How to Repel a D-bag (according to people from Brooklyn)

I feel like every week, I start off like "Oh man it's Monday, this is totally the worst, I wish it was the weekend" and then one second later, it's Friday again, and I'm like, "How did it get to be Friday, this is awesomecrazy!"  And then the weekend goes by in an even faster blur, and I'm back at Monday all "Seriously, Monday again?  How is this possible?"  So this continues over and over again until pretty soon I'm like thirty-five, saying, "But you guys, I thought I was just a freshman in college?!?"

Anyways.

This is what's on my schedule for this weekend:

Tonight I'm going to go home, make dinner, watch Hulu, fight with myself about making myself look presentable, fight with myself to make me actually leave the house, dance to "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen for fifteen minutes straight, then meet up with ^^^ this kid (Frank) downtown because I haven't seen him in ages.  He's being all studious and pre-lawyer and stuff.

I'm seeing Heather too, but she's featured on this blog an awful lot, and I couldn't find a picture of the three of us.

And I'm actually technically crashing their dinner date, but you know, it's fine.  It happens.  It's cool.  Don't give me that look!

Then, if I'm feeling brave...

http://www.hobokenlepre-con.com/

I might partake in Broboken's first annual Lepre-con tomorrow.  Oh, lawsy mercy.

You see, I asked someone "Why does Hoboken have a St. Patty's bar hop when it's not St. Patty's?"

His response?  "Cuz they are awesome."

While that makes a lot of sense, and everything (no, it doesn't), but I Googled it and it turns out that the Lepre-con is happening this weekend because the "parade committee" just did this little thing called, you know, banning the city from having their annual St. Patrick's Day parade.  Now, why on earth would they do that?  Perhaps because of the excessive "lewd behavior, public drinking and other safety issues."

I totally wouldn't expect that at all of Broboken, so I'm sure that the festivities this weekend will be totally calm and uneventful and appropriate.  So yeah.  That might happen.

But one thing I'm definitely doing this weekend is seeing...

The Mimes and Mummers present Next to Normal!  I can't wait to see what these kids (along with Joshua Chase Gold, director of Mimes' Spelling Bee last year) have done with one of my favorite musicals.  And with the abundance of pre-show carb loading at Emilia's, it's sure to be a delicious night.

And it might look something like this:

(Circa 2009)

In case you didn't look closely enough, let me point out something important to you:

The original Mike Burns face, where it all began.

And then I'm headed over to the Greenwich Country Club for the first time with Jack and Jenny, but I'm not going to insert a picture here because I really want to finish writing this blog sometime soon.

Finally, here is one thing I'm not doing this weekend, but I found it pretty amusing and thought you all should know about it:

XXXXX FRIDAY, MARCH 2 XXXXX

Cat Face

A party where you draw a cat face on your face. Douchebags don’t like to draw cat faces on their faces so basically there will be no douchebags. The last one of these was amazing, sweaty fun till the lights went on. With DJs Mischief, Dirty Finger, Rpeg, Jess OK. Bad Kitty phone booth.

Public Assembly
70 North 6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
9p-4a; $5 with a cat face, $20 without
(as listed on nonsensenyc)

So, there you go, kids.  If you don't want to hang out with douchebags, draw a cat face on your face.  One of life's greatest mysteries: solved.

Happy weekend!
Courtney

Girls' Night(s)

This weekend was a long weekend.  Thanks, presidents!

Even though arguments can be made for the merits of men, sometimes you just need a girls' night.  That's how we felt this weekend.  So, we had two.

We had already planned a girls' night when we found out Allie got a promotion.  Hurray, Allie!  So, we celebrated with the only kind of sparkling stuff you should ever celebrate with.

Andre!

Just kidding.  That was just for the lols.  I got some Cava from Vinyl Wine, around the corner, which sells both records and wine (a winning combo).

However, you just couldn't tear away the Andre from Andrea (Andre??  Andrea??  GET IT??).

There was enough buffalo chicken pot pie to feed an army (thanks, Rachael Ray!).  And after playing dress-up-Allie-and-Courtney, we headed out...

...to CVS.  24 hour stores are seriously underappreciated in this town.

So while Allie bought some respectable drug-store product...

...Heather and Andrea took pictures.

What you should do at CVS....

...what you shouldn't do at CVS.

Open 24 hours, kids.  Appreciate it.

We headed over to Summit Bar, on 9th and Ave C, which was a nice place with a relaxed vibe, classic cocktails (an Old Fashioned over here, personally!) and a heated backyard patio.  I didn't take any pictures because I felt like it would be too tacky.

BUT at Common Ground the next night, I clearly had no qualms about being tacky.  I think that the prevalence of board games helped that out.

So, it was Apples to Apples and a dirty martini.  Andrea won (by a hair), but my personal favorite combo was: adjective: "overwhelming"; noun: "giving a hug."  It may have been because it was my combo, but let's just look at this objectively, people.

We gathered up the out-of-town girls (and yes, a few guys, so I guess we cheated a bit), pushed together a few tables, and pretended like we don't live in three separate cities.  Mama Jen even put up with my exuberant picture faces.

Uh, you don't live in separate cities, you guys.  Stop hogging all the camera time.

Let's get a GROUP picture, everyone!

"DIANA!  HEATHER!  GROUP PICTURE!!"

"Wait just one moment while I become distracted with your furry cardigan and Heather fixes her hair even though we want this picture to be totally natural and candid, of course."

"Okay now, I'll just put my arm around you, and we'll, like, all get together and smile and have our eyes open..."

 
"Welp, good try, everyone, but it's a bit blurry and there's mega red eye and there are boys photobombing in the background, which is what happens when boys invade girls' night."

"Look at that!  A beautiful picture of the five of us.  Well, your eyes are closed, Diana, but it was the best we could do, so we'll call it a success."

Then Alex took my camera and all of these pictures happened.

Random people.

Random people with funny faces.

Random people watching sports.

Random people... oh no wait, that's us.

Random creep in the backgrou... nope, again, that's me.

Let's all make our most flattering faces and it'll be great.

This is how we had to take all of our pictures on vacation last year because there were only the two of us.

Alas, we wrenched the camera back from him...

...but they took it back one last time for a final self-portrait.

Stay tuned for photos from our tour of the Brooklyn Brewery Monday!  So much can happen in a long weekend.

Love,

Courtney

Just some schtuff

The Pioneer Woman once told me, "when you don't have anything to blog about, just start writing."  Since the Pioneer Woman is the bomb, I will take her advice.

This weekend I spent with my mother doing touristy city things like staying in a hotel, shopping at Macy's, eating at the Brooklyn Diner (overpriced, not the kind of diner food I wanted) and seeing How to Succeed in Business, at which many 14-year-old girls kept me and Daniel Radcliffe apart, hindering our love.  Don't worry, we can both feel it.  It'll happen someday.

We also did not-touristy things, like seeing The Help (SO GOOD!  One of the best book-to-movie adaptations I've seen), eating at Rosa Mexicano, and going to the Pony Bar for dinner.  I took my mother to dinner at a bar.  I'm super classy.  But guess what??  The food there is delicious.  Like, I can't really even handle how good it is.  I would eat there every day if my finance and metabolism would allow it.

When I dropped my mom off at Grand Central, I cried like I used to when my cousins would leave to go back to New Hampshire after visiting for the day. (True story: one time I cried so much that they took me back with them.  No joke)  But seriously, man, I'll admit it, I was that lame-o twenty-one year old college graduate with the biggest backpack on earth and a Macy's bag full of clothes and cupcakes crying on her mom's shoulder in the middle of the terminal.  Listen, dude, real life is hard!  It's confusing!  And weekends are way too short.  So I'll own it.  I cried.  In fact, I went home and cried some more.  And watched 30 Rock.

Spin class.  It sucks.  Don't let anyone tell you different.  Granted, it sucked less than it did when I tried it at the Gold's Gym in Enfield two summers ago (no, I canNOT go up another gear and if you ask me ONE MORE TIME I will get off of this bike and THROW IT AT YOU) and it probably would have been decent if I had remembered to bring my inhaler (can someone please tell me why I am so susceptible to respiratory infections?) and I will probably go next week but still.  I wanted.  To die.

Our apartment gives us headaches, both literally and figuratively.  We finally got a mail key (I SWEAR I didn't lose it.  But I don't know what happened to it) and got our electric bill, awesome, not, but our toilets are still running.  I sometimes forget that it's daytime when I hide out in my basement.  There are centipedes taking over.  The fridge sometimes is REALLY cold and sometimes it just turns off altogether.  It smells like trash in the front because the trash dump is right outside our window.  And I still haven't cleaned my room.  But all in all, it's probably a pretty good first apartment.

I'm contemplating starting another blog.  But I don't blog in this already, and I'm really bad at sticking to blogs about one topic because I just love talking about me and myself and whatever I want to say.  So we'll see.  And it'd be anonymous, so I wouldn't really be able to post it here.  So I guess this paragraph was just all pointless.

When in doubt, have a cupcake.

Love,
Courtney

Weekend in Pikshures

The weekend went by so fast that it probably was just a dream (INCEPTION!), and Monday is bringing rain and yuck to darken and dampen and crush the Hartford area, just as it does to my soul.

I don't like Mondays, okay?  Monday means getting up early, and getting up early does not work well with me.  I need my sleep.  I need the sun to rise before I do.  I need many things.

Plus, my Droid did a software update this morning, and I don't like it.  It's not as pretty.  And I swear that it's slower.  Plus, according to this website, Verizon started the wave of Android 2.2 updates on August 3rd.  It is now August 16th.  I feel forgotten and offended.

But let's not dwell on the present, shall we?  Let's think of happier times... when the skies were clear... when there was no need for an alarm clock... when our Droids still had blue backgrounds instead of black...

Let's look at the weekend in pictures:

We had an excellent time at TECHDP HAAAY!!! on Friday, but when Colleen and I left on Saturday morning, we found this little guy on the door.  I guess that's what happens when you go to college in Storrs, Connecticut, and not the Bronx.

In the Bronx, the only sticks you see are nightsticks.  ROFLCOPTER!

Then, I took the train to New York Citaaayyy to meet my fam.  We went to see Rock of Ages, which was pretty darn rockin'.  I'll bet my dad and brother were really upset that we didn't see Promises, Promises.

Not.

Everyone got this thingies when they entered the theater.  They're little flashlights shaped like lighters that light up when you squeeze them.  It's so that you can wave it in the air and be all eighties and stuff.

You know what else they do when you enter the theater?  Make you throw out your Diet Snapple.  I need to get a purse with more pockets.

Apparently it was like the something-somethingth (65th?) anniversary of that picture where that World War 2 guy kisses that girl in Times Square, so they built an enormous statue and let people kiss in front of it.  There were bajillions of people in Times Square and in front of this statue milling about and pissing me off.  I hate the amount of people in Times Square.

Did you know that the girl and the guy in the WW2 picture didn't even know each other?  Well, apparently.  Because no one has ever really figured out who the subjects were for sure, but Edith Swain, who everyone believes is the girl in the picture, says that this random guy just came up to her and kissed her.  I hope his breath didn't stink because that would've been gross.

And then.  And then.  And then we went to Rosa Mexicano, my favorite Mexican restaurant in the history of the world.  Joe and his fam met us in the city, and all seven of us had some mad deliciouso food, including the freshly made guac that you see above.  Well, actually, I took that picture like four months ago when we went for Joe's birthday.  But it was just like that.  Only spicier.

The hotel wouldn't put out our cot for us because they maintained that it wouldn't fit.  So I slept standing up.  Just kidding.  But it's pretty funny looking, right?  IT LOOKS LIKE I'M SLEEPING BUT I'M NOT!!!

I ate this burger on Wednesday, and okay yeah, that wasn't a weekend, but it was a happier time.  It's from Shady Glen, which I saw on the Food Network once, and it has CRISPY CHEESE THAT GOES OUTSIDE THE BURGER!  Can you see it???

I folded mine inside the burger and ate it that way, and it was so good.  Then I ate some peppermint ice cream.  Then I went to Body Pump.  Then I puked.  Almost.

This is what happened when I got home from NYC.  I was tryin' to surf the net and sheeet, and my cat climbed on my stomach in between me and my laptop.  Despite the angry face he has on in this picture, he really loves me and is glad that I'm home.  He's going to miss me so much when I leave in a week.

--

In other cat-related news, I looked through my phone and realized that approximately 70% of my photos are of my cat.  Need a life much?  More on this tomorrow.

I just realized that "more on" sounds like "moron" and laughed a lot.  Now I feel like a more on.

Love and Monday blues,
Courtney

PS: But.  But.  But.  But.  Mondays are Moe's Mondays.  This afternoon is looking to be a lot more promising.

What We're Doing Tonight

I am an excellent invite person.

HAPPY FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH!

Love, Courtney