffeeshop where everybody knows your name

a moment in tampa

One morning in Tampa, I decided to take a walk from my hotel downtown to the Hillsborough river a few blocks over. The hotel boasted its proximity to the "riverwalk", which sounded nice enough. But as I approached this riverwalk I noticed colorful graffiti covering everything in the distance.

My sketchville alert -- the one that goes off when you realize your GPS has just routed you through a scary neighborhood -- was on full blast. Every passing person was suddenly a threat. I jumped each time a car passed.

I could see the riverwalk in the distance and it looked nice - a perfectly manicured park sticking out in the sea of graffiti. I figured the city of Tampa was in the midst of some kind of downtown beautification project in what was once a poor area... they just hadn't gotten around to washing off the spray paint.

It was broad daylight, so I decided to keep walking despite my wariness. When I reached the start of the riverwalk, a plaque explained that Ivy League college crew teams trained at this stretch of river in the summer and showed their school spirit by spray painting...everything.

My brain has never gone from STRANGER DANGER to WINKLEVOSS TWINS! quite so quickly.

By the way, have you ever seen the University of Tampa? My picture above doesn't do it justice, but I thought it was so pretty I had to do a double take the first time I saw it.

recent things that make me happy

The farmer's market, where so far I've picked up peaches, blackberries, strawberries, corn and other various vegetables, goat's milk soap, a lavender plant, and a lemon verbena plant. The peaches and blackberries turned into Olivia at Everyday Musing's peach and blackberry crisp.

I read about this book, Palace of Illusions, in a magazine awhile ago and added it to my to-read-someday list. I found it at an outlet mall outside of Austin and bought it immediately, partly because I want to read it and partly because it's sparkly.

I think I still have a headache from the lunch break I spent picking out a new perfume a few days ago. I ended up with Wish by Lollia. The pretty bottles may have been part of what sold me.

Blueberry picking, which actually happened about 3 weeks ago. It was scorching, but the lemon blueberry cheesecake bars, blueberry muffins, and bowls of Greek yogurt, honey, and blueberries were kind of worth it.

I loved this movie, even though it added about 10 books to my must-read-now list (not to be confused with my to-read-someday list) including A Moveable Feast, The Paris Wife, The Great Gatsby, and Save Me the Waltz. There was also a hilarious moment with Salvador Dali in the movie, where he describes his latest idea for a painting, which sounds like a complete mess -- something about a rhinoceros and Jesus. I fully appreciated that having just been to the Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, and seeing paintings that looked an awful lot like what he described and somehow managed not to be complete messes.

Dali mustaches. What else do you do when posing outside of his museum?

Happy weekend! What's been making you happy lately? Has anyone else read that sparkly book or seen Midnight in Paris?