.ruminations.

I'm such a ridiculous fangirl.  My co-worker just stopped by my desk to tell me that she just walked right past Eric Ripert on M Street.  Well, she's about 99% sure.  I mean, he's him.  And she heard him speak in his sexy as hell voice in French on his mobile.  And it makes sense, sort of, because Westend Bistro is just a handful of blocks east of us.  Enough evidence for me.  I totally just squealed like a teenager and clapped my hands...and then berated her for not: a) screaming for the man to stop so she could snap his picture and b) calling me so I could run up the street and glimpse him for myself.

At the same time, my co-worker mentioned that Owen Wilson had been at Poste this past weekend...and of course I didn't care.  Paul Rudd was in Adams Morgan last week, and as much as my Clueless (and, okay, a bunch of other awesome turns in movies since) love runneth over, it compares not to my love of hottie cheflebrities of a certain sort.  I mean, look at him:

Eric Ripert a' smoldering

spoiler, what?  hubert effing keller, ya'll.  so the judges aren't nearly as mean, but i wonder if it isn't because these chefs are...real?  and i think i love tom colicchio and his intro commentary on each chef.  and they're so cute with each other!  or is it just the first group and their guy love? 

i am so giddy it hurts.

i

i am

omg, why don't the kids realize that dc is an effing dirty town?  one does not walk barefoot down the street, with perfectly comfortable sandals in hand, like some effing dirty hippie.  do they want to contract a disease?  are they not content with the passing swine flu hysterics?  do they want to be patient zero for another potential pandemic?  sweet mercy.  the kid must have been a college kid.  to which i then add, fuck, man.  your parents are either paying for you to go to georgetown or gee-dub, in which case, you have enough fucking money to wear shoes.

okay, okay, i know i am only a few years out from being said dirty hippie -- yeah, i've put in my time roaming barefoot around cities, but i was always wearing uncomfortable shoes.  have i become too high maintenance?  is it wrong to not want to have to dodge swinging sandals and flying ash?  because of course he's a compulsive flicker smoker.  doesn't he know it's rude to haphazardly flick as he walks?

the old lady is shutting up now.

my fragmented knowledge of music strikes again.  guess what folks, it only took me 28 years to realize that the beach boys were chanting 'barbara ann' not 'bop a ran.'  i am still incredulous...because, you know, 'bop a ran' is a legitimate refrain.  this is just like rediscovering all the madonna songs i thought i knew as a wee child in the 80s.  why can't she enunciate?

27 - Beach Boys - Barbara Ann

new shoes arrived today!

they are gorgeous!

they hurt like all get out!

i'll need a couple days to make them feel good!

i can't run in them!

they're taller than i thought!

i heart them.

I am so grossed out by my feet right now.  I blame this on the warm weather today -- GLOBAL WARMING IS GOING TO KILL US ALLLLLLLLLL -- because the weather prompted me to wear open-toed shoes.  The ones I chose pushed my toes together in such a way, that it created a situation where one of my toenails (lacquered and pretty though they are) managed to gouge a hole in the side of another toe.  GOUGE.  This meant that it bled out all over the sole of my shoe (a pretty yellow shoe), and made a mess.

What the hell does that say about me?

a) My toenails are wild, and they need taming. 

b) I need to reconsider my imprudent shoe choices.

c) I'm so used to bearing pain in the name of cute shoes that I can't even tell when there's a hole being bored out of the side of my toe.

The hell, ya'll?  Even when I lost sensation in my toes in the name of the Cole Haan pump, it wasn't this bad.

I need a drink.  Or cherry pie.  And I have cherry pie.  Because Baked and Wired loves me and knows when I need pie and has it available!  Or whatever.

What's going on, neighborhood?  I'm going to be lame and stay close to ground this weekend.  Anyone doing anything spectacular?

So I have friends with tickets who went downtown, friends with pipe dreams that thought to go from Virginia to DC at 4 am.  I am of much lesser fortitude, so I am in bed, tucked underneath my comforter on this momentous day.  And...I'm okay with that.  It's cold, ya'll.  And if I was downtown, how would I watch the color commentary by Katie Couric and learn that Thomas Jefferson had his inauguration then went back to his rooms for supper? 

Okay, how cute are Clinton and Bushie Senior walking arm in arm?

Oooh!  Instrumentals!  It's time!

First day back at work after 13 uninterrupted days of holiday, and I come bearing tons of cookies.  I am a baker.  So sue me.  Anyhow, no one is eating my cookies.  NO ONE.  Female, anyway.  Everyone is on a diet, whether for a wedding, an inauguration ball, or sheer crankiness.  This is not helping me with my cookie surfeit. 

Does this sound wrong to anyone but me?

Because WishBear asked me to show her pictures of today's ill-conceived baking, I give you:

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That's right, gingerbread cookies.  Cookies and snowflakes.  And royal icing.  I'm not sure my hand blender will ever recover.  I'm doing it in the spirit of the holidays, and the fact that the only day I'm working this week is tomorrow.  I don't know why I didn't manage to take tomorrow off as well, but whatever.  I made lunch plans, I made cookies.  Blergh.  Everything was made from scratch, and now it all hurts.  You would too after an afternoon/evening of baking. Miss my whinging, don't you?

I will take comfort in the fact that I only have to work 7.5 more hours for the rest of the year.  Awesome.

More pictures before I go comatose:

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Having a window by my desk is completely unproductive for work.  Half the time, I'm just staring straight into the building across the street (50 feet if I were to wager a guess), doing my best impression of Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.  My favorite is Solitaire/Free Cell man.  He's barely in the office, and when he is, he's playing games on his computer.  Not the fun ones, just the ones that come with Windows.  The untraceables. Smart man.  Or not so smart man...because his office space is the same size as mine.

Anyhow, last week he was also the cause for my consternation.  In his office was a life-size cardboard cut-out of Barack Obama.  He was facing out, so ostensibly, there was a man constantly staring at me from my peripheral vision.  That's a smiling 6'2" man.  A much of a cutie as the man is, it's disconcerting after day 2.  I was even contemplating ordering one for myself (a friend whipped out his iphone during dinner to find this information for me -- show off), when the faux!Bama disappeared on Friday.  To get one now would just be petty.

And now I have gesticulating girl in the empty office.  She's been standing in one of the empty offices talking on her cell phone for about twenty minutes now.  Go office productivity! (Also see: me writing up this blog entry.)  Bygones.  Why do people gesticulate when they're talking on the phone?  No one can see them (except the voyeur across the way), and no one can appreciate the wild hand movements.  I'm sure I've been guilty of this myself, but I'm very puzzled.

Hmm.  She's gone.  This only leaves me with girl eating microwaveable meal in the wee kitchen on 3.  Bored.