Tag Archives: random pictures I took with my phone because i could

Vegas Baby

Anybody interested in listening to more of my drunken tales? This time in Vegas?

Well, no matter. I need to write this all down so I can relive my glory days when I am in my 80s… I sure do hope the Interwebs are still going strong “50” years from now…

We had never been on a vacation without the kids in tow until this past weekend. And thank goodness we did not have our kids with us. Otherwise The Husband would not be able to check out the top-optional swimming pool at our hotel.

TOPTIONAL.

That is the new word I learned from my trip there. Don’t you just love Vegas?

I am leaving on an early flight to NYC this morning, and I need at least 2 hours of shuteye since I have been sustaining on minimum sleep since we came back from Vegas.  Therefore I will be brief, (and you all know “brief” is a relative term when you are dealing with someone who is borderline Narcissistic when they are talking about themselves…) I will make a list of things I can still remember as the massive amount of alcohol finally found its way out of my system.

1. It actually was not that startling to have a woman turn around and you found yourself face to face (?) with her boobs. Well, I am not a straight man so I cannot speak for them. For me, it was kind of natural anyway. Anti-climatic almost.

2. Young boobs are perky. Either that, or all these girls all have had boob jobs. Once you pass 30 though, your boobs start drooping. So enjoy them while you can. Or start saving money.

3. Older, trim and fit women’s boobs even if they do drape a little do not bother me at all. Yes, the young women next to me exclaimed quietly, “Ewww.” I so wanted to tell them, “Let’s see what yours look like when you hit her age.”

4. Men are hilarious when they pretend they are not looking. Ladies, you know what I am talking about.

5. This is a note to the girl who was competing against her (former?) best friend for the same young man’s attention: Taking off your bras somehow did not work, eh? Your friend put hers back on pretty quickly and guess what? The young man continued to talk to her while your boobs were bouncing up and down in the background. I am sorry. Next time, don’t try so hard. And I hope your (former?) best friend forgive you for trying to upstage her the second you got into the pool.

6. People watching is a lot more fun when it is TOPTIONAL.

7. In Vegas, Adult Shows mean TOPLESS. Duh.

8. Those boobs on stage are no larger than yours and oh my goodness they do not stand up like “Boing!” the way porn industry makes you think they do. They droop, a bit. Naturally. Due to gravity. They fucking droop. And they all look gorgeous. You chuckle at yourself because who would have thought that you’d found affirmation at the show Fantasy? 

9. It is a brilliant idea to get well buzzed before you head down to the night club so you don’t spend all your money on those over-priced drinks.

10. Chuck Liddell is apparently somebody famous.  (You found that out when the security personnel told you off “Please stop taking pictures!” even though you were taking pictures of the go go dancer). More importantly, he apparently can crush you with his bare hands, according to your husband, after you obnoxiously yelled Chuck Chuck Chuck! And your husband is no fun because you really want to say to Chuck, “Chuck, Asia loves you!” – a bold faced lie of course. But you are so drunk you could not fucking care.

11. You say and then yell some variation of “I am so drunk I cannot fucking care” throughout the night.

12. You don’t mind going and waiting in line at the bar because you are so drunk… yeah, and you keep on talking to random strangers.

Some young man asks whether you’d mind if he cuts in line to get some water from the bartender. You say, “You are so cute. Go right ahead.” While you are waiting, you ask him, “What’s wrong with you that you are drinking water? Are you Mormon or something?” He mimes giving you a pamphlet, and you laugh and tell him that your son sprinkles you with holy water as a joke. To which, the very nice young man feigns surprise, “You have a son?! Impossible. You look about 21!” Of course you thank him, “I will buy you any drink you want!” When you ask the bartender to give the young man a glass of water, the young man says, “I want to marry you right here right now.” You think, “Too bad he’s gay, and of course, I am married.” Then you send him off to have a great time “because that’s what young people are supposed to do!”

13. When you go back to the bar the 3rd time, you strike up a conversation with a nice gentleman from Hawaii who is a boxing club manager and whose fighters finally get invited to Las Vegas. In the middle of your conversation, you say to him, “Well, I just don’t want to see white people ruin Hawaii.” He bursts out laughing and tells you “You are real.” So of course you have to buy him a drink. And guess what he orders at the bar after the long wait? Pineapple juice. Yup.

14. So yeah, and then there is the part about you getting kissed by a girl. Twice.

15. Your husband actually got a picture as proof.

16. Maybe that was why he was not mad at all even when you dropped his Crackberry into the swimming pool.

 

 

Narcissus: A Rambling in Four Parts

I saw these for sale when I made an emergency run for coffee at the store: a dozen for $1.99. I normally do not buy flowers, the same reason I do not make the bed: What’s the point? But I made an impulse purchase that day and I am glad I did. Whenever I pass by them, which is all too frequently since they are sitting on the kitchen table now, a smile pulls into my face. Flowers do that to you. Besides, they are so much cheaper than a diamond necklace.

 

I held out the daffodils the way He-Man pulled out his Power Sword, screaming: “By the power of Narcissus!” Willing Spring the coy bitch to finally show her face.

I did that often when I was young: holding up my umbrella, yelling, “The omnipotent gods, please endow me with the power of miracle!”, the Chinese dubbed version. I harbored this longing to be a super hero, or a swordsman. All of these fantasies involved me cross-dressing incognito. There is a lot of theorizing available behind a cross-dressing story such as HUA Mulan (Don’t say “Fa” please. Use the historically correct pronunciation, in Mandarin…) : being male in appearances somehow signified a path to empowerment and freedom, provided you are not found out.

 

Back to Spring. Or the lack of sighting of that pesky bitch forever running late or simply no-show even after she had RSVP’d when the universe was first created. The sky was dressed in blue and adorned himself with glorious white clouds yesterday, waiting for her.*

Whenever the kids and I see the sky looking like this, we’d say, “Look! The Simpsons!” And we all could hear the intro music to The Simpsons wafting in closer from behind the clouds. Or maybe it’s just me.

 

Back to the lingering thoughts of cross-dressing. Sister Merry Hellish recently wrote a great post on “Men in the corporate culture, their ties, and the women who fight them” aptly titled Sex, Ties and Reconditioning. She had asked several bloggers to send her pictures of themselves wearing a tie, and I am honored to be one of them. You really should click over and read the post. Actually, don’t even worry about finishing this post and leaving me a comment (srly sometimes I wonder what I myself would say if I had to comment on the gibberish coming out of my keyboard…). Just stop and hop over there right now!

As always, assignments of self-portrait stresses me out to no end and I did not pick up the camera until the last minute. In the end though, I had to admit that I had a lot of fun posing with a hat and a tie inside our powder room, holding a camera with my right hand, snapping pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror. I, a 40-year-old woman, was playing dress-up in a tiny bathroom, in the middle of the night, by myself. And I had not even been drinking.

Do you ever wonder now what your parents were doing when you were sleeping back then?

It was really late when I sent SMH my submissions, and I knew she waited up for me so she could work on her post before she went to bed. I continued to play with Picnik.com, or what I like to call, A Woman’s Best Friend. After much cropping (for you could see the toilet in the original picture AND I was wearing a pair of hot pink pajama pants underneath. They were only $5 on sale!), massive editing, and over-applications of effects, I have to say I love how I look in a fedora* and tie.

The funny, and slightly disturbing thing is how often I stare at this picture of myself ever since. I know it is not real: Too much cropping and softening and posterizing effects have been involved. But it makes me feel strong inside when I close my eyes and see myself in a hat and tie thusly. Does that even make any sense?

I hope I can manage to retain this mental image of myself channeling Annie Lennox (who is a very strong outspoken feminist. Yes, she does not deny that she is a feminst) on days when I feel oh so unworthy of working side by side next to all these men around the conference table.

Self: I can’t do this any more. These men think I am an idiot.

Annie Lennox:

You’re a bird in the sky now baby
Earthbound
Feet on the ground

 

 

Today, in a very self-serving way, I am going to declare that we all need a little bit Narcissus in us.

 

 

 

* On second thought, I guess we can’t blame Lady Spring for not showing up this weekend after all since blue tux & white ruffles combo inadvertently conjures up the image of Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber

The fedora actually belongs to Mr. Monk, my 8 year old. I now am convinced that every man and woman should own a fedora.

 

I’ll take the one on the left to go

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I am letting it all out today.

What you are looking at is my butt. Well, half of my butt: I had to crop the top of my butt off so you cannot see my muffin top. Ok, so technically, I am not really letting it all out today. Just half out.

I took these pictures when I went to a Warehouse Sale for 7 for All Mankind. Because it meant the potential of buying jeans that did not have any stretch capability in them and allowed my muffin top to hang over the low-rise top like an over-risen bread dough for a whopping… WAIT FOR IT… 20 to 30% off, I proceeded to get jiggy with it, struggle wiggle out of my clothes, and strip nekkid right inside the Union Station. Only to notice later that there was a camera pointing right at the makeshift dressing area.

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Did I scream and run away when I noticed the security camera? Nah. First of all, I took a picture of it. (Of course!) Then I felt sorry for whoever had to sit there and watch. Besides just at that moment, I noticed that my butt looked different in the two types of mirror they had there (as you could see for yourself): my problem area, as many of the diet programs would call it, looked decidedly less wide in one mirror than in the other. I was very excited about my discovery: My own magic mirror! I stared at my own butt, the one on the left, with appreciation. I committed it to the memory vault for future emergency use.

No. I did not buy the mirror on the left. I tried but they wouldn’t let me. The guy just looked at me like I was crazy.

What? Oh. Duh. Of course the one on the left is my real butt. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

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Like all of you here, I am obsessed fascinated with and intrigued by Search Terms.

Compared to some of the search terms that led people to the other blogs out there, Yes you know who you are, the ones that led people here are lame.

“Tiger balm in ass”. Funny but not jaw-dropping eye-popping funny. I don’t even want to know why people searched for that. OUCH.

I am also worried that people may actually be disappointed when they come to a page on my blog and realize that it is NOT what they have in mind, for example, when they typed in “Wedding Invitation” and they saw THIS.

Anyway, I have been noticing a trickle of people searching for “People of Walmart” AND “Muffin Top Belly” and landing on an old post of mine written when I first discovered People of Walmart with uber excitement.

It showed up again today.

Muffin tops.

Yeah. I have a big one of those myself. I KNOW that me getting rid of my muffin top would be one of the Top 10 Wishes on my husband’s wishlist. I don’t understand. I see my muffin top as a safe guard for our marriage. There is NO way I would want another person in this world to see my muffin top. So there goes the risk of me having an affair. Just sayin.

Food for thought.

You are welcome.

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p.s. For more exciting key words that REAL people ACTUALLY used for their Internet searches and frankly, that make you worry about humanity, Elly over at BugginWord does a weekly column on Search Terms that led to her site (I like calling these things “Weekly Columns”, it makes us all sound more sophisticated, with our cardigans and fountain pens and stuff…)

Sundays in My City – From Dives to Skyscrapers

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p.s. Obviously backdated so it appears to have been published on a Sunday. These pictures were taken a week before but I have been to lazy busy to do anything about them.

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Unknown Mami

Saturday Smörgåsbord

I have been watching SpongeBob with Mr. Monk this whole day except when I am being the Chauffeur. (And I know I am not the only Weekend Chauffeur around here…) You know what I admire SpongeBob the most? He does not seem to understand the concept of Envy and Jealousy, and therefore he is always genuinely over-the-top happy for other’s good fortune, accomplishment and success.

He is, in fact, always happy.

For this rare virtue, he comes off as insane. Unaware. Unhinged.

(Ok, fine. For you anti-random-theorizing folks out there, SpongeBob comes off as insane mostly because he understands spoken words literally…)

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It is cold. As in…

I half expected to see a polar bear floating by on one of these pieces of ice

Breaking the ice. Literally.

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My husband complained about me not responding to his email or just in general, plainly ignoring him while he travels abroad on business. What can I say? I am the Champion in Compartmentalizing. Guilty as charged. So I sent him this picture above and wrote, “Wish you were here!”

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Completely unrelated. Really. I swear. Girl Scout Honor. I just saw this on our fridge and I am proud of our family motto, so I took a picture of it. That’s it. Really. Not trying to say anything. Not a comment at all.

Sundays in My City

I am in downtown Chicago with the kids this weekend. NO laptop. I have aniPhone with no SIM. But it has a camera: look out, world!!!

I am sitting in the hotel lobby using the free Wi-Fi, trying to blog via my iPhod thingy. Ok. Seriously? How the fuck does anybody type on this thing?!?! So far I have accidentally published this post twice. Ugh. FWIW, Here it goes…

Homebody

Less than a year after we started dating, my husband brought me home to meet his parents during the winter break. Ever since that year, we have been spending Christmas at my in-laws in Maryland. The fact that my folks are not in the U.S. simplifies things since we don’t have to fight over which set of grandparents to visit. And in all honesty, even if my folks were here, I would have supported the idea of celebarting Christmas with my in-laws because they are the Christian and this is a holiday that holds a special meaning for them, especially my mother-in-law.

It does get a bit claustrophobic whenever I am here because we do not do anything. We sit around the house and enjoy each other’s company. We read and we watch movies on DVDs. This is all fine and dandy for the first three days. After that, I would get myself a severe case of cabin fever, knowing that Washington D.C. is only a 45-minute train ride away.

I do lobby for a visit to the Smithsonian every year. This year we did the tour of the White House, finally, and I even managed to force the husband and brother-in-law to have lunch in Dupont Circle. Can you believe it? I have been coming to Maryland since 1995, and this was the first time I had eaten there. If not for Dufmanno, I would not have known a place as cool as Adams Morgan existed.

Yes, I know every guidebook mentions all the cool neighborhoods. In my feeble defense, when your in-laws LIVE so close to D.C. you kind of do not feel the need to pick up a tourist-y guidebook…

I have never been to Georgetown. There. That should settle how pathetic it is. I am. We are.

I love them dearly but these people are homebodies.

Example 1: When we visited my husband’s grandmother and aunt in a Boston suburb in 1996, I found out that my husband and his brother had only been to Boston once. ONCE. They had been visiting the grandmother EVERY SINGLE YEAR and the aunt’s house is a mere 10-minute drive to a T station.

Example 2: The family gets together for one week every summer at the Outer Banks. We go to the beach and read. That’s it. The highlight will be having Chinese take-out one night and going to the 4-screen movie theatre one afternoon.

What’s more: they make me feel so guilty, like there is something wrong with me, for wanting to GET OUT.

On the third day of our trip here, I volunteered to go to the store, perhaps with too much enthusiasm. My mother-in-law, let me preface with this, a very kind and gentle person whom I get along famously well with and from whose mouth I have never heard of an ill word of others, jokingly commented, “You are itching to get out of the house, aren’t you?” “No. Me? Noooo. I just thought I’d go to the store for you.” “It’s ok. We don’t need anything right now.”

I don’t even feel comfortable saying, “I am going to Starbucks” because why do you need to go spend that money if you can have a perfectly good cup of coffee at home? Unless you are a spoiled spendthrift. And why do you need to leave the house when you don’t need anything? Unless you dislike the company of the people around you.

So that’s what I have been doing so far ever since we got here last Tuesday. RELAXING. There were days when I did not see the sky at all. It seriously stresses me out to no end. I feel so restless.

I am just a bad case of spontaneous combustion waiting to happen.

I hope I don’t trigger the alarm when I go through the airport security tomorrow.

Quickly. Group Hug!

Strangers are just friends waiting to happen. — Rod McKuen

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I almost missed the postscript. And when I first read it, I was upset that he asked for $100 cash! "You little...!" I thought. I burst out laughing when I saw the instruction to Santa. Despite everything, I did not ruin this child. I think.

Dear Friends,

Yes, you dread this moment of sappiness and it has come. No, seriously, I am so blessed to be surrounded by people who show me what the true human spirit of giving and caring is, not just around Christmas, but on a daily basis.

In the past year, I have been fortunate enough to get to know many of you better through words and some, through images (although to my disappointment, nothing risqué. We need to work on that, my friends!), from all over the world. I have been even more fortunate to see a few of you materialize in the real 3D world. Do you know how awesome that is? It means that I would have more than one Cora waiting next to my Ducati right outside of Flynn’s Arcade when I came out of The Grid if I were Sam Flynn.

I am so grateful for the community I have found and become part of that my heart aches every time I think about it. I find it easier for me to breathe and to be myself every day because of this place right here.

I want to wish those who celebrate it a Merry Christmas and those who don’t, a wonderful long weekend and/or vacation. And for my Jewish friends, enjoy the movies and the Chinese! And you know, by Chinese I mean the food, not ME.

And to all, unless you are a Jehovahs Witness, a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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On a Clear Day in DC

At the in-laws. Can’t talk. I mean, it will not look too good if I remain attached to my laptop or my Blackberry or my fake iPhone, aka CONNECTED, the way I am at home. I can hide in the bathroom and tweet though.*

* I am absolutely not kidding about hiding and tweeting from the restroom… I sent a picture of the ladies room from Old Ebbitt to Wicked Shawn because she has been made to notice my strange habit of checking out ladies rooms wherever I go. I get excited about nice bathrooms…

And I absolutely love restrooms that make political statements, but only if they are left-leaning, liberal ones like those at the Luna Grill & Diner in Dupont Circle.

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So we “visited” the White House today. It was over in 30 minutes. No sightings of President Obama. I was absolutely crushed over that. We did get to see all the fancy rooms looking even fancier now with all the Christmas decorations. (This of course begged the question of: What do people SEE when there is no Christmas tree inside every single room?) We spent more time in the UNofficial gift shop across the street including having our pictures taken with the cardboard POTUS and the First Lady. Apparently, one of the requisite poses is of the famous photo taken of JFK at the Oval Office with John Jr. poking his head out through underneath the desk. Is it just me or has Monica Lewinsky forever ruined that iconic image for you too?

Nothing is allowed when you tour the White House; you are allowed basically your cellphone (which has to be turned off), wallet and car keys. When I saw a sign that says

PASSHOLDERS BEYOND THIS POINT ONLY.

I was so tempted to risk being tackled by the secret service and take a picture of it, for you, because the P was missing. Instead I have this underwhelming photo to show for:

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As a result of our trip to the White House, I spent the entire day out and about, including a jaunt to the trendy Dupont Circle, without my purse, i.e. NO lip balm, NO lipstick, NO compact, NO hairbrush, NO Kleenex, NO hand lotion, NO touch-up.

The horror.

I did take way too many pictures of the Washington Monument. What? I like reading the articles.

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This is turning into a travelogue, so I will stop, BUT not before I show you the most interesting thing I saw today. Kudos to my husband for pointing it out as a good blogging fodder:

At the Air and Space Museum, there is a small exhibit calling your attention with the intriguing question:

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Can you be a Stewardess in the early 1950s?

with 8 flaps emblazoned with categories such as Height, Weight, Age, Race, Marital Status, Education, Appearances.

5’2″ to 5’6″, 135 lbs. max, White, Never married, 2-year college or registered nurse, AND… [our favorite] Attractive – “Just below Hollywood” standards.

I have a phone (with a camera, like every other phone nowadays) and I am not afraid to use it…

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