monday pickthrough- balls in the air edition.

sorry for slacking this weekend. it never ceases to amaze me how much energy performance sucks out of me. 3 shows and a lot of sleep, and not room for much else. on sunday morning, i was planning on going in to work, went upstairs to change clothes… and accidentally ended up taking a 3 hour nap.

so yeah, not much blogging. but only one more weekend and i’m free! except for the part where i’ll be really sad not to be doing it anymore. but, i’m am excited to have time to write and sleep again. plus, i’ve gotta work that ikea bus shit hard- AND i have a pretty exciting announcement coming up later this week about a collaborative project that i’ve been working on with some very sexy local fashion bloggers.

but i’ve already said too much.

for now, make some jokes about balls in the air, and enjoy these trivial tidbits.

cranky pants: an ethical conundrum.

surprise! i’m a fucking wreck this week.  the balls to the wall schedule, the stress (MUST LEARN TO TAP DANCE!), the poor diet (toast and hersehy kisses again?), the lack of sleep… i suck hard right now, and there’s no denying it. i’ve even been cranky with my poor dog (who has been attempting to eat his own poop lately,but still doesn’t deserve the ‘tude)!

unfortunately, my intense level of crank got spit out into the universe this week in kind of a crazy way.  i sent an EXTREMELY BITCHY email to a company that at the time I felt had seriously wronged me. and then i regretted it. and then i didn’t regret it… and then i asked you to tell me whether or not i should regret it (i think i feel a poll coming on).

all over the place.

work. rehearse. sleep. walk dog. work. rehearse. sleep (sort of). work. rehearse. eat? does a whatchamacallit constitute a meal? work. rehearse. crack up over dog trying to eat a cheez doodle. fall asleep on couch in a delirium. work. rehearse…

holy shit i don’t remember being this tired before. i can barely sit upright on the couch, let alone figure out something coherent to write about (passes out on couch and wakes up at 3:55 am). however, i have had a few lucid moments this week on other people’s blogs. maybe you could read those and pretend you’re reading this one?

my first real post on the coupon evolution blog declared my deep love for indian food at tandoor. plus, FREE APPETIZER COUPON!

then on the flyte blog, i wrote about this one time where my favorite radio DJ disappeared, and everyone pretended like it didn’t happen. it was bizarre and infuriating.

oh, and i also wrote an original piece about my polar dipping experience & hatred of fundraising (hot girl in bikini definitely NOT ME) for the wcsh6 portland blog.

also, pretend i wrote this yesterday. meanwhile, i’ll be pretending that i know how to tap dance.

off to work! rehearse! drink! drink! drink! sleep…

monday pickthrough- feet of fire edition.

yesterday didn’t happen. well it did, but i was trapped in the rehearsal bubble for 9.5 hours, emerging only to yell FEET FEET FEET FEET before ripping off my shoes and tossing myself on the sofa face down. michael bennett was clearly a sadist. since when does it seem like a good idea for ANYONE to perform ballet in HEELS? but seriously, come mid-march, i will be essentially excuse-free when it comes to post welching. but for today, just assume that i was taking the day off to honor the presidents.

anyway, on top of the utter awesomeness that is the phoenix best of nomination (my mom called me at work today to inform me that she had viewed the other nominees, and that i still had her endorsement), i also finally started my new gig over at coupon evolution, AND the portland twitter examiner gave me a really hot pimp. it’s only monday, but i think this is gonna be a pretty good week.

if superheroes were hipsters.

expand into new markets. cast panda bears.

the very best website in the state of maine (make sure your volume is UP).

easy on, easy off, quick as the flick of her tongue.

what, no taft? ranking the 5 hottest presidents.

i wonder where mainers rank on the pedestrian aggressiveness syndrome scale?

an old port eyesore finally gets put to pasture. (also, is it just me, or are that woman’s eyes INSANELY CLOSE TOGETHER).

the many wondrous applications of zalgo text.

probably the best jokes that anyone ever made about portland.

suicide blonde: a budgetary conundrum.

the year after i graduated from college, i was making a lot of bad decisions. i spent my first six months of independence sleeping on a couch and living pretty much entirely off of yoohoo and cheez doodles. and probably some other stuff that i shouldn’t write about because sometimes my mom read my blog. anyway, on one particularly messy evening, getting drunk off of swilly cumberland farms beer (golden anniversary if i recall correctly), my friend megan held up a box of ultra blue, and beckoned to the bathroom.

well, it’s NEVER a good idea to color your hair while drunk, but going platinum blonde while even so much as tipsy can only end in UTTER DISASTER. first and foremost, my hair was splotchy like a leopard. apparently, it’s important to make sure you get total coverage, which is hard to do when you’re half in the bag. also, make sure that you don’t leave the bleach on too long, or your hair will end up a crispy mess than no subsequent corrective hair coloring will ever be able to cover.  i knew i was in trouble when a 4 year old girl looked at me and earnestly asked: “why is part of your hair black and part of your hair yellow?”

crap!

i really am bad about this post a day business. last night i got home from a chorus line rehearsal at 9:30 and was completely shot.  i was hoping to just quickly link up to a post about home made granola bars that i did for part time vagabond… but it wasn’t up yet. so instead, i opted to make myself a grilled cheese and some soup, throw some greek on the ole netflix instant, and promptly pass out into a pile of dog hair and dirty laundry that i was supposed to be cleaning up for the party i’m having TOMORROW. gah.

well, i have a feeling you’ll be getting these apology/filler posts fairly often , or at least until my show is over/i start to get the hang of daily writing again… wordpress actually has been sending me prompts for blog topics as part of the “post a day” program, but they are mostly TERRIBLE, and not at all applicable to the topic (i know i stretch it sometimes, but still).  actually, since i’m still sort of delirious, and i’ve never used the POLL function before, here are the last 5 topics that they sent me:

shit, i forgot the coupons.

for xmas, i gifted myself with a subscription to the sunday paper. it’s minimally cheaper than buying it at the store, and conveniently delivered to my front door before 7 am. thus, i can stay in my sweatpants and be lazy and not brave the cold cold walk down to the sketchy sketchy 7-11. or so i had hoped! first sunday, NO PAPER. i figured maybe it just took them a minute to get the party started. last sunday, NO PAPER AGAIN (later resolved with an agitated call to the circulation department- i hope)!  thanks to a 7 hour a chorus line rehearsal on sunday, i didn’t have the time or energy to go get one on my own. i hit the grocery store on tuesday, but sadly, there were none left. a couponless week! what’s a girl to do!?

when i first started my coupon clipping adventures over a year ago, a moment like this would have sent me into a panic spiral. to think of all the deals that i would miss, the freebies loaded into the carts of strangers that wouldn’t be available to me without those magic slips of paper… i don’t remember if i ever cried over such a situation, but i also don’t remember not crying. when i first started out, i would get a crazy high off my deal mongering and would hit multiple drugstores multiple times per week- often spending hours in the aisles trying to cobble the perfect deal (poor boyfriend left to languish in the car).

but then, i kind of got over it.

i don’t have any idea how extreme couponers keep the ball rolling… it’s so much pre-planning and work! after a while, my coupon energy ramped down and my desire to have every single deal faded away (my stockpiles grew too large… i ended up with items i couldn’t use or donate…i was fucking tired…). if i missed a newspaper, so what? if i forgot to bring my coupons to the grocery store, meh!

i still go through peaks and valleys of coupon focus/mania, but in terms of the emotional highs and lows that i used to hit, i have figured out a few things along the way that are guaranteed to always talk me off the ledge:

resolved.

i was lucky enough to come into a bit of an xmas windfall this year. nothing earth shattering (most of it went to bills and to my saving’s account), BUT i decided to give myself a small allowance to spend on whatever i wanted. DANGEROUS. it could have been anything, or everything… i have a bad habit of burning through cash without really paying attention to where it goes, or really caring too much when it’s gone. i’m all like “oh, that’s was fun”, instead of feeling the intense sense of guilt and shame that keeps most people from getting in financial trouble.

the last year has overall been a good one for my financial evolution. this was the first year in over a decade that i didn’t use my credit cards even once. i also managed to have a savings account with actual money in it for more than 15 minutes. on the other hand, i didn’t pay off my credit cards as much as i would have liked, i didn’t manage to keep the majority of the money in my savings account, and i still didn’t start an HSA.

so for 2011, i have only one resolution. it isn’t to save more, or spend less, pay off the credit cards, or even open an HSA… (although all of those things are certainly worth keeping in mind). my resolution this year is just to PAY ATTENTION. wherever my money travels should take me this year, i would like to be watchful and be thoughtful about every dollar i spend. i’m thinking about leaving my debit card at home, giving myself a cash allowance, being more careful about monitoring my mint account… but it doesn’t really matter what i do, as long as i’m being vigilant.

i decided to lube up my resolution and get started a little early with the aforementioned windfalll. instead of just throwing the money into my checking account and going apeshit on whatever i happened to find first, i sat down and really thought about things that i wanted, needed, and would generally be too cheap or too broke to afford the rest of the year. here is what i came up with: