Friday, June 19, 2009

Don't Hate the Player

Ah, the charade that is "work" the day after a night out.
You should see my office right now -- usually bustling and so loud you want to kill yourself, today it's so quiet in here I can hear Daniella snoring next to me. And, oh by the way, she's wearing a Snuggie. Again.
My dear dear Daniella is getting ready to head to Montreal for law school, and last night was our going away party for her. A good percentage of the Hired Guns crew headed down to the East Village for the first leg of our night out. She's a huge beer lover/snob, so we thought Burp Castle on 7th Street would be perfect. It was not perfect. There were about 15 other people in the tiny spot, and in the ten minutes we were there, we were shushed by the bartender no fewer than 3 times. Shushed. By the bartender. Are you fucking kidding me? So, after flicking off the biatch behind the bar, off we went to DBA, which was perrrrfect. Big table outside in the back. Lots of good beer. Pierogies that mysteriously landed on the table from Veselka. (Scott was hungry, apparently, and it would prove to be a key move later in the evening.) Next stop was Winnie's in Chinatown. For you non-NYCers, Winnie's is one of the city’s most classic karaoke bars. For you non-Jessicaers, I cannot sing for shit. I'll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say, the night had some highlights: everyone (in the bar, not just in our party) wore the snuggie at some point. (Don't worry about why we had a snuggie. Not important.) Hey Mickey, Sweet Child o' Mine, and To All the Girls I've Loved Before were all covered - the last of which was surprisingly accurate considering it was sung by a (mostly) gay man. And everyone I work with drank out of the stiletto I was wearing. (Notice I don't say everyone drank out of MY shoe, because it was not, in fact, my shoe. Again, not important.) A 3AM cab ride home, and back to work as usual today. (Just an hour or two or four later than usual. And that's saying something, because "usual" is already pretty late.)
So here I am, at nearly 5 o'clock, looking at all my bleary-eyed coworkers doing the exact same thing I am doing, which is to pretend to work. Or, more accurately, to focus all possible effort on not letting either 82 pound eyelid close. Nothing productive has been accomplished today, outside of a painfully slow walk up to 23rd Street for dumplings. (Fried. The big order.)
Why are we playing this game? Who are we fooling? Silly, silly professionals.
Okay, time to see if I can't tie my unwashed ponytail to my bra strap, to keep my head from bobbing forward anymore.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Hungry Hungry Hippy

Okay, there are officially only two reasons to run.
1. Your ass is on fire.
2. Someone is chasing you, with a knife or something else very sharp and scary.
Because otherwise, it just sucks, pointlessly.
Case in point: today, I decided to go running.
This decision stemmed from the crappy afternoon I spent with my iPod, which was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge my existence.
See the problem already?
The only good thing about going running, ever, is that it gives you an excuse to listen to ridiculous music. If I was simply on my way to work in the morning, or wandering the aisles of the grocery store, and someone caught me humming along to "Womanizer" or "Dance -- Too Much Booty in the Pants" I would be embarrassed. But when you're running, they may look at you funny but who cares? Because then you're just gone! (Shout out, Phoebe.)
But here's the thing. When your iPod is ignoring you, and so you decide to go running, you run in silence.
Or rather, you run listening to the sounds of your own wheezing and gasping for precious breath.
And you increase the chances that you'll inhale a bug as you suck wind, which means you then have to listen to yourself hack and make that awful old smoker gutteral noise.
All I really want to do is sit here on the couch, breathing normally, watching Best and Worst Beach Bodies on E!, drinking a glass of wine and complaining about nothing.
All the running in the world is not going to diminish the curviness of hips like these. And I read somewhere that once you get cellulite, you never lose it. (I also read that once you lose your eyelashes they never grow back. Does anyone know if that's true?) So, really, if I'm going to have these big ole hips anyway, doesn't running around just seem... childish?
Anyone?