This Year’s Love Had Better Last

Exciting news in 20-Something’s blog land – I’m closing out the end of 2008 with my 500th post. Wow. That’s a lot of narcissism. Thanks for sticking with me…cheers to the New Year, friends, lovers and randoms!

You know you can’t wait for it –
20-Something’s Year in Review:

Best Books I Read: “Fieldwork,” by Mischa Berlinski “The Wonder Spot,” by Melissa Banks, “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, “More Than You Know,” by Beth Gutcheon and “Water for Elephants” by Sarah Gruen. (I can never narrow this down).
Favorite Movie: “Sex and the City: The Movie” and all the girly festivities and pampering that went along with it!
Favorite New Band(s): Vampire Weekend and Kings of Leon. I cannot stop playing that “Sex on Fire” song! Sooo good.
Best Restaurant I Discovered: Black Bottle. (You must try their chocolate cake – chocolate lava center surrounded with caramel and topped with vanilla gelato. It’s to. die. for!)
Best Happy Hour I Discovered: Twist’s happy hour, which is extra long (4-11pm!) with drink specials and more than 20 food items starting at $2.50!
New TV Show Addiction: Top Chef (there’s a lot more to list here since I got cable for the first time in three years, but I won’t go into boring TV detail).
Best Vacation: It’s a tie between Vegas in March with BD and Mexico in May with my family (the first family vacation we’d ever taken that required a plane).
Best Celebration: Barack Obama being elected President (!!!).
Best Month: September. The best trip EVER with Baby Daddy to the Westbeach Resort on Orcas Island. Oktoberfest in Fremont. My all-expenses paid work trip to sunny and beautiful South Beach in Miami, where we won “Best Booth” for the event I project managed.
Biggest Best Purchase(s): A PC to accompany my Mac, and my pretty new cream micro-suede couch.
Biggest Blunder: Peeing on a federal building.
Favorite Video: Me, of course.
Worst Fashion Trend: Crocs. I know they’re not new to 2008, but I’m holding out here. WHY.DOES.ANYONE.WEAR.THESE.IN.PUBLIC??? Every time I see them, I wrinkle my nose, frown, scoff and get really annoyed. Those things are effing ugly. Keep them in the garden, if you must. *End rant*
Favorite New Fashion Trend: Skinny jeans (yikes, I know. I can’t believe I’m admitting this, let alone wearing them), scarves and lots o’ layers!
Best Party: Tie between the girly sex toy party and Luke and Jana’s wedding.
Biggest Accomplishment: Quitting the Jesus factory and scoring a new job in marketing (with actual paid vacation, a short downtown commute and a pretty decent raise) after a long and arduous nine-month search, more than 30 resumes and cover letters, and 10 different interviews!
Biggest (Failed) Accomplishment: Finishing x365 and NaBloPoMo, and giving up my loved P.I. blog, “Bright Lights, Date City.”
Least Favorite Life Change: Losing my friend Kelly to the mid-West.
Best Life Change: My sexy boyfriend – and finding love, again. Or maybe my color-coordinated bookshelf? It’s hard to decide between those two. OR Bestie Amanda moving back home after three years away – what to choose!
Best New Activity: Pie baking! (Okay, so I only baked one, but it was still fun to learn!) No, but really, I love the Nia fitness class I started attending, to be picked back up after the first of the year.
Best Decision: Sticking it out through my long, terrible and torturous eight-month pro-bono project with The Taproot Foundation. I never want to be a quitter!

On the horizon in 2009…

New Year’s Resolution for 09: Call my dad and grandparents once a month.
Goal to Accomplish Before the End of 09: Move to San Francisco, or very minimum, somewhere new. Seattle feels a bit small for me now, and I feel the need to spread my wings and live with no regrets. I’ve been talking about it for a long time, so I’m just going to DO IT. I’m starting to update the resume and sift through Craigslist now… *fingers crossed* it works out before the end of 2009.
What I’m Most Looking Forward to in 09: The wedding of my Dolphin Sister in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Scary Reality of 09: My sister will turn 21 in October. Wow.

2008 Photo Recap

(To the tune of “This Year’s Love” by David Gray, so put your headphones in. Also the captions come up quick and choppy when it was uploaded to the Internet, not sure why, so you’ll have to read quick!)

Don’t Blame it on the Rain

My career as a back-up dancer continues…

Currently Feeling: Glad I reconnected with W and all his goofiness.
Currently Anticipating: NYE tomorrow. But more for it to be over with. I sorta hate the holiday with a red hot passion.
Currently Listening To: The new Kings of Leon CD I bought Mike for Christmas.

Gimme, gimme, gimme – Gimme some WINE and CHEESE

I had a ridiculously fun night last night.

An extravagant, Balinese Seattle socialite friend of mine, whom I’ll call W, hosted a wine and dinner party at his house in Maple Leaf, and I dragged my Hussy Bestie Amanda there with me. W knows nearly everyone in Seattle, I believe, and he’s always trying to fix his single, straight friends up, so I thought I’d help a sistah out.

When we pulled up to the street W lives on, two bottles of red wine and MapQuest directions in hand, I didn’t even have to check the address. With an extravagant, Balinese friend comes an extravagant, Balinese house. In a line of houses, it was the only one with Christmas lights in every tree, intricate fountains, Balinese statues in the yard, and huge plastic red hearts stuck in the surrounding flower beds. It was awesome. Amanda and I looked at each other and laughed, “That is SO W’s house.”

Waiting for us inside was a table of wine and cheese, two pots of spaghetti, a camera-happy and YouTube-obsessed host, and fantastic 20-somethings to mingle with. I don’t need to tell you how much wine I drank (not really sure if I even know how much wine I drank), but we eventually moved the party to The Little Red Hen for karaoke night. I vaguely remember jumping up and down, singing at the top of my lungs to an afro-wearing singer on the stage—who turned out to be an old high school friend when he took the wig off—and something red in a little shot glass. It was a little too crazy for a Wednesday night, but I kept telling myself, “Meh, you only live once.”

And in this one life I have, I plan to laugh and dance my little buns off, and drink wine until I turn violet, Violet.

Amanda and I are featured as back-up dancers in this video from last night:

Currently Feeling: Still giddy and high from all the laughter last night.
Currently Anticipating: Catching up on the shows I missed last night. Love DVR!
Currently Needing: A weekend in.

Do you think I have a career in videos?

I discovered the Web cam program on my computer last night, which was ridiculously, ridiculously entertaining. I couldn’t stop snapping photos for my boyfriend framed in cheesy hearts, and recording videos to send my friends. Since Amanda’s birthday party was last night, she lucked out with my first video birthday message. I think I might have a career in this… anticipate many more video blogs to come!

HELLO, Lover!: Sex and the City movie trailer

Swoon! I’m so ready to get Carried away… Yes. I will be camping out with Cosmos in hand and all my best girlfriends the night before.

Currently Feeling: Like a slacker.
Currently Anticipating: May 2008!!
Currently Hating: Christmas shopping without an income for it.

Jem is Truly Outrageous!

I just received the wig for my Halloween costume in the mail today at work. I wondered briefly if the mail room guy was wondering why I ordered something from My Wig Store, since obviously my hair is ridiculously, ridiculously full and luscious. (Oh, if only Larisa read my blog. She’d understand the ridiculously joke. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure you all think I’m totally conceited.) Anyhoo. The wig is my final touch on my most creative and possibly most fanfuckingtastic Halloween costume to date…

I’m going to be Jem from Jem and the Holograms. Larisa and Vanessa are going to be two of The Misfits, Jem’s archrival rock band. The three of us are designing our costumes ourselves, which are hopefully going to look as close to the real deal as possible since we’ve taken photos of the cartoon characters from the Internet. My mom—sewing genius that she is—is sewing me a crazy sparkly 80s dress just like the one Jem wears, with a matching belt, etc. I’ve purchased a sparkly microphone, and my wig just needs to be dyed pink, ratted and hairsprayed, and then I’m set.

Be prepared for some pretty funny photos of the three of us singing the Jem theme song:

Glamour and glitter; Fashion and fame…that’s totally me, eh?

“We are The Misfits. Our songs are better…”

Truly Outrageous!

Currently Feeling: Slightly nervous that the power will go out at work because of Weatherpocalypse 2007, and I’ll lose all my work.
Currently Anticipating: Completing the final touches on my costume this weekend.
Currently Excited For: An evening out with Nate and his friends tomorrow.

i’m so glad we got this cleared up

Thanks, Miss Carolina, for your insight into the state of America’s education system. Clearly she’s brainwashed by the “right” side of her state. Oh bejesus.

Can anyone find me a map?! I haven’t seen one in years! If it isn’t obvious already, Miss Carolina did not win the crown. (I missed this little tid-bit Friday night when I was watching the Miss Teen U.S.A. pageant. Perhaps that was toward the end of my bottle of champagne.)

Currently Feeling: Warm and fuzzy.
Currently Anticipating: Finishing some housekeeping tonight and watching 90210.
Currently Listening To: Mickey Avalon. Seriously. Love him.

It’s Friday! Let’s Laugh!

I can’t stop laughing to myself about this video. I haven’t seen something this entertaining in a long time, and it’s made my whole day.

Not sure if you’ve seen Al Gore’s global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth, or heard about the nut-job parent who had it banned from the Federal Way school district because he felt it was, “propaganda.” But, please watch this video. I promise with all my body parts that you’ll laugh…

Let’s Get Some Shoes

I might have found the best thing know to all fashionable women—or perhaps the worst. You decide.

Women have a reputation for being obsessed with shoes. It’s true for most I know. It is never as simple as being a guy; we can’t have one pair of tennis shoes, one pair of dress shoes and one pair of casual shoes. We have to have the latest style—open-toes, wedges, slouchy boots. We have to have the right color to match our outfit—I own shoes in the following colors: brown, tan, white, black, orange, teal, pink, yellow, red, bronze, silver and gold. And that doesn’t even touch the printed shoes. In basic colors such as brown tan and black, I have boots, heels, wedges, flats, open-toed, close-toed, sandals, etc. It’s ridiculous.

“It’s really hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes—that’s why you sometimes need really special shoes!”