Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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secret gourmets and undead dreams

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We got home late last night from having a minor dinner party with some friends.

The dinner party surprised me. It turns out that in addition to being a terrific actress, natural marketer, and one of my favorite dance partners, our friend Gina-O (i.e., not BFF Gina, but a different, second Gina with a nearly identical last name) is an amazing gourmet cook and furniture refinisher.

How did I not know this about her after knowing her for nearly five years? This is someone I absolutely gravitate to whenever we’re out with a group of people, and I am just learning these major facts about her.

Another thing to chalk up to my self-centeredness? Or is it entirely possible that other seeming extroverts don’t wear their entire lives on their sleeves.

(I only do it on my blog.)

I do not do late on weeknights anymore, unless it is for a show and I have the motivating energy of rock to keep me propped upright. I was so unbelievably tired that I think I may have intentionally driven over the speed limit for the first time on my way home in an effort to get into our bed that much more quickly.

E woke up crying in the middle of the night, which made me wake up and hug her in response. She was quite inconsolable, but said it was just a bad dream, and we were both super-exhausted, so we fell right back to sleep.

As I was fishing through my sock drawer this morning, I looked back over my shoulder at her as she stretched across the bed like a cat.

“So, the crying. What was that about?” I asked her.

“I told you, it was a bad dream,” she replied.

“Like, a depressing dream?”

“It was kind of an post-apocalyptic scenario. With two different kinds of undead battling for supremacy. Like 12 Monkeys meets Walking Dead. And I was the leader of the one tribe!”

“That actually sounds like an awesome dream.”

“Then I died at the end. Well, actually, I was dead already, so I regained my humanity. But it was still tragic.”

“Did you win?”

“Unclear. It was more of a set-up for a sequel.”

“Ah.”

Crying in her sleep about leading her tribe of undead to an uncertain truce only to become a martyr … until the sequel to her dream is optioned for production, anyway.

My wife, ladies and gentleman.

tuesday morning brain

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Scene: 8 o’clock in the morning, I am rounding my neighbor’s inordinantly large front yard in my business clothes and running sneakers, en route to my trolley.

Thoughts as follows:

This walk is boring.

Their yard is too big. It adds at least a tenth of a mile to my walk to work. That’s, like, a minute. I wish I could cut through their yard instead of going around it.

This is taking forever. I wonder if they would mind if I cut across their yard. That seems like the sort of thing you should maybe ask permission before doing. I could just try once, to see if they say anything.

Who would want a front yard this big, anyhow? It’s not good for anything. It’s not as if you would have a picnic out here for all of the neighborhood to see.

Do you know what would make this better? Music. I could listen to a third of a song while walking around this yard. Or, I could sing a song. It’s a little early for that.

It would be great if I had some way of playing a song right now. Like, if I had a device with me that did that – a portable music player of some kind. And headphones. That would be ideal.

Finally, the damned yard is over.

Oh, shit, I left my iPod on the hall table.

(I glance back over my shoulder at the expanse of the neighbor’s yard.)

Their yard is too big.

In case you ever wondered, this is how my brain actually works.

Defending Our Ride on CBSLocal Philly!

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E and I are sharing a slice of Internet Fame today courtesy of CBSLocal Philly via their auto correspondent @MikeyIl (who you may recall from my epic interview with him last summer).

Shot by MikeyIl for CBS Local.

My only prior auto-related run-in with Mikey was when he drove me to a concert in a pimped out ride he had on loan for a week to write up for a blog. Many months ago, Mikey put out the call for Philly residents with cars they really loved that were less than five years old. Feeling pretty strongly about the utility of our Toyota Matrix, E and I volunteer and wound up with an interview and photo shoot with our car! It’s our first shared press!

You can read the entire interview and see Mikey’s photos at CBSLocal Philly. As a bonus, here are a few exchanges from our interview that got wound up on the cutting room floor:

DYR: Does your car have an nickname?

E: I’m leaning towards Molly, though after Molly Weasley or Molly Bloom, I’m not sure.

 

DYR: Where did you get your car from? What/where was the dealer?

P: I didn’t even have my license when we bought the car, so a big test for us was if the dealer would actually talk to Elise about car stuff. I didn’t even know which side the gas pedal was on – I was there solely to haggle. I actually staged a walk-out mid-conversation at one dealer who didn’t seem as though he was actually listening to what Elise was saying.

Locally we work with Ardmore Toyota. Except, if you’re me, you sometimes call Toyota of Ardmore OKLAHOMA … which would explain why everyone answered with southern accents for a whole week that one time.

 

DYR: What’s your favorite or worst part of your commute?

E: I’ve driven it to work a few times. My favorite part is when I can first see the skyscrapers, and my least favorite part is when the radio cuts out in the parking garage. :)

P: I commuted to work once all summer. It was about five minutes shorter than my SEPTA commute but, unlike the El, I was not afraid of catching syphilis during the ride.

 
Oh, and this non-sequitur:

P: Elise is the best car-packing Tetris player I’ve ever known. She can make anything fit into anything.

Who will I be in 2012?

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Eight years ago (!) I made three blanket resolutions that I have hung on to nearly every week of my life since them.

Clearly, they work well for me and do not need any changing.

Hell, they could work for anyone – watch what you spend, watch what you eat, and spend your time wisely.

Doing all three of them doesn’t yield any specific sort of result, but you wind up with plenty of extra money, energy, and time – the three things we’re always wishing for.

It’s deciding what to do with all that extra capacity in your life that is the tricky part.

It’s easy to see the benefit of hindsight. 2009 was a year of saving up my life. 2010 was a year of spending it. 2011 was a year of enjoying it. I saved for the house, rehearsed the hell out of the bands, and worked my butt off for a promotion, spent my cache of effort, and then reaped the rewards.

As 2012 stretches out empty in front of us, I find myself wondering – what else do I want? You can’t live your whole life off of the royalty check of one cool thing you did, once upon a time. That’s how reality TV stars are born. It’s a land of diminishing returns.

If you didn’t get everything you wanted in 2011, I hope you know what it is and how you’re going to get it in 2012.

If you’re happy with who and where you are right now, I hope you find yourself ready and willing to want something new.

As for me, at the beginning of a new year I am always looking forward to becoming a better version of myself.

I will let you know as soon as I figure out who he is.

 

Crushing On: Okabashi Shoes

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When I joined a gym early in 2011 I had one major concern.

Okay, two, but everyone looks silly at points while doing yoga, so I got over that one pretty fast.

No, my major worry was the showers. Really it was an array of several related worries. A bouquet, if you will.

Meet my new gym enablers. I love them.

After a year of gym-going I was able to sublimate OCD Godzilla for long enough to be seen mostly nude by other human beings not on the internet, use gym-supplied towels without breaking into hives, and bypass my typically lengthy shampoo regimen while still feeling clean. Yet, nothing can disengage my genetic heritage of being skeeved out by stuff, and there is nothing more skeevy than the floor of a four-by-four square stall that has sweaty naked men coming and going from it all day.

For some people, a turn-on. For me, skeevy.

It came down to my feet. I am notoriously sensitive about the idea that feet are meant to touch the ground, which other stuff has touched, and thus might be dirty. I was the child that needed to be carried directly from the ocean to the beach towel, so no offensive sand could stick to my tiny toes. Wearing flip flops anywhere but the poolside was (confession: still is) absolutely verboten, less the edge of my heel slip from their rubberized surface to touch the ground in a parking lot or grocery store freezer aisle or any other location where I might catch a deadly foot plague.

Wow, who knew it would feel so good to type that all out?

Back to the gym. Even after I got over all of my other shower hangups, I could not let any part of my feel touch the shower stall. “Of course,” you say, “I wouldn’t either.” Yet, my autopodomysophobia extended to the flip flops. Would they not also become riddled with disease over time due to their contact with the shower stall floor, spreading to infect not only my feet, but my entire gym bag?

For most people this image conveys the idea of a relaxing vacation. For me, it conveys the idea of OCD heart attack. This may explain why I have not been on a beach for over 10 years.

This spawned lengthy, philosophical conversations with my co-workers about what they did with their shower shoes. No explanation was enough for me. I slowly tapered down my gym-going, as on every freshly-showered return to my desk I could do nothing but worry about my feet, which surely had contracted a fungus from my flip flops.

And chlamydia.

And the plague.

I decided I needed a pair of flip flops that could be put in the washer, or dishwasher, or microwave, or some other disinfecting appliance short of the furnace.

Enter my good (also OCD) friend Mary and her suggestion of Okabashi shoes.

These Okabashi people know all about the concept of shower OCD. Their flip flips are molded from just one or two pieces of injected molded microplast, which means there are few nooks and crannies for dirt and chlamydia to infest. They are treated with an anti-microbial agent, which means less fear today and more super-germs in our apocalyptic future. Plus, Made in the USA!

Most importantly: they are completely waterproof and dishwasher safe!

Three days and $20 later, I had a pair of Okabashi shower shoes that are completely impervious to all possibly gym shower floor related phobias and concerns. And, if I get concerned I can just spray them down or put them in the dishwasher.

Problem solved! I have literally been to the gym twice as much since I acquired the new shoes. That’s even better than a New Year’s Resolution!

(PS: The shoes run slightly small, I would consider estimating up one half size.)