Sweet dreams til sun beams find you

Man, I forgot how much fun it was to "do things". Back in 2006, I used to go out and do things all the time. I'd to go to antique sales and museums and festivalish things and then I feel like it all sort of stopped. I really have no idea why. It's not like our weekends got super hectic. And the Ale House shut down, so it's not like I was spending most of my time on a barstool in Seaford. Regardless, 2009 will once again be the year of doing things. If 2008's theme song was "This Is It", 2009's is "Get On Your Feet". That kind of sounded like a Jenny Craig advertisement.

Anyway, one thing I enjoy very much is Disney on Ice. I enjoy anything Disney, really. I think it's because every May my parents would take us to Disney World. This is the reason why I can't do fractions & don't know percents, but I digress. Last week, D.O.I rolled into town and Shana said she was down to go, which was sweet, because if I went to this alone there was a good chance I would look like a pedophile. I was like a mailman trying to get there. Neither rain, nor sleet nor snow would keep my late-bloomer ass from overgrown characters on skates! I risked my life, driving 30 miles an hour on a snow covered unpaved Northern State Parkway just to get there on time. And boy was it worth it. We walked in, got our tickets & went straight to the souvenirs. This years theme was The Incredibles go to Disney Land. Not as good as the princess one I saw a couple years back, but ok to say the least. My two favorite parts of the show were definitely when these soldier dudes got one of those spinning circle move going. It's a classic. They even use it in Slap Shot and The Rockettes get an honorable mention for doing it too.

The Haunted Mansion part of the show topped the list though. Nassau Coliseum was decked out in black lights, looking much like some of my friends freshman dorm rooms, and super trippy. I've never seen it, but I imagine cirque de soleil has similar lighting. Favorite moment that is not pictured: one of the skaters busting his ass. twice.
In the keeping with the "doing things" theme, I've decided I'll be taking a roadtrip to Graceland over Easter weekend and I'm totally pumped. You may turn up your nose and poo-poo this idea, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna be glorious.

In other news, these are my new bad-mama-pah-jamma pants. They're not the most comfortable, in fact the embroidery is kinda annoying and itchy, but I think they're super cute. Growing up I always wanted striped pajama's. I know that's kind of an odd thing to want when you're 4...then again, I wanted a cat that was pink, purple & blue. Never got that cat...20 years later I finally got the pj's, though.

<3

"It's Ok...I think i just broke my hand...and maybe my foot...but i'm ok"

Tonight, in order to ignore my raging stomach ache & stuffy (read "stubby") nose, I'd like to tell you the story of how we celebrated my second favorite holiday last year. So grab a cup of hot cocoa and prepare to be mildly dazzled.
First of all, here are several reasons why St. Patrick's Day is my second favorite holiday:

• The color green - i look good in it & i like drinking any beverage that is the color of Slimer from Ghostbusters.
• Daylight drinking - aside from rugby drink ups, this is the only legit way to drink when the sun is out without anyone thinking you have a "problem".
• "Kiss me, I'm Irish" - best make-out holiday. hands down.
• Parades - i've said it before and i'll say it again, i'm a big fan - they make me cry. throw in some bagpipes and it's waterworks city, population: me.
• Weather - this is about the time of year the weather starts to get nice & i'm able to be outdoors jacket free.

With that being said, buckle up because here we go. In the years since I've been out of college, I haven't been able to properly celebrate this glorious holiday due to a little thing I like to call "work". Last year I believe March 17th fell on a Monday (and taking a day off work to drink would just be completely irresponsible). I can't quite remember how everything came to fruition, but I know we made plans to celebrate in the Hamptons the weekend before the big day. Jamie, Shana & I packed up the car on Friday night, like always, stopped at 7/11 to stock up on essentials - beer, chips & dip and little blocks of cheese - got to the house and began to tie-dye shirts immediately upon arrival. We were damn good at tie-dying too. Was this the night we called Ali when we were playing Kings for rule advice and were told "Shit..you guys are fucked up...there's no 1 in a deck of cards, assholes."?
Saturday morning we woke up bright and early, drank a couple beers and tried on fake mustaches*** while we anxiously awaited the arrival of Ali & Rocks. Once the Wormers had fully assembled it was time to call a cab and get our show on the road. It was around 1:00 when we walked into a bar filled with kegerators, lots of people and policemen with green mustaches. I had worn a beer helmet with my college nickname "Cocks" (get your mind out of the gutter) sharpee'd on the brim. I hadn't been in the bar a half hour when a drunk dude came up to me and was like "I will give you $100 for that helmet." I said "Lemme see the cash." Homeboy whipped out five twenty's right there! SOLD! We were about to finalize the transaction with a handshake when one of his buddies came up to us and was like "you're really gonna let him do that?!" Umm duh! That's when his friend dragged my buyer away and I continued to double head? I wasn't double fisting...either way that sounds dirty and the point is, I was drinking two beers at once. Ten minutes later my buyer had returned with a new offer, and I soon became helmet free and thirty bucks richer. EPIC WIN!

***Sidebar: This was during our mustache phase. We would carry spares around in our pockets & wait for the right time to bust 'em out...ahhh the good ole days.

Once the crowd at this bar started to die down, we decided we'd go with the rest of the leprechauns and head over to a bar called Casey's. Casey's is kinda like the Boardy Barn's fraternal twin sister. It's awesome & will turn into a shit show for sure, but its not as cute or outrageous as the big BB. Once we were in, all hell broke loose. I saw a woman was painting faces, and being the man-baby that I am, squealed and said YES! IM GETTING MY FACE PAINTED! MAKE ME BEAUTIFUL! I closed my eyes and let this lady Picaso do her job. "How do I look guys? Great? Cute? Irish?" The girls just stared and laughed and said "Ash, You just paid a bitch ten bucks to make you look like Mike Tyson." But I didn't care! I was drunk! It was St. Patrick's day weekend! There were boys in kilts and we needed to know if they were wearing underwear! The answer was no. Ali found out for us.


Fast forward a couple hours. I'm sure I've puked at least once and I'm confused that I can see the sun setting from inside. That's when someone spots an almost empty bottle of SoCo in the garbage can behind the bar. How it wound up in my hands? I haven't the faintest clue, but i do know it made it really easy to make new friends when you were offering free sips.
Proof that this actually happened and the many many reasons why I love this photo:
1. Shana is all business and like "take a picture of this shit"
2. It looks like Rocks is thinking about giving her number to some dude with a bad bowl haircut in the back right corner
3. The guy I sold my beer helmet to is standing right behind me.
4. There's photo evidence that I was walking around a bar with that bottle of SoCo in my hands.
5. I obviously can't be fooled by the dude spitting game and probably just slurred something along the lines of "dude! what? no! i gots an almost empty bottle of SoCo & a full bottle o' beer...ashleycat don't need you" (This was the day ashleycat was born)
6. You can see the pretty side of my painted face

After that, it all kinda goes black. I know some man in a Hawaiian shirt tried to get me to dance. I know we ate pizza at a classy restaurant across the street from the bar. I know the pizza burned my mouth & I puked in a sink. I don't know how we got home. I know that when we got back to the house, I fell walking up the stairs AND my friends tried to set me up with a dude who had a girlfriend, but in their mind "it was all good because he hated her." psshh...that homewrecking shit was so 06 guys!

I cannot wait to top this.

my nyquil is kicking in.

Knock, Knock! Who's there?

Strep Throat!
ha!ha!ha! Funny, right?
How 'bout no, Scott.
I've been strep free since '93 when I developed an allergic reaction to penicillin and pretty much every other medication under the sun used to treat it. I have lasted 16 long years without catching this dreaded infection and fearing what would happen if I did. I pictured my demise would be something like that of a character in Oregon Trail. My throat had been feeling like gar-bage for the past couple days and so I came to the conclusion that this was not something ice cream alone would fix. When Dr. Kaplan gave me my diagnosis this morning, it was like one of my worst fears had sprung to life. (Thankfully it was not the zombie one - that would have just been horrible. and messy.) HOW DID THIS HAPPEN??? ugh, here's to enjoying a Z-Pack, that will leave my stomach writhing in pain, for the next couple days.

So after getting back from the doctor, I set up shop in my bed and answered emails while I watched How I Met Your Mother (if i loved Jason Segel before, i love him even more now) and The OC.I bought about $53 worth of music on iTunes today. I blame my antibiotics....
I decided that I want to be an Elvis fan in 2009, so thanks to my "following through" resolution, a bunch of songs were added to my library. Also, because of the Boardy Barn flashbacks I had this morning, I purchased some of my favorite drinking songs - IE: "Hey Baby" by Bruce Channel & the remix by Crazy Frog. Budgeting is really working!
Tonights pictures have nothing to do with anything. They're old & I took them at a fair in Levittown the night I realized I was no longer into the dude that I was seeing at the time. And on that note, I'm going to bed.

<3

This is the start of something good...

...but you have to follow through.

Oh Dear God...I just quoted Gavin DeGraw. Hold on to your pants because it's all down hill from here. Next thing ya know, I'll be slipping back in to my Birkenstock's, doing shots of wheat grass and quoting lines from that Daniel Powder song, "Bad Day."
In all honesty though,
A. Gavin DeGraw is one of my guilty pleasures - in fact, I've had many a sing-a-longs with one Doug Neumann to classics such as "I Don't Want To Be" and "Chariot", and if you judge me for this, I will track you down and take away all of your mothers Josh Grobin cd's. Then she'll cry. You want that on your plate?
and
2. I have a point. "Following Through" is my new years resolution. Boo! Hiss!!! Yes, we're talking about it...for the first time since I can remember, I've made a resolution and I intend to stick with it. I like to challenge myself. For example, I occasionally like to see how long i can go with out having a beer or showering, so I figured it was time for a new "test" and it coincidently fell congruently with New Years. This means when I make plans, or hear of some thing I want to do, or if I want to go somewhere, or come up with a brilliant idea, I will stick to my guns and follow through. So far I've already gone ice skating (alone - which really isn't as sad as it sounds) and paint balling (which is totally as painful as it sounds). This weekend, I'm planning on going to the Icecapades - because really - there's nothing better than grownups ice skating in Disney costumes (especially since I've given up on grown men who make a mockery of the ice in blue, white & orange jerseys).

Anyway, Happy New Year. Hope you had a good one. Break was nice. I got really used to waking up around 2 and watching The OC till 5. Ahhh The Good Life. Other then the activities previously listed and a few other things here & there, I caught up on some movies: Tropic Thunder (SO BAD), PS I Love You (SO SAD), I Am Legend (eh), Seven Pounds (another tear jerker that kinda made me feel bad about my life), and Yes Man (not Jim Carrey's best work, but it was better than the Truman Show). It felt nice to be back at work today. I caught a glimpse of the new AP which has a picture of We The Kings I took in it. (i took the little pic at the bottom left corner, too!)
Here's the same pic, reworked a little bit:

Enjoy(?) some more pics from my land camera.
It was so cold at the beach, my film cracked. ehhhllll.

Dear Sugardaddy,
Please buy me this camera. If you'd like to throw in the digital format back, i won't object ;0)
Love you forever.
xxoo, ash

I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back, and then away we go.

It's 2something in the morning and I'm watching Peter Pan for the second time this week. I get into this pa(n)ttern every few months where I watch Peter Pan, in one form or another, at least once a week. I'm usually partial to the live one they put out around 2005, or Hook....tonight it's the Disney version. When I was a little lass, I wanted to be Pan's trusty sidekick, Tink. I wanted to be the girl he went on adventures with, who fought by his side. Now that I'm an old wretched semi-adult, I'm kinda partial to the Wendy-lady. As much as Peter loves Tinkerbell, she's not the one who got the acorn. I want the acorn. If only there was a way to be both. Did that make sense?? I babble when I'm sleepy.

Anyway, Saturday I went on a roadtrip with Uncle Hitt & Co. We hopped in his little Sentra and drove up to see Four Year Strong at The Palladium in Worcester. It was nuts. Kids in the pit were going crazy and there were at least 50 people watching from the stage. As an added bonus, I got to see my favorite Boston Bitches. Horrah!




Today, Vipes & I went to the Guggenheim. It was so inspiring. To be this close from the brush strokes in a Van Gogh or Renoir is super trippy. I just kinda stared at most of the paintings in awe. Seeing every little line and imagining what the painter was thinking about when he created a specific piece, and then where it is today, makes all the little wheels in my brain spin in my brain like The Scrambler.

Here's to 2009.
Happy Hogmanay
<3

I want to start paying it forward

She is a silly heart!

I'm watching that documentary on Shiloh Pepin, the mermaid girl, again. I don't know why i love it so much. She reminds me of a nicer, smaller, funnier version of Roseanne. My favorite quote of hers tonight is "I've always wanted a boyfriend of my very own. I've met lots of guys. So in the future, i might be a dating person." I hear ya girlfriend. If you get a chance, you need to watch this. Next up on TLC: "A Life Half Full". It's about people that are born with out lower extremities and the title alone sounds promising. SCORE!

Tonight I met up with Amy for some reunion tea, because that's what we do when she comes back home. We order coffee & tea, set up shop in Dunkin' Donuts and talk for hours & hours, because that flame broiled Burger King smell is so hard to get out of your clothes. Amy's my best friend from high school. We've known each other since we were in middle school, but back then, my only friends were beanie babies and my cat because i was innocent little girl who collected colored pens. That was until she corrupted me. I remember asking Amy why she didn't participate in gym one sunny day when we were in 7th grade. She bluntly told me she was on the rag and my jaw almost fell off my face. When i was younger, i didn't talk about sluffing or use curse words and i boycotted American Pie. After that answer, Amy & I didn't talk for a while. I was scared of her. She was headed down a path with the "cool" kids that smoked after school and copied each others homework. I wanted no part of that life! I was pure and enjoyed the TGIF lineup! Then, in 9th grade, after most of the kids had left our middle school (we had the option to stay for 9th or go to the high school), and i ditched all my Winnie The Pooh clothing, me & Amy found ourselves hanging out more and more. Sure there were times when she was rotten...like that time she was supposed to come over after school but wouldn't get off the bus with me. Or the time she blamed me for the breakup between her & her boyfriend because i "made" her go see Moulin Rouge! But, we came to be best friends. Amy taught me how to come out of my shell and is partly responsible for my potty mouth and sense of humor. She's the only one i've ever spent an hour laughing about the word "supervisor" with. Sober.

I was looking at pictures i took & developed when i was in college the other day. I miss developing my own film so much. Being in the darkroom and seeing my pictures pop up out of nowhere was really, as lame as it sounds, special. I took this first picture of Russ, junior year for a natural light portrait project. He's so handsome, black eye & all!

Since i don't have a darkroom, I've been trying to use my Polaroid Land Camera more often. It's not exactly the same, but there's still that element of anticipation to see if your picture's going to turn out. I especially love the series 3 pictures down. I went to the Planting Fields with parents today and got some shots in. Sorry if this isn't the most exciting post...but this stuff makes me happy.
Hope you all had an awesome Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa.
<3


Tuna - In reference to your cross country drive idea...can i come too?? imagine the muxtape!