500 Days of Summer

Tonight, our Monday night movie madness group went to see '500 Days of Summer'. Let's just say it would have been better if it was only about 76 days of summer... since the movie dragged on way too long... and the girl in the movie, named Summer, got on my nerves (played by Zooey somebody-or-other). Joseph Gordon-Hewitt was excellent. Here's the 3 days of Summer version... Boy is an idealistic romantic at heart. Boy meets girl who doesn't believe in love. Boy falls in love. Boy and girl have a good time for 300 +/- days, but girl won't put a label on their 'relationship'. Boy presses issue. Girl turns into a raging bitch and proceeds to stomp on the heart of boy. Boy falls into a shame spiral of depression. Girl.... (go see the movie).

I really enjoyed the premise of this movie, but it fell flat. As much as they rammed the relationship and the separate personalities of the two down your throat, I never really connected or felt anything. I actually connected with situations in my life, which is maybe what they wanted. I wanted boy to move on and girl to get hit by a bus. The movie itself was very clever, although trying to be a lot funnier than it really was, but they used a lot of interesting tactics to make it fresh, like using a narrator and some black and white footage and funny sequences. Point of movie: Just because you have something in common doesn't make you soul mates... and while you're trying to force the issue, your real soul mate may have just walked by and you were too busy being miserable to notice.


The acting was good... the premise was good... the presentation of the story was good... so I give it 3.5 petunias out of 5.

Happy Birthday...

Today is Matt's birthday... I think it's so cute when people say they're not affected by getting older... or their birthday coming... until you're older. Once you hit 40, it's a shame spiral from...

-Picking an outfit to wear out when you're young, depending on who you're trying to attract to attracting flies because you crapped in your Depends...
-Picking out a fast car to cruise town in, to picking your nose in the parking lot of the Dollar Store trying to find your car when you forgot where you parked it...
-Feuding with your family because they don't understand you... to watching Family Feud and not understanding it...

Anyway... keep telling yourself age doesn't matter, Matt... it will, and soon enough. Don't forget to take your Beano with your cake and warm milk... you know how gassy you get... and have your oxygen nearby when you blow the candles out... and try not to dislodge your teeth in the process.

Smile... you know you want to... how can you resist?

Kennywood's Not Open...

Tonight, a bunch of us were supposed to go to Kennywood... with Summer almost over and most of us at camp on the weekends, a nighttime jaunt made more sense... but with the looming rain, we had to cancel. I will miss...

- Kenny Kangaroo's wave...
- Putting trash in the lions mouth and hearing it roar in Kiddie Land...
- Hearing the Merry-go-round music and the sounds out of Noah's Ark...
- Corndogs, Potato Patch french fries, square icecream cones, cotton candy and drinking something out of a sippy cup...
- Making one of those pictures where you drip paint onto the spinning canvas, then getting splattered paint all over you as well...
- Playing skee-ball and winning something cheap and plastic...
- Watching people shit their pants as they swing through the air in that wire harness over the lake...
- Stepping in gum and over puke...
- The cries of the darling children who don't get their way...
- Getting crotch rub from wet clothes from the log jammer...
- Feeling like everything you touch is coated with germs...

Eww... yuck. (I can't wait until we reschedule... I wouldn't part with any of it... that's what makes it awesome!!)

Progress...

Today, despite the rain (torrential downpour, actually), my brother and I were able to get three very large trees cut down at the Marriott as part of the newly approved project. My cousin got a case of the Shingles (and I don't mean to put on his roof), which I hear is very painful... Not as painful as working with my brother in the rain though, I'm sure. It was actually kind of strange working with him... he used to work for a tree removal outfit a few years ago. It was amazing to see him notch out the tree and have it land where he was aiming, especially in a lot full of cars, surrounding trees and a light post... all of which I was hoping not to have to replace. With excessive diarrhea of the mouth, talking merely to hear his own voice and flow of bullshit, you can't help overlooking that he's quite intelligent... not smart enough to stay off drugs, Lord knows, but he is attending AA meetings now and is holding a job, so there's hope yet. He moves in with a friend of his on September 1st... into his first apartment ever in 44 years. Our little boy is growing up right before our eyes. I feel like one of those older parents who are afraid they are going to die before they see their kids attend first grade.

And while he was 30 feet up in the tree, all I could think about was all that he put me through over the last 20 years... that... and the $15k insurance policy I have on him where I'm the beneficiary... and the Dodge Ram Crew-cab 1500 with the Hemi engine that I would, respectfully, call "Dan".

New Boyfriend... New Mulch

It's always great when my friend gets a new boyfriend... I can stay in business, because the yard gets spruced up with mulch for the 'first time at the house' ceremony.

District 9

I'm not really a sci-fi person, but this movie was great. It reminded me of Battlestar Galactica (the TV series)... political message wrapped in a sci-fi skin.

Basically, the movie was about aliens that land here... their spaceship stalls overtop of Johanasburg, South Africa. The government took 1.8 million of them and put them into a shanty town concentration camp of sorts, put numbers on them and controlled them, not letting them out amongst the people. And all they wanted to do was go home. OK, maybe there's no 'basically' about this movie... it is a little complex... but the parallels to history of maybe the jews or blacks is uncanny... and that's where the message comes in. Between the government's non-value of their lives to corralling them like animals, forcing them to live in squalor to disecting them for information (again with the parallels), it gets ugly when they try to move them further out of the city to make the humans feel better. So they basically make them mad... and that's where the sequel comes in. In the lead role is a virtual unknown... what a fantastic job he does. If they gave awards to movies of this caliber (Independence Day, War of the Worlds, etc.)... this would win. Great acting, great computer-generated action sequences... blood and guts... ugly but endearing aliens... you can't help rooting for them. I'm looking forward to the sequel, which I'm sure is not far behind. And a franchise is born. I give this 4 petunias out of 5... I may have to pluck one from Julie and Julia... totally not in the same league.

Well, it's official... my vacation is over... know how I know? My bum is peeling. You never peel until you're back home.

I can't believe that it's the middle of August already. It would really suck to be a kid having to go back to school soon. It seems like it hardly got hot enough to be Summer. I was working at the Marriott today and heard the locusts in the bushes. I don't know if it's technically 'romantic'... but that's a word that I use to describe something that takes me back to a warm-fuzzy time

It was the locusts and the lightning bugs that were the two things about Summer that I remember... that and growing up in the deep South on Big Daddy's plantation as a proper southern belle... I remember Mammy would help me get into my outfit for the barbecues at Twelve Oaks where I would drink mint juleps with that awfully handsome Ashley Wilkes... err... oh, wait... that wasn't me... that was Miss Scarlett. Well, it wasn't that much different in Robinson... except we had hot dogs and Klondikes on our cedar red picnic table in the back yard. Fiddle-Dee-Dee (i.e. fuck).

I've Got Crabs... Crabgrass, That Is...

It's embarrassing for me, as a landscaper, to have my front yard (4' X 12') looking like a road-side truck stop where dogs pee. There are more weeds than grass, and when they put the bushes in and then the driveway, they never filled in the spaces they had to disrupt in the beautiful red mulch bed (don't get me started on the use of red mulch). And the landscaping company just comes in, week after week, plowing right over it. It's really crappy work. I know I can be particular about things, especially my field of work (which covers about every occupation), but considering what we are paying for rent and paying an additional $20/month for what they call a 'Monarch' fee (Monarch makes it sound so classy and beautiful) that includes landscaping... it should be illegal is what it should be. It was hard enough when it was just the red mulch I had to be embarrassed about... but you know how I can't stand weeds. I thought about putting sod down in only my yard and changing the mulch to a natural brown PA hardwood... but didn't think they would go for that kind of thing. Leave it to me to get evicted for making things beautious. There's a line from an old movie called 'Boys In The Band'... "Oh Mary, it takes a fairy to make something pretty".

Julie and Julia...

Last night, we went to see Julie and Julia. I wasn't in the mood for a movie where I had to think a lot, so this was perfect. It was thoroughly entertaining and insightful and I hadn't expected much, so it was a bonus that it was good. Since food isn't one of my big things, it didn't exactly motivate me to run out and buy her cookbook, but I did microwave a hotpocket when I got home, if that counts.

The movie actually runs two parts... how Julia Child became interested in cooking in the 40's and how she wrote her cookbook... and then some girl named Julie in 2002 in NYC who was inspired by Julia Child so she vowed to go through the whole cookbook in a year, one recipe a day, more or less. Not having any structure or follow-through in her life, she pushed to complete the task and blogged about it every day, which led to a book deal and, duh, a movie. There were many parallels in both of their lives. Amy Adams did an ok job... a little empty and whiny, but Meryl stole the show with her portrayal, full of bubbly zeal and vigor of the famous chef, including her accent. There were things that we did and didn't see... what we didn't see was more of Julia Child's alleged drinking (how she went from Le Cordon Bleu to Pabst Blue Ribbon) and more of how she got her own show, etc. What we did see (a lot of) was the boom mic... about 16 times. It got to the point that the audience would bust out laughing when it dangled down, it was that ridiculous. Occasionally in a movie, you'll see it. Or a Palm tree in set supposedly in Hoboken... but never do you see the mic 16 times. It's beyond comprehension how it slipped through.

With Meryl's acting (redeeming herself from that crap she put out with Mama Mia) and most of it set in Paris (it reminded me of when I parlayed through Paris when I was a little girl), I really liked it. It's really not worth 4 Petunias, but I will give them anyway, since most of the other crap movies out there aren't any better (and I had the Petunias leftover from a job).

Home Sweet... Home (Ugh)?

I arrived back in Pittsburgh just in time for the humid 90+ degrees that I left in Florida... except the ocean is replaced with the river and the palm trees with weeds. I was home less than 12 hours before I had to turn around and head to camp to do massages for the weekend. I'm starting a project at the Marriott this week and I have a few other projects to do. Meanwhile, I can't wait to get out of here again. I want to head down to Washington D.C. for a few days to stay with Elaine (she's doing a project there for the next 6 months)... then go down and see my friend Brad in Myrtle Beach... maybe after Labor Day. I got a taste of the drug called 'leisure'... I can work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for months... then, give me a day off and I'm ruined.

Time Flies...

I've always been the type of person that loves to travel, but once gone from my surroundings, I tend to want to go back home after about 3 or 4 days. There used to be Shelby that I would miss, but now there isn't anybody that's going to jump up on my leg when I walk through the door. My Dad probably doesn't even know I left.. he probably thinks I've been in my room for ten days. And it's not like I always returned to some glamorous life either. Still, I am a creature of habit. I am at the Panera Bread... and I just got done eating the same exact lunch I have had the last 5 days.

Having said that, this trip has been very different. I think it's the only time I have ever relaxed in my life, and not given myself a guilt trip over it. I'm not ready to come home. Not that I'm going to have angst over it, but if I weren't living with my Dad right now, I would consider moving here, as I always have in the past. Despite being hot, people are more active here. There's nothing like running next to the beach to get your day started and everything is so beautiful. Even the street bums look great with a tan standing in front of a palm tree.

The grass may not be any greener here, but at least it's shaded by palm trees and blown by the ocean wind. I dread winter. I leave tomorrow, and I'm not happy about it... at all.

Farmer's Tan

I went back to the beach today... my farmer's tan is offially gone. In fact, any tan line I had is gone. I went to the nudie beach and probably caused third degree burns on my bum-bum. Very interesting situation, if you've never been there. Straights and gays and kids, oh my! You have to experience life. For not stepping foot in the ocean or sun or the pool for the first half of the trip, I am very tan now. ... I've had a few people speak to me in Spanish... like my name was Paco.

A Night Out...

I get a lot of feedback from my blog from my adoring fans... and the thing that I seem to get the most is that people can't believe that I do so much by myself... dinner... going to the movies... this trip. You would think that I just don't have anyone in my life that wants to do anything with me which, often, may be the case... but I choose to do things by myself for a few reasons:
1.) Several of my friends are high maintenance. I would say that you know who you are, but clearly you do not. Be wary of anyone who says they are low maintenance... they're high to think that they aren't high maintenance. Don't make me name names
2.) I am a pretty basic person. I only need my food to have a slight resemblance to what it should look like. Since I have served before, I have high expectations of the service but don't expect them to meet them, so I don't get upset like other's do. I don't send anything back. Eating isn't a dining experience for me. Nothing can ruin my dinner, except maybe if my Happy Meal is missing the toy.
3.) Traveling with someone, even someone you are close with, can be a bitch. I don't want to be on anyone's sleeping... menstrual... eating... or any other 'cycle'. And I don't want to see your tids and bits hanging out over bagels and eggs. I hate waiting for people and like not having to get a consensus from people who can't make up their minds.
4.) I get easily distracted in movies, so the less people the better. I have diverse taste in movies and never get to see what I want to see because I'm too busy seeing some talking dog movie or some A-list actor singing like a D-list singer.

I went to see Hurt Locker last night. It was about bomb specialists in the military in Iraq. Not only did you feel the tension and suspense every time they diffused a bomb, but also the mental state that they get into when they can't trust anyone and are under constant threat of being killed. The acting was great. And although there wasn't anything wrong with the movie and it was very entertaining, I still only give it 3.5 petunias out of 5, despite it's oscar rumblings.

Last week, I went to see Kathryn Heigl's new rom-com, The Ugly Truth. The ugly truth actually is that the movie sucked. As fabulous as she is (even in the LBD (little black dress), her blonde tress and smile couldn't carry off this movie. It was predictable and slightly annoying at times. There wasn't much chemistry between anyone. The highlight (other than her in the LBD) was seeing the romantic lead's ass (some no-name, although now famous for his ass). The star opposite her, Gerard Butler of Sparta fame, fell flat. I would still recommend seeing it... it was funny in spots... but don't expect too much. Coincidentally... 3.5 petunias.

A Little Touch of the 'Burgh

With a momentary loss of sanity, I was a little homesick last night after pondering life and what-not on the beach near dusk... so I went across the street to the Primanti Brothers... oceanside. It's really a mind fu@k to look out of the window with the logo on it and be looking into the ocean. Apparently one of the brothers headed south and this is the only one out of Pittsburgh. One bacon and cheese with no tomato or slaw later and I was fine. Definitely less expensive than a therapy session, but more fattening, for sure.

I'm at my wit's end with this laptop. I thought about donating it to a school.... a school of fish, that is, by throwing it right off one of the causeway bridges. Sometimes it lets me post a picture, sometimes not... sometimes it receives my mail, sometimes it only sends. I have a new one picked out... it's just whether I want to spend the money or not. I'd like to get a new laptop to replace this one and my home computer as well and just have one.

Today was a beach day. I went down towards Miami... the water was so blue-green and warm. Truly the best moments of the trip so far. I've always been a water person... I will probably go back tomorrow... the weather has been fantastic. There are a few movies I want to see... Harry Potter, Transformers and Hurt Locker... it's been too nice to be inside though. I'll have to wait until I get home where it's sure to be shitty weather all the time.

It's a Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood... Saturday

It's absolutely gorgeous outside today. Too bad I am nursing a hangover and missed most of it. I didn't eat much last night, so I guess it hit me hard and fast. I finally got out to grab some lunch and enjoy the weather. It was supposed to be a beach day. I layed out a bit yesterday and swam in the pool at the condo. Tomorrow will have to be the beach day and since I haven't even stuck my foot in the ocean yet, I guess it's time. It was actually a good exercise for me to be able to sit and do absolutely nothing but watch TV without giving myself a hard time about it. I have to learn to relax more. Problem is, if I give into it, I really fall into it and start to like it... and we all know that I don't have time for time.

I found out that the test to see if I have the Factor Five Leiden blood disorder is going to cost $400... and the DNA test is about $100... finding my real family is costing me too much.

Pampering Over... Heading Back to Ft. Lauderale

Ok... I gave in. I used the jacuzzi tub... and it was wonderful. And I don't feel guilty. I'm leaving here to go back to Ft. Lauderdale today. I'm looking forward to getting back and staying put until Thursday when I leave for Pittsburgh... I don't want to think about that though....

Progress

I went down to Duval Street last night... pretty dead. This is the off-season though. At least I was back early so I could get up early to do my walk and workout in the fitness room before heading to the complimentary buffet. I'm really getting used to be pampered. I used to think that "we'll leave the light on" at Motel 6 was nice of them to flick the switch. Not so much when you have a full staff tripping over you. 'Status' in the hotel business is a huge thing that is probably out of control. It sets the bar so high that it is virtually unreachable... and has created a band of snobs in some that expect way too much for the money that their companies are spending. It creates a hatred in the staff and makes the customer service that you are getting, fake. Employees are only trying to keep their scores up, not because they really care about you.

Last night I slept on the couch. I felt badly that the housekeeper would have to remake it and the water it would take to wash the linens. I also haven't used the jacuzzi in my bathroom. The 'pleasure' over 'resources' is a weighty debate. Maybe I'm not cut out to be pampered. I did like when they came in and fluffed my ballcap though. I am fortunate to have this opportunity and appreciate what Elaine did for me.... oops.... have to go... the van driver is here to rub my feet.

On a totally unrelated matter... I have to get checked for a blood disorder called Factor Five Leiden... it's a genetic defect that makes blood too thick and then it clots. With my biological background unfolding even more (having recently met some of my half-siblings on my mothers side) to include my birth fathers side as well. I may have a nephew that will be willing to do a DNA test. When I get back, I will have a lunch with him and what would be my half-brother to discuss it. Although hesitant in the past, with the surfacing of the picture and my resemblance, they are wanting to figure it out and possibly embrace me as a relative. The catch twenty-two is that if I am their brother, I may have the blood defect that almost took one of their lives 3 times already in their late 40's. We'll see what happens. From very little information to so much progress and information, I feel like that tropical tree that the roots grow down into the ground from the grown tree branches.

Sightseeing...

This house is the southern-most residence in the continental United States.

Key West Hotel

Most of you know that I am a pretty simple person. My idea of splurging at a hotel is the Hampton Inn, and if I get free shampoo... hot dog! My friend Elaine has Platinum status with the Marriott chain... and boy did she hook me up this time with a free room. This is the nicest room I have ever stayed in. With a full diningroom, living room, bedroom with jacuzzi tub, washer and dryer, two bathrooms, 3 TVs and a full kitchen... not to mention my own balcony... (wait for it).......... and my own set of spiral stairs that lead up to my private rooftop balcony, overlooking all of Key West. Once I put that compimentary robe on, I may never leave this room. I will be here until Friday a.m, unless I extend it. Thanks Elaine... you're the best!