Archive for October, 2009

Happy fucking Halloween.

If there were such a thing as a Halloween Scrooge, it would be me. I hate this holiday. Mostly because I feel like I SHOULD be really good at this holiday, having a relatively sharp wit and creative brain, but in reality, I suck.

Most of my problems stem from the fact that I’m morally opposed to dressing as anything remotely slutty or cute. This severely limits my ability to buy costumes from costume stores. It also means I really have to make up in wit what I lack in looks if I’m to make a Halloween love connection. Which leads to my second problem: in my quest to come up with a creative costume idea, I’m typically a little TOO creative. Like the year I went as gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe. Did I mention I was a freshman in college? In a sea of slutty nurses, I was easy to pick out. One just had to look for the Amazon in the pink vest with a flip flop taped to her head.

So of course it’s Halloween day and I’m flush in creative options, not one of which is a good idea.

A sampler:

The Jolly Green Giant (ho-hum)

All gold. Then my answer to the question, “What are you?” can be any one of the following: the gold standard, the golden age, golden, heart of gold, tears of gold, fields of gold.

Brandy (you’re a fine girl)

A picnic

A hoe (as in a garden hoe)

All silver, see all gold reason.

The Walrus

And the winner: Wrapping myself in multi-hued fabric, carrying a book, and calling myself the reading rainbow.

Success beyond my wildest dreams or doomed to fail?

You decide.

I went to a Hip Hop show last night. I decidedly do not belong at Hip Hop shows.

Living in Boulder (a.k.a. middle class white-dom) has eliminated any racial tensions I may have encountered in a more diverse community, but it has not eliminated my lack of rhythm, my lack of a flat-brimmed hat, my lack of neon-hued articles of clothing, and my lack of ability to understand what a rapper is saying.

I wore my glasses and refused to throw my hands in the air.

Plus, I thought Mos Def said Hip Hop was dead. Maybe it was Nas. Whatever, I’ve already established that I don’t belong.

I'm this guy, but not as cool

It probably goes without saying that law school apps make anyone a glass case of emotions. All the workings of a nervous breakdown are present: the prospect of major transition, the torture instrument called the LSAT, and the scramble to get apps sent as early as possible. But here’re the stupid things I’ve done to further toy with my feelings: signed up for the recruiting service and researched schools.

The recruiting service is a nice idea. It theoretically gives schools access to candidates they’d like to see gracing the hallowed halls of their institutions. Schools often show their interest by waiving application fees, an extremely delightful feature for any applicant dreading shelling out thousands of dollars to electronically submit a couple of pieces of paper. Most of the schools that have waived my fee are schools I’d likely never attend because they’re in places like Tulsa. Given my compulsion toward international law, I have a hard time imagining any international experience happening in land-locked states. But a couple of schools in the top 20 (and on coasts!) have sent me a treasured email noting they’ve waived that fee. Sure, it makes me feel good. Sure, it boosts my ego. If they’re waiving my fee, they totally want me to come there, right? Except that this false confidence is inflating my hope of where I get in (I’m OBVIOUSLY Harvard-bound if I get my fee waived by a top 20 school, right?), so when the rejection letters come back, I’ll be especially crushed. Cruel, cruel world.

The research is my own fault. There are a couple of international law programs out there that have especially extensive and especially geeky courses. Of course, that makes me foam at the mouth, staring at my computer screen slack-jawed enjoying the intellectual foreplay. So I get obsessive. I want to know EVERYTHING about those schools. I read all the profiles, watch all the stupid little videos, and memorize the school stats so I can throw them into everyday conversation:

Person: “How’s it going today?”

Laura: “Oh, not bad, but did you know NYU was founded in 1835?”

Person: “What?”

Laura: “Oh, no big deal, I was just thinking about the fact that the Georgetown Law Library has 1,075 seats.”

This extensive obsessing leads to finding out things I don’t want to know. For instance, perusing some profiles of current students at NYU made me realize that while I’ve been screwing around in the world of wine, business, and burritos, my fellow applicants have been curing cancer, studying soil in Antarctica, feeding orphans by hand in Rwanda, and learning to speak every language in the world, ever. It’s cool, though, I can totally tell you the difference between California and Burgundy Chardonnay. I’m sure that’s going to speak to my future success as a lawyer. I obviously am as qualified to attend the schools of my dreams.

Bear with me, dear friends, in this period of darkness. Someday I’ll represent your interests as you navigate the legal ropes and all this law school drama will be behind me. But until then, tread lightly. My ego is fragile.

Warning, dangerously self-reflective post follows.

I recently discussed a topic with my roommate, Lindsay, that I think warrants mentioning in a self-indulgent blog post: the dichotomy of personality that we all try to suppress in our various circles except to those who really know us.

In my case, I’d call these personalities “Laura” and “Shunk” (the credit for that one goes to Lindsay, who stole it from someone else). “Laura” is the future lawyer, former business analyst, former corporate department leader, graduate with honors that hangs all of her clothes in her closet according to color and sleeve length, facing the same way. She doesn’t drink caffeine, she embraces organic brown rice and vegetables, and she works out 5 times a week. Her shoes usually match her purse, she’s never late to an important meeting, and she can carry on a conversation with anyone. She crafts business plans, spends nights in reading The Economist and drinking wine, makes people laugh with sharp and well-timed witticisms, and sucks friends into discussions about the state of agriculture in South America. “Laura” throws dinner parties, makes a decent risotto, and cleans the kitchen. “Laura” has her shit together.

By contrast, “Shunk” is a slob. She doesn’t do her laundry until she has no clean underwear (she probably even goes commando for a few days). She’s prone to whims, drinking too much on a weeknight, and sleeping until 1 pm, only to drag herself out of bed to lie on the couch moaning about her state of affairs. She’s the one in the corner (uh, center) of the party forcing everyone to drink from the bottle. She likes to eat chocolate (or pork or chips or ginger cookies or…) until she feels a little sick and she drinks caffeine to the point of upset stomach and nervous sweat. She doesn’t balance her checkbook, has a pile of drycleaning that has needed to be done since she lived in New York, and sleeps on her mattress pad for a couple of nights since she’s a little too lazy to make the bed. And to top it off, she makes crude jokes, burps loudly in semi-public places, and wears sweats or a puffy vest. “Shunk” is anxious and certain she’ll die alone with her cats (both “Laura” and “Shunk” hate cats).

Whether “Laura” or “Shunk” is the prevalent personality in my life at any particular moment, the reality is that they both exist, oft harmoniously, but usually in conflict, and one’s likely not going to ever totally win out over the other. The content of this blog usually reflects moments when “Laura” meets “Shunk” and some sort of awkwardness ensues. Awkwardness is the bread of life and, honestly, I find it really charming when I see those moments in other people: the cracks behind the public perfection.

That’s the end of my “Dear Diary, I have feelings” rant.  And secretly, I’m pretty happy that with “Laura” comes “Shunk.”

Yesterday was a hangover day. I made a series of bad decisions on a Tuesday night propagated mostly by a soon-ending employee discount and the suggestion that we start consuming the wine bequeathed to me upon quitting my sales rep gig. I pulled a typical Laura Shunk, creeping to my bed without arousing the suspicions of the other party members, and woke up wearing what my family likes to euphemistically call the wine hat. It was torture, too; not even a Chipotle burrito did the trick. But as I tried not to pass out while playing Tetris with boxes of produce in the walk-in refrigerator in an attempt to get to the olives, I was comforted by the fact that this hangover didn’t even creep into the top 5 hangovers of all time list. And reflecting on each of those is the only thing that got me through the cold hard night.

In chronological order:

The Tequila Night Hangover.

You always remember your first time. Tequila Night occurred freshman year of college, and up until that fateful day in February, I was that annoying girl that bragged about my ability to consume alcohol and not even feel it the next day. What’s more likely is that I’d never consumed ENOUGH alcohol to feel it, or I’d never met tequila. Either way, Tequila Night started out with a sober friend instigating shot after shot after shot and evolved into freshman-style debauchery, complete with toplessness, vomit, and a very exclusive game of spin-the-bottle (read: 4 players). Somewhere in there, I realized how drunk I was, remembered that it’s always best to eat in those situations, and found myself in my dorm room, my roommate passed out in her bed, eating tortilla chips off the floor.

Fast forward to the next morning and I suddenly know what it means to be hungover. I can’t move for fear of throwing up. One of my friends finally coaxes me into the dining hall for some friendly grease and waves of nausea overtake me. I keep it together until I run into one of the members of the spin-the-bottle game who may or may not have witnessed the tortilla chip incident. And then I hid in my room for the rest of the day, welcomed to the world of true adulthood.

The Wedding Weekend Hangover.

I’ve admittedly had a few weekends of overdoing it that give cause for a brown-rice style detox supplemented by a lot of milk thistle to clean out the old liver. Perhaps the most epic of these, however, was a wedding weekend in between junior and senior year of college. Any intelligent person knows what will happen if you give a bunch of single college-aged kids in Iowa free transportation and a series of open bars: overconsumption, bad decisions, and serious awkwardness. My friend Katie and I showed up ready for business and spent the weekend undulating between seriously hungover and seriously buzzed (I’ll spare the details of our antics). Jess, our more responsible third cohort, was kind enough to beg us to eat so as to combat some of the problematic effects of alcohol.

Sunday morning came far too quickly for our tastes, and Katie and I had a long drive back to Colorado. After another open bar at brunch, the thought of which brought on waves of queasiness, we got in my Honda Civic for the 12-hour trek. No talking, no looking side to side, no fun. But as bad as it was for me, Katie was having heart palpitations… so I got to spend that day not only fighting my own bleary-eyed misery but also wondering if Katie was going to die. She didn’t, by the way.

The Rocktober Hangover.

It was my first October in the real world and I hadn’t totally adjusted to the notion of being a responsible adult yet. As a side note, I wish this was still the excuse for the next two hangovers, but I most-unfortunately knew EXACTLY what I was getting myself into in those. My first October in the real world took place in Denver, CO and happened to coincide with the first time in years that the Rockies pulled out the wild card spot and made it to the playoffs. The night of the wild card game, I was entertaining a dude I’d been dating and a couple of friends who were also a kind of couple. We were having a nice responsible glass of wine at a wine bar when news hit of the Rockies victory. Like good responsible fair-weather-fan Coloradoans, we took this as our cue to celebrate. With a couple of VERY expensive bottles of wine, followed by several rounds of Patron. On a weeknight.

The end of the night is fuzzy. I know my date took a cab home with me around 2:30 am, only to have me slam the door in his face and request that he not walk me to the door. When I woke up at 7 the next morning to an alarm intended to arouse me from slumber and go to work, I had to put one foot on the ground to keep the room from spinning. A couple of vomits later, I knew work was out of the question. I called in sick. And then because I sounded so miserable I knew there was no way anyone would believe that I’d be so chipper the day after, I called in sick the day after the hangover day to make it believable.

As bad as that was for me, however, it doesn’t even compare to the day my friend had: after she lost her purse at the last bar we were at, she barfed all over her boyfriend’s stairs, had to call work the next morning from a payphone, and, because she couldn’t find her purse, took public transportation back to the suburbs to get the extra key to her car (this is a challenge in Denver; it’s not a city set up for public transportation adventures). While wearing high heels, basketball shorts, and one of my giant tee shirts. Classy.

The 2-day Neckbrace Hangover.

The very worst hangover I’ve ever had in my life came after a work event. The financial consulting firm at which I used to work prided itself on the open bars it threw for its employees. These always bordered on shitshow, even for more senior members of the firm. But all-analyst events, events at which just recent graduates were present, were the absolute worst. One of these events took place in a gross Chelsea club about 3 weeks before I left the firm for life in wine. A few too many dirty martinis ended my night sans coat in a cab back to Brooklyn. I may or may not have barfed in the cab. I may or may not have lost my keys.

Regardless, I definitely woke up the next morning completely unable to move my head because my neck was epically tweaked. I had to get out of bed to copy my roommate’s keys, but I didn’t move from the couch for the rest of the weekend. I still get a pain in my neck when the weather turns. Only instead of being one of those people who can brag about my football injuries, I’m that idiot that drank too much gin and olive juice and gave herself arthritis.

The Sake Hangover.

The most recent top-5-worthy hangover story was the universe’s way of punishing me for bad decisions. Working in distribution meant that I had to occasionally entertain visiting suppliers (be they winemakers, other sales reps, or importers), and I was especially excited for our sake importer to come to Boulder. I got to meet him before I was supposed to take him out, and he was one of those perfectly-pressed tiny Japanese men. I’m tousled (in a sexy way, obviously) on my best days, and a mess on my worst. I barely understand how to iron. The night before our sales day together, I made a series of bad decisions. Bad decision number 1: have a beer with Rusty, a friend who’s always good for encouraging bad decisions. Bad decision number 2-25: have a LOT of drinks, play a sloppy game of pool, send a lot of sloppy text messages, somehow make it home, lock Rusty out of my house and force him to sleep in his car. Again, classy girl.

The next morning my phone rang at 8:30. It was my distribution boss, letting me know he’d be there with the adorable Japanese man in 30 minutes. My eyes were bloodshot. My stomach felt like it was going to fall out of my butt. I was incredibly unprepared for this day. And I smelled like a distillery. A quick shower and 10 cups of coffee later, I was as ready as I’d ever be, but let me remind you that my day’s task was to sell alcohol. Meaning, hang out in liquor stores and restaurants and taste sake, over and over and over. I don’t know about you, but pretty much the last thing I want to do when I’m that hungover is be in a place with a lot of alcohol. Especially when I’m doing it with a perfect Japanese man that has probably never had too much to drink in his entire life. This, friends, is what hell is like. And given these stories, I totally deserved it.

One of the happy events in which I partake at my current place of work is what I’ve euphemistically termed the Saturday Night Superclean. Doesn’t that sound fun? When I think of those words, I think of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, a hero of my literary past, and her magical ways of getting kids to clean up their disgusting messes. In harsh reality, however, Saturday Night Superclean is somebody else’s disgusting mess that I get to clean up.  And there’s a noticeable lack of magic potions (unless you count bad beer) to make it more interesting.

These are the events of Saturday Night Superclean:

1. Take the tablecloth off the table where we plate food all night.

2. Move all stray dirty dishes to the dish area.

3. Exercise my very rusty tetris skills to move one rolling table into the office and the other rolling table against the wall.

4. Pull out the bins of flour, sugar, and staff meal pasta , scrub them down, and try to organize them in a fashion that does not cause everyone busting through the swinging doors to trip over them.

5. Stand around and eat leftover dessert while chef scrubs the flat top.

6. Feel a little nauseous from too much dessert.

7. Go dig up chef’s coat to wear during proximate events.

8. Pull out the grates covered with hot chemicals and wipe them down, leave them for the chef to scrub.

9. Wash my hands 9 times to get the chemicals off.

10. Put gloves on.

11. Pull oven pieces and aluminum foil out of the ovens.

12. Get more chemicals, ask the dishwashers in broken, convoluted Spanish where they’ve hidden the scrubbing tools.

13. Watch the dishwashers find the scrubbing tools and remember that’s where they’ve always kept the scrubbing tools.

14. Crawl around in the hot tiny ovens, avoiding dripping chemicals from above, scrubbing the burnt mess.

15. Throw water in the ovens; usually hit my feet.

16. Squeegee out the ovens.

17. Replace tin foil, secretly (or not-so-secretly, depending on how many beers I’ve had by that point) celebrate being able to pull exactly the right length off the roll to cover the bottom of the oven.

18. Replace grates and other oven pieces, shut the ovens.

19. Toss water all over the floor.

20. Scrub the floor.

21. Squeegee the floor, cursing the slope AWAY from the drain.

22. Mop.

23. Scrub out the hand sink.

24. Chug remaining beer.

25. Collapse of drunken exhaustion.

That list is probably fairly irrelevant. The key point here is that yours truly, at a height qualifying for gentle giant, spends Saturday night contorting her limbs and pulling on former yoga experience to insert herself into a tiny oven. Awkward doesn’t even begin to cover it. And with all that bending and twisting, it’s important to wear loose clothing.

Uncomfortable as that is, it’s bearable, until something goes wrong, pushing the whole experience into the realm of “this is what hell is like.” A couple of weeks ago, I was properly liquored up on PBR and ready for deep clean. I was attired in a chef’s coat, had ditched my work shirt for a tanktop, and was wearing my uniform-appropriate heinous loose-fitted brown pants.

I shoveled some Palisade peach turnovers into my mouth, waiting for my turn to come. It did. I bent over to grab the grates and…. Riiiiiipppppppp.

Panic.

I turned around to survey the damage, hoping this was a split seam, deep in the nether regions, where no one would ever notice. It was the opposite. My pants had ripped along the seam, but we’re talking butt hole to ankle style. How that’s possible, I’m not sure, but did I mention that part of this process is eating too much dessert? Fatty was now paying for her after work snacks. And to add insult to injury, I was wearing my skimpiest thong. I may as well have been going commando. The flap of fabric that was once a pant leg wasn’t going to hide anything sacred.

The kitchen at my restaurant is a hallway. 5 people like to stand on top of each other in this hallway during Saturday Night Superclean. There was no way I was going to finish this night, which had only just begun, without someone noticing what had happened. Plus, I’d gotten a chemical burn on my ass THROUGH my pants my very first Saturday night at work. There’s no way I wanted to experience the effect of that chemical on my bare sensitive skin.

It was time for problem-solving skills. I tried for a few minutes to crouch strategically, hiding the gaping hole with my other leg. It became clear, however, that I was going to be unable to actually scrub the oven in that position. I couldn’t call my roommate and beg her to bring me another pair of pants because that would mean walking through the dining room that was still full of guests and servers. And the only other article of clothing I had was a short skirt that I’d worn to work that afternoon. I only had one choice.

I removed my chef’s coat and tied it around my waste, hiding most of the damage. One of the chefs looked at me quizzically.

“Uh, I’m hot.” I’m sure he wondered why I didn’t just ditch the chef’s coat instead of allowing it to drag through puddles of dirty water, effectively ruining it, but to his credit, he said nothing. I was too nervous to drink after that, which made the rest of the event excruciatingly long, but I made it through Saturday Night Superclean with my newly created crotchless stripper pants. And at least I got to add this line to my resume: Thought on my feet to solve high pressure and potentially dangerous problems. It may be time to go on a diet.