Me and the Bachelor

So apparently my father is on a first name basis with Andrew Firestone (a.k.a the gorgeous bachelor from television who is also the great-grandson of Harvey Firestone who started the Firestone Tire company). I was at the 50th anniversary of the interstate highway system shindig when Mr. Firestone started walking toward my dad, his secretary, and I.
Me: "Ohmygod, Andrew Firestone is coming right toward us."
Dad: "Hello, Andrew, how's it going?"
Andrew: "Fine, sir, going well."
Dad: "This is my daughter Jessica."
Andrew: "Hi, Jessica, nice to meet you."
Jessica: ::gaping mouth with slight gurgling noise::
Dad's secretary: "Jessica just graduated from law school."
Andrew: "Oh, really, where from?"
Jessica: ::wide-eyed stare when she realizes he is looking at her and engaging her in conversation::
Silence.
Dad: ::clears throat::
Jessica: "Um, Akron...." (pointing off into the distance at who knows what)
Andrew: "Oh, my brother went to Pepperdine."
Jessica: "Oh, that's a way better school."
Silence.
Andrew: "Well, I guess its less the school and more the person, really. I mean, I went to a lot of nice schools, and that really didn't help me."
Jessica: "HAHAHA...hahahaha......ahem."
Silence as Dad and Andrew stare at Jessica and Jessica looks at her toes.
Dad: "So, I had dinner with your brother last month."
Andrew: "Ah, at the Inventor's Hall of Fame. Yeah, he said that was really neat. Although it was weird that it took them 100 years to get Harvey in there."
Dad: "That's what my wife said. They also inducted the guy who invented Prozac......"
The two best friends walk off together chit-chatting while Jessica stares ahead with her head tilted to one side until the euphoria wears off and she realizes with horror what she had done.

My dad commented later that my face was as red as the Firestone shirts and that he had never, ever seen me at a loss for words.

Fashion Rant

So you know what I hate? Shirts that have "built-in" necklaces. If you do not have enough fashion sense to know what necklaces compliment what neckline, then you should not be allowed to purchase clothing at all. You should be forced to wear a potato sack and a lanyard with a card on it so that those that are curious may look at the card that reads "I do not know how to pair shirts with necklaces properly."

Case of the Missing Shoes (again!)

So you will be happy to know we found the pointy leather sling backs. But now there is a more urgent and frightening problem: I have an empty shoe box and I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT THE SHOE LOOKED LIKE THAT WENT IN IT.

It is difficult looking for a lost shoe as it is....but trying to find a shoe when you don't even remember what it looks like?!? (Let's just overlook the fact that I have so many pairs of shoes that I am beginning to forget what they look like...) Oh, the horror. I tried looking up the brand name on line (it's an Audrey Brooke shoe called "Melanie") but of course they don't have a website. I have deduced that I bought the shoes from DSW, and am now trying to rack my brain to remember what shoes I have purchased from there.

What is even more upsetting (I know, I know..how could it get any worse?!?) is that under normal circumstances I write on the outside of the box a description of the shoe and when I purchased it ("Black Kid Suede High Heel with Buckle Winter 2005"). This box has NO LABEL.

I don't know what I'm going to do until I find those shoes.

Backfield in motion

So I went to the park today with my gigundo bar review book. After awhile, my mind started to wander and as I read the same sentence over and over again I became aware of a periodic ::thunk:: behind me. I turned around and saw an old man with a football. He would take the football in one hand, and after what looked like a baseball pitch wind-up he would chuck the ball through the branches of a nearby tree. The football would hit the ground with a ::thunk:: a dozen yards or so from the old man and he would slowly walk to retreive it. Then he would throw the ball into the tree again from the other side.

As crazy as it sounds, it looked like fun.

Wedding shower

So a very good friend of mine is getting married this summer. Today was her wedding shower. To me, wedding showers are one of the worst marital traditions since the bouquet toss. They really don't even make sense anymore; most couples are living together before they get married ("Living in SIN" as my mother likes to remind me), so they don't need all their friends, family, and second-cousins to buy them blenders and toasters, etc. The food is always bland, the party games suck, and worst of all they never serve alcohol.

This bridal shower was worse than most because it was run by my friend's 10 bridesmaids, six of whom were all in the same sorority in college. It was like being at a shower run by the Stepford Wives: they're all thin, pretty, smiling, contemptuous bitches. I went to high school with a few of them and other than the slight variations in hair color (almost all blonde highlights, like, Ohmigod) and huge rocks on their left hand, it was exactly the same cliquey bullshit. I wanted to shout at them, "OH yeah? Well while you were off getting married and pregnant I got.....um, a law degree. So there."

The icing on the proverbial cake? The party was alphabet themed (a large chunk of the bridesmaids were also teachers). Each guest was assigned a letter and you could only bring a gift that started with that letter. I got "B" (my mother asked if that stood for "bitch"...with the femnazis in charge I wouldn't be surprised). My mother got "G". After perusing the wedding registry, my mother despaired that there was nothing that started with G. I told her to be creative and get cake products and say the "G" stands for "gateaux" which is French for cake. Proud of our witty solution to the thematic conundrum, we watched in dismay as the gift was handed down the assembly line of sorority sisters who opened the package for her and presented it to her for her approval.

My gift? A Bundt pan and beige bath towels. Double word score for the towels.

Let there be light

So I there are four light bulbs in my bathroom, and for the past six months or so three of them have been burnt out. So the bathroom lighting has been provided by one brave, solitary bulb. It gave the bathroom a 1970s atmosphere, like an old photograph, where everything is dim and had a tinge of burnt sienna. Since studying for the bar exam affords ample opportunity to procrastinate, I decided to replace the bulbs. When I first moved into my apartment my mother had bought me these new special lightbulbs that were only supposed to filter white light so you can see the "true color" of things. I had three of them, so I decided to use them. The bathroom went from being soft and beige to being dazzlingly white---and appallingly filthy. It was like I had never cleaned the place, ever. The new bulbs revealed that the true color of my bathroom was not cream: it was dirty.

In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom. I had forgotten about the new bulbs and turned on the light. I was instantly blinded by what seemed to be a giant lighthouse bulb above my bathroom mirror. It was like that scene in Christmas Vacation, when Clark W. Griswold finally gets the lights on his house to work and it blinds the next-door neighbors, who end up knocking over expensive wine glasses and a glass tabletop, except I was running into the counter over and over again, stubbing my toe and flailing my arms about while I pulled down the shower curtain and knocked various toiletries from the counter into (ironically) the toilet.

The casualty list included a bottle of Candy Apple body spray, an eyeliner pencil in Pewter, and a box of Kleenex.