ponyo.

I watched Ponyo last night. It's streaming on netflix right now. You guys. I cried, I laughed, I squealed with delight. It is the best movie I've seen in a long time. Ponyo is so adorable and Soskuke is so cute. I think it restored my faith in movies (I lost it after a summer of disappointing movies. Anyone else? Serious dearth of good movies this year). Oh plus, at the end of the movie they play the coolest end song ever, complete with a rap.

Has anyone else seen it?

back in dc, finally.

and i don't have to leave until july 12! i never thought i would be traveling so much, but it's kind of fun. i have lots of pictures to upload to my computer, but last night i just needed to take a night to relax.

the drive back from hershey was about 2.5 hours and felt like a mini-road trip. i had the windows rolled down, the ipod cranking out rocky votolato, regina spektor, sleigh bells, and radiohead. had such a great time singing at the top of my lungs. and have you heard sleigh bells? my summer favorite, definitely. i love how distorted the sound is, with her sweet vocals on top.


last night TH and i took a walk around our neighborhood with nice weather for the first time in weeks. we ended up at sweetgreen for salad and froyo, then back to our apartment to watch the funniest not-meant-to-be funny 80's movie ever: wall street.
working-class new jersey guy, bud fox aka charlie sheen, makes it big on wall street and has a moment where he looks out over the city from his upper east side apartment and says outloud, "who am i?" HILARIOUS. he also litters, rides a motorcycle, buys pretentious modern art, and eats steak tartare. i'm just saying, if you want to laugh, watch this movie.

it was a great night. it's nice to be back home. tonight i'm going grocery shopping like a normal person. that's the thing i'm looking forward to most this whole week. sweet.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg

I started The Umbrellas of Cherbourg a couple weeks ago, and finally finished it last night. I recommend you watch it immediately. It's french with english subtitles, and the entire script - all dialogue is in song. Everything is sung - it is a true true musical. But that's not the best part. The colors in this movie are absolutely brilliant. I took a few screenshots for your viewing pleasure. I was coveting the wallpaper in the umbrella shop the entire movie. I seriously want to fill my life with colors like these.



The story line is kind of boring - girl and boy fall in love, boy goes to war, life happens, plot thickens, loose ends are tied up, blah blah blah. Just watch it for the beautiful colors and luscious songs.

I love Sundays.

I do. I love them. I love the laziness. I love the church. I love the fellowshipping. I love all the pretty dresses at church and the boys in suits. I love watching silly movies. I love hanging out my NY BF. I especially love it when church is early and I have the entire day to spend with friends, movies, food, and lazy evening conversations.

I also love my polka dot dress and these shoes that TH bought for me. Buying me shoes: quickest way to my heart.

Ohhhhh girls just wanna have, they just wanna, they just wanna-uhhh

Last night I had the discreet pleasure of taking in an utterly girly movie - Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day. This was the ultimate chick-flick, in that it had silk robes with feathers, squeaky high voices, tete-a-tete's with a variety of men, makeovers, glitzy glamour, singing, and - yes most importantly - LOVE.

The love part was an essential part of the movie, yes, but I'm talking about when I fell in love.
With him:
Oh, Lee Pace. You are delightful, aren't you? The way you make me swoon in my seat in public. The effortless charm you possess which willed me out of my seat last night and forced my hand to fan my blushing cheeks. You are my husband, lets not deny it any further.

I had a girls night out last night with the Iggster, Mei Mei, and Mary D. I love these girls. It is so difficult to find girls who have as much depth, humor, love, sweetness, style, grace, and kind words as these 3 girls. I feel lucky to have them as friends and - girls - we need to have a sleepover so soon. I'm talking pedi's, mani's, facials, cookie dough, brownie batter, pizza, and smutty magazines and rubbish movies.

Anyway I highly recommend you see this movie. Take your boyfriends/husbands if you must. But if you really want to have a fun girly time-out: go with the gals. It wasn't even all fluff, either. The movie was superbly acted and there were some very heartfelt moments interlaced with all the bubble baths and fashion shows. See it and let me know how it changed your life.

Slo-flix

I mailed off 3 netflix movies on monday. They were just received this morning. wtf, netflix? I count on your hastiness to get me through the weeks. I've been waiting for some good movies to come all week!
1. This is England
2. La Vie en Rose
3. Broken English

It's a pretty good list. A Brit movie, a French movie, and a movie about Parker Posey moving to France. Can't wait. At this rate they should be here by March 1st.
Has anyone else ever waited this long to get their movies? Like the girl who makes tons of money is going to wait that long for a freaking movie service. COME on!

**UPDATE: I think Netflix reads my blog because the movies were finally received today. New movies tomorrow! Hot Dog!

I don't believe I mentioned...

Before all the craziness of The Move and The Business Trip, I went to a ballet. The American Ballet Theatre performed the classic, The Sleeping Beauty. I love a good ballet and I was pretty excited to go check it out, especially with Debbie kickin it by my side. We had a lovely pre-theatre dinner and got settled in our comfy nosebleed orchestra-view seats for the 3 hour ballet.
What I did not expect, however, was that this particular ballet would be starring the one and only COOPER NIELSON*!!! He was the Prince, and the star of the ballet. And his female counterpart? Oh, no big deal - it was only KATHLEEN DONAHUE*! You could feel the energy in the room when they were dancing together. All the pre-pubescent pipsqueaks had no idea why us twenty-somethings were watering at the mouth.

The entire ballet I was distracted with several thoughts:
--Was Jodie Sawyer waiting around backstage to later be blown off by Cooper Nielson?
--Were Kathleen and Cooper talking to each other on stage, exchanging nasty insults about their latest sexshual escapades?
--Does Cooper Nielson really drive that overcompensating motorcyle? Come ON.
--And of course, some classic lines:
Jodi: What about what I want?
Cooper: I don't give a SH*T what you want.

Jodi: Here's some cookies(for Cooper). For next time.


Seriously. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm the BEST GO* D*MNED DANCER in the ABA! Who the hell are you?? NOBODY.

*These are not the dancers actual names, but their characters as portrayed in the timeless favorite, Center Stage. To me, they are real people.

weekends without iggy

As you may or may not know, Iggy is my bff. She's my go-to, my friend on the weekends, my lunch friend, my tete-a-tete friend, my friend with whom to eat mounds of popcorn, etc. You get the picture. We're old friends.
Then there are other friends I have who join mine and Iggy's social endeavors and occasionally join me in song, dance and general merriment.

Well...apparently this past weekend was travel weekend and I missed the memo. Nearly everyone I know (read: 3 people) were out of town this past weekend and I was left to sob in the wake of their departure. I knew it was coming, however, and I prepared myself. I had 3 fresh movies from Netflix - 2 tearjerkers and an action packed thriller with my girl, Sydney Bristow Jennifer Garner. I gathered some recipes together for a practicing my Giada skills. I scheduled some appointments to fill up my days. And miracles of miracles...I actually had a super fun weekend!

Friday:
After work I came home and popped in The Kingdom. It was an ok film, even though Michael Bluth's presence was really screwing with me. I enjoy a good politically charged action flick- this one was your run-of-the-mill Hollywood flick. I mean, Jamie Foxx was in it so you know it's gonna pack that certain something into the brainwashed movie-going crowd. Later I met up with my friend, Ron. We made Rowlett cookies and went to a Mormon party, complete with trampoline where I saw Bone Malone, Jeremy Ryn, Jenny, and my old childhood friend Dan Kirk (to name a few). It was fun and the cops came because of all the devil music playing in the background. They were mighty surprised to find a bunch of sober twenty-somethings dancing and jumping on an indoors trampoline. I would even go as far as to say they wanted to join in, but who wants a bunch of pigs spoiling their party?
So Friday? Success.

Saturday:
Showed the apartment to a couple of girls who I pray and pray will sign the lease today. They seem very cool, especially for a craigslist find. Called my momma and had a nice conversation. Made some money (read: returned some clothes to H&M). Went grocery shopping for quinoa salad ingredients. Met up with childhood friend Dan for pseudo-date (we can't call it a date because we're kind of related. He is the brother of Abby's mother. My brother married his sister.) We saw The Bucket List (cried!), had an adventurous sushi dinner (I tried sea urchin which is basically a salt water gelatinous mass of disgust - cried again), then went back to my house, made some tea and wrote our own Bucket Lists. I was surprised at my 9 choices - and I've got some work to do to have a fulfilling life.
Saturday: Success.

Sunday:
Whoops - slept through church. Went shopping for new underwears. Discovered I'm never going to Victoria's Secret again because they have trashy cheap stuff that is ridiculously overpriced and never fits me properly. I'm exploring other options. Met up with Ron again to eat noodles. Made some delicious quinoa salad with red peppers and sweet corn and a lime-cumin dressing. Watched Shenandoah - a great old movie starring Jimmy Stuart as a Virginia farmer during the civil war. Netflix said it was a 4-hankie movie (whatever netflix) and I actually did cry at the end. It was great and I definitely recommend it to anyone who likes war, fist-fights, love advice, jimmy stuart, and horse violence. Seriously though - watch it.
Sunday: Success.

I guess I learned this weekend that if all my bff's go out of town, I can use the time to get in touch with old friends or people I don't see that often. And get a lot of things off my to-do list. Laundry? Check! Clear netflix queue? Check! Call old friends? Check! Despite my preconceived notions of spending weekends without familiar people - I guess you could say I try to keep my glass half-full. Now if I could just find the person who took my bottle of Makers...

More customer service issues

So I figured this year I would start early with Christmas presents. I've been doing some online shopping and found this great website that sells awesome writing supplies. I ordered something for one of my babbies, and I've been so excited to see what they look like when they arrive.

Until...I got an email today asking me to clarify the address. Here's how our email conversation went:

Gnomie,
Your order is printed but FedEx will not accept the ship to address that you provided Awesome Writing Supplies. What is going on?

-- Gail

No problem, I thought.

Gail,
Please ship to my billing address,
1234 ABC St
Washington, DC 20000

I'm not sure why the other address wouldn't work. It is a business address, the company's name is Gnomes R Us.
If it doesn't work, please use the billing address.

Thanks,

Gnomie
And here is her audacious reply.

Gnomie, I spoke to the receptionist and got the floor/suite #. I thought I was shipping to a residence which is more costly. It would have saved you money had you input the business name in the shipping address so FedEx could have provided a commercial rate. Since I've had to spend time on figuring it out, there is no savings now, only in the future.

Bitchpants!

Is it just me? Am I too sensitive? Does anyone else think that email exchange seemed fairly rude? She was giving me the old 1,2 step and a slap in the face. Well...you could've saved money if you weren't so stupid. My time is soooo important because millions of people are just lining up to buy supplies online and I can't spare a moments time for anything else other than order processing.

Lloyd Dobbler was right.
"I don't want to buy or sell anything processed. I don't want to sell anything processed or bought. I don't want to process anything bought or sold."


He just wanted to hang out with Diane Cort and teach her how to drive stick. What's so wrong with that??

UPDATE: I got a follow up email from the BP:

Gnomie,
It works now that there is a room # and a company name. Had I shipped with the information provided there would have been a $25 surcharge passed along to you because of the inaccuracies & omissions of critical delivery information and there is a bold red statement requiring ALL necessary shipping information on the order page where the ship to address is input.

So you know in the future, FedEx and UPS are now surcharging all shippers when critical delivery information is needlessly withheld from them, and the floor, suite, apartment, company # are all critical pieces of information for locating a recipient who is located in a multi-family or multi unit office building. It just took me 1/2 hour to figure this out and the shippers are apparently frustrated with so many people wasting their time when the information is known to the customers.

So SORRY. I'll go stand in the corner. How many sentences would you like me to write, BP??

The Reds and Whites

Happy birthday to my brother, Roberto Rigoletto!! (yesterday)

I have been out of the loop for the past few days. The boss came back to the office and its been a whirlwind of work and kissin ass. Something that I've become better at over the past few years (but still have no real vested interest in).

It's been raining here the past few days. A cold front has moved in and its so refreshing and delightful! This is what autumn, October days are supposed to be about! So last night, after a tough day of work I went home to relax...and I spotted it.

From across the room I saw the 2 video VHS made in 1960-something classic. I'd been waiting for a dark, and cold dreary day to watch this movie. Dr. Zhivago. I'd seen another version before, but it was starring Keira Knightly. I mean she was just suPERB in pirates and pride and prejudice(read: nearly unwatchable) but I had a hard time taking her in that movie. Although, I love her in Love Actually. Maybe because she has a smaller part?

Anyway, Dr. Zhivago. I loved it. Winner of 5 academy awards. It's so loooong and telling and full of war and freezing, starving Russians. Not to say that I like watching people suffer, but there is something about the dismal "every song is in a minor key" land of Russia. I love epic type movies that follow people throughout their years of development. The beginning is full of so much hope, but also so many foreboding and dreadful events that you can figure out This is Going to Get a Little Complicated.

All the characters are so unrealistically beautiful, especially for people who are supposedly starving and freezing to death in the harsh winters during the civil war of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.


Maybe it goes back to my History major in college, but I love historic wartime. It's so interesting to watch the desperation and suffering that these wars support and cause. I always tend to wonder what makes a person rationalize killing people, especially innocent children and their parents. The brainwashing of soldiers has to come at some point, I just wonder when that happens.

Anyway 3 1/2 hours later, I have to recommend you all watch this movie. The old one, not the new version with Keira Skin-n-Bones Knightly. It will make you believe in the power of survival.