Claire Danes – starving ballerina couture. Please eat a sandwich and cover your chest bones.
January Jones — Flesh-colored boringness. And badly fitted (boob smasher)
Cat Deeley — Darth Vadar couture.
Lena Dunham – Ugly wallpaper couture. And badly fitted.
Zosia Mamet — Water colored-boob-bondage sadness. Also very badly fitted.
Jessica Pare — Rumpled taffeta boob-bow sadness. And those shoes! Ugh.
Aubrey Plaza — Walked into a full body spider web and then put some beads on it. Also weird boob action. Why do these girls hate their breasts?
Heidi Klum – semi-glamorous space alien. Reminds me of the aliens in Mars Attacks!
Anyway. While enjoying my Joan, Kelly and George (Guiliana is on a case-by-case basis with me), the scariest commercial came on right in the middle of the snark-festivities.
It featured a (according to the voice over) “thoughtful husband and excellent dad” playing golf with his daughter. And then out of nowhere, he starts talking about getting checked or vaccinated for hepatitis B. No explanation or anything. Just a warning from the Centers for Disease Control – Hep B is on the loose and Asian golfers with children need to watch the hell out.
Maybe that’s what afflicted all those dresses at the Emmy’s. Maybe I should go read up on the physical side effects on Hepatitis B.
Little bit late on the links this morning. But there’s some pretty good one’s in this week’s edition, so pull up a chair, put on a fancy dress, grab some foreign cheese and get your dubstep on.
I am quite unfortunate to have not one, but by my count, at least two co-workers who think it is appropriate to engage in clipping their nails at the office. The metallic “ting” of each clip wafts over the walls of our cubicle farm and puts my teeth on edge. I think I’ll print this fake subway sign and post it in a few common areas.
True story: I worked at a 24-hour Home Depot for a summer in college, and I was always disturbed by the fact that we sold machetes at a 24-hour Home Depot. I thought that was just asking for late-night trouble. I also noticed during that summer, that Home Depot was a place where a lot of couples went to argue. But apparently, not this couple. Blech.
I just finished Michael Paterniti’s “The Telling Room,” a book about love, betrayal, perception, storytelling, Castilian culture, and, most importantly, the creation of a beautiful Spanish cheese. This CNNMoney story about an Italian bank that takes cheese as collateral on loans fits in quite nicely.
I could see XFE doing this. This guy has gifted his wife 55,000 dresses over the course of their 56-year marriage. Now, I wonder: do they fight over which dresses she packs when they go on vacation?
I know that by now everyone in the world has seen this, but I don’t care. I love Dubstep cat. Plus, the cat is dancing to one of mine and XFE’s favorite parody songs: “Cinnabon.” OK, it’s not, but that’s what we’ve turned it into — an ode to a warm, yeasty treat found in airports and malls.
(Editor’s Note: XFE is back with another guest post.)
That’s right friends I am back and not with just some hotel crashing post full of pictures, but with real, get to know XFE content. As readers of ThePoeLog know, Poe struggles to get herselfproperly packedfor all of the fabulous trips she takes and quite honestly the whining has to stop. As a result, our upcoming trip will be packed using the new following approach.
Step 1: Poe will go ahead and pick her suitcases and start the process.
I am sure she will use something like this from Style BluePrint in Nashville full of great tips like “3 swimsuits, and if they are 2-pieces, make sure the bottoms coordinate with the tops so you have even more options.” Thanks for the incredibly helpful tip. You may want to also add something like “If the top of your two-piece with the detachable neck tie, you may want to bring that detachable neck tie, otherwise you will be trapped in Peru and XFE will have to MacGyver you a neck strap from one of your shoe laces from your hiking boots.” But who am I to enlighten the packing community?
This little gem of a packing list is by women for women, and although Croatia-specific it is also backpack specific, with tips like “5 pairs of underwear – Laundromats are plentiful in each town, but I just washed mine in the sink and let them air dry.” I am not sure how Poe could go wrong. Sink rinsed and air dried chonies are fine for the bunk beds at the hostels Poe used to frequent when she was a broke traveler, but not appropriate for Austrian Business class.
Who wants to brush their teeth near these things?
This list did allow me to learn about another apparently great travel invention The Diva Cup. I will let you read the article. I, however, have already been scarred enough today.
Finally, Poe will undoubtedly turn to some other general packing list, or my personal favorite, she will work to combine multiple packing lists from various sources into her own super mega packing list/approach/methodology. This behemoth will ultimately result in arriving to sunny summer in Croatia with 6 pairs of pants, 1 skirt, 3 shoes (not pairs; you can mix and match) and a handful of hair ties. It will be like last year in Austin where she brought two pairs of cowboy boots AND bought a third pair of boots but failed to pack a sweater for 50-degree windy January days. So that is it. That will be Poe packing approach. Right until we reach step 2.
Step 2: Poe has to fit whatever pile she has gathered from above into one half of the selected suitcases.
Only half.
Step 3: XFE will completely ignore what Poe has gathered and will fill the remaining half of the suitcase with bikinis, dresses, skirts, tops, and underwear. Now, how does that sound different than step 1, you might ask? Well let me tell you: I am not over-thinking it. I am just reaching into the dark corners of the drawers where the skimpy items are tucked, and the top shelves of the closets to find all those great lost gems I have stood outside of dressing rooms watching Poe buy.
This is the Dalmatian coast; where the sun is bright, the air hot and the parties go on forever. Hotel rooms are sold with line passes to nightclubs. We will be there when the country is admitted to the EU, maybe a celebration will break out. We are staying at the #1 hotel in Dubrovnik with a balcony overlooking the city. Heels and a skirt to tour wineries and sample oysters? YES! Wedges and a dress to sit and drink through a long lunch? Yes! Heels and a cover-up to get from our room to the lounges below? YES! The smallest little G-string you own? Yes! It is vacation — YES! YES! YES!
Our hotel in Dubrovnik. Coverups: optional
This is Croatia and our summer vacation. Have I turned Poe into a Barbie? Maybe – but if it gets her packed and out the door and looking cute for the duration of vacation, it is victory. I am all for it and so should you be, my readers. Otherwise, we are all destined to be subjected to this packing drama for all of eternity, and I am just not up for enduring that pain.
And, I’ve come up with a tentative packing list for Costa Rica, thanks to the ladies of RHoOC. However, as I mentioned in that post, my closet and drawers are oddly bereft of hot pink and bedazzled items.
Which of course necessitated a quick(ish) trip to H&M.
To summarize, my packing strategy for a week in Costa Rica (in less than 30 steps)
1. Run to H&M on a Friday at lunch.
2. Dodge mobs of sweaty tourists.
3. Head directly to the swimsuit section since that’s all you really need or in the market for and grab every available size of swimsuit separates.
4. Go to ridiculously packed dressing room line and wait. And wait. And wait.
5. Finally get into a cramped dressing room with no air conditioning and fluorescent lighting.
6. Begin the torture of trying on bathing suits pieces.
7. Cry.
8. Throw bathing suits around cramped dressing room, hitting yourself in the eye with the plastic-yet-oddly-sharp hanger.
9. Leave the dressing room empty-handed and depressed.
10. Grab armfuls of anything tropically-themed or sequined and priced $10-$15. This includes items that may be dresses but are more likely just swimsuit cover ups. Including a leopard print, spaghetti-strapped romper that you most definitely cannot wear a bra with.
11. Avoid the now even more packed 7-item-limit dressing rooms. You have too many items.
12. Go back through the store and drop off anything that might be fitted and might need to be tried on.
13. Replace fitted items with elastic waist items or flowy items with belts.
14. Swoop through accessories and snap up electric blue feather earrings ala Gretchen that you will never in your life wear outside of a tropical locale or bachelorette party.
I know, Gretchen! I’m excited too!
15. Stand in stupidly long line, debating every item you’ve dragged to the register but not tried on, eventually justifying each item as “eh, it’s only $10.”
16. Hand over $100 bucks for like, 22 items. Vacation shopping: complete.
17. Head towards the exit, checking watch to see if you have time to swing by Pret A Manger for a sandwich on the way back to work.
18. See a rack with a cute silky black $10 top that’s (a) tropically themed with an adorable red/orange/pink orchid-y print running down one side of it, and (b) has cute little short sleeves so your arms won’t look like sausages (which they surely will in that other sleeveless sequined top you just bought. Eh, it was $10. Two silky shirts won’t kill anyone)
19. Run around the store playing a very grown up version of the Memory Match game, trying to remember where you saw the hot pink (finally! RHoOC here I come!) pleated shorts that would just perfectly match the cute tropical top you just found.
20. Find the shorts after 13 laps around the entire store.
21. Fret over what size might fit. “Let’s see, normally I wear a size 8 or 10, but this is H&M, which skews much younger than me, so what’s the juvenile equivalent of a size 8 or 10?? And, H&M is a European brand, which always runs smaller. If I remember correctly, in European sizing I wear like a 12 or 14, so what I really need here is a juvenile size 20?? Is that right? Wait, what time is it? Crap!”
22. Do the old “hold this up to my hip bones” sizing method.
23. Grab a size 10 in the shorts and go back to the stupidly long line, which is now at a COMPLETE standstill as cashiers go on break / to restock / to break up fights in the dressing room lines / to administer first aid to a woman with an injured eye who was trying on swimsuits she shouldn’t have been trying on in the first place.
24. Reach the cashier who is taking her sweet ass time about everything.
This guy actually has paper. My girl did not.
25. Listen patiently as she explains that she’s running out of printer paper so she seriously hopes you’re not paying with a credit card.
26. Shove $24 cash at the cashier, who then informs you that she’s out of printer paper and cannot print you a receipt. For items you have not tried on. And might need to return.
27. Snatch bag and glare.
28. Dash back to work. Close office door and try on shorts under your work skirt.
29. Do happy dance in office half-dressed because by some miracle, they fit perfectly. And they’re hot pink.
The final step will be to shove my bag of H&M-ware into a suitcase along with previous years’ bathing suits, floppy hat, a couple of pairs of strappy sandals and some flip flops. Done and done.
I am back from Chicago and in mostly one piece, despite my awesome efforts at eating too much, drinking way too much, and being waaaayyy too merry. I am not crazy about weddings (unless their gypsy style), but I do love a good reception and this wedding reception did not disappoint. Two especially memorable parts: deep-dish pizza late in the reception and a floor-clearing rendition of the dance from Footloose. Yeah. THAT JUST HAPPENED. (Eerr, actually, it happened Saturday night, but I did just relive it in my head.)
In fact, I saw quite a spike in blog traffic on Sunday, which I think I can safely deduce is due to worried wedding guests checking to see if I had posted any embarrassing photos. Yeah, don’t need a team of kids in a van and a snack-hungry dog to figure that out. But scandalmongers can just keep on trucking. I totally want to post all the embarrassing photos, but won’t (except of myself, which there are plenty of). I’ll save those other photos for future political/blackmailing purposes.
I can’t say I’m completely unscathed. In perhaps the weirdest post-wedding side effects category: I have quite a few breakouts in quite a few odd places. Like, a pimple on my upper eyelid (WTF?). And another pimple behind my right earlobe (WTF-squared??) And a few nice red zits on the side of my neck. All of it is very odd. I am, however, grateful that I did not get these awesome little painful red spots before the wedding. My dress, as you can see is striped, and stripes and spots would definitely have clashed.
I’m already wearing out running buddy Amy. It was a long night for her.
Now on to the important stuff: what I wore. Out of respect (and I use that term loosely) for my Mariah-Carey-loving dance partner for life XFE, I went with shall we say, hoochie dresses all weekend. If it wasn’t tight, and the cleavage wasn’t on full display, it did not get packed. That’s right. I didn’t even give myself the option of chickening out on wearing XFE-approved clothing, dignity be damned. Oh well. At least XFE was happy, which is what it’s really all about. (EDITED per XFE request: I did get a fair share of compliments on the dress at the wedding.)
Did I mention that I had a lot of fun at this wedding?
On Friday night, we went to dinner at Alinea, and I’ll do a full post on that awesomeness tomorrow. We followed up with an unforgettable night at Duffy’s. As nice as Alinea was, Duffy’s was totally on the other end of the spectrum. Icky college smelly bar. Lemme just say, I did not pick it. And….I’m still trying to forget it.
Totally appropriate dress for Alinea. Not so good for Duffy’s.
Saturday morning, XFE took a few of us to Greek town for gyros and cheese fries, before we headed to Evanston for the big celebration.
On the actual wedding front, my cynical self may have gotten a bit choked up when I saw the bride coming down the aisle. She looked pretty good. And not at all hoochie.
This is what my hair looks like in the morning. Sorta like Doc in back to the future.
