This Is Me, Honest

Guest Blogger - RSVP so I can send an invitation

2008-09-01T20:09:00.003-05:00

I haven't blogged since April, so a former blogger asked if she could post something that's been on her mind.

It goes a little something like this:

A friend of mine is getting married later this month. We were once fairly close; now, not so much. Distance and life have gotten in the way. She moved away and went back to school, I climbed the corporate ladder... you know, life just took us in different directions. My most recent move put us both in the same area just in time for her engagement and wedding. She called soon after the engagement to let me know and made sure I was invited (via evite) to the engagement party **WTH happened to proper invitations for formal events? An engagement party does count as a formal event, right? Is it just me?**

For the last few days, she's been blowing my phone up. I went through all the possible reasons for the multiple, back-to-back calls. Hmmm, did she have a bridesmaid drop out and she needs a replacement? Was she having a program folding party? Selling Mary Kay? Looking for a last-minute caterer? Hell, I don't know, let me just call her back...

She "invited" me to her wedding. Well not really. She actually asked me if I was free the day of her wedding. When I told her I had already made plans but would love to come she suggested I call her back once I confirmed I could make it and she would follow up by sending me an invitation. Huh? I figured I must have misunderstood so I text messaged her my mailing address and a note to congratulate her on the upcoming nuptials. I didn't misunderstand. She replied with a request for my availability so she can send me an invitation IF I can make it.

Is this the wave of the future? Only invite people once they've already confirmed they can come? I know the economy is bad but it's certainly not this bad, is it? I didn't think wedding invitations were that expensive, not even the really nice ones. So why is she treating this like a big budget item? Why is she requesting confirmation before she'll even formally invite me? Ugh, I can't even be bothered. Here's my deal, I'm not responding to your text invite. If you don't send me a paper invitation, you won't see my face at the wedding or my gift in your hot little hand. If I get a paper invite, I will try to make it and will provide a gift. Just let me know what you're gonna do.

~Crystal~

Hola Mi Amigos

2008-04-04T14:54:00.002-05:00

?Que Tal?

I know I have no excuse for not posting but things have been a little hectic for me the last few weeks. Lots of ups and mostly downs at work and then there was that mid term that I had to power through a few weeks ago. I just returned from visiting my sister in Madrid, Spain and had a marvelous time. I am however broker then broke, if that’s possible. The US dollar has hit rock bottom and a 1 Euro = $1.63 exchange rate made things quite expensive since I had to pay for a hotel, myself and my “broke college student” little sister when out and about. I’d anticipated the exchange rate was going to hurt but didn’t realize how much so until I got there.

Madrid is such a great vibrant city and has such history and culture and not to mention the yummiest Sangria I’ve tasted in a long time. I did not however, fall in love with the food. It was good but not as great as I’d expected. I did however, have one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in a long time, French baguette bread with slices of Iberian Ham. Oh joy, now the Spanish are crazy about their pork and the ham (not like we’re used to but more prosciutto style) just melted in my mouth. Yummy!

So while in Madrid I tried and tried not to lecture my little sister too much but man oh man I wonder at times what she and her friends are thinking. I’m trying to balance giving her much needed advice and letting her make her own mistakes and boy is it hard.

The Debil

2008-03-02T21:53:00.003-05:00

Remember this post?

http://thisismehonest.blogspot.com/2007/08/myspace-is-debil.html

Well I should have re-read it first before I signed up for a face.book page. A few months ago I broke down and signed up because it would give me access to my sister’s page. I’m that nosey and cautious older sister who wanted to make sure my sister wasn’t posting pictures or comments she would regret later in life. I’d received emails from some friends asking me to join and always ignored them so I was a bit surprised to see that the “friends invite” was there when I finally joined. All of a sudden I realized that half of my team at work was signed up including my manager and my company has a network on this thing. So now I’m signing on at least once a day. Uhhh! I really didn’t need yet another reason to be glued to my laptop. Between, school, work, blogging and now face.book my fingers hurt.

So Sorry

2008-02-25T21:41:00.001-05:00

Sorry Beloved, I know you were on vacation last week and I was supposed to post but there was a lot going on. Since my last post, I came back home and jumped right into work and life. Things have been crazy busy and may get busier.

School is school and it’s amazing how these professors actually want you to work for those grades. Lol! Sunday I went to see the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre for the first time at the Kennedy Center and oh my I’ve been missing out. They were absolutely magnificent and I can’t wait to see them again. They brought back memories from my HS modern dance classes and I really miss dancing. I may just go ahead and sign up for a class at Jo.y of M.otion when I have some time.

I always think of a bunch of posts on my drive to and from work but end up forgetting about them when I get to my destination. A few years ago I mentioned getting a tape recorder and dictating posts as I think of them but that probably won’t happen either.

I just need to carve out some blogging time at least once or twice a week. We’ll see how that goes.

Why isn’t Spring here yet?

Why?

2008-01-26T07:43:00.000-05:00

Did MTV France translate the title of “Run’s House” to “Ghetto Pasteur which means Ghetto Pastor. Uhhh I don’t like that AT ALL. They’re also doing a bad dubbing job. I don’t like this at all. I don’t really watch the show but from what I’ve heard there’s nothing ghetto about it. I think someone should write a letter to MTV and ask them to do a better job of translating the names of their shows. I wonder if the Rev knows they’re calling his show ghetto.

Why?

Do I feel that a friend of mine is unconsciously being negative about something I’m working on. While helping me figure some things out I think she’s being super negative. I’m sure she’s justifying her behavior by saying that she’s trying to help me not fail. Not sure if she realizes what she’s doing or why.

Why?

Am I so jetlagged? I went to bed at 11:30 PM woke up at 2:30 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep until 7 AM. Not even my trusty melatonin has helped me on this trip. Glad it’s Saturday.

Why?

Is February going to be a beast of a month there’s so much going on. I can’t wait!

Can I Rap to You For A Sec?

2008-01-17T20:54:00.000-05:00

I’m going to step up onto my Soap Box for a minute.

Please, please, please I beg you do not adopt an animal cat or dog unless you are absolutely sure you’re 1) financially able to 2) will give the animal a home no matter WHAT until they die of old age or have to be put down because of a serious incurable illness.

No seriously, please don’t adopt or buy a pet unless you’re 100% sure you’re in for the long haul. The woman I worked with when I first started volunteering at the local DC shelter would point out all the animals that were returned or were “given” up by their owners because of what I would consider the most asinine reasons in the world. I’d get so pissed and wonder why people find these creatures so disposable almost like a pair of shoes that were worn or could no longer fit.

Today I received a forwarded email from a colleague whose friend was looking for a “good home” for her cat. Apparently after being a great pet and companion for years the woman had a baby, decided feeding and cleaning a litter box was too much trouble, all of a sudden discovered that her mother was allergic to cats and oh suddenly realized she preferred dogs. I want to bop that woman in the head. Sure I’ve never had a baby before but I have cats and know that feeding and cleaning a litter box takes 5 minutes a day if that. That email just pissed me off.

I think one of the reasons we have so many animals in the shelter because people are irresponsible. They don’t want to spay or neuter their pets but then don’t want to raise all the babies that suddenly appear. When I tell some men looking to adopt a dog that the dog will have to be neutered before being adopted they actually cringed and said it was like cutting their own balls. WTF!?!?! Are you freaking kidding me?

I know animals aren’t like children BUT please really make sure you're ready to go the long haul when you’re adopting a pet. Oh and if you’re buying a pet please make sure the seller is a reputable seller and isn’t part of a puppy mill.

Repost -- Ode to the Avocado

2008-01-10T21:05:00.000-05:00

I walked into Whole Foods on Tuesday evening and the first thing I always do is head to the Avocados to see if they’re on sale. Imagine my surprise when I saw they were but for $2.99!!!!!!!!!!! What in the world! I then remembered this ode I wrote to the Avocado on my first blog back in 2005.

Ode to the Avocado

Editorial Note:

I am not a poet but last night I felt moved enough by my dinner of sliced Avocado with a sprinkles of balsamic vinegar and tomato and mozzarella salad.

Avocado, Avocado how I love thee.

You’re my favorite food item. Although many are confused about your status (fruit or veggie), I know you’re all luscious fruit. Your tough yet easily peeled exterior layer reveals a succulent and tasty core.

Sliced, diced, chopped you taste so good to me. Smashed with herbs and spices you make me want to scoop you up with a great tortilla chip.

Avocado, Avocado how I love thee.

Sliced with a few sprinkles of balsamic vinegar so yummy. Some say you don’t taste so good and don’t have much of a taste and that you don’t have any flavor but I disagree. I love thee.

Haas Avocados are on sale this week 99 cents at Fresh Fields/Whole Foods.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T20:16:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a fantastic New Year’s Eve.

I had an amazing but exhausting time over the last week and a half and am happy to be back home and this weekend I’m recharging my batteries.

I know I’m blessed and am very very blessed to have the mother I have but once in a while I think I take for granted the unconditional love I get from her. This last week I realized more then ever that I am truly truly blessed and need to remind her at ALL times that she’s an awesome and amazing woman and I’m glad she’s my mom.

On the way in to work this morning I thought about the year 2007 and realized that I am one lucky lady and need to count my blessings that 2008 will be bigger and better. I started graduate school, I finished paying off all my credit card bills, I went to North Africa for the first time, rode a camel and hugged a monkey, I went to Sub-Saharan Africa for the first time and entered in to the year 2008 still credit card debt free!

I know great things will continue to happen in 2008 and I can’t wait to find out what. Life is good!

Bah humbug

2007-12-24T14:11:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy “insert whatever holiday you celebrate here”.

I’m spending Christmas in NYC with my mom and cousins and am having a great time reconnecting with them all since they live in Europe and Miami. It is however hard for five women to get ready in a reasonable time with only one bathroom. It takes us FOREVER, to get out of the house. Since I’m time crazed and getting five different personalities to follow a schedule is like herding cats I had a little mini melt down as we started our 9 hour shopping marathon.

I’m anal regarding time and I know it, so I took a deep breath and decided to let things go as they are. So what we don’t make it to all the stores and sightseeing spots on our list. We’re enjoying the holiday season and all the NYC Christmas sights.

On our way home via subway we were serenaded by a man playing a sax. He came in to the subway car spouting all kinds of nonsense and then started playing his sax; he refused to stop until someone gave him some money. There were some kids on the train who were trying to shut him up and it just got funnier and funnier. What did I do? Filmed it of course. Only in NY!

Happy Holidays!

The Bible

2007-12-11T17:34:00.000-05:00

I’ve never read the bible, and no one in my immediate family (parents, step mom or siblings) has a bible. The bible is a book I’ve seen in Church pews when I attended mass with my grandmother as a child and when I attend weddings but it’s never a book I’ve actually picked up and read. My parents grew up in the Catholic Church and my mom shockingly enough has never read the bible either. She studied the history of the catholic religion and the catechism as required in her catholic school but never actually read the bible from cover to cover. My step mom’s dad was a Methodist minister and none of her siblings participate in any form of organized religion.

I took an introductory religion class in college but it focused on the history and brief teachings of the world’s largest religions but never drilled down into the details. I was talking to my step mom not too long ago and mentioned how the bible is referenced in literature, movies, songs, and now that religion is a hot button issue on the political circuit I’m feeling that my overall education is lacking. I’d love to understand what the references mean even if I don’t agree with them, so I got online and purchased the bible experience. I’ve taken to listening to books on CD to help the commute go by faster so why not the bible on CD.

No worries Hostess, I won’t try to set up my own cult and force you guys into it. Similar to how Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Salinger are required reading to give kids a well rounded education of the classics, the bible, the Koran and other religious texts should be included to give kids a point of reference when passages from those texts are mentioned in every day literature.

Blast from the past

2007-12-06T10:24:00.000-05:00

This morning I tuned into my favorite Caribbean radio station online and they played one of my favorite zouk tunes from the late 80's.

It immediately conjured up memories of a summer in Haiti, visiting family, spending time with my grandmother, mom, uncle, cousins and our trips to the beach. Listening to zouk and compass songs and having an amazing summer.

I haven’t been to Haiti since 2001 for my grandmother’s funeral and for me that’s such a long time. I used to travel there almost every other summer as a child and when I graduated from college and lived at home I went once or twice a year. For the last few years there hasn’t been a reason to go, the country was in turmoil, my cousins have all pretty much moved to the U.S. or Canada and life there wasn’t as carefree as I’d remembered as a child.
Christmas 2008 will be spent in Haiti, rediscovering some of my favorite beaches, reconnecting with family, listening and hopefully writing down some memorable family tales. It’ll be the year my cousin introduces his wife and kids to one half of his heritage. It’ll be the year I meet my uncle’s new wife and my new cousin through marriage. Although Christmas 2007 hasn’t passed yet I’m looking forward to next year where I’ll be frolicking on the beach in a bathing suit listening to some awesome tunes as the waves crash onto shore.

Following Up

2007-12-02T22:50:00.000-05:00

Last week I exchanged emails with an old colleague who recently moved to Europe with her husband and kids. I met her when I first moved to D.C. and we worked for the same company. I haven’t seen her in a while and when I told her that I hosted my very first thanksgiving dinner she said “You go girl; I'm so proud of you. I remember when all you did was make chicken on your ge.orge for.man grill”. I chuckled because that’s all I did. Chicken and rice, or chicken and salad, that was it. I’ve always cooked, even in college but it was always chicken breaded and sautéed in a little oil and rice or corn or insert some random vegetable.

I can’t remember when my interest in cooking meals for variety and flavor instead of just cooking for subsistence happened. I just know that for the last few years I’ve started buying cookbooks and dropping hints to my parents that a gift certificate from William Son.oma would make my birthday/Christmas extra special.

Gone are the days of grilled chicken on the GF grill, tonight I made Mediterranean style chicken breasts stuffed with feta and olive tapenade with a side spinach salad.

Here are some pictures from my Thanksgiving dinner table.

Scared Sh*tless

2007-11-27T11:30:00.000-05:00

I wasn’t 100% sure I was going to blog about this but after reading the Hostess’ blog today and also hearing the news of Sean Taylor’s passing after being shot by an intruder I figured why not share. Some of you guys know I live in a transitioning neighborhood. In DC that means the haves and the have not live side by side in the same neighborhood. There’s a half way house for women 2 blocks away, ray ray and ‘em down the street, grand parents, single women, men and young upwardly mobile couples all in the mix. I’m a city girl born and raised in Brooklyn so I am always careful about my surroundings and make sure I’m secure in my car and in my home as best as I can be and make sure I have gotten to know my neighbors on all sides of me. Not just because I live in a major city with a crime issue but because safety should be everyone’s number 1 concern even in middle America and even in the ‘burbs. Hell there are gangs fighting in Gaithersburg, MD and people go missing and are attacked everywhere in this country from the hood to classy and rich neighborhoods.

As I sat on my couch watching an episode of the 1st 48, for which I blame the Hostess for introducing me to, and talking to a friend at about 11:20 PM someone rang my door bell. No one I mean no one just rings my door bell that late at nigh so I knew it wasn’t someone I knew but then when the hard knock on the door followed I thought maybe it was a neighbor, as I walked toward the door I called out and asked who it was. The person responded and said their name, which I didn’t know and said they had ID. Since that meant nothing to me I responded that they should go away and I didn’t care. The person then proceeded to put their hand through the mail slot to show me their ID and I could tell that they were trying to look through the slot. I went red and was pissed and scared all at once. I started yelling and said I was calling the cops which I immediately did. My friend on my cell phone and 911 on my landline. I’m grateful the dispatcher waited on the phone with me until they showed up because I was shacking with anger and a bit scared hell I’d been watching the 1st 48 which is about solving murders.

The person who I believe was a female was long gone by the time the police showed up and unfortunately I didn’t actually look outside because I was busy dialing 911 and didn’t want to get near the door or window in case. I made my statement and will be following up with my neighborhood list serve, the police list serve for my area and at the next community meeting. The person probably just wanted money but showing up on my doorstep at 11:20 PM and sticking your hand into my mail slot puts me in attack mode and the only way I know how is to make sure my house is secure and my alarm is on at all times and by making a big stink about this and alerting the powers that be (neighborhood commissioners and police) that more patrols are needed

Thanksgiving is here!

2007-11-21T13:27:00.000-05:00

I'm hosting my very first Thanksgiving and right now the house smells fabulous.

I made some pumpkin muffins for tomorrow's breakfast, boiled the water with the brining seasoning for my turkey and am getting ready to bake Monica's southern comfort cake. Later this afternoon before the 'rents get here I'll make the cranberry sauce.

I decided to take Tuesday and Wednesday off just to relax and get some stuff done around the house and thought it would be great to have my dad and step mom come up instead of me going down to NC, I figured we'd eat at my aunts house or my step mom's cousin's place. Little did I know they thought I was inviting them up to eat at my house. lol! After the slight panic I came up with a game plan and so far so good. The rest of the menu:

Green beans and almond slices
Garlic and Chive Mashed Potatoes
Macaroni and Cheese
Stuffing

I can't wait until tomorrow!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Some of My Favorite Things

2007-11-14T22:37:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to blog about something for a while now but I've been busy with life, work, school, and just general chillin'.

Over the last few weeks I've been on a quest to fill up my wine fridge with delicious wine and also make sure I have enough so I don't show up empty handed when I'm invited to gatherings or dinner parties. To do that, I've had to drink lots and lots of it. It's a tough job but I'm up for the challenge. I made my choices first based on my instant attraction to the label, followed by the description of the wine and what the vendor thought it would pair well with in regards to food. Cool, funky labels seem to draw me in as I'm browsing through wine aisles.

So here goes, some of my favorite things (wines):

The first one is called a cupcake chardonnay, the name alone resonated with me but the buttery and creamy flavors of the wine has me buying a bottle every time I pass a world market.

Now this Sauvignon Blanc I picked up at Costco and although pricier then a table wine it's absolutely delicious. Crisp and light, this New Zealand white is really refreshing.

If you don't like sweet wines but wanted to try a Riesling this dry one is delicious. I actually like sweet wines but tried it because the label in the store said it worked well with spicy Asian food and I was preparing a spicy Asian style fish stew that night. It's really good although the Hostess thought it was just ok.

This label caught my eye and when I realized it was a Riesling I had to pick it up. I found it at wholefood for only $8 and it's a great wine.

This isn't a wine but I thought I'd add it to my favorite things because it's a beer that needs a corkscrew to open. A delicious Raspberry flavored Belgian Beer, which btw, is now all the rage in my hood. They add Raspberry flavor after the initial fermentation or something like that. The end result is a delicious bev-raj that is way better then the flavored malt liquor stuff they make for women to drink.

Out of Control

2007-11-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

I just watched a clean house marathon and am thankful for the common sense god gave me to keep my house uncluttered. I know I’m being judgmental but the people on these shows need some serious psychological help. Serious help that only a mental professional can give them. They also need style help, mirrored walls? On purpose? Don’t get me wrong I collect stuff, clothes especially but twice a year I go through my closet and just get rid of stuff I haven’t worn in a year.

I have that “you just never know” feeling about some of my stuff but my house is about a 1,000 square feet and I just can’t afford to keep everything. If something is coming in, something has to come out otherwise it’ll have that stuffed look. Stuffed isn’t cute nor does it make any sense.

I just did a complete reorganization of my home office/guest room and threw out a bunch of papers and stuff I’d collected since 1999, when I moved to DC. If I hadn’t looked at it since I moved into my house in 2003 it was out the door. Clearly I didn’t need it. Some of the “stuff” I couldn’t part with because of the "you never know" element I placed into small storage tins that fit on my book shelf so they’re tucked away until I need it, if ever.

I have to fight the pack rat feeling because my parents struggle with it as well and that’s one habit of their’s that I do NOT want. So I will continue to fight the urge to keep stuff and make sure my house is clutter free.

The Staple

2007-10-25T21:28:00.001-05:00

There’s nothing worse then trying to figure out what to cook for dinner when your fridge and pantry are pretty empty. I had two pieces of tilapia defrosting in the fridge but couldn’t figure out exactly what I wanted to do with them. I then remembered that there was a can of light coconut milk in the pantry and I’d purchased some green and red Thai curry paste a while ago. Some green curry, fresh chopped ginger, garlic, brown sugar, a splash of fish sauce and a bit of chicken stock. 20 minutes later a green fish curry over rice. Yummy!

I’ve decided to always have fresh ginger and coconut milk on hand just in case I need to make an Asian influenced dish.

ROFLMAO!

2007-10-23T19:53:00.000-05:00

That’s what I did this past weekend when I watched season 3 of the office. I LOVE that show! It’s ridiculous, outrageous and un PC but so damm funny! I watched the original British version on DVD last year and started watching the American version earlier this year.

I actually made a habit of watching an episode every morning before I headed to a work site back in March and had to deal with “le menteur” from my previous post. That was really the only way I could deal with that muhhhfking liar.

So now I’ve caught up to the episodes I missed from this season and am clamoring for more! More office please!

Too Nice

2007-10-18T21:19:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I’m too nice and wish I could tell people exactly how I really feel. So in typical blogger fashion I’m letting some of it out. The names and language has been changed to protect innocent and not so innocent.

Au Menteur : Mais sa va pas ou quoi. Tu pense que je vois pas ce que tu fait ? Ferme ta Guelle et va te faire. Si je pouvais je te dirais la vérité que tu est rien et un jour le monde va le savoir.

La fille : Tu sait pourquoi rien ne marche pas pour toi ? C’est parce que tu est méchante et dieu va pas te bénir avec du bonheur a cause de ta mechanste. Parfois tu me dégoute.

Le Ga : Pour quoi tu chante pas ? Femme la ce bonheur mwen, ce miracle mwen, vie mwen. Mwen tombe pu li.

La Copine: Reste ou tu est. Ca vaut pas la peine de venir parce que j’ai vraiment pas envie de te voir. Je suis fatigue et franchement je préfère m’asseoir sur le divan et rien faire pour tout le weekend.

La collègue : Tu a toujours des excuse. Arrêt ca n’aide pas ta cause. Je m’en fous si tu dois aller nourrir tes enfants. Il ya du travaille à faire et chaque fois qu’il ya quelque chose tu me donne une excuse. Frankly my dear I don’t give a damm.

My Pumpkin

2007-10-10T20:34:00.000-05:00

Someone stole my pumpkin and they also stole my neighbor's pumpkin. I jumped on the Halloween/Fall bandwagon early despite the heat and purchased a nice pumpkin at Whole Paycheck for only $5. That's a great price in my opinion but someone stole my pumpkin so either I'm going to have to buy another one or just go without this year. I HATE RAY RAY and 'em, seriously hate them and hope they rot like my pumpkin would have, had it NOT been stolen from my front stoop.

I didn't exactly see the ray rays steal my pumpkin but I'm really wondering who else could it be. That's what Rays Rays do, they steal, loiter, sell and do drugs so I'm blaming the missing pumpkin on them. Maybe the kids who walk down the block on their way to school did it. Lil' Hoodlums throwing checker wrappers on the street and just generally being lil' ray rays. I hate 'em too.

Bitter? Yes I am. I hate when people steal my stuff.

I Love Hip Hop

2007-10-08T22:56:00.000-05:00

There I was having a sip of wine, doing some homework and chatting with Diva in Demand on IM when she mentioned the Hip Hop Honors on VH1. I’d actually turned the TV off to focus on some homework and job related emails I but turned the TV back on and got sucked into this tribute. It suddenly hit me that I LOVE HIP HOP!!!!!!

I think I forgot how much I love it because what’s on the radio today isn’t what I grew up listening to in the 80’s and 90’s. I found that hip hop had lost it’s way except for a few who managed to keep the flame of what I consider real hip hop simmering. This special on Vh1 reminded me how great hip hop was back in the day. Why is it that all the good stuff is the old stuff?

It’s almost midnight and I’m way behind on what I wanted to get done tonight but that’s ok because I’m rediscovering how much I hip hop tonight.

The Case for a Tic Tac

2007-10-01T21:43:00.000-05:00

Last week I went to a panel discussion and reception hosted by one of our client organizations. While on the drive to the meeting I popped in a piece of gum just to make sure my breath was minty fresh. Last thing you want to do is chew gum when meeting with a client so I tossed it out.

Unfortunately after mingling and talking to various people for about 30 minutes straight and not being able to move toward the drink table I realized that I was in need of a mint. Talking to clients/colleagues and sucking on a mint is almost as bad as chewing gum so that option was out.

If only I’d had a tic tac, not just because they’re a low caloric treat but because they’re small enough no one will notice that you have a few in your mouth as you mingle and talk business.

Note to self – pick up some tic tacs before the next client meeting.

What to Say?

2007-09-17T10:32:00.000-05:00

I haven’t updated the blog in a long time and although I have a bunch of topics swirling in my head putting them down on the computer has been a little bit hard for me.

Let’s see I’m back from my work trip to Africa and I’ve decided to make it my mission to get back to West Africa as soon as I can. Despite the 12 hour work days I had the best time. There’s just something about Mali and Senegal (where I ended up for a long weekend) that has me wanting more experiences. Hopefully next time I’m there I’ll be traveling with someone who I can do some traveling with. The one regret I have is that I spent a month in Mali and only headed outside of the capital once. As a woman I don’t travel alone to remote locations in foreign countries EVER. I hate that I had to limit myself and missed out on a chance to travel to Dogon Country and Timbuktu but I’m just a stickler for personal safety and I’m not that type of person who straps on a back pack and goes on an adventure alone. Next time though I’ll be better organized and hopefully will have someone I can tag as a traveling partner.

I did manage to make it to Dakar, Senegal to visit a friend for a long weekend. It was a great weekend and I was able to visit Goree Island and hang with some of her family and friends. My last vacation was to also visit a friend and while I loved the sightseeing aspect of my trips I also loved interacting with the family and friends.

On an extremely sad note one of my colleagues is dying. He’s been diagnosed with a degenerating lung condition and there’s no cure. He goes into the hospital later on next week to do a biopsy to figure out if there’s a way to make him more comfortable. They’re also unsure of how long he’ll have to live. It can be just a few months or up to 2 years. I’ve also had another colleague die in the last year of cancer so we’re all really weirded out about this.

Flash Back....

2007-09-02T18:28:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting here writing my report and watching some video channel out of France that pretty much plays hip hop, R&B and African jams all day long. Their “Legend” hour is on and they played this little number.

Talk about blast from the past. At first I figured this song came out when I was in 8th grade but then looked it up and realized I was actually already in 11th grade when this one came out. Either way I immediately thought of Sunday afternoons when my mom would once in a while head over to Tower Records on Broadway and buy tapes. I remember having this tape and think I may have thrown it out along with the other fifty-eleven tapes I had under my bed collecting dust.

Oh now they're playing Vogue! I loved, loved this song.

I remember during the Pajama Jam my senior year this song came on and this guy I had a crush on danced the entire video voguing moves and all. I mean the ENTIRE thing. The following year I heard he came out. Like duh I should have figured that out when he did the entire Vogue
routine.

Ok now they're playing "Hey Mr. DJ". I can no longer concentrate on work. I'm off to begin the dance off in front of the mirror in my hotel room.

Hope everyone is having a fab Labor Day Weekend!

The Gringo

2007-08-26T15:55:00.000-05:00

Shortly after I posted about my lack of friends I was invited on a short sightseeing tour by the director of the office I’m consulting for. Last Saturday I woke up at about the crack of dawn (7 am) and headed out to a small town/village about an hour away from the capital Bamako.

The Malian landscape is absolutely beautiful and I was just amazed by such rich colors in the scenery we passed. We decided to hire a guide and hike up some pretty interesting rock formations which was a first for me. The extent of my outdoor activities consist of the annual camping trip I take with some friends but hiking isn’t part of our activities. Despite my initial reservation, I took to it with gusto and think I may need to find some friends interested in hiking when I get back to D.C.

Unfortunately I solidified my gringo status when the New Yorker in me decided that my purse couldn’t possibly remain in the car even though there wasn’t another person around for miles. So I proceed to hike around for about an hour and half with my coach purse slung over my shoulder and my large water bottle in hand. WHO DOES THAT?!?! Apparently I do and yup I’d do it again or leave my purse at the hotel.

I took pictures but was a little uneasy at taking pictures of random people without asking first. So I have far more scenery shots then I do people shots but hopefully I can fix that next weekend. This last week was a series of exhausting 12 hour plus work days so I decided to relax and chill out this weekend. I adventured out to the National Museum, had some lunch, did some touring around and then settled down by the pool. I didn’t have any friends to hang out with this weekend but I needed some quality alone time so I didn’t mind too much. Hopefully I’ll get someone to take me shopping for souvenirs next weekend.

[I've added most of the pictures I've taken to my FlickR page. Click on the collage on the side to check those and other pictures I've taken on various trips. If it doesn't work just refresh the blogger page]

MYSPACE is the DEBIL!

2007-08-20T15:20:00.000-05:00

I didn’t jump on the My Space bandwagon when it first started because I figured it was something that the “kids” did online. I believe by the time I even realized there was a My space or a Face book I was fully hooked and addicted to blogging and I can only have one internet based distraction at a time. I have my space biases and think folks 30 and younger shouldn’t be on it (not sure where I got that age from) but in any case I do feel it’s for the ‘youngins and at the ripe young/older age of 33 that doesn’t mean me.

Yet some folks I know don’t feel the same because in the last month I’ve had 3 different friends who are over 30 bitch and moan to me about something some dude they liked/used to date/are dating did on my space. It’s either some picture they saw of dude and another chick, or some chick’s comments or something someone commented on their page that made them realize that they were really not in town when they said they were etc, etc, etc. At first I was actively listening to their story and injecting some tidbits when needed. However the moment they mentioned my space and the dude in one sentence I became distracted.

I’ve been sent my space pages of random people before by some of these friends so I could “see” what they were talking about. To me it was a bit like stalking and although I will refresh a blog page fifty eleven times (CreoleinDC’s) to see what’s been updated or what new comments have been posted on a controversial topic (Hostess) I don’t see that as stalking. Now going to someone’s my space page fifty eleven times in a day, clicking links to other people’s my space page who happen to leave provocative comments is stalking to me. In fact it seems like one big soap opera mess to me.

Making Friends

2007-08-16T09:39:00.000-05:00

So far I’ve seen the inside of my hotel room and the inside of my client’s office. I did manage to take a walk yesterday to the ATM, saw scenery I thought would be cool to take, and ripped my pants in the process of trying to take a picture. I have like 2 casual (chilling pants with me for the month) uhhh! The office driver has offered to take them to the local tailor to get them fixed and for that I’m grateful. I’m also grateful I got a tetanus shot before I came and my skin didn’t get pierced when I climbed over the iron gate.

Whenever I travel for work I’m usually either going to a project office where there are local staff and foreign staff working or I’m traveling with 3 or 4 other consultants for a specific assignment. I’m generally never the only consultant on an assignment where we don’t have a project office which is the situation I’m in now. For me that has meant a lot of nights ordering room service which I’m not used to at all. When I’m traveling I usually have dinner with my teammates at least several times a week and if we’re new to a particular country we make plans to go sightseeing together on the weekend.

This trip is a bit different as I’m alone really and although the client is here they haven’t offered to meet up for dinner and/or offered to take me sightseeing. That’s fine because they live here and have their own lives going on and honestly they hired me to do a job, they don’t need to play Julie cruise director and I hate feeling like I’m imposing or forcing myself on people. So now I’m on a mission to make some friends because at this pace, I’m going to finish up all the casual reading material I brought with me way before my departure date.

So I’m on a mission to make friends, which I’m finding is pretty hard and awkward for me. I’m not one of those people who just randomly strike up a conversation with strangers. I often wonder how people come off a plane with a new best friend. I sit down, dig out my reading materials and put on the headphones.

So now I just have to work on getting out of my comfort zone because this traveling alone stuff is so not what I’m used to.

Languages

2007-08-12T19:25:00.000-05:00

In the last month or so I started working on an assignment at work that required me to use my French language skills. A bit rusty, I’ve been trying to practice speaking a bit more with my parents and other francophone friends. I started thinking about language and how we learn it and realized that I never consciously learned French the way I learned Italian or Spanish in H.S. I guess it was similar to when most toddlers start comprehending and speaking I always remember speaking and understanding French. In fact when my mom often reminds me that although, I was born and raised in NYC, French was actually my first language. That’s what my parents spoke and since they were at that time firmly entrenched in a Haitian enclave of friends and neighbors that’s all I heard around me. According to my mom I didn’t start really speaking English until I went to pre-K when I was four. Go figure, I remember learning how to read and write English and French in school but comprehension was always there. Similar to Haitian-Creole which I always remember understanding without any difficulty. I was never formally thought Creole (Kreyol) but similar to French it was spoken around me since infancy and I guess I just absorbed the language in that part of my brain.

I’m heading to Bamako, Mali now via Paris and although I haven’t spoken French on a regular basis since my trip to Brussels last Christmas it’s all flooding back in. Wish me luck as for the first time in my career I’m actually going to be conducting meetings in French. Gasp! I’ve only had to speak to friends and family in French since I graduated from college so we’ll see how forgiving these clients are at my accent and grammatical mistakes.

This is my first trip to sub-Saharan Africa so I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stuff to blog about over the next month.

They Asked for Forks!?!?!

2007-08-03T22:52:00.000-05:00

Last night I got together with a few bloggers because BC was in town on his US tour. Since, the Hostess, the BC and I are addicted to Ethiopian food he suggested to the dinner organizer, CreoleinDC that we head there for dinner. The invitation was made to the blogworld and Tsiporah, onefromphilly (no blog), Royce’s Daughter and another blogger decided to RSVP to hang that night. We were going to one of DC’s many many many Ethiopian eateries and I was pretty excited because if I could, I’d eat Ethiopian food EVERY DAY, it’s that good to me.

It doesn’t always dawn on me that there are people out there who don’t care for the food because well it’s like someone saying they don’t like cake. Just weird to me lol! I’m so used to eating it communal style that I never thought that not everyone is ok with the traditional style of eating Ethiopian food which is around a big communal plate where you take pieces of injera to eat your food. Similar to how other Middle Eastern and African cultures eat. Just make sure you use your right hand because traditionally the left is used to uhhhh clean oneself.

There was a lot of confusion and distraction not just because there were 8 people who’d been reading each other’s blogs but never really met but because one of the bloggers was giving everyone MUCH blog fodder. Check out the posts of the different bloggers who were there to see what I’m talking about.

So, Creole asked the waitress for a fork and I think I clutched my imaginary pearls. Creole doesn’t really “do” communal plates and I can respect that because that's how she is. Then half the hands at the table started going up in demand of forks. I just felt my heart dip a little and I may have yelled out “ahhhh NO”. Some tried the injera and just couldn’t get past the taste but without the bread you really can’t eat the food traditionally. I actually think the bread is good but I only take off little chucks so I won’t get too full too fast. Most of the people I know who don’t like Ethiopian food don’t like it because of the bread.

I feel like Ethiopian food is a DC staple just like the Smithsonian museums. A must do when you’re in DC especially if you’re anywhere near the U Street/Adam’s Morgan area. Either way the evening was a great success that ended waaaaaaaaaaay past my bedtime.

I’d rather be reading Harry Potter

2007-07-24T12:04:00.000-05:00

I haven't finished the book yet. I quickly read a chapter this morning at 6:30 AM when I woke up although I'd stayed up until 1:30 AM to read for an hour before going to bed. I’m usually very excited when a new Harry Potter book comes out but this time I wasn’t so thrilled with the timing. I have a new project that requires a lot of my attention at work, my regular project still requires my attention, I’m in the middle of putting together a section of a group project, and finals are less then 2 weeks away. So my downtime to actually read and finish a 700+ page book is slim. I really thought about taking Monday off so I could finish the book but then thought about all the work I had waiting for me in the office and realized I couldn’t in good conscious do that. So I steal away some time and read a chapter here and there hoping that this weekend I will have a few hours of free time to finish the book.

I’m really in this predicament because I am the number 1 procrastinator, I procrastinate at every aspect of my life (except for time, I’m pretty punctual). I’m not sure why that is because I feel such a sense of satisfaction when I actually get things done immediately. Why am I not continually striving for that constant sense of satisfaction by getting things done? I sometimes have this constant feeling of dread because of all the things that are on the constant “to do list” that I just put off because of the time it would take to get it done. I’ve been browsing the Internet looking for some self help tips and hopefully I can get it under control. I even procrastinated with this post and have been thinking of updating the blog for about a week now.

Letter to UPS

2007-07-17T08:54:00.000-05:00

A package was sent to my home address on 7/9/07 and arrived for delivery at my home on 7/10/07. That evening when I received my InfoNotice I contacted UPS immediately and ask that the address be changed to my work address since I was not going to be home during the day to receive the package. I receivd 2 subsequent infonotices and each time contacted the 1800 number located on the notice and asked them to send it to the new address. Every customer service representative I spoke to apologized for the mix up and stated that the package would reach me at the new address the next day. I called every single day since and was told the package would be on its way.

I finally recieved a call from the Landover, MD UPS location after asking three times for someone to notify me as to why I still haven't received my package at the correct address and they finally left a VM this morning on 7/17/07. Unfortunately I wasn't able to understand a word the UPS representative said because it appeared that they decided to stuff cotton in their mouth before dialing my number.

I would have never thought I'd experience this type of service from a company that seems to pride itself on customer service. It has been 7 days and I have not received my package yet one that would have shipped from Landover, MD to McLean, VA which is less than an hours drive away. It has taken 6 phone calls and I still haven't received my pacakge and yet when I asked for someone to contact me they gave the assignment to someone who could not articulate their name or phone number. This is absolutely deplorable. I hope you improve your customer service becuase the next time I'm sending a package for work or for personal use I'm not using UPS.

Side Note: I don't even know who sent me the package, I didn't order anything and I can only think it's someone sending me a birthday gift. IT better be good! lol!

Something About That Song

2007-07-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

A year or two ago, I heard this song on skyrock, a French hip hop station. Maybe it was because I was going through a tough time emotionally but this song just spoke to me. It just reminds me to keep my head high, not to compromise on my wants and desires and to keep working on the fabulousness.

Drunken Paranoia

2007-07-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I went out for a happy hour with some co-worker friends. I was home by 9PM changed into my PJ's and settle on the couch with another glass of wine and a tofutti tutti in front of my computer and the TV. I settled down and to watch Top Chef at 10 and right before they announced who was going to be kicked off this week I fell asleep. I woke up at 12:30 with all the lights on. I got off the couch, made sure the alarm was set, closed the TV cabinet and went to bed.

At 3 AM I was startled by what I thought was "ray ray" making lots of noise outside my window only to realize that my television downstairs was on. I crept outside of my room in the dark to see if the cabinet was open and if I could hear anyone downstairs. I could have swore that it was open and someone was down there. I locked my bedroom door and started to call 911 but then decided to see if maybe just maybe the channel playing was also a channel that my Tivo would typically record. Once I verified that with the TV in my bedroom I turned on the hall light and crept downstairs. My TV cabinet was closed but the TV was blaring. I could have SWORN I'd turned it off before going upstairs. I turned it off made sure the alarm was engaged and all the doors were locked before returning upstairs to bed.

Once in bed I realized I didn't check to see if someone was hiding in the other rooms upstairs so I locked my bedroom door again and listened carefully. All I heard was the cat scratching at the carpet outside of my door.

I feel asleep and woke up when I heard a boom at my door and thought my suspicions were true someone WAS in my house. Turned out it was the cat trying to do a Kamikaze through the door because it was 6 AM and he wanted food.

Lessons Learned:

1) Always double check to make sure the TV is off in the living room
2) Don't go to bed tipsy

Olivier Needs a J.O.B

2007-07-01T18:57:00.000-05:00

My neighbour and I decided to run some errands together on Saturday and stopped by Petsmart so I can pick up some supplies for Pierre and Olivier.

Neighbor: Da hell, you just spent $93?
Me: Yup but it's a months worth of food and supplies
Neighbor: Yeah but dang they better get a job or something. Can you put them in commercials?
Me: Bwahahha! (thinking: That's not a bad idea)

So if there are any animal commercial producers reading this. Olivier and Pierre need a JOB stat! Here's a video of Olivier I took two Christmases ago, please consider this his audition tape.

Intrigued

2007-06-27T20:36:00.000-05:00

You ever want something that you know you really didn’t want? It looked shiny, intriguing even. Just not for you, yet you couldn’t help yourself. You just wanted to touch this shiny, not good for you toy. Knowing that the shiny new toy would eventually fade away to reality, you still want a peek.

Maybe its angst and maybe I should just put that toy back on the shelf.

PSA: Left Lane is a Passing Lane

2007-06-26T22:12:00.001-05:00

I haven’t taken a drivers test in 15 years so maybe just maybe they’ve added new rules. Hell I break road rules every so often (snicker) because sometimes that “No U Turn” sign isn’t helping. However, driving below the speed limit in the left lane and driving slower then the speed of traffic in the left lane is UNACCEPTABLE EVERRRRRRRR. Last time I checked the left lane was the passing lane, not the just sit there lane. In fact if there’s more then one lane on a highway so do us all a favor and just chill in the right lane UNLESS you’re ready to pass someone. For the life of me I don’t understand why people are so rude to think they can SIT in the left lane while people are passing to the right.

Maybe it’s because I’m in my car in highway traffic for more than an hour a day and feel the frustration of those inconsiderate people who hog the left lane when they’re not passing anyone and god forbid are driving below the speed limit.

To the idiot dude in the Jeep Cherokee who hogged the left lane going slower then the speed of traffic, whom I passed on his right this morning at 7:20 AM on GW Parkway I’d like to say VA TE FAIRE!

Clearly I need to find a job downtown. This commute from DC to Tyson’s Corner is driving me bananas.

Keepin' it Real

2007-06-22T09:06:00.000-05:00

I was catching up on my school reading when my home phone rang at about 9:30 PM. I figured it was one of my parents since everyone else calls me on my cell phone and answered.

Quick background, I have a very very basic home phone service. No caller ID, voice mail or even answering machine and I don’t even have long distance capabilities on it. My cell phone has all those services included in the plan so I only used my home phone to dial into my company’s network. When I finally got DSL I kept the home in operation to make those just in case calls and so I wouldn’t “burn up” my cell phone minutes when I worked from home.

To make a long story longer, the person asked for me and then proceeded to tell me that my number was listed as an alternative telephone number for my little brother. That was news to me because I don’t think my little brother even knows my home number. I can count on one hand the number of times I talk to him in a year and that’s just because we’re not particularly close and we generally catch up when we see each other on holidays and over IM. The person on the phone identified himself very quickly and then asked me for a way to reach my brother. I was a taken aback because 1) I had no idea what this was about and 2) I was weirded out that they called me looking for a way to reach my brother. Since I don’t give out anyone’s number all willy nilly I asked the caller to tell me his name again and where he was calling from.

Now here is where things got a little bit dicey. The dude on the phone immediately got snippy and then tried to use some scare tactics such as “I know your bro is still in XXXXXXX (to use The OE’s term) and that it was in his best interest to contact them. That’s when the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I got a little bit pissy and said I’m not giving him any information until he tells me what this is about. That’s when dude said I’m not going to waste any more of your time and said goodbye, so I hung up.

Remember that scene on the Chappelle show in the “When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong” segment and the girl receives a wrong number? Well that’s how I felt so I called my brother who assured me he didn’t have any clue as to why the person called me and that he was current on all his bills. Then I “Starred 69” the number and then gave it to my brother. I could have called what appeared to be a bill collector back to give him a tongue lashing but I saw what happened when folks “kept it real” and really it’s none of my business.

I’m just trying to figure out how in the world they received my number since I’m pretty sure my brother 1) doesn’t have it and 2) why would he give out my number as an alternative when he could easily have given them my dad’s number or a fake one.

I saw a 20/20 episode one day about the scare and illegal tactics bill collectors use to try to intimidate folks who owe money and if there are any out there reading this:

“I hate when mofos ‘be’ playing on my phone”

What would you do?

2007-06-20T19:52:00.000-05:00

If someone you liked, like really really really liked tried to set you up with one of his friends. You and dude have hooked up on more then one occasion. You profess your undying “like” to him and that you want more. He gently tells you that he needs to work on himself and isn’t ready for more. Yet you find out that a few weeks later he flies across the country to hang out with some chica. You then tell him you can no longer hook up. However you continue to hang out on occasion, IM, email, phone and of course hook up. Two weeks after the last hook up you organize a Happy hour to where you each bring friends. Walking back to your respective cars, he repeatedly asks if you think Tom is cool. The next day you realize he gave your email address to Tom, who asks you to hang out.

What would you do?

Excuses

2007-06-18T16:50:00.000-05:00

You ever talk to someone who has an excuse for everything! Who is always justifying their actions because they know they shouldn't be doing x, y or z. I seem to be surrounded by indecisive people and people who have excuses for things that they KNOW are unacceptable. I’m not throwing rocks because I live in a glass house. I KNOW I shouldn't have bought and ate that bag of cheetos when I stopped for gas last week. So what if I’d just ran for 20 minutes on the treadmill. I used that tidbit and a crazed work day as my excuse therefore I had no one but myself to blame when I couldn't fit into a pair of shorts from last year.
There are reactions for every action even if you don’t think your actions warranted that reaction. Am I making any sense? I’m not saying you have to watch every single thing you do or anticipate every reaction. BUT you do have to think about how your actions are going to affect the people around you.

Green With Envy

2007-06-14T10:30:00.001-05:00

I don’t typically “envy” people but right about now I’m pretty envious of folks without any vision or tearing problems. Some of you may remember the clogged tear tuck, if not click here. I ended up having the surgery to create a by pass and unfortunately I’m now in a wait and see game. I’m still tearing and have had two subsequent doctor visits after the surgery and so far they’re still telling me to hold on it should get better. Since I’m using medicated drops the doctor made a stress test that included putting in yellow drops in my eyes. Unfortunately I still had my contacts in. On the way back to the office I looked in my rearview mirror to “check my hair” and saw this looking back at me.

I’m laughing now because I look like someone possessed by some alien life form. Either that or a new X Men character. I wonder what my powers would be.

Girl Scouts

2007-06-07T08:50:00.001-05:00

A friend and I were walking back from the neighborhood "likka sto" (the kind with bullet proof glass) and ran across this squirrel on the side walk. He immediately ran up the tree and started munching on his prize. After a closer look we realized he'd snagged a girls scout thin mint cookie. He had one eye on us and the other was focused on grinding his little rabid teeth into the cookie.

Didn't realize that squirrels liked cookies let alone thin mints. You learn something new everyday.

Stepmothers

2007-06-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

Mine is pretty nice and we get along which should be a given since she’s been my step-mom for almost twenty-five years. We’re definitely not Mother - Daughter close, not even Aunt – Niece close but more like 2nd Cousin close. As a kid I remember her not being able to comb my hair and I’d come home looking like a crazy person. I remember her throughout my child hood as someone who made sure that my dad who was no Ward Cleaver, made an effort to have me visit every other weekend when they lived in NYC and at least once a year when they moved to NC.

Yet throughout the years there’s always been that layer of uncertainty on how close we should be to each other. How close do you get to someone who isn’t your mother, yet has that role for your siblings and is your dad’s wife? Now that I’m an adult we see each other several times a year and she comes up to visit with me and some of her family in DC without my dad at least two or three times a year. I went on vacation with her and my sister a few years ago and she’s the one I communicate with when I’m planning a visit. That layer of uncertainty has thinned out a bit but is still there.

At my age there’s a greater chance that I may be a step mother. How close should I get if I’m not raising my husband’s child, how close should I get if they live with us? As a stepdaughter who has gone through the awkwardness what kind of stepmother would I be?

One of my good friends is going through some drama with her family now and a lot of it centers on her feelings towards her step mother who raised her and her dad who isn’t exactly Ward Cleaver. Her real mother is sort of in the picture but is emotionally unbalanced and they have a turbulent relationship. She’s relied on her stepmother to give her that maternal love and unfortunately according to my friend she doesn’t feel it. Family dynamics can be dicey to begin with and then you bring in the step parent element and it can get even messier.

The Fight between Good and Evil

2007-05-25T09:29:00.000-05:00

For the last 9 months I’ve been fighting a battle with an evil force. Although I’ve learned over the last 32 ½ years that the world isn’t black and white, I believe in good and evil forces. I believe I have my two feet firmly planted on the good side so it’s hard for me to understand how to fight the good fight when Evil comes knocking. Last Friday, while literally under the knife (I had out patient surgery to repair the clogged tear duct I have (more information on that in another post), the Evil forces had worked up to derail what was potentially a life saving force on the project I manage.

The crisis took 6 days, 3 conference calls and countless emails to fix and while Good has prevailed, Evil orchestrated such a blow that I’m scrambling now to put up shields and get my weapons in order because Evil will be back and I want to be ready!

In other words, I wish a muhhhfucka would!

Morocco

2007-05-16T10:20:00.000-05:00

It’s been a crazy last 7 days, returning home from vacation, catching up on 400 unread emails, dealing with a kitchen renovation and hosting my cousin has meant that I haven’t had time to write about my trip.

Morocco was AMAZING, just magnificent. When I landed in Marrakesh and stepped down from the plane onto the tarmac I was like hot damm I’m in Africa! I know, it’s not sub-Saharan Africa but it’s still my first trip to the continent. Once I was outside and saw the bustle of people on foot, in cars, on bikes, the women half of them covered (scarf on head) I realized wow I’m in a Muslim country. [I’d gone to Indonesia for work years ago and although that is the country with the largest Muslim population most of the women I saw there didn’t cover their heads]. I was taken to the guest house we were staying in and decided to take a nap since my friends were running late driving down from Casablanca to meet me. When they arrived it was as if someone said “On your mark, get set, GO!”.

5 cities (Marrakesh, Essouira, Casablanca, Rabat, and Fez) in 8 days. Talk about whirlwind. My first night in the country I didn’t go to sleep until 7 the next morning. My friends arrived we hung out, went to eat, went to two clubs, went to a casino, grabbed more food and then finally back to the guest house to sleep. It was a bit crazy.

What I also loved about my trip was that I wasn’t just on a bus with a bunch of tourists being schlepped from place to place. I was there visiting my old officemate and friend who’d decided to move back to Morocco to be closer to her family and friends so we got to hang out with them, sightsee and get an up close and personal tour of life in Morocco.

I did things I’d only dreamed about doing, like riding a Camel on the beach, petting a Monkey, watching snake charmers in a square, eating and discovering great food. The whole country just oozed ancient history and rituals. I went to a Hamman which is a tradition in N. Africa which involves, a steam room, someone scrubbing all the dead skin cells and dirt off your body and a massage. I never felt cleaner and wish I could do it here so cheaply. I walked through the Souks, bargaining with the shop keepers for souvenirs, I took lots of pictures and thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Quick Update

2007-05-07T04:49:00.000-05:00

I know its not unusual for me to only blog once a week or even once every two weeks but I am heading home from an 8 day vacation where I resisted the urge to get on the internet to even check personal emails. Now that I'm transiting back home I thought I'd put out a quick update.

I just spent the last 8 days in Morocco and it was FABULOUS, words can't even describe everything I've experienced in the last week. Howeveer, so many blog worthy things happened that I can't wait to have an hour to sit down and write a proper post later on this week. I'll upload some pictures from the trip as well later this week.

Special Thanks

2007-04-25T14:25:00.000-05:00

I'd like to give a special thanks, a shout out in fact to the Internet. Thanks to you internet I am able to listen keep up with the diaspora music while at work and in my car (via my iPod). A further thanks to the good folks at you.tube for having such a service that enables me to watch the videos for those songs that would more then likely not appear on American MTV, VH1 or gasp BET.

Medhy Custos is back with a new single.

So I heard this new song on the internet radio from Martinique and it's been playing on my iPod on repeat. The song is by Admiral T and features a group called Kassav' who virtually propolled the Zouk phenomenon through out the Francophone world. I've been listening to Kassav's music since I can remember even listening to music. The message is about how together the country can be strong and prosper. Good stuff.

I just discovered this great Jamaican artist called Gyptian and I've been rocking some of his songs for the last few weeks.

Thanks again internt.

Desensitized?

2007-04-19T14:39:00.001-05:00

On Monday afternoon I headed to the gym in my office building with a colleague and saw the breaking news about the Massacre at VT. I remember stopping for a minute thinking how messed up that situation seemed, put on my ear phones and started running on the treadmill. I looked at the images on the TV screen and remembered being annoyed that they were showing the same footage over and over again. I finished my workout, showered and went back to work.

Later that evening I joined my colleagues for a work sanctioned happy hour and on my way home I just kept having that feeling that this whole incident/catastrophe was just so removed from my life. Sure it occurred four hours away and there are a gazillion VT grads in the DC metro area but I didn’t know any of them or even anyone who was there. I remembered a conversation that happened on my list serve about what type of violence/crime a neighborhood or area was used too and the shock when something equally violent and horrific occurred that wasn’t part of the general status quo. I started wondering if school shootings, mass murders were starting to be part of our general status quo and got worried.

The next morning the victims and the families of the victims started talking and expressing their grief and disbelief and it finally hit me that I too was shocked, saddened that so many lives were lost and realized that no matter what the numbers were, not matter that this shooter achieved a new US record that even one victim was one too many. Over the last few days we’ve been discussing the need for more gun control, the need for more mental health interventions and what exactly could have been done to prevent this. Hopefully we all figure it out before it just becomes the norm.

Before It's Too Late

2007-04-11T13:02:00.000-05:00

I need to talk about my Saturday night a few weeks ago. I went to see one of my favorite Haitian groups play and had the most amazing time. That night I partied like a rock star and was up until about 4 AM but it didn’t matter that I spent all of Sunday in recovery mode. Like seriously I had such a good time I can still remember how the “happy” endorphins entered my system when they played hit after hit. I’ve been pretty down because of work lately and day dreaming about how much fun I had helps to take my mind of this crummy project I’m working on.

So now I’m listening to this song with my headset on and trying not to rip my hair out. Serious though, I love listening to my Island music as my friends call it. It takes me back to happier times when I was partying like a rock star.

Lost

2007-04-05T12:07:00.000-05:00

No this post isn't about the show, although I've heard it's great since a friend/acquaintance who I never talk to on the phone called me yesterday out of the blue because she was looking for someone to discuss it. I've never actually watched it since I can't keep up with all the L&O's currently on and now that the Sopranos are back I can't tackle on another show right now.

This post is actually about how we somehow LOST Spring. Have you seen it where you are? Ours disappeared from the DC Metro area. I went from getting a pedicure on Saturday wearing open toed shoes on Monday and Tuesday to some tiny snow flurries on my way into work in Northern VA this morning. WTF!

It's Friday Night!

2007-03-30T20:24:00.000-05:00

Just got paid, party hopping, feeling great. I think those are the lyrics. Either way I’m actually sitting on my couch this Friday night excited to be home and relaxing. I’ve had an extremely busy week and now I’m catching up on Tivo’d L&O’s and Oprah’s. It was such a nice day outside I decided to head home at 4:30 to begin my weekend and apparently everyone in the DC metro area made the same decision because it took me over an hour to get home when it usually takes me about 40 minutes.

Spring is HERE and you have no idea how excited I am about it. I got home, took the grill cover off the grill, cleaned it and grilled a piece of steak for the warm steak salad recipe the Creole Princess posted on her site a few weeks ago. Delicious and good for you too.

In the next few weeks I’ll slowly start planting herbs and flowers in my lil’ garden. In the next two weeks I’ll remove the covering off the outdoor furniture and relax outside while reading the Sunday paper.

Aren’t you glad spring is here?

Fake ID

2007-03-27T13:36:00.000-05:00

Sunday evening I took two girlfriends who are moving out of town to dinner to congratulate them since I’d missed the group festivities that occurred during the weekend. We decided on a Tex-Mex place that was near our respective homes because the weather was nice and they had a great large outdoor patio section. Unfortunately by the time we were ready for dinner it was too cold to eat outside so we settled inside and ordered drinks. I ordered a Margarita on the rocks and when the waitress asked for my ID, I was flattered and my friends thought it was kind of cool that folks still checked my ID. The woman took my license and examined it for several moments before looking at my other two friends who although black looked nothing like me before giving me a puzzled look.

“It’s me”, I said “with a different hairstyle”

Still she gave me a puzzled look and then I handed to her a credit card with my picture on it.

“You look different in this one too” she said.

“Well it’s me” I responded.

She walked off to I assume put in our drink orders and my friends and I cracked up about how she examined my driver’s license and how stupid she seemed since I was clearly over 21 even if I do look younger then my 32 years. I was slightly insulted that she’d think I’d give her a fake ID since I never resulted to those tactics when I was under 21 but I was more amused by her dumbness. My friends thought I’d handled the situation well although they admit that they would have been pissed and we change the subject.

Five minutes later a new waiter approaches our tables and asks if we’ve already ordered drinks. After we tell him we have he then asks me for my ID again. I think I saw red, I was pissed and while bitching and moaning pulled out every piece of ID I had with a picture of myself on it including my Carolina ID with my 1992 picture. I asked to see the manager and relayed how pissed I was that they’d think I’d give them a fake ID for a freaking Margarita on a Sunday evening. WTF!

I told the manager that I was insulted and although he explained that he wanted his staff to check ID (they didn’t check my friend’s ID for her glass of wine) I was insulted that they’d think I was giving them a fake one. I reminded him that black women often change their hair style and they’d better get used to it because I may return the next week with a different hair style but the same dammed driver’s license picture. I was trying not to come off as crazed angry patron and accepted my margarita and shut up. The manager did end up taking our order because I think he could tell that we wouldn’t have welcomed our original waitress to our table. One of my friend who was with me did mention that that particular waitress was a bit rude at times but I can’t fathom what in my opinion was an idiotic move since everything I showed them including my license has my name on it. With the new tamper proof licenses who has a fake ID with their real name on it?

I discussed this with a friend who said she would never return to that restaurant and although I would tend to agree a part of me wants to return and see if they’d try the same shyt with me again. I don’t believe it was an entirely racial incident but I do feel it showed the un sophistication of a restaurant owner/manager and his staff in a diverse city and neighborhood.

Almost Healed

2007-03-09T09:16:00.000-05:00

A year ago I woke up and realized that I’d bumped my head and accumulated a credit card bill that I couldn’t pay in full at the end of the month or the next year. I felt like I was drowning and whenever I’d pay the monthly bill, half of what I paid was added back onto the total in interest charges. Looking back I can’t tell you exactly what I’d charged that accumulated into a pool of credit card debt. I do know that it wasn’t a car (still driving the silver bullet) or a bunch of fancy clothes. I do remember that some of the charges stemmed from a pricey and unexpected car repair bill, an airline ticket or two that I’d sworn I’d pay off with the next check but then needed the cash for something else. Numerous trips to Costco and who knows what else.

I remember telling a friend that I was working on getting out of credit card debt and she was shocked that I even owed more then $10 on my credit cards. I’m known as the frugal one, the one who has nice things but nothing too flashy, I usually don’t get on the new electronic gadget bandwagon until after some time has gone by and the prices have lowered. I was the one who graduated from college with only school loans and a $100 credit card bill. What happened in the 10 years to get me to where I was this time last year? I wasn’t vigilant, I wasn’t paying attention to my spending habits or I should say I chose to ignore what was happening and kept right on spending. Ever since I received my first credit card almost 14 years ago I’ve fought the battle of not using it unless I could pay it off in full. I usually win and can say in those 14 years I’ve really lost my head three times where it took me more then a year to pay it off but that was three times to many.

I’m constantly fighting a money management battle. I’ve had two examples growing up, my mom who is extremely fiscally responsible and my dad who is the exact opposite. That man has champagne tastes with a beer budget. I’d say I fall in the middle. When I was saving up for my house I cut a lot of unnecessary expenses out and put myself on a strict allowance so I know I can do it. It was just an extremely painful process and I am struggling to find a happy medium. About a year ago a friend introduced me to her financial planner and although I was skeptical about spending money to hire someone to do what I figure wasn’t rocket science I knew I needed help. I was tired of drowning and the vicious cycle hasn’t helped me build the kind of wealth I’d like to have “just in case”.

In a week and a half I will be completely debt free! Writing down the debt per credit card in a notebook made it real and crossing off cards that were paid off has been an extremely liberating experience. I’ve put myself back on an allowance and am looking forward to watching the numbers grow in my savings account. I have two vacations planned for this year and it’s going to feel amazing to use “cash” to pay for everything. It feels great to get back on track and I’m taking steps to make sure I can’t get myself into this situation again.

On the Road Again

2007-03-06T05:23:00.000-05:00

Edited
I’m on the road again for work after being home for about three weeks. To say I wasn’t looking forward to this trip is an understatement. First there are so many issues with this project I don’t know where to begin. Some of them are beyond our control but there are many that are within our control which is why I’m here. I’m supposed to fix everything during my two weeks here but since I don’t have magical powers or even a magic wand I’m not sure how much I can move things forward since a lot of the issues are personality driven.

I fly a lot and spend a lot of time sitting in the cattle car, otherwise known as economy class on long haul trips. I usually fly United and have enough miles that I can sit in that premium section of economy with the extra leg room. I know it’s not much but when you’re in economy you often end up with the person in front of you putting their seat so low that it’s in your face. Only problem with the premium section of economy is that it’s near business class and I have to sit and watch them get all the preferential treatment. I’ve also flown business a few times so I’ve had a taste for the good life. Forgive me guys, I’m just bitching and moaning because I could use my miles and upgrade but I’d rather save them to fly free around the country. I’ve gotten over it. Because my approval came at the last minute I wasn’t able to fly my usual route with United and ended up on a Virgin Atlantic flight to London.

As for the economy section I was not impressed. In fact after hearing so much great stuff about Virgin it was disappointing. Sure the Single beds they have in “upper class” looked great but I ride in the cattle car and they’re giving you a place to sit still for 8 to 10 hours and a bite to eat, yet I continue to expect more and am disappointed every time. The trend in the industry seems to be moving toward less passenger services and higher prices so I should know better. So far I’ve flown economy on United, American Airlines, Delta, US Airways, Air France, Lufthansa, Swiss Air, Virgin Atlantic, Macedonian Airlines, Austrian Air, BMED (a subsidiary of British Airways). My favorite so far in terms of service and amenities (i.e; quality of food and drink) has been BMED. Those of you who travel frequently what are your favorite airlines and why?

Apparently I'm not the only one concerned check out this article

Reality Check

2007-02-25T17:00:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday I finally had my 2nd visit to an Ophthalmologist in an attempt to figure out exactly what was wrong with my leaky eyes. The visit was extremely painful and couldn’t imagine having ever been in so much pain even when I had my wisdom teeth removed. I know have a diagnosis, Nasolocrimal duct obstruction which basically means my tear tucks are closed. I still produce tears but they’re not draining the way they should. The doctor was able to clear out my left one but I will more then likely need surgery to fix the right one. To say I’ll never be able to not break out in a sweat when someone says “stick a needle in my eye” in an understatement.

Just the idea of having my eye operated on had me in tears from the doctor’s office. I bitched and moaned to a friend about my situation only to realize 2 minutes later what an ass I was being about this. Here I was complaining about my minor and curable issue to a friend who has MS. I didn’t have cancer, MS or but something I had an answer and potential remedy for. Sure I spent a half hour having a needle stuck into my tear ducks but I’m fine, healthy even and blessed to only have experienced only a little discomfort.

It's Been a While

2007-02-16T12:36:00.000-05:00

Let’s see, I finally saw Dream girls on Tuesday evening at a fundraiser. Wow! That was a great movie however I feel like I’ve been lied to, hoodwinked in fact. Why did all the talk shows, articles, blogs say Beyonce was the lead? Why was nominated as a Lead actress for that movie? She was playing a supporting role to Jennifer Hudson’s character. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Beyonce and she looked great and played the beautiful “not really a singer but I look good” role perfectly but she was NOT the lead.

Last Saturday night I hung out at Costco and the grocery store. I’d just come in from Kyiv the night before and had nothing at home so when I finally got myself together around 5PM I went food shopping. I’m sure lots of you have heard to never go to a grocery store hungry. Unfortunately I did, because I was desperate. Surprisingly enough I didn’t do too badly at Costco because I spent almost an hour and half there going up and down the isles and back and forth having a debate with myself for EVERY item I put in my cart. Good times, I tell you good times. Then off to 14th &P to the good folks of Whole Paycheck, where I munched on free cheese samples and was able to get out of there with only a $22 bill. You ever get something at the supermarket that was incorrectly weighted and miss priced and feel like you’ve won something? I got a good size block of parmesan cheese for $1.97 and felt like I was good to go. Lol! Parmesan cheese is expense.

Some of you know my real name, first and last and one of the reasons I moved to this anonymous blog format is because my first name isn’t common in these parts called the US of A. In fact it’s fairly uncommon and old fashioned even where it originated from (France). My last name is also a male first name in the English speaking world so, everyone always switches my name around and I get “Dear Mr.”. Yesterday several people including people within my company after reading an email I’d sent out responded by saying “Dear Honest’s last name”. Clearly people DO NOT pay attention to emails because the email went out as follows:

From: Last name, First name (typical for my company)
To: Folks who don’t read “good”
Subject: Blah!

Dear Blah,

Can you update your CV and forward it to me by tomorrow morning.

Best Regards,
First name

________________
Ms. First name Last name
Not head honcho
Company in the ‘burbs
Tel: 555-5555

Bitter, yeah I am because I’d had a long day that involved going to our lawyers’ office for something some renegade colleague did. It does however help with telemarketers since I don’t have caller ID at home I pick up and when I hear can I speak to “Mr. Honest’s last name” I say you have the wrong number. hehe!

Elles Demandent

2007-02-05T07:36:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Youtube I can get my zouk video on. I actually saw this video at a restaurant/lounge/strip club in Kyiv last week and just looked it up and realized it was also on Youtube. This was my favorite song of December '06.

OK now for the background on the restaurant/lounge/strip club deal. A colleague and I went to a restaurant recommended to us by a local colleague but went in too late to eat dinner so we decided to venture down the street and look for another place. I happened upon the word Pectopah (which is the only Russian word I can read in Cyrillic) and figured at 9:30 PM it was better then nothing. We entered in what we thought was a family type restaurant since there was a kid running around and were given the option of sitting in the front dinning room where a pianist and guitarist played or the lounge area with flat paneled TVs playing videos and a DJ playing lounge type music. We chose the lounge area, sat down ordered drinks and food when I realized there was a room beyond the lounge with a pole in the middle. My female colleague and I started laughing our arses off and kept thinking of ways to take pictures of it without being detected.

10 minutes later the reason there was a pole in that room walked right past us with very little clothes and clear stripper heels and proceeded to uh...dance with the pole. I learned that evening that clear heels are universally stripper heels and appearances can be deceiving.

Lucky or What?

2007-01-30T09:05:00.000-05:00

My mom recently told me that I’m lucky because certain areas of my life just fall into place exactly how I need it to without a great deal of effort on my part. According to my grandmother who was disappointed that I wasn’t baptized when I was an infant, Saint Carmen, whose birthday I share would bring me good fortune. According to my mom she wasn’t talking about money just that despite not being baptized (I was eventually baptized at age 11 when I asked to be) being born on July 16th meant that Saint Carmen would look out for me and things would be ok.

As I sit here typing this post at 2:30 AM, suffering from day 3 of jetlag, I wonder if Saint Carmen picked and chose what path she’d help me with from the beginning or if it’s something she choose randomly. There’s a small area of my life where things don’t just fall into place and it happens to be the one area where I just don’t think I have any control over. People may disagree but life and all these years gone by is telling me differently. My life is good, I have my health and my family is healthy so I wonder if I should just be happy with what I have or pray that Saint Carmen will decide to add an additional area.

11 Incidents

2007-01-21T20:54:00.000-05:00

That’s how many car accidents (including cars that skidded and ended up facing the wrong way)I counted in a 30 mile radius on the Dulles Toll Road (for those in the urea). A friend and I headed to the Leesburg outlets so I could exchange a pair of shoes I’d bought before the Christmas holidays and didn’t see a drop of snow or even rain in D.C. When we reached the toll road we saw some flurries but nothing major. In Leesburg, an hour from DC the snow was coming down so we decided exchange the shoes and run into one other store before heading home. We were at the outlet stores for maybe 45 minutes and then headed up only to find the highway had accumulated at least an inch of snow. My silver bullet is great and reliable but isn’t a snowmobile so I kept my speed to about 40 mph.

Unfortunately there were a bunch of other Bozos who figured they should keep at the regular posted speed limit and ended up on the side of the road, in a ditch or with a jacked up car. I was anxious to get home, it was after all a snowy Sunday afternoon which means sitting in my pjs watching TV and drinking hot cocoa but despite my interest in getting home quickly I had no interest in dying so I keep it slow.

This is our first snow fall of the winter season and people in the DC metro area are notorious for loosing their minds when it snows. What I don’t understand is why won’t folks just SLOW DOWN! Ain’t nothing at the end of the journey to risk my life or someone else’s for. The folks with the SUVs are also notorious for speeding during inclement weather in these parts; I haven’t read anywhere where SUV manufacturers say they’re safe to drive fast in snow and icy conditions.

Let’s talk about the supermarkets; I walked into a Safeway near my house for Empanada fixings and quickly walked out. The lines were at least 30 minutes long. No way, when I didn’t need to have Empanadas tonight. Armageddon is not here, so I can’t understand why EVERYONE had to be at the grocery store today even though it was snowing. I figure the majority of the patrons lived in the area so that means there are also at least 2 mini market/bodegas/7-11 type stores within a two or three block radius of everyplace in DC proper so there’s no threat of starving to death if folks run out of milk or bread.

I’m hoping for more snow so I can work from home and if that happens I’ll just walk to the local mini market or grocery store if I run out of food.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

2007-01-15T23:23:00.000-05:00

I suddenly have the urge to blog lol!

You ever catch someone from work lying in an email? I asked a colleague to send an email asking for additional information about a move taking place that may affect the budget on my project. The recipient of the email responded that there wasn’t a move and “things weren’t as they seem”. WTF, does that mean? I have no idea. I do know that on Sunday an email was sent by the recipient (I was cc’d on it) stating there would be an upcoming move. Turns out I deleted the email but thanks to the good folks of Google Desktop I was able to pull up a cached copy of the email and forward it on.

My immediate reaction was disbelief; I knew I wasn’t going crazy and remember seeing an email on Sunday about a move. Then I got pissed because for a quick second I thought this lie made me look like an idiot and there’s nothing that I hate more then having egg on my face at work. Then I laughed and remembered who I was dealing with; this guy has a shady rep. Once again thanks to Google desktop I was able to prove that I wasn’t the idiot and am anxiously waiting to read what excuse he’ll come up with to get himself out of this one.

Breaking Down and a whole bunch of other stuff

2007-01-14T20:19:00.000-05:00

Blogging doesn’t seem to have the same appeal to me that it did when I first started 2 ½ years ago. I love reading other blogs but I’m having trouble keeping mine updated and often times feel like it’s a chore instead of an outlet. I don’t want to give it up yet so I'm taking the pressure off and updating when I have something to say.

I’m 32 years old and my body is breaking down. My cholesterol level is high, I need to work out more and I have an eye drainage problem. Yes, ladies and gents my right eye doesn’t drain properly so every 15 to 30 minutes or so a tear just rolls out of my right eye and down my cheek. I have bruises around my right eye lid from the constant rubbing and for a few days I was convinced I’d developed some type of skin cancer. I went to an ophthalmologist who recommended an eye lid specialist and since specialists appear to be in demand, my appointment isn’t for a few weeks.

Commercial Break:

I’m watching that I Love New York show and WOW, WOW, WOW! How in the world?!?! Where do they find these people? Lawd there’s a dude on there quoting scripture!!!!!! He’s on a crazy VH1 show to win the hand of New York and says he puts god first and starts quoting scripture. That made me laugh.

Back to the program:

If I receive my undergrad transcripts by the 22nd I will be taking my first online grad school class in about a week or so. I’m excited, frightened and very nervous. The class is in project management and will definitely be an asset. It’s not the grad school program I wanted but I don’t have the time to attend a brick and mortar program at this time and figured this course would help me with work now.

Finally A Post!

2007-01-05T16:55:00.000-05:00

I’ve been going up and down the blogsphere sucking my teeth at people who haven’t posted in a while, when I realized I haven’t posted anything since 2006. I’m feeling a bit stressed after being on vacation for 2 weeks. I haven’t taken this much time off in (hmmm since college) and it felt great. Now I’m sick and have a ton of work I don’t feel like doing but hope that this weekend will help me get over this achy, sick, head cold feeling and I’ll feel more like myself.

I spent Christmas and New Years with my mom, aunt, cousin and his family in Brussels. I had a great time listening to some of the same old stories I’d heard over and over through out the years and heard some new and interesting ones that made me think about fate, our paths in life and how one event could change the course of your life. I’d heard that my aunt didn’t like my dad and didn’t attend my mom’s wedding but I never knew why until last week. I’d asked my mom if she was hurt, angry or sad and she seemed to brush it off her shoulders.

My mom and dad meeting in Brussels in the 1960’s seems to have took my mom and her family down a different path that wasn’t anticipated when she and her sister left Haiti in 1964 to study in Belgium. The plan was that they’d get their degrees my aunt in Nursing and my mom in Chemical Engineering and they’d return to Haiti get jobs and settle down with someone from a “good” family. In the meantime my aunt finished her nursing degree applied and was accepted at an Anesthesiologist nursing program in Canada and was all set to go when my mom met my dad. Apparently my grandmother didn’t want her to leave my mom all alone in Belgium with this man (my dad) since my mom was still in school. So my aunt didn’t go to Canada stayed in Belgium and met her ex husband who was Belgian. After 40 years she’s still living there and recently retired. Two years after they married my mom moved to the US with my dad since his entire family immediate family lived in Jersey at the time. She never finished that degree in Chemical Engineering and when I asked her why she said something about being married was overwhelming and when I gave her that are you kidding me look and said “you’d never let me get away with that” she agreed and said hell no I wouldn’t have. She did eventually get an undergrad degree in business.

This sequence of events makes me really think about fate and our paths in life. Sure if my mom didn’t marry my dad I wouldn’t be me or even alive but what if they’d gotten married and she finished the degree she initially started, would they have moved? What if my aunt ignored my grandmother and went to Canada would I have practically lived up in Montreal where she was supposed to live? Would I be the same person? I am, who I am largely as a result of my experiences and believe that slight changes could have played a role in how I view the world I live in.

Heartbroken

2006-12-18T23:16:00.000-05:00

I read stories like these and I’m heartbroken by the endless chaos and lawlessness. Year after year rule of law, prosperity and hope for a better future go out the window. What happened to the first independent black republic in the world? 200 years of independence and what? I’m heartbroken because I miss it, the summers with my grandmother, the visits with my relatives, discovering my family history with every trip. The carefree summers spent rocking on my grandmother’s front porch drinking “limonade” and all the Avocados and fried plantains I can eat. Weekends at the beach and week nights visiting all the cousins.

It’s been 5 years since my last trip to attend my grandmother’s funeral. Her death, the destruction of the country at the hands of bandits disguised as politicians have made me reluctant to return. The chaos and lawlessness have run 90% of my family out to new lives in the US and Canada. There’s nothing left but the memories and I miss it so much. Will I be able to visit with my children one day? Not just show them pictures or tell them stories but show them where I spent the majority of my summers as a child.

Abidjan!

2006-12-13T23:19:00.000-05:00

My old officemate and I used to randomly shout out Abidjan! (Capital of Ivory Coast) because of the song below. It used to crack us up that these French and Ivorian artists were representing their city like folks represent Brooklyn. What I love about this video are the two immigrant groups from different backgrounds coming together due to their love of music and their immigrant status and lives in ("Les Banlieue", Where a lot of the projects are) France.

It was our similar tastes in music that had us closing our office door if we were working late and just jamming to everything from Salsa to French hip hop and R'nb. I tuned her into this new Rai'nb mix coming out of France which took traditional Algerian Rai music and combined hip hop and R'nb rythms. To say American music has a big influence all over the world is an understatment. I was surfing on you tube and decided to play this video because it reminds me of my friend and old officemate whom I miss terribly. She moved to Morocco to be closer to her family and I can't wait until I figure out a way to visit her without breaking the bank.

Friendship

2006-12-11T23:49:00.000-05:00

How many of us have them. I’ve been thinking about friends and friendships a lot lately and no wonder since it’s all over the internet and on everyone’s blogs. Falling out also seems to be a regular occurrence both in real life and in the blog world.

I don’t think I’ve been mad enough at a true friend to have a falling out with them but I have had a true friend stop speaking to me several times because of something she felt I did to her. She stops speaking to me at least once every two years and when she lived in DC it was at least once every six months I often wonder why she even bothers to continue the friendship. She’s also next level with the drama so I sometimes try to stay clear since I try to lead a drama free life. I’ve had friendships that over time have dwindled only to be re ignited once both or one of us decides to reach out to the other on a regular basis.

Sometimes distance is especially hard and if both people don’t put in the effort to keep in touch and update then it will just slide. I have a friend who lives in Las Vegas who isn’t an oldest and dearest friend from grade school but is one I made about 5 years ago. We hung out and spoke often when she lived in DC but now that she moved our friendship has continued but on an every other month catch up session. I actually have a few friends from H.S and college who I don’t speak to every day or even every week but still consider good friends and know if I needed something they’d do what they could for me. Sometimes we loose touch with people because we’ve outgrown each other or no longer have enough in common to sustain a true friendship. I was talking to a friend on IM tonight and she asked about a mutual friend that she no longer talks to. She said something to me that made me pause and think for a moment, “sometimes I think friends go through so much together there is nowhere to go but apart. Sometime you find your way back sometimes you don’t.” That and other aspects of our conversation reminded me that sometimes the level of friendship you have with someone in your mind and with your actions isn’t the one they have with you.

I’ve been thinking about my best friend from HS lately. I haven’t spoken to her in almost 9 years and lately I’ve wondered what she’s up to. If she’s married, has a child, if her family still lives in the same place. I can’t think of what really drew us apart except to say we grew apart; maybe a different out look on life and different directions. I’ve been thinking about calling her for the last six months but haven’t made an effort to. I think I still know her number by heart; I called it almost every day for the four years that we were in HS together.

Edit: I just called my friend from HS and she was so excited to hear from me. Just like I have, she's been thinking about me on and off for the last 9 years. She still lives in the same apartment and has the same phone number that I remember from HS (NYC's never move I swear!) lol! We're meeting for lunch next week when I go up for the holidays.

Thank You Jesus

2006-12-03T21:12:00.000-05:00

God looks out for babies and fools right? Well god was looking out for this fool, Moi. Thursday evening I head home and of course traffic in Tyson’s is out of control so instead of the usual 40 minutes it took an hour and when traffic cleared up I was flying. Flying through a yellow/red light right in front of a capital police officer and since they’ve been given new powers to police DC along the Capital Hill area I was pulled over. The officer gave me a lecture about running yellow lights and gave me a warning. No points, no $75 dollar ticket.

Friday afternoon I left work early, braced the crazy winds and made a right turn slightly ahead of a guy who was gunning to make a left turn into the lane next to me. Right in front of me he lost control of his car and hit an oncoming car head on. I was a little bit freaked out but glad he was able to get out the car and it looked like the person he hit was also ok. Their cars however, not so great.

Saturday, a friend and I were driving along GW Parkway on our way to the Leesburg outlets and as I’m telling her about my Friday night metro adventure a deer runs out of the woods right in front of my car. I managed to break, not swerve into another lane and only appeared to have clipped the deer because he was able to run off. To say I was freaked out would have been an understatement.

Soooo Excited

2006-11-29T21:43:00.000-05:00

Today I bought a garlic press. Yes, I know finally! j/k I’ve been eyeing this garlic press thing for a while now ever since I saw Dave use one on Food Network. This cooking thing has become my newest hobby and I forgot how expensive hobbies can become. That garlic press was $15 bucks! Then they’re the cookbooks, the spices that aren’t already in my cupboard and extra ingredients that I don’t buy on a regular basis just to try new recipes but it’s all worth it IF the dish turns out ok. My mom always asks me what I want for my birthday or for Christmas and I usually ask for a gift card from Banana, but this year I received pottery barn dishes for my birthday and for Christmas I’ve asked for a cooking class. I can’t wait until this Spring when they’re back in session.

Not only am now into reading and buying all sorts of cookbooks but I’m also glued to cooking reality shows. Top Chef is my show, so much so that it now comes before Law and Order on my TV viewing line up and that says a lot since 99% of what I watch on TV is L&O. Last Wednesday when I went to my dad’s for Thanksgiving I expected to get my Top Chef view age on but low and behold the good people at Time Warner decided that Chapel Hill wasn’t worthy of having Bravo on their TV line up but instead they got the Inspirational channel. Hmmm channel geared toward Gay men or an Inspirational Channel. Since I have a bunch of prayers out there for some friends going through a tough time, I’m going to refrain from saying out loud or writing on here what I think about that. I was a little pissed that the next town over which was literally two blocks from my dad’s place had Bravo on their line up. Either way, thanks to the miracle of Tivo I was able to catch up.

Monnie posted a few of her favorite Thanksgiving recipes and her “Southern Comfort Cake” caught my eye. Here’s a picture of my version. It was GOOD, slap your mama good!

La Reina

2006-11-26T20:36:00.000-05:00

Celia Cruz is/was the Queen of Salsa and after listening to most of her last CD on the road this weekend I've come to the conclusion that if I could go back in time I'd be her back up singer. I can't sing, nor do I speak Spanish other then the usual 5 phrases you should know if you're in a Spanish speaking country but I'd have figured it out. Celia Cruz was amazing and had an amazing career, I'm just sad that I didn't discover her music until after she passed away.

So if anyone reading this saw a crazy looking chick in a silver civic on 95, it was the drums. They made me do it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-23T17:27:00.001-05:00

I hope everyone is enjoying a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving!

Anonymous Request

2006-11-21T12:03:00.000-05:00

A certain Anonymous Fly by night commentor said: "One liner: Show me the cats!". Well here you go. A day in the life of Pierre and Olivier.

Here Olivier is doing what he does best, beg for wet food. This meowling happens daily once at 7:00 AM and again in the evenings when I get home.

When he's not chasing his brother around the house at 2 in the morning Pierre passes his time getting ready for his evening job.

Apparently the light coming into the living room was too much for Olivier and he couldn't find his nap time eye mask.

Clearly all that fur doesn't help keep them warm so they have to snuggle up during the winter.

I HATE DELTA

2006-11-18T15:33:00.000-05:00

My mom and I are heading to Europe for Christmas and we booked direct round trip flights from JFK to Brussels. I'm a loyal United customer because I have so many miles with them but they wanted an arm and a kidney for a flight from DC to Brussels so I thought hey it would be fun to go up to NYC for a few days hang out and then fly with my mom since the ticket from NYC only cost one arm. Best laid plans and all that jazz....

I just received an email from Delta saying they are sorry for the inconvenience but on New Years Day when we leave we're now flying directly to ATL then on to JFK. They suddenly canceled the direct flight from Brussels to JFK for that day. WTF?!?!? How much sense does that make for me to fly over NY only to go back to NY a few hours later then I eventually have to get back to DC a few days later, so I'm flying over two place I need to be. Oh and the customer service chick I spoke to who said there's nothing they could do and couldn't compensate me in anyway. Fuck you, die bitch.

How's that for being honest.

Not so Honest

2006-11-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Diva (in Demand)’s post where she has one liners about how she really feels about people in her life and started thinking about my own honest assessments of people around me. Despite the moniker, I’m not as Honest as I’d like to think. I hold my tongue a lot because I’m generally non confrontational and nice with people I know. I’ve had a former manager at work describe me as someone who is straightforward, honest, and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. I agree with her assessment to a certain extent but I’m not always straightforward or honest. There are a lot of things I hold back on because I don’t want to be confrontational or hurt someone’s feelings. It’s also because I can be judgmental (90% of which I keep to myself) because as I get older, I realize we don’t all have the same thought process nor do we need to.

A friend of mine just asked me for a personal favor that would have included lending her money until pay day. Except with my family, I have a policy of only lending what I can afford to give away. I felt very awkward telling her I don’t feel comfortable doing that and although I know she’s disappointed she says she understands my decision. I’m not sure why I felt uncomfortable saying no, which is another problem I have. My friend expressed that she would never put me in a bad financial situation and I believe her but in the back of my mind I thought, she succeed in putting herself in a bad situation financially so why can’t she clear up whatever issue it is that’s keeping her from buying something outright or with her own credit card unless its an emergency (this situation wasn’t an emergency). This is where I should have stepped in and told her what I just wrote but I stopped because I didn’t want to sound too judgmental (which I can be when it comes to finances) and if she made the decision to ask me for this favor then she’s probably justified the expense in her mind and nothing I would say would make her budge.

Everywhere around me I have friends and associates who don’t have the same ideas regarding sacrificing to reach an end goal that I do. In fact my mother would say I don’t have the same idea that she does and I consider her the ultimate sacrificer (is that even a word?). During our retreat we had a friend’s husband come in and do a basic financial planning exercise. If we called bad financial planning and decisions a disease I could honestly say a majority of the group is dying from bad decisions. Will anyone make the changes they said they would to get on the right path to their goal? Maybe. I’d like to think I have sound, fool proof financial habits but in reality I don’t. I sat down with a financial planner earlier this year after forking over big bucks and have a clear goal I need to strive for but find myself constantly tripping over my own feet. I’m trying an experiment as of December 1 (not including xmas presents which will have its separate budget) and I’ll see how successful I am.

Dear Blog,

2006-11-12T23:45:00.000-05:00

I apologize for neglecting you over the last week and a half. I’ve been crazy busy with the Armenians who were in town but that’s not an excuse because I’ve been busy before and had no problem blogging. I’m not sure if I’m going through writers block or if I’m suffering from topic withdrawal. Life is good but I just haven't had anything really exciting to blog about lately.

This weekend I made my first Indian meal and it wasn’t too bad. As my own critic I thought the Ginger Chicken Kebabs I made were tasty but the Dal (Lentils/split peas) were ok. There was something missing and I can’t put my finger on it yet. I figure I’ll have to make it again this week and step it up regarding flavor. I made enough for dinner on Saturday and for my book club meeting tonight where only the Hostess and another of our friends showed up. Everyone who said they’d attend suddenly had other pressing issues to deal with. I’ll have to rethink my food choices next time I host it since I have so much food left over that I’m going to have to work hard to eat so it won’t go to waste. Maybe I’ll make those stuffed mushrooms I’d planned on making for lunch this week.

Saturday was such a gloriously fabulous day and I was able to spend a few hours outside, volunteering for the Washington Humane Society’s remote adoption unit. Basically we sat outside of a pet store in DC and let the dog’s cuteness attract potential adopters. I took the dog I was in charge of for a walk and managed to get a few people who were eating outside at the local restaurants to come check our booth out.

Thank god the elections are over, I’m so sick and tired of those attacking political ads that only lessen my faith in our country’s political system. No one talks about the issues anymore just about something the other candidate said out of context 20 years ago. I can’t imagine that the people of the DC/MD/VA metropolitan area approve of these tactics and we all need to stand together to get them to STOP! Luckily for me I live in DC and not MD otherwise I would have been bombarded by phone calls as well.

Remember a few months ago when I blogged about cheating on my hairdresser with a new person and a new salon? Well it’s been a blessing and a curse. The new place is great, I make an appointment and I’m usually seated in the stylist’s chair within 10 to 15 minutes of my appointment time. Now the curse is that I’m not used to going to a person who actually honors appointments so I’m not used to making appointments way in advance when I know the hairdressers I usually go to will take in most folks first come, first serve. So when I called yesterday to make an appointment with the stylist I’ve been going to at the new shop I learned that she’s booked until the 24th. At this place there’s no such thing as squeezing someone in unless there’s a cancellation. I guess I’ll have to schedule my appointments well in advance from now on.

America, America!

2006-11-01T21:04:00.000-05:00

Have you ever driven or walked down a street in your town and looked at it through the eyes of a visitor? I’m doing that this week and DC looks a lot different to me; crisper, cleaner even. One of my colleagues from Arme.nia is here with a delegation of officials and since this is her first trip to the U.S. I asked her what she thought and her initial response was that it was surreal almost like a movie.

As I drive around DC I look around and see my adopted city through the eyes of my colleague and realize how great it is here. As I compare it to her home town it just reinforces what I sometimes forget when being bombarded by trivial political ads that don’t address the issues, when I realize that our politicians are spending our hard earned tax dollars on a lost cause. I realize that despite our issues we live in a great country.

Boo Boo the Fool

2006-10-29T10:24:00.000-05:00

It’s amazing what some folks will do so they can take advantage of others. A friend of mine recently took a group trip to Jamaica and spent the majority of her time at the all inclusive resort. One night the group had tickets to a party off the resort and she met a Jamaican guy who happened to live in NYC. They chatted, danced and hit it off so they exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch once they returned to the US.

Upon returning to the US, my friend discovers that her uncle recently passed away and headed to his funeral. While she was away she received a call from the gentlemen she met in Jamaica. He’d wanted to see how she was and also let her know that he’d been mugged and lost his wallet, ID, credit cards and money. They conversed a bit more before he asked if she could send him some money and that he’d pay her back the moment he returned to NY. She told him she wasn’t able to and asked why he couldn’t ask his relatives since he was staying with them. He had an answer for that. A week or so later he calls her again this time he’s in NY and asked while they chatted if she could send him some money since he was having trouble getting to the bank since it was far and he didn't have any money to take a cab. When she asked why he couldn’t ask his friends there he stated that he doesn’t want to ask anyone for anything. Her response: “but you’re asking me”.

This is a man she met for about 30 minutes in a club and he felt comfortable enough to make her a target for his scheme. I don’t know this guy but all this is a straight up scheme and I’m assuming it’s worked for him before because I honestly can’t imagine a stranger having the nerve to ask my friend for money. You don’t know her, but there’s nothing about her that reads “boo boo the fool”

La Patte

2006-10-24T22:36:00.000-05:00

Sain Supa Crew love 'em.

Jury Duty

2006-10-18T21:48:00.000-05:00

I was summoned for Jury Duty sometime in August and postponed it for last Thursday. I figured the scenario would be the same as the last time I was “summoned”. I’d go down and they’d dismiss me in time for Oprah. I guess my juror number came up because I was the first person called and I was picked for to be the juror on a criminal case. Maybe I should play my juror number, who knows I might win a few dollars or a few million. Either way I learned a few things on Jury Duty, one of them is that the D.C. Courts need to revamp its system. The second is that even though I haven’t ridden a DC bus in years, toothless people and folks with jaundice still ride the bus. Clearly they haven’t given their liver a rest in ages. The courthouse is full of unsavory looking characters who smoke New Ports, and talk about their probation issues and getting clean before the urine test.

First it’s enough that you have to get there all “early 8AM” and shyt but there are NO snacks and they don’t give you bottled water. They have a few dial up lines in the business lounge but no wireless internet anywhere in the court house. I was a bit flabbergasted, are we not at the end of 2006? This seemed unacceptable, and I’m sending Fenty an email. I’ve heard that jurors in other cities are at least given a few basic necessities.

I knew the actual trial wasn’t going to be anything like it is on Law & Order or other TV shows but I was really disappointed by how slow the attorneys were. I felt like objecting a few times when the defense attorney kept repeating the same question, 10 different ways. More then 3 minutes of silence while you read your notes seems a bit much. I think both attorneys spent more time doing bench conferences with the judge then they did actually questioning witnesses or giving their opening statements. I can’t imagine having the task of prosecuting someone for a crime or defending them and my performance or lack there of, having a major outcome in their lives.

I did have a great time trying to figure out during the bench conferences what celebrities folks looked like and have decided that the prosecutor has a Pinocchio Nose, the first Detective to testify looked like a female Jaime Foxx and the Marshall assigned to the courtroom had a Steve Harvey hair cut.

Although I wasn’t happy getting picked, I did experience something new and did my civic duty.

Crack in a Bag

2006-10-15T19:52:00.000-05:00

Yes, my friends this is crack in a bag. When I went up to NYC last weekend my mom had two bags on the kitchen counter. I finished one in 5 minutes and the other in the car on my way back to D.C. This is seriously crack in a bag and although I don’t promote addiction, if you have an opportunity try one or two. The only thing that may suffer is your waist line.

Rockland Drama Part 2

2006-10-11T17:01:00.000-05:00

STOP

If you haven’t read part 1 then check it out here before reading this post.

For those who read part 1, here is the background story:

The mother of the bride asked her daughter, to ask the father of the bride to tell his wife that she was not welcome at the wedding. The mother of the bride gave these instructions the day before the wedding. The Stepmother’s son was a groomsmen in the wedding, she helped (via her husbands money, because his money is also her money, pay for the wedding), when my mom and another friend asked the Stepmother if she was going to the wedding back in July she said yes of course, I’m buying a new dress and everything.

27 years ago, the father of the bride met the stepmother at her cousin’s house when she just arrived in the US, they fell in love. He knew he was married and had a one year old daughter and stepson at home, she knew he was married and had a one year old daughter and stepson at home. He announced to his wife that he was leaving, divorced the ex wife and married the new wife. The ex wife just lost husband number two to divorce and was livid. So livid that my mom, when asked just shakes her head and says it was such a messy, messy divorce.

The father of the bride made sure he was as involved in his daughter’s life as much as he could with every other weekends and two weeks during the summer. In fact growing up I resented my father and his actions after my parents divorced because I had a daily example of what it really meant to be a father who doesn’t live with his child (the father of the bride and stepmother live in the building I grew up in). According to the grown folks (my mom and her friends) the stepmother didn’t try to raise the stepdaughter and kept her distance when she visited. Growing up the daughter and the stepdaughter had a bearable relationship but not a close one.

On the wedding day the father of the bride was sad and at first I thought it was because he was about to give away his only daughter until I realized that his wife of 27 years was not in attendance.

Now that you’ve received more details (albeit third hand) does this change the answer you gave in Part 1?

Rockland Drama Part 1

2006-10-09T17:42:00.000-05:00

I went to a beautiful wedding in Rockland county (upstate NY) this weekend and am a bit bummed that I didn’t have time to call some NYC bloggers or even see one of my best friends. I’ve learned a few lessons this weekend though, one of which is to read driving directions very carefully. However, on a good note, we ended up on the scenic route to the wedding.

Unfortunately the weekend wasn’t as tranquil as the surroundings would lead one to believe. Without going into details at this time, what would you do if your ex husband’s wife planned on going to your daughter’s wedding. Would you ask her not to attend?

I’ll wait a day for some answers before posting the behind the scenes story.

What To Do?

2006-10-03T12:20:00.000-05:00

I’ve been chanting “better countries” for the last year regarding my work assignments. There are better countries out there waiting for a competent project manager among my team’s portfolio. Unfortunately those projects aren’t under my bosses’ leadership and around here folks have to look out for their own sub team members first, so I have a choice to make. Say no to an opportunity in Kiev and take my changes with not being 100% billable or say yes to Kiev and grumble with secured billability and employment. Kiev isn’t too far from Yerevan so maybe that would work.

At least the Kiev opportunity doesn’t start until the new year so I can hold on to my “no more work travel for ’06” stance.

Did You Know

2006-09-26T12:27:00.000-05:00

Did you know that Kung Fu moves were based on the Praying Mantis’ fighting moves? That Lions will kill the cubs of a pride once they’ve taken over the pride because the Lionesses won’t be ready to mate if they have young cubs. That left alone without human contact dogs will revert into pack form.

That I’m suddenly more obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy then I was last season. I watched most of the second season but never saw the first season, which I watched in its entirety this weekend. I’ve put the episodes of Season 2 that I missed on my net flick list and my TIVO is holding episode 1 of season 3. I can’t wait to get home on Friday, have some take out Ethiopian and watch it. I’m so obsessed and anxious for more that I’m watching clips from season 2 on youtube. Isn’t that website great, just nifty.

That my taste buds have changed since I was a kid. I know most adults go through this, but I’m finally analyzing how different my taste buds are now. For example, today I shared a mixed salad plate with a colleague and ate raw cabbage. When I was a kid I never went anywhere near cabbage, cooked or raw. Now I’m even using it in meals I make at home. Spinach is another vegetable I never ate as a child. Now, I absolutely love, love spinach; sautéed with garlic and I’m in heaven. I didn’t start eating spinach until about 10 years ago. My mom never forced me to eat something I didn’t like so I’m gradually re discovering foods that I didn’t like as a child and this re discovery period called adulthood is excellent. I still hate carrots though. I wish I didn’t, because everyone says they’re a great snack but I can’t knowingly eat something that tastes like poison to me.

That I’ve always wanted to hug a monkey, well a Chimp to be precise. I watch all these animal planet shows where the zookeepers are hugging and playing with Chimps and I want too also. I don’t know why but I’ve always been fascinated with hugging cuddly looking animals. This is me after elbowing little kids out of the way at the San Diego Petting Zoo.

I guess I just need to make sure I don’t drink 4 beers before doing so like this dude.

That I’m only human and can be critical, selfish, the best friend you can have, easily annoyed and equally laidback.

Needs a Good Home

2006-09-24T12:52:00.000-05:00

This is Mimi and she’s a three year old pure breed Rottie who needs a good home.

Her owner adopted her from the shelter a few years ago but now realizes that she cannot financially support the two dogs and numerous other pets she has. I’ve never met Mimi but a good friend of mine has and would readily adopt her if she didn’t already have two dogs and live in a one bedroom apartment. I’m seriously thinking of adopting her but my two cats are already neglected and with my travel and work schedule I don’t think I could give Mimi the love and attention she deserved. She gets along well with other dogs and cats and would love to be adopted by someone who would spoil her. If you know of anyone who is looking to adopt a pet send me an email at thisismehonest at gmail dot com.

I’ve been working all weekend on the final report for this project and am slowly going crazy. Hopefully everyone will have their sections to me by tomorrow morning so I can review, edit, send it off to someone else for more edits and feedback and can deliver it to the client by Thursday afternoon. I’m catching a plane back home on Friday and there’s no way I’m postponing my return flight home.

How It All Started

2006-09-20T05:24:00.000-05:00

Last week I took an Indian cooking class at a local culinary shop and had such a great time. I’ve wanted to take a cooking class there for such a long time and managed to find a spot at one of the Indian cooking sessions. I love Indian food and am excited to get started with some of the techniques I’ve learned and the huge cookbook I bought. When I get back home (yes I am on another trip) I’m heading to a local Indian grocery store to buy all the spices I need.

I remember when I was maybe 11 or 12 I went to my first Indian restaurant with my dad. When I was about 10 my dad and stepmother moved to N.C. and I would go and visit them during the summer. My dad would drive up to NYC hang out for a few days with friends and family and we’d drive down to NC together. As a child and even more so as an adult when there was a plan in motion I wanted it executed with little to no deviation. Unfortunately my dad is not one to follow a plan or a schedule. This has been the basis for many fights until I realized that I couldn’t drill in a sense of time or respect for other people’s time into a grown man and learned to play the game to my advantage. As usual we’d scheduled to leave early in the morning and I was anxious to leave to just get there. I would have thought my dad would be also since he had to drive for 9 hours straight, but my dad’s lack of timing meant that we were still doing “one last thing” around lunch time.

Once he ran his last errand I kept pushing to get on the road and thought a quick lunch at McDonalds was all we needed. My dad who would rather starve then eat McDonalds wasn’t having it and insisted we sit down for a proper lunch at an Indian Restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. I sulked and swore under my breath and went along with him to the restaurant. It was my first Indian meal and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I remember eating succulent Tandorri Chicken, fluffy basmati rice and warm Nan and have been hooked ever since. I’m going to remind my dad of this story and next time he’s in D.C. “I’m making him full Punjabi dinner”(line from Bend it like Beckham).

Catching Up

2006-09-15T13:01:00.000-05:00

I know I’ve neglected this blog and haven’t posted as often as I should. I do have a lot of topics flowing around in my head but as I think of them while I’m driving to and from work (I have plenty of time to think during my commute) I think out how I would write the post and promptly forget it the moment I’m in front of a computer.

London – Was fabulous by the way. The place is horribly expensive but wouldn’t be if the dollar/pound exchange rate was on equal footing. I know it hasn’t been in ages but 10 years ago when I went there for the first time it was a bit more reasonable 1.50 pound to the dollar instead of the 1.99999 to the dollar it currently is. Either way that place is just fabulous, and vibrant and full of life despite their typical gloomy weather. The question I should really ask myself about the weekend is: How many bottles of wine can two people drink in one weekend and I believe I lost count. What I love about Europe is that you can buy a good bottle of wine at a restaurant (despite the exchange rate) and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Either way make sure you drink every last drop because as my girl Jonelle said before we left a pub near her house: “I know when my next meal will be but you never know when you’ll get your next drink” or something like that. I’d just drank a ½ pint of Guinness and shared a bottle of wine with her so I think that’s what she said.

While Jonelle was running her errands on Friday I hung out at the London Zoo and walked around town. The weather was really lovely and I just wanted to take in the sights, sounds and smells of London. I stopped in for a Bacon Sandwich (I know not on the diet but when in London) with brown sauce. They are soooooo good it’s ridiculous. Not sure if it’s the cut of bacon they’re using or if it’s that brown sauce (not sure what’s in it, maybe crack) but it’s sooo damm good. Saturday we went down to Brighton so we could see the sea. I’ve never been outside of London so it was cool to see another town. The streets were so quaint and after hitting up this Soul Food Restaurant where the food was on point. We ended up walking up to the rock beach (no sand at this place) and lying down on the rocks and taking a nap. The itis was that bad that I ended up sleeping comfortably on some rocks!

We went back to London that evening and went out with a friend of Jonelle’s and had a great time chillin’. On our way back to Jonelle’s we stopped by a bar in her neighborhood that plays hip hop and it always amazes me how hip hop has spread all over the world and not just the booty shaking stuff but some good stuff.

I left the next morning for D.C and am home until Tuesday when I get on yet another plane for what I am praying is my last work trip of 2006.

So I Voted

2006-09-12T13:15:00.000-05:00

Today I voted in DC’s primary elections and am glad I got my vote on. I wont’ tell you who I voted for but I will say this. Whoever I voted for BETTER and I mean it, BETTER think about my interests. Getting rid of Ray Ray n ‘em from around my block, knocking down Hechinger mall and putting in a Whole Foods, Target, Pet smart, Barnes and Noble, and Ethiopian restaurant. That is not a lot to ask for and I believe this will bring money to the neighborhood and make it more vibrant. More retail (NO MORE ATHLETIC FOOT WEAR STORES) will also mean people like “moi” won’t continue spending our hard earned consumer cash in VA or MD.

I had an early morning conference call so I didn’t get to the polling site (a block from my house) until 9 and there weren’t any lines. There were however a gazillion supporters all wanting to give you a flyer with their preferred candidate’s position. I had to decline all of them; I read up on all the positions online and don’t need any additional paper at home. I’ve been home since Sunday night and haven’t even touched the months worth of mail I have sitting on my entryway table.

I think the voting process in DC needs a complete overhaul. There HAS got to be a better way. Wasn’t there a promise to revise the ballots and voting process after the 2000 election?

Step 1: Wait on line based on the first letter of your last name.
Step 2: Tell person with big binder your last name and wait 5 minutes as he tries to find “Honest’s Last name”.
Step 3: Refuse to let person butcher first name so after a while he gives up and says ok whatever sign here.
Step 4: Let him know my party affiliation and sign a separate card.
Step 5: Go to another line give person signed party affiliation card and voting preference (paper ballot or touch key).

Side Note: Have you seen those paper ballets? Way too confusing.

Step 6: Wait for the only touch key machine in the entire building! WTF?!!?
Step 7: Vote and collect my “I Voted” Sticker

All Things British

2006-09-06T07:02:00.000-05:00

Last week I watched the entire first and second season of BBC’s The Office. You know the original the Office that was recently remade into an American sitcom. I haven’t watched the American version due to my numerous L&O and Food Network obsessions, there’s no time for new shows. Since I’ve been here without any L&O and Food Network, I’ve divided my TV viewing time between Animal Planet, BBC News and the Office Season 1 and 2 DVD’s I borrowed from a colleague here. I watched the first half of an episode and was pretty disgusted. Uhh I thought what a freaking ass the lead character was, I’d pretty much resigned myself to not watching it until the cable service in my apartment went out one night and I had nothing else to watch.

I’m so glad I was forced to go back and watch it because the show is hilarious. Sad, dumb even but hilarious! I’m now adding the additional seasons to my net flick list. Some British comedies leave me wondering WTF was so funny but the Office and Coupling are just extra hilarious in my opinion. Or maybe it’s because I’ve quickly grown to love all things British, except the pound/dollar exchange rate.

Tomorrow morning I’m heading to London to spend a few days hanging out with my girl J and I can’t wait to get there. Despite being unprepared for the weather, (It was still in the 80/90’s in DC when I left and it’s been about 100 degrees in Yerevan) it’s going to be a blast!

Language of Love?

2006-09-04T07:50:00.000-05:00

Friday night I spent a few hours hanging out at my favorite bar here and met the boyfriend of one of the old waitresses. I remember her from my last trip here in May because I spent a great deal of time hanging out at this bar. I also remember that she barely spoke any English. She knew enough to say hello and when she waited on my friend and I, she used that international “want a drink” hand signal and I have mastered the way to order my signature drink in the former Soviet Union: Vooodka (using the O instead of ah sound) and Tonik (using the O instead of ah sound) so ordering was pretty easy.

The waitress is bilingual, Armenian and Russian and her boyfriend is also bilingual, French and English. Head tilt: I know she speaks like 10 words of English and he speaks 5 words of Armenian. How do they communicate you ask? I have no idea. According to some Armenian friends they don’t need to, they speak the language of love. I’ve had a few days to think about this and it still boggles my mind. Some couples have communication issues when they both have the same mother tongue so I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be in a relationship with someone I can’t understand and who doesn’t understand me.

This reminded me of someone I used to work with. He was Mexican and his wife was Turkish but they both spoke English fluently. I often wondered what they spoke to each other during arguments. Although they were both also learning each other’s respective languages I wondered when it came time for arguments how they coped. I speak French pretty fluently but when I was a child I was even more fluent since I spent so much time with non English speaking family members. However, when I was a kid and my cousin and I argued which was often we would argue in French but I would get so frustrated that I would automatically revert to English when I wanted to make a point. So I always wonder when arguments get to a boiling point and each party is feeling frustrated do they revert back to their mother tongue.

The Ring

2006-08-30T01:30:00.000-05:00

I’m in a boxing ring, both a referee and a coach, caught between a rock and a hard place. The warring factions: the recipient client, funding client, and the boss. Being yelled at as I enforce the rules. The fans wanting to have their say. None of them understand each other and I don’t think they’re willing too actually. As I talk and cajole, ask them to view each others side, to make some headway I feel the weights getting heavier on my shoulders.

Today for a few minutes I longed for a 9 to 5 job one where I turned on my computer at 9:01 AM and turned it off at 4:59 PM without worrying about the work until the next day at 9:01 AM. That isn’t really what I want but these last few weeks have really tested my patience. It’s hard but so is life. This is what I want to do, it’s challenging but I wonder how much challenge can my shoulders bear. I’ve wanted to do this for as long as I can remember so I’m living my dream right? Maybe it isn’t the subject of the battle that’s weighing me down. Tax Administration, uh uhhhh! Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking only of better countries but of better subjects.

Oh So Livid!

2006-08-25T07:24:00.000-05:00

It’s Friday, my day started out well, I was looking forward to attending a dinner party at a colleague’s apartment then off to hang out at my favorite bar here in Yerevan. All of a sudden I became livid about something I saw online.

Mwen te telment fache. Pou ki sa ou vle tande? Parceque geyen ou neg qui mwen te amoureux avec qui pa te remain mwen meme facon. Mwen decouvrit que neg la mette un profile sur l’internet la ak ou photo qui te pren la cay mwen. Merde. Get maman li.

After about 10 minutes of being pissed at what I saw I became pissed at myself for being pissed and for being so damn dumb. Have you ever been pissed at your own actions and/or feelings after you had a chance to really think things through. Uhhhh!

So as I sit fuming at myself then I get a “backhand to the face” kind of email from our client. It wasn’t so much the “NO” I received in the email but the “I wish you would spend as much time doing x,y,z as you do a,b,c”. Eyeroll. I could feel my blood boiling as I read the email and decided to close the window and respond on Monday. I’m not going to deal with it this weekend, either issue. I’m going to enjoy the weekend hit a few of my favorite restaurants in Yerevan and enjoy life.

Have a great and fabulous weekend!

The Case of the Stalker

2006-08-23T11:32:00.000-05:00

Friday August 18th

Stalker: Hey Ladies
Us: Hey
Stalker: Ladies where are you from? Amerika?
Us: Yes
Stalker: Where you from in Amerika? Kansas, Nebraska?
Me: (Giving him a are you fucking kidding me eye. sorry square state people). We’re from D.C
Stalker: ah I want to go to Amerika, I want to go to Miami, I like Miami.
Me: (Eyeing his flower shirt, white pants and pointy white shoes) Well you’re certainly dressed for Miami.
Stalker: Where are you guys going?
Me: We’re meeting friends for drinks.
Stalker: Can I join you?
Me: uh no I don’t think so.
Stalker: Can I get your number?
Me: (frowning there’s something off about this dude) Uh no that’s not a good idea. Ok bye.
Stalker: ok bye.

My colleague and I walk into my favorite bar in Yerevan and meet up with some locals I’ve gotten to know on some of my trips here. After sitting down I look up and The Stalker has entered the bar. Luckily for us they don’t let random dudes in the place unless someone working or a regular patron can vouch for them and dude was eventually asked to leave. Fast forward about an hour and a half and my colleague and I are ready to head back to the hotel but who do we spot standing next to a tree across the street, pants glowing? The mufucking Stalker.

My first thought was ah I wish a mufucker would! I will get Brooklyn and cause an international incident. Common sense prevailed and my female colleague and I quickly hopped into a cab back to the hotel.

Saturday August 19th

My colleague and I are walking back to the hotel after hanging out at my favorite bar and spots a florist. (Corner Florist are open 24/7 here) She wants to buy a rose but the guy buying his girlfriend flowers insists on buying us one. We say thank you and we’re on our way. Half way back I notice a guy suddenly start walking slightly behind us. Me I don’t trust when someone suddenly starts walking near me in the wee hours of the morning. My colleague notices also and we cross the street. Dude continues walking in pace with us and for me that’s unusual. First people here walk very slowly, like they never have any place to be kind of slow and we were booking cause it was the wee hours of the morning. So finally I point out a bar that I went to once last year that had great music but was considered a gay bar. After noticing that the dude stopped when we stopped we ducked into the bar for a quick second. When we came back out 5 minutes later he was gone but we ran into the flower purchaser, his girlfriend and her brother who insisted that we go out for beers with them. It was 2:30 AM but after a while we both accepted and had a great conversation with them about life, Armenia, and the US over Red Bavaria brew which btw is quite delicious.

I've Got Nothing

2006-08-18T04:44:00.000-05:00

I had a couple of blog topics floating around in my head during my flight from DC to London to Yerevan but I can’t seem to develop anything but a sentence or two with each. My flight was un eventful which is probably a good thing. The security check lines both at Dulles and the transfer terminals at Heathrow weren’t long and my luggage arrived at the same time that I did. I was able to take my books, laptop and some electronic stuff with me on board so thank god I didn’t have to pull my hair out due to boredom. All in all pretty un eventful.

The weirdest feeling was not having my lip balm or hand lotion with me. I never realized how much I relied on those things until I didn’t have them for 17 hours.

I’m here for three weeks so I’m sure I’ll have something blog worthy soon, hopefully. I’m exhausted and am looking forward to this weekend so I can sleep.

I've Got the Blues..

2006-08-14T17:49:00.000-05:00

And I’m not sure why. I’m usually in an upbeat mood but today for some reason I’m just feeling pissy. Maybe it’s because today is my first day back in the office after being on vacation for a week. Maybe it’s because I’m leaving tomorrow for a 3 ½ week work trip. International travel isn’t the hotness right now and I hope I can at least take a book to read with me on the plane. I’ll go stir crazy with nothing to occupy my time for 17 hours.

I can’t remember the last time I was in an “uhhhh” mood and didn’t know what caused it. One of our admins came into my office to discuss something and when she droned on I could feel myself tensing and I literally had to keep myself still because all I wanted to do was turn back to my computer and ignore her.

Whenever I need a pick me up at work and head for the vending machine for a bag of cheetos. There is nothing like that crunchy cheesy goodness to help me feel so much better BUT as part of my eat well, live well, loose weight goal I’m ignoring my need and drinking a bottle of water instead and eating a mini bag of popcorn with no butter (Just 100 calories MNM).

Hopefully tomorrow is a better day.

Mom’s Say the Darnest Things

2006-08-11T10:23:00.000-05:00

Mama Honest is the bestest and although she can be worrisome on certain issues she really is the best mom a girl could want. My parent’s were born and raised in Haiti and both left in the early 60’s and eventually immigrated to the US in 1970 after they’d met and gotten married in Europe. Despite 36 years in the US their accents are still pretty thick. They also have a habit of mispronouncing words or incorrectly using certain phrases in conversations.

When my dad was visiting me a few weekends ago a friend of mine came by whose parents are also foreigners and is used to accents. After she left she commented that although she laughed she had no idea what he was saying. My dad says that we “people” hear with an accent and he speaks perfect English.

Yesterday my mom and I stopped at Circuit cit.y to buy a flash drive for her laptop and I reverted back into my childhood and asked her to buy me a DVD. When she said no, this led to a funny exchange with the cashier and ended with my mom saying and I quote “She’s a working girl; she can by her own DVD”. I saw the puzzled look the cashier gave my mom and when we left I had to tell my mom she just told the cashier I was a prostitute. As you can imagine she was a bit embarrassed but I’m used to these scenarios with my parents.

A long time ago my mom was telling me a story and kept repeating “It’s a meat, a meat”. When I was a teenager and my mom or dad was telling a story and they weren’t clear or didn’t pronounce something and I didn’t understand I’d just ignore them and keep moving. A few years later my mom repeated the “it’s a meat” story and when I finally stopped and asked her what in the world she was talking about she said “meat, you know not necessarily true, fairy tale”. It finally dawned on me that she was trying to say “Myth”. I was like “Ma its Myth” and she’s like yeah that’s what I said “meat”.

Unfortunately the French language lacks “th”

Anxious

2006-08-09T17:28:00.000-05:00

I’m taking the week off (kind of) in honor of my Honest Mama visiting from NYC. I started my semi vacation on Friday afternoon and it’s already Wednesday evening. Where did the time go? Yesterday my mom and I met some of my old colleagues for lunch outside of the agency I used to work for in downtown D.C.

As I sat on a bench and waited for our appointment time I ran into an old colleague that used to work for my current company but now work's for our major client, my old agency. Who says you can’t go from the private sector to government. Suddenly a certain weird feeling over came me as I watched more and more people go in and out of the office building with those familiar badges. I felt anxious, nervous even to be back where I started my career and the building I spent so much time in for the first three years of my DC life. Where I learned my lesson that you shouldn’t get your meat where you get your bread, and learned that sometimes in life you need to make a change.

Lunch was great and hanging out with my mom has also been great and I’m going to be sad to see her leave on Sunday. It’s funny but when my mom is visiting I forget I’m 32 years old and revert back to being a kid. Who am I to argue if she doesn’t think the kitchen floor was scrubbed hard enough and wants to do it herself, not I. Who am I to argue if she wants to vacuum and scrub even though I cleaned like a demon before she arrived? I am truly a spoiled kid.

Secrets and Such

2006-08-06T21:21:00.000-05:00

I have some and no, I won’t tell you people otherwise they won’t be secrets. I’ve learned over the years that the only way to keep a secret is to not tell anyone, not a soul. Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? Unfortunately some people don’t realize that you can’t tell people your secret and not expect it to get out. The following scenario has me shaking my head and trying to find the right moment to let the secret teller know that the supposed secret and its details she confirmed telling to only a handful of people have crossed continents and found its way across the Washington DC metropolitan area.

Secrets that involve sex, scandal and work colleagues are hot and too juicy to just let slide for most people. They’re like trying to grill asparagus with sesame oil, you’ll get a lot of smoke and if you’re not careful fire. That’s why I always say: “Don’t get your meat where you get your bread”. Do you really want your love life talked about at the water cooler, dinner parties and across the pond?

Cruel

2006-08-03T10:01:00.000-05:00

The world is a cruel, cruel place. I’m not talking about the war going on in Lebanon against innocent civilians, not talking about the probable (actual) civil war going on in Iraq. I’m talking about my fucking (yes I’m livid) air conditioning unit going out yesterday. Light flickered, then no more air. At first I thought ok maybe it’s going through that kick on, kick off cycle since I have it on auto. It never came back on; I lowered the temperature to make sure. Turned the thermostat on and off, went outside to turn the unit (thingy) on and off, and turned the switch off at the electrical panel and zip, nada. Lights are working, innanet is still on, cable and Tivo are working so I figured it’s my air conditioning unit giving up.

At 7 AM I call the heating and cooling people a friend recommended and they give me an 8AM to 12PM window. Lawd Jesus! It’s hot here, as my girl Mu would say “It’s as hot as two squirrels fighting in my cleavage”.

Hallelujah the cooling people come at 8:30 thinker around bill me $110 including a gas surcharge fee (da hell) and tell me there’s nothing they can do because the problem is with Pepco (DC’s electricity company). Apparently I have partial power going into the house so things like my air conditioning unit and my dryer aren’t working. I call Pepco get a computer asking me to give all the info, say yes or no and god forbid if you ask a question the computer will hang up on you. So I call back and finally yell enough for “operator” that I get a live person who tells me there’s a problem in my neighborhood that isn’t scheduled to be looked at until after 1PM. I guess I’ll go into the office now to cool off.

The world really is a cruel, cruel place.

Humidity, Porta potty’s, LCD Projector’s, and Gumbo

2006-07-31T21:40:00.000-05:00

Saturday night I thought I was going to a regular old back yard barbeque until I found myself smack dab in front of a “door” girl. You know the girl who collects the money after security goes through your bag or gives you a pat down. I think it was the Hostess who first noticed that there was also a porta potty there near the “entrance”. I use the term “entrance” loosely because the party started in the alley way. (Note: DC is full of alleys and most houses/apts have alley’s behind or beside them).

I guess they needed the extra room since the evite had at least 500 invitees and when I checked the address right before going to the party almost 300 people RSVP’d yes. The party was outdoors but I swear I could feel the humidity engulf me when I joined the crowd at the bar. Yup in the alley they set up a Tiki style bar. Oh and on the back of the hosts’ building the fight was being projected by an LCD projector and on the side of the house next to their building the same fight was being projected by a 2nd LCD projector. Apparently that’s how they roll. I guess we’re going to have to scrounge one up for next year’s birthday beach bash.

When we got there the food was pretty much gone since we waited around for these late broads before heading out to the spot. After one of the hosts told a tale of being burned while making gumbo but we didn’t have any sympathy for him. There was a tale of gumbo but we didn’t see or taste any. No sympathy from me, for all I know the gumbo wasn’t real or it wasn’t good. Either way we went out for Ethiopian afterwards to feed our addictions.

Friends

2006-07-27T16:44:00.000-05:00

You ever talk about the people whose blogs you read as “someone you know” because you don’t know what other category they’ll fit in and you don’t want to let on that you read blogs because the next question people will ask is “Do you have a blog and if so can I read it”? The Hostess and I read some of the same blogs and often when we’re with the crew we might mention something someone blogged about or a situation someone who blogs was in and I always feel a bit awkward when trying to explain the person I’m talking about.

It appears that Friends and Friendship is the topic du jour on blogs (the Hostess’) and on GMA. It’s made me reflect a bit about my own friendships and how they’ve evolved over the years as my friends and I grow older, relocated to different cities and are living our adult lives.

When I was a kid, my best friend was the daughter of one of my mom’s friends. Although she was 18 months older then me we played together and hung out from the moment I could walk until my freshman year in H.S when our friendship just drifted apart. I was the nerd, the goody two shoes who got good grades and didn’t do anything to get in trouble while she was the rebel, the one who hung out with boys from around the way (i.e; thugged out drug dealers). We started drifting apart when we were still in the same junior high but when she moved to H.S we stopped hanging out together period. My mom would always wonder what was wrong and why I never called Mickey and I didn’t know what to say. In reality Mickey stopped returning my phone calls, or when we chatted she made it obvious with her attitude that she didn’t have time for me. I was extremely hurt but realized that it was probably for the best because I didn’t care for the ghetto folks she started hanging around. A few years later I finally told my mom why Mickey and I were no longer friends. Mickey died in 2002 rather unexpectedly and I do regret not even at least trying to keep in touch when I returned to Brooklyn after college.

When I was in H.S and even college I spoke to my friends every day, several times a day. I remember my mom asking me in H.S if I didn’t see a friend at school because I was on the phone with them for 3 hours several times a week. I don’t even remember what was so important or what we even talked about for so long. Now I don’t expect to spend so much time with friends on the phone, we all have busy lives, work, relationships etc and all that takes up time. I have a few good friends some I’ll even consider best friends scattered around the country and at times I don’t talk to them for weeks and when I’m traveling it’s even longer then that. I don’t get upset when I haven’t heard from them for a while because I can always pick up the phone and call them. These are people that I know will do what they can if I need help. They also understand when I can’t accommodate their wants or needs and understand that I will when I can. I feel that friendships should be a give and take relationship and should also be easy. It shouldn’t be a burden but a blessing.

Good Times

2006-07-24T22:06:00.000-05:00

This weekend I continued the birthday celebration our third annual Birthday Beach Weekend. We went to “ssshhhh” can’t disclose the location for fear of folks discovering it’s greatness and ruining it. You know how people do J. We had about 23 city people show up although the forecast called for thunder storms. Other then the wind messing up our tent set up and the monsoon that occurred in the middle of the night the weekend was a great success. For some reason it gets better and better every year. Next year we’re going all out two nights in a row!

If there was a blemish on the weekend it would have to be the fly that kept creeping into my boy’s truck on the way home. I haven’t thought about it until recently but what is the purpose of a fly? Besides flying by your ear and causing folks to start flinging their arms all over the place what is their purpose?

Hustle and Struggle

2006-07-19T09:09:00.000-05:00

Hustle and Struggle that’s what I heard for five minutes as I tried to contort my body into a position designed to work my ab muscles. Damm it hurt so bad! Have you ever tried doing sit ups or ab exercises when you’re out of shape in that area? It feels like someone is trying to rip your guts out. Power through the trainer yelled out. I’m seriously trying really hard, no pain no gain right.

I’m on a mission to get this 32 year old body back into shape. I don’t want to be that chick; you know the one who let herself go after she turned 30. I want to be in shape and get my metabolism back on track so I’m not huffing and puffing after climbing a few flight of stairs. I want to get myself together so I feel confident and can stop cursing myself in the mirror because my clothes are tight.

My goal is to loose 20 pounds in 3 months, can I do it? I believe I can, if I put my mind to it and not use my constant business traveling as an excuse to not exercise or eat well. The only depressing thought is that I’ll need to do this for the rest of my life.