My halloween highlights

So...just so you don't think I am an evil person, I began the day by finding and turning in someone's lost inhaler....so then I felt I could be a little snotty the rest of the day.

My first costume oopsies of the day... I was walking around campus and saw this woman in a very small skirt, and very little top and very tall heels, and I said outloud, oh look a hooker. Since it was halloween and all, I thought it was reasonable. Well, I was given a look of death....apparently it was not a costume.

So I kept out of trouble for awhile, until I was at dinner at Nola with Christine, when I was impressed by this woman's devil costume with stuffed monkey....then the monkey started to move...this is when i realized the monkey was in fact a child in a monkey outfit....needless to say that was a little disappointing...but I would recover.....

Finally we are walking to Christine's car, when waiting at the stop light was a convertable bmw, which is not so odd, but the backseat passengers were a giant rabbit and bear (with the large head pieces and all), to whom I waved and said hello easter bunny. He did wave us over to the car, but our parents taught us well, one should never get into cars with strange mammals.

New Gym Character

I have been calling him chesty bob little pants. He actually looks like a cartoon character. His hips are so tiny and he wears little spandex shorts, which only accentuates their slimness. He is clearly a man that works out his upper body quite a bit....Think the cartoon character Johnny Bravo, not the Greg Brady Johnny Bravo. And on the top he wears skin tight tank tops with a slit cut in the front so we can all admire his pectoral muscles. I noticed him the other day while taking a sip of water on the eliptical and I almost choked to death.

move over metrosexuals.....

now there are ubersexuals.....

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1598631,00.html

although we have decided that donald trump's name should never be associated with the anything that has to do with sex

New Feature---Gym Adventures

So I have discovered after going to the gym for slightly over a week at about the same time, that many similar characters are there at the same time. I discovered this same phenomena at the library when I was an undergrad.... So I have undertaken naming them so they can develop imaginary personalities....yes, I clearly need to occupy my mind while at the gym....

So you may ask who are these new characters....well most of them are named for their physical appearance....so...i'll just keep posting them as they get names and as they do crazy stuff.

Powder, this man is stick thin, deathly pale and bald. He runs 15 miles everyday on the treadmill and then lifts weights...oh i lie, he isn't completely bald...he has some random ugly chin fuzz....he always looks distressed....i keep thinking he will keel over on the treadmill

Gramps, this guy is definitely old enough to be my grandfather. But he is so happy every day at the gym, he gets to know all of the regulars, and is one of the most pleasant people....

on the other hand, there is a collective group of women I refer to as the storks....they all need to eat a few cheeseburgers....they each spend about 1.5 hours on the elliptical and look like they haven't consumed more than 100 cal/day in many years....I am contemplating bringing them a cake....

Of course there are the trainers, who actually have real name Andre and Terry. They are both really cool, but Andre is the best.....but it is nice to have some friendly faces there....

As more ridiculousness emerges, I will keep you posted.

And yes, I am insane....going for at least 2 hours a day....but dissertations can make you fat, and I don't want to be a fatty....not cool....must look good in swim suit in guadeloupe in december

Strange things happen in Arkansas....

which according to kyra is the no shit statement of the day....

I am scared of the Duggar family....that woman's uterus must be wrecked.....and why are they so crazy.....do the children actually know all of the other children's names....these are questions, i ponder as they scare the crap out of me.....

I find myself agreeing with the SF Chronicle editorial about this family.....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/10/19/notes101905.DTL

thanks christine.....

It is these sorts of people that make us blue state people fear the red states and the odd characters that live in them....

So you might wonder why I have been missing lately....

Unfortunately I haven't been on any trips, well since the wedding....but I have been trying to get my advisor's lab up and running...it is now, but it is slow going....freshman apparently don't want to do experiments....I am mad at them right now....they need to show up....I only need 19 more subjects.....

But I am almost done with the first article from my dissertation which is on the effects of both giver and reciever behavior in reciprocal exchange on affect, cohesion and committment....yeah I know....some things never change....

Although today I had a fabulous idea for a paper, KC and I are going to present in the spring at a conference on social structure and emotions....but b/c I am paranoid, I won't tell you quite yet....and if KC doesn't want to go with that idea...I think I might run some experiments on it all by myself, it will be super cool...yes I know, I am very professional.....

What else has been going on.....Andrew and I are going to Boston in December to meet my new niece/nephew....gender unknown, and the rest of the clan....which should as we say, be interesting....

I have found a new and exciting show, it isn't actually new, but it is relatively new for me, and if you like the British mystery drama, you are in luck....you should check out Jonathan Creek, if you don't get BBC America (it is on at 1pm every weekday....thank goodness for Tivo), check out the dvds...but here is the link to the show on BBCAmerica http://www.bbcamerica.com/genre/drama_mysteries/jonathan_creek/jonathan_creek.jsp

Oh...with the opening of the new gym, I have taken to spending my mornings there. It isn't crowded at all, and if you go in the morning (especially Tuesdays and Thursdays), you can meet some of the guys who are actually trainers that Stanford employs....I work with Andre, who also has a boot camp on Mondays and Wednesdays, which I refuse to go to because I don't do anything with boots unless it involves leather and heels....But Andre has put me on an exercise routine...and I must admit I am hurting a bit, but I am feeling good....it is nice to spend the mornings there.....I get alot of stress worked out before heading into the office....I recommend it....But don't try to steal Andre from me...I might have to kick your butt.....

Need Art?

If so....please check out my friend Tezza's website....not only is he talented, but a super cool guy as well....plus...he has good taste...he is married to Tahu....

So check it out....

www.terriwilson.artspan.com.

I have seen many of these pieces live, and they are excellent

muffin spa day

Fabulous time was had by all....we went to Bliss San Francisco. Which is now my favorite spa...none of this new age phooey, just high quality treatments, which excellent staff.

Then we went to the official muffin sushi place in Berkeley, kirala...oh my god, if you haven't been, you need to go...the don't take reservations, but you can always eat at the bar...which is what we did...there is almost always a wait, but damn it is worth it...it is soooooo good....

Also there was full integration of the girl muffins....murdock muffin, stud muffin, blueberry muffin and I (muffin slut) all had an excellent time....the perfect amount of muffins for one car!

for a full account, check out the mad, mad muffin world.

Funny things overheard at a wedding

So while at DD's wedding, I overheard this conversation between two women....

w1..."you look familiar, do I know you?'
w2..."so do you, did you go to duke?"
w1..."yes....my name is x"

I look at andrew and say, "dude, they made out 6 years ago"...at which point all the people surrounding me started laughing hysterically.

oh the joys of going to weddings with your formerly drunken friends....

Latest Creation

So those of you who don't know, I am a knitter/crocheter....yup, I do crazy stuff....Since I am about to be an auntie, I made the little one (gender still unknown...but I am rooting for a boy) a blankie....check it out....It is being modeled by a monkey friend as usual....

More pictures of projects should be coming soon.....expect Andrew's first knitted gift this weekend....poor boy....little does he know what he is getting into with me.

Sorry, life is hectic

But we are back from the wedding safe and sound. It was a beautiful affair, but involved much comedy. My speach at the rehearsal dinner went over really well. Several people told me I should be a comedian....I think I'll stick with being a sociologist. I have posted a few pics.... The wedding went well, of course the flower girl didn't make it up the aisle, which hell, all of the bridesmaids thought was pretty damn funny. The food at the reception was excellent, and as soon as I got to put on flip flops I was much happier (see I have lived in CA for too long). Several middle aged couples wanted to adopt me, apparently I am a dream child, and have several standing offers to move in down in Southern California. But the reception was great, a lot of fun.....as we had a great table of bridesmaids, and their signficant others. It was hysterical, I thought our table was going to have a fit when some people started dancing before the bride and groom's first dance....the groom politely dealt with it, preventing the somewhat anxious bridesmaids from dealing with it, but in retrospect, pretty damn funny. So in case you are wondering....the first picture is me, with my man, Andrew (we do clean up very nice) and the second is the bride with her family.

I know you miss me

Sorry, I have been Missing in action lately....well, I have been getting the lab ready for the upcoming academic year, and all sorts of other boring stuff. But right now, I am in rainy north carolina accompanied by my faithful companion, Andrew...Actually at the moment we are dorking out and both working on laptops and being lame....but I thought I would take a few minutes to update all of my virtual friends with my comings and goings. So we are here at Duke University for my best friend from college, Dana's wedding....Yesterday was a day of high comedy. I spent most of it with the mother of the bride, betty. She is a total riot....for some reason, while dana and betty don't always get along, I always get along with both of them fabulous. So yesterday Betty and I did the rehearsal dinner seating chart, and name plates, and table indicators....but had a fantastic time doing it....all about the company. But my favorite part was when Betty threw the father of the bride, paul out of the house for just being damn annoying...Pure comedy....So today we have a bridal luncheon, the rehearsal, the rehearsal dinner and a cocktail party....but I am free until noon, and loving it....oh but i have to write a speech for tonight....ooops. So off to take care of that....

back from huntington beach

so....we had a lovely time at both the shower and the bachelorette party.....things seem to be all ready for Dana D's wedding....

Andrew headed off to England today for 10 days......then he comes back, and then we head to NC for the wedding....which I will be blogging from.

This friday I'll be having a birthday party.....which should be fun....but i need to do some cooking before then.....I am providing the mango salsa, and the canolli....yum!!!!!

oh enjoy some cute pics from the shower....

Falling apart

so....i think my body has decided it needs another vacation....yesterday, it decided to fall up the stairs to my apartment, ripping up my right hand, left upper arm and left shin. Then I managed to give myself a massive paper cut while trying to open my mail...clearly it did not want to be opened....

then the cherry on top, while walking to meet Linda for lunch, my shoe just busted open, no, the heel didn't break, i was wearing driving mocs....the toe casing just broke upen...now the shoes are being held together by some masking tape, thanks to Linda....Note to self and others....STEVEN by Steve Madden Shoes suck ass....I have only had these since april, and they fell apart...cheap ass crap....I will not buy another pair of shoes by that felon.....

So hopefully i can't fall apart any more while in huntington beach.....

Also...look forward to a picture of the sweet Furla bag Andrew bought me for my birthday....it is very pretty....he is a very, very good boyfriend...he already won best gift ever from a boyfriend...and he has only been around for 11 weeks....

I wish I was going to England

Alas, I am staying here, while Andrew heads off to Jolly Olde England.....If I was to go, I would have to go see Ducktastic....
http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/shows/display?contentId=84782

I mean...how can you not want to see a take off of sigfried and roy, but with ducks....I hope it comes to the US.

In other news, I am headed to Huntington Beach this weekend for a shower for dana and her bachelorette party....should be entertaining.

so i know you missed me

ok....so here are some pictures.....in case you need some help....there is a picture of one of my jellyfish scars, the beach at our hotel in the corridor, the sunset in la paz, and one of me and andrew in front of the arch on the pirate cruise....if you can't figure out which is which...well then i have so item identification webpages that perhaps you should view
but i didn't really have internet access for the past week or so...but i am back, and awake...so i thought i would update you on some of my adventures....

things i have learned....jellyfish are not nice....in a total of a week, i was stung 6 times...ok, five of those were in one day. it was really quite impressive, and andrew laughed at me when i bough rubbing alcohol...i highly reccomend carrying some if you are going anywhere near jellyfish, b/c if they find out you know me they might attack....

we have also learned that i have very little ability to discern the gender of animals...all of the animals in cabo pulmo were incorrectly identified by me...and all given male names, despite upon further inspection they all proved to be female.

so let me tell you a little bit about our snorkeling adventure in cabo pulmo...aside from my absolute hatred of jellyfish....well on thursday we took a boat out with our captain juan (but not juan carlos...don't be silly, cats can't drive boats). The first two places we went were so cool, we were snorekeling with thousands of fish called jacks. We took some underwater pictures of it, those should be up later this week. This was really fabulous, but we were really more amazed by this bitchy woman and her man friend also on our boat. I have named them chesty macboob, and whitebob palepants....she had ridiculous fake boobs, and he, well, he was the palest person ever, and andrew is from the north of england, and he isn't that pale.....so chesty managed to complain the entire time, and nothing whitebob could do would appease her...so eventually he just let her wander off with juan, while we were on mermaid beach...i can't say that i blame him....but when we got back to the main land....she made all the fishermen, scuba and snorkel guides happy when she proceeded to sunbathe topless about 100ft from their repair shop and about 40 ft from the beach-side restuarant we were having lunch at.

i highly recommend going on a pirate cruise....i have to say pirates know some very interesting things....like how to make a mean margarita...or at least how to give you lots of them....i like margaritas.....

some more recs for the los cabos area....when you are sick of mexican cusine go to the tulip tree in san jose del cabo....it was fantastic...i had blackened tuna with mango and pineapple salsa....oh it was delicious....

upon a few hours to think about it....if you are going to los cabos, and you want to basically be in the US, spend your time primarily in Cabo San Lucas, if you would actually like to think you are in a different country go to San Jose Del Cabo...it is amazing what 30km can do.....

sur la playa

so....we went to lovers beach yesterday....we were taken by our handy captain, edmundo....so to get to the beach you have to jump off the boat into the pounding surf....which of course caused me hours of amusement later as others managed to do it with much less style than myself. but...in other parts of the story.....it is a really cool beach, b/c on one side is the sea of cortez and the other is the pacific ocean....all absolutely gorgeous......

well, we decided we would go do a little snorkeling....which is all fine and dandy....until we tried to get out of the water....i was floating along trying to take off my flippers when one hell of a wave comes by and takes one of my flippers away.....well...just when i regain my flipper, another big ass wave comes by and totally almost takes off my bathing suit bottoms....well....this caused me to freak, and as i went to grab my bottoms, i lose my flipper.....flipper was eventually regained....but somehow in all of this mess, i lost my mask...which was eventually recovered....but pretty much the only thing i didn't almost lose at the beach was my top.....which would have been interesting.

one of the other great highlights from the beach was this small boy who was screaming he wanted his mommy, so i turned around to see what was going on....well some woman, the relationship to the child unclear was attending to him...well apparently he was having problems with his penis, and was screaming in much pain. it seems that while playing in the surf he had gotten a ton of sand in is suit (this happened to almost everyone there, but most of us did not scream for our mommies), so this woman figure helps him remove his suit....so he is totally buck naked, hiding behind a rock....when another woman in this group decides that clearly the solution is to attempt to cool this child's penis by putting her bottle of beer on it....let me tell you, this is not the solution, as the little guy cried out in pain. the beer was promptly put down, and his little brother mistook it for his juice and promptly had a few swigs....frankly if that was my family i would have been drinking too.....

well after this long day at the beach, i was really dehydrated and tired, so the pirate cruise got post-poned until friday when we'll be back in the cabo area.....but we did manage to get our butts to a fabulous french pastry shop, called french reviara, which was awesome...if you find yourself in the cabo region....get there...it is in san jose del cabo....and was just fabulous.....oh my god, it is wonderful....i will be eating there friday, saturday and sunday morning before we head home..

birthday report

so....a lovely day was had by all.....andrew decided he wanted to learn how to snorkel, so as part of my birthday present, he got us both snorkeling gear, which is super cool, since we can use it for the rest of the week, and then when we go on our next adventure to guadeloupe in december/january...so that was cool. We went to this beach called playa santa maria, and snorkeled for a couple of hours...we saw awesome striped fish, and blue fish with yellow fins, little baby fish, and big bad mo fo fish....

then we came back to the hotel, had a couple drinks for happy hour, and then cleaned up and went to a fabulous place for dinner, where we had an awesome view of cabo and the arch during sunset. Add to this the food was simply spectacular....and they had awesome mojitos...and we all know i love mojitos...so if you are in cabo go to puento veija restuarant...

so today....the big plan is......breakfast...ok...i am hungry, then off to lover's beach for some more snorkeling (someone is hooked) and then a pirate sunset cruise...yes, I tracked one down....and we are bringing mojo, so i will have my own monkey for the trek...... here is the link for the cruise http://www.loscabosguide.com/buccaneerqueen/index.html

again, thank you all for your birthday wishes....

I'll try to post tomorrow, but then we are off to cabo pulmo, where there will be no internet...so...you will have to live with out updates for a few days...i hope all is well....

happy birthday to me!

so...it is my birthday....and we are headed to the beach shortly, for a bit of a swim, a little snorkeling, lunch and a cocktail or two.....then home and then for a sunset dinner....not a bad day....

but yesterday we had a great adventure....we went on a glass bottom boat tour of the sights around cabo....we saw many pelicans (those of you who have seen my pictures of new zealand, these are my current bird of choice), the arch, which is amazing, and many other cool fish, and rock formations....i have awesome pictures....but in addition we also had our second sigthing of the mark granovetter clone....he even wears black socks...just like mark....so fascinating.....

i had an entire conversation with a salesman in spanish yesterday....very impressive....whereas andrew tried to order chicken and fries (chips for you commonwealthers) by ordering polio and chips, instead of pollo....oh the comedy never ends.....

in our hotel there is the most amusing group of people....known to us as the ladies and their dudes....all of them appear to be over 75 and having the time of their lives....they are highly entertaining...we like to make up stories abou them going surfing, night clubing, etc....all i can say is one of the ladies has some serious moves as she got one of the buff young hotel workers to carry her up the stairs....damn she is smooth.....

so...i am off to call my parentals...HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!! I hope you enjoyed your present.....

i'll give you more updates later.....

ps thanks to all of those who sent birthday wishes

so i lied...

we actually went to cabo today...someone....aka andrew was confused....so yesterday we just went to todos santos and had lunch at this really good place the los adobes..so if you are in todos santos...go there....

we have discovered a driving norm...if you see an animal on the side of the road...say a cow, horse, donkey, sheep or goat, you are supposed to flash your hazard lights....andrew has taken to this social norm....so i am the animal spotter....

so...we are at our hotel in cabo, which is pretty cool...i got some great photos of the waves crashing on the beach already....another new theme to the trip has developed...alex waiting for andrew...and in these moments of boredom....i have taken to photographing my feet...so be prepared for those to be posted....maybe just one.....

one really cool thing about our hotel in cabo is that we get free phone calls to the US...so...mom and dad...i'll call on sunday...and happy anniversary...oh and birthday to me!

in disappointing news...andrew was going to take me on a pirate cruise before my birthday dinner...i was really excited, and then he read the fine print and discovered the priate cruises only run from oct to may. damn....i wanted to see some stupid pirates.....i guess i will have to settle for the cap'n morgan in our bar...

so...1 minute to happy hour....i need a cocktail....have a lovely weekend all...and i'll try to keep you posted..

ps if you need a guide book to baja...get the moon handbook...it is awesome...thanks brownmouse