Tag Archives: friends

How to Live Through a Week of Tragedy

You can’t remember so many bad things ever happening in such a short amount of time. Information keeps coming in about the bombing at the marathon and the people who were killed and wounded. All of your friends who were at the marathon (it is not an exaggeration to say that EVERYONE in Boston knows someone who was there) are uninjured, but the stories of people who were hurt are hard to hear. You remember how when events with mass casualties happened in the past, you tried to think of who you knew who could have been hurt—on September 11^th, your cousin who often flew from Boston to LA, and when the shooting in Arizona happened, your friend who lived in Tucson. You had to wait to hear if those people were okay.

Now it’s your turn. You’re the one people are trying to get in touch with to make sure you’re okay. You’re the one getting texts from your parents, sister, aunts, cousins, friend who’s on vacation, friend in Seattle, friend in DC. It’s not some distant event that you’re mildly disturbed by and think about occasionally—it’s here. It’s your city, your people.

And despite the acts of kindness that are reassuring you of the goodness of people out there, this week of tragedy keeps getting worse. Poisoned letters are sent to President Obama and a Mississippi senator. A plant explodes in Texas, killing and injuring dozens of people. The bill for background checks on guns fails in the Senate, which makes you so angry you’re afraid to talk about it for fear of saying something you’ll regret. Something else in your own world that you don’t want to talk about publicly—something not on par with everything else but still pretty awful— also happens this week.

You don’t think things could get worse…and then they do.

* * *

Before you go to bed Thursday night, you hear that an MIT police officer has been shot, then that he was killed. You’ve seen the photos the FBI released of the two suspects and note that there’s nothing distinctive about either of them—they could be anyone. You wonder, before you go to bed, if this shooting is related to the bombings or if it’s yet another unrelated tragedy in a terrible week.

Friday morning, when you finally drag yourself out of bed after hitting snooze several times and start to get dressed, it occurs to you to check the news and see what the latest is on the bombing suspects, so you pick up your new iPhone.

You don’t make it to the news. Your phone has blown up with text messages and voicemails almost as numerous as they were on Monday after the bombing. Dazed, you check the computer and try to make sense out of the hell that’s broken loose while you were asleep. Your office is closed. The T has shut down. Cambridge is one of several cities and towns on lockdown. You’re not supposed to leave the house.

You stumble downstairs and turn on the TV, bringing your laptop with you and trying to get yourself up to speed. They think the suspect is in Watertown, not very close to you, but who really knows? You see pictures the news crew has from around the city. Boston, on a workday when people are normally rushing around and doing their day-to-day thing, looks post-apocalyptic. This, oddly, is just as scary as anything else.

Your fright turns to impatience when you realize that it might be awhile before they catch the guy. The news starts repeating the same things they’ve already said. You go to the back porch to read the paper. You answer work emails from your customers, who all live out of state and have probably forgotten where you live. You talk to your parents, who are flying home from their vacation in Florida. You have a long chain of text messages going with three friends, and your discussion of the news coverage is interspersed with talk of guys, one friend’s cat, and the Geek Squad at Best Buy. You get annoyed when you realize that you barely have any food in the house and can’t even order takeout because businesses are all closed. You get more annoyed when you realize what a nice day it is and how great it would be for running but you’re now stuck inside because of some murderous assholes. Then you feel guilty for being so annoyed at little inconveniences when everyone you know survived the bombing unscathed and so many other people can’t say that.

Around 6:30 they hold a news conference where they tell people the lockdown is over but the suspect has not yet been apprehended. You’re still nervous but dying to get out of the house, and since the T’s running again, you and your friends start making plans for drinks and dessert. As you’re getting ready to go out, you see something happening on the TV. It’s clear now that they’ve found the guy, and you and your friends immediately postpone your plans. You keep texting each other new things that you hear. You keep on watching until finally it’s over and the suspect is captured.

On Saturday, you get up, get dressed, and head out for the plans you didn’t get to last night. You drink multiple glasses of wine at lunch and buy cupcakes from a bakery. You and your friends head into the city and see the makeshift memorial set up on Boylston Street. Several blocks are still shut down. There are some adorable therapy dogs over by the memorial that you and your friends pet. The dogs look tired—like everyone else, they’ve had a long week.

Saturday night you sleep for twelve hours straight.

* * *

So much goes through your mind this week. While you don’t know any victims personally, little connections keep startling you. Jeff Bauman is from your hometown and was two years behind you at your high school. Patrick Downes graduated from BC a year ahead of you, and many of your friends know him. Sean Collier lived near you, on a street your roommate walks the dog down every day. They’re jolting details, but you have to keep reminding yourself that it wouldn’t be any less tragic if it had happened to people who come from some place you’ve never heard of. You know it will be hard to remember this the next time something tragic happens somewhere that’s not here.

You try to piece together the bits of information you keep hearing about these two brothers, everything their friends and relatives say, trying to make sense of what could have led them to do this before ultimately concluding that you never will, because dropping bombs on a crowd of people at a marathon will never make any sense.

Humor is one of the only things keeping you sane. You’ve always liked The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but you usually only tune in after some kind of major current event, like to see what Jon Stewart has to say about the presidential election. But this week, watching Comedy Central is getting you through the day. And aside from every other awesome thing they do this week, their Boston tributes are especially gratifying. This clip from Colbert manages to be hilarious while also getting Boston exactly right.

[hulu id=pi5tsuwrierrkrzc3_8vyq width=512]

You feel profound gratitude for everyone who helped put an end to the manhunt that dominated Friday. You’re horrified when you think about the guy who found the suspect hiding in his boat and how scary that must have been.

You wonder how long it will be before Hollywood makes a movie out of all this.

You stop talking in the second person.

* * *

There are so many ways a person can use the word “love,” so I need to get across what I mean when I say I love Boston. A lot of people say they love their hometown but still roll their eyes at it, as if their love is like the love they’d have for a parent who means well but doesn’t understand them at all, like Emily on Gilmore Girls. But Boston, for me, is not Emily Gilmore—it’s Lorelai Gilmore, the mom you can’t believe you were lucky enough to be born to. Boston may have been the city I fell into because it’s so close to where I grew up, but that’s not why I stay here. I stay here because there’s no city in the world I could ever love more.

I love that it’s full of colleges and therefore full of people who are here for education, people who are intelligent, people with ambition, people who want to go on to do great things. I love that it’s so easy to get around on foot. I love the passion people have for sports teams—one of my fondest memories of college was watching the whole city erupt in happiness after the Sox won the World Series for the first time in eighty-six years. I love that people who are liberal and open-minded are the rule rather than the exception here. I love that so many big moments in American history occurred here. I love that so many funny people grew up here—Amy Poehler, Steve Carell, Conan O’Brien, Mindy Kaling, just to name a few. I love that Boston inspired movies like Good Will Hunting and The Departed. I love that we have good seafood. I love walking down Newbury Street, getting a cannoli in the North End, taking a ferry to the Boston Harbor Islands, spending an afternoon at the Museum of Science or the Aquarium or the MFA. I love that we have independent bookstores and artsy little movie theaters. I love that it’s not far from the ocean or the mountains. I love that you don’t need a car to live here. I love that we have four distinct seasons, unlike so many other parts of the country. I love that it’s such a foodie city that I feel like my list of restaurants to try will never end. I love the view as I’m going over the river on the Red Line. I love the Boston Globe. I love that the local furniture companies keep trying to outdo each other with their TV commercials. I love that our medical care is among the best in the world—I know multiple people who might not have survived some scary health issues if not for the excellent medical care they received here. I love that the people here respect each other’s space but won’t hesitate to help someone in need—a quality on display in all its glory this week.

“This is our fucking city,” Big Papi so eloquently put it at the Sox game on Saturday. And it’s MY fucking city, too. I have no desire to live anywhere but the Boston area for the rest of my life, and it’s too bad it took a week of tragedy to remind me why.

Boston by Katie

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Over MLK weekend, I traveled out to San Francisco for my friend Jenna’s wedding to a great guy she’s been with for ten years. I met Jenna back in first grade, and I freaked out a bit when I realized that was TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO. My friendship with Jenna is as old as a college graduate! Anyway, the wedding was lovely, and it was great to see Jenna and her family. I didn’t know many people there besides Jenna and her parents and sister, but everyone I met was awesome!

I only had a couple of days in San Francisco, a city I’d only been to once before (on my first business trip, when I was twenty-three, had spent the entirety of the previous year in Massachusetts, and so completely broke that I was over the moon at the idea of my company paying me to travel). Jenna and her new husband Mike had put up a Google Map with all their favorite places in SF on their wedding website, so I used that as my guide when figuring out what to do!

Also, I found the flower shop from The Room (or what it used to be- now it’s a coffee shop) and took a picture. I HAVE NO SHAME.

Anyway, that combined with conversations with some people at the wedding about their own visits to Boston got me thinking- if I were giving people ideas for what to do on a visit to Boston, what would they be? When I went to New York over Memorial Day weekend last year, I used this post from Nugs for ideas on what to do. Here’s my post on what to do when you’re a tourist in Boston!

Touristy Stuff
Public Garden and Boston Common: Two parks across the street from each other, both lovely. The Public Garden has the Make Way for Ducklings statues as well as the Swan Boats when the weather permits. Boston Common has athletic fields and Frog Pond, which is good for skating in winter or wading in summer.

Freedom Trail: For all the history buffs. It starts at Boston Common and takes you through historical sites like the Old North Church, the Paul Revere House, the burying ground with John Hancock’s phallic-symbol tombstone, and the Bunker Hill Monument, which is a great exercise in stair-climbing.

Museum of Science: For all the science buffs. There’s always some cool exhibit here- I saw one last year on Pompeii- and there’s also the Omni Theater and the Planetarium, plus all the regular exhibits.

Faneuil Hall Marketplace: Faneuil Hall is a historical marketplace and meeting hall, and the area surrounding it is full of stores, restaurants, bars, and street performers.

Cheers Bar: I actually never watched Cheers and I’ve only been here once, but people seem to love going here! Just make sure you’re going to the real Bull and Finch pub on Beacon St. rather than the knockoff bar in Faneuil Hall.

Newbury St.: You have to at least walk down Newbury St., even if you don’t buy anything. It’s so lovely and old-Boston. And although many of the stores are too expensive for the likes of me, there are some cheaper ones, too.

Fenway Park: Hopefully you can go to a game, but if not, see if you can take a tour. I love this park.

The North End
The North End is the Italian neighborhood of Boston, full of restaurants, bakeries, and coffee shops. I’m actually not that crazy about Italian food and therefore not the best person to ask about which restaurants to go to, but I have developed some favorites.

Fiore: I tend to forget the names of nice restaurants I go to in the North End, but this one I remember solely because of the awesome roof deck. If it’s summer, go up there at least for a drink!

Pizzeria Regina: Best pizza in Boston, in my opinion. It’s a franchise now, but the original restaurant is in the North End- go there!

Mike’s Pastry/Bova Bakery: Mike’s Pastries is very popular, with good reason. You always see people walking around with cannolis in Mike’s Pastry boxes tied with string. However, because it’s so popular, the lines can get a little nuts, so if you don’t want to wait, head one block over to Bova Bakery, which is just as good.

Restaurants
Abe and Louie’s: If you want something on the fancier side, this is my favorite steakhouse in Boston. Definitely not cheap, though.

Legal Harborside: There are a lot of Legal Sea Foods restaurants around, and they’re all good, but this one, which is fairly new, is my favorite. It overlooks Boston Harbor and if it takes you a long time to get a table (which it will, if you don’t have a reservation), go up to the top deck and order a drink and sushi while you watch the boats.

Paris Creperie: It’s not exactly an authentic French creperie, but even so, I love this place. Aside from great crepes, their Nutella hot chocolate and frozen hot chocolate are orgasmic.

Fire and Ice: This is a cool concept for a restaurant. You put as much raw meat and vegetables as you’d like into a bowl, select the sauce you’d like, and then give it to the cook in the center of the room, who throws it onto a big Mongolian grill and cooks it right in front of you. It’s a lot of fun!

Anna’s Taqueria: Cheap, cheap, cheap Mexican food. I’m a big fan, although my West Coast friends don’t seem impressed by it.

Grendel’s Den: Speaking of cheap, from 5-7:30 on weeknights, this restaurant in Harvard Square has food at half-price if you order a drink!

KO Pies: This Australian food hole-in-the-wall is right down the street from my office. Yeah, I know, Australian food? But this place has amazing meat pies, chicken schnitzel burgers, potato wedges, and Lamingtons.

Bars

Drink: This is such a cool bar. While you can order your standard wine and beer, there’s no menu–rather, you have a conversation with the bartender so that they’ll mix you something you’d like. “Let’s have a conversation about your alcoholic needs!” It looks kind of like a science lab, with long tables, and the bartenders will grind up ingredients or squeeze the juice out of fruit.

Scholars: This is a fairly new bar that has a little bit of everything- great beer list, great cocktail list, dancing, pool tables, private rooms. Also, it’s HUGE- I can’t stand bars that are cramped.

Common Ground: Most of the time, this place isn’t quite so special. But Friday night is “My So-Called 90s Night,” and dancing to all this nostalgic music is so much fun I don’t even care what I drink.

Pretty Things

Boston Harbor Islands: If it’s summer, take a boat out here. They’re beautiful and a lot of people forget about them.

Arnold Arboretum: This is in Jamaica Plain, but you forget you’re still in the city when you’re here. Great for hiking or just sitting by yourself.

Other Good Things to Know

As much as I complain about the T, you should take it in Boston. Cabs are more expensive here than in any other city I’ve visited. Don’t take the cab unless you’re taking an early flight or are at a bar until later than 1:00 AM.

For some reason, a lot of people from out of town mispronounce “Copley” as in “Copley Square.” The first syllable is “cop,” not “cope.”

If you like seafood, you should eat it. Actually, even if you’re not crazy about seafood, you should eat it in Boston. I’m convinced that you can’t get good seafood outside of New England.

We really do say “wicked.”

But I Really Just Have Friends

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I’ve had this post in the back of my mind since I started contemplating gratitude at the beginning of the month, but I felt like if I wrote it, it would come out wrong. And maybe it will, but I’m still going to try and write it.

I was thinking lately about the moments of my life when I’ve been the happiest or when I’ve felt the most joy, and I realized that they have one thing in common: I was with my friends.

Like this entire weekend, when everyone was happy. Or this summer when I saw some of my closest friends in California. Or when my BC girls and I united in DC, also this summer. Or pigging out on beer, pancakes, and cheese fries after the half-marathon a couple of weeks ago. Or last Friday, when I went outlet shopping with my friends, bought a great bag at an awesome discount, and actually had fun (seriously, that’s a huge deal- normally I hate shopping!). Or any number of moments just hanging out and laughing in college or in the six years since.

I haven’t told a lot of people about this, but I have a great group of friends I met online on a Gilmore Girls forum eight years ago or so. I’ve met a few of them in person. We’ve all seen each other through marriage, divorce, relationships beginning and ending, new babies, deaths of family members, graduations, new jobs, losing jobs, moving, and any other big life event you can think of. We’re all very different, but we’ve formed a little online family- two of them actually became roommates earlier this year. They are fun, amazing, funny, loving, forgiving people, and whenever I have something I want to talk about and don’t know who else to tell, I tell them.

I can be a difficult person to be around. I can be moody and angry and overly nervous, and sometimes I’m not successful at hiding those things about myself. But I have friends who have seen those parts of me and, for some reason, don’t judge and still want to be around me. Friends who have helped me through my worst times- my first year out of college, when Christina was one of the few things keeping me from completely losing it, and when my anxiety got really bad.

I am beyond thankful for all of this. What I need to do my best to make sure is that I am as good of a friend to these people as they have been to me.

(Post title comes from this song.)

Quote Wheels

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Since high school, I have collected quotes. My senior year, I started keeping a list of quotes inside my locker. All kinds of quotes: song lyrics, quotes from books, lines from movies and TV shows, funny things my friends and relatives said, Bible quotes, cheesy sayings that resonated with me nonetheless. As the year went on, my friends gave me suggestions for what to include, and I added to it as I went.

Before college, as I was arming myself with dorm room decorations (including a poster from the first Harry Potter movie and another of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”), I decided that I wanted to display the quotes in a more “artistic” way. So I got some white posterboard and skinny Crayola markers, traced a bowl on the posterboard, cut out a circle, and wrote out the quotes in a spiral. And thus the “quote wheel” was born!

(I’ve been meaning to write this post forever, by the way. It was Christiana Krump’s idea. She mentioned it in a comment almost three years ago!)

I just thought it would be a fun thing to hang up in my dorm room, but the friends I made throughout college LOVED it. And college lends itself to quotes—I mean, this was back in the days of AIM away messages, which were made for both melodramatic quotes and the funny things your friends say. So the quote wheels expanded, and eventually I made separate “BC quote wheels” made entirely of funny things my friends said.

Here are some notable quotables, and a glimpse at where my mind was at from the fall of 2001 to the spring of 2006:

Song Lyrics

“In the end, only kindness matters.”

-My high school yearbook quote, from “Hands” by Jewel

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

-“Closing Time” by Semisonic—a standard quote for a graduating senior.

“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”

-“Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon

Books

“You ever wonder what a Martian might think if he happened to land near an emergency room? He’d see an ambulance whizzing in and everybody running out to meet it, tearing the doors open, grabbing up the stretcher, scurrying along with it. ‘Why,’ he’d say, ‘what a helpful planet, what kind and helpful creatures.’ He’d never guess we’re not always that way; that we had to, oh, put aside our natural selves to do it.”

-from The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

“It is our choices, Harry, that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

-from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves.”

-from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Movies

“Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.”

-from Playing by Heart

“Thank God for the model trains, because if it wasn’t for those they wouldn’t have got the idea for the big trains.”

-from A Mighty Wind

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

-from Forrest Gump

TV Shows

“Joey takes naked pictures of us and then he eats chicken and he looks at them!”

-Rachel on Friends

“It’s like you took a gun and stabbed me in the back right in front of my eyes!”

-Shawn on Boy Meets World

“Never give up on a miracle.”

-Mulder to Scully on The X-Files

Funny things my friends/relatives say

“You should ask Caroline to show you her new breast.”

-My mom to my dad—our swim coach was showing my sister a new way to do breaststroke, and my mom didn’t realize how that sounded until I pointed it out to her.

Me: We get Easter Monday off…what is Easter Monday, anyway?
Caroline: I don’t know, I think it’s the day where everyone just kind of sat back and said, “Damn, that was a cool thing he did!”

“Damn, I would have been so cool if I had lived in the early nineties!”

-My sister (born in 1986)

Me Being Dumb

“Wow! There’s a big thing of ice!”

-Referring to a pond I saw in the distance from a mountaintop when I was skiing

“The most investigated performer…that must mean…he did something BAD!”

-Me reasoning my way through a Trivial Pursuit question

Cheesy Anonymous Quotes that Resonated Nonetheless

“Everything is always okay in the end, so if it’s not okay, it is not yet the end.”

“To the world you may be one person, but to one person, you may be the world.”

“Don’t criticize someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticize them, you’ll be a mile away and have their shoes!” (Yes, I realize this one is grammatically incorrect.)

Miscellaneous Quotes

“Be who you are and say what you think because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
-Dr. Seuss

“Sad. Nothing more than sad. Let’s not call it a tragedy; a broken heart is never a tragedy. Only untimely death is a tragedy.”

-Angela Carter

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates.”

– Thomas Szasz

BC Quotes!

“There’s this girl in my philosophy class who has the same scarf as me except mine’s red and hers is blue, and I just want to go up to her and say, ‘Hey, we have the same scarf except mine’s red and yours is blue.”

“And on the seventh day, God COULDN’T rest…he created Oompa-Loompas!”

“Ben’s in Worcester and Dave’s in Washington and I gave up alcohol for Lent, so I have nothing and no one to do this weekend!”

Two Weeks in August

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Well, I’ve had a crazy couple of weeks—good-crazy, though. I spent a week in Dallas for my company’s national sales meeting, flew home, was home for about twelve hours, and then went back to the airport to go to DC, where Erin and I stayed with Jackie and hung out with Tiana and Pam. Here are some of the highlights from the past two weeks:

· I ate an insane amount of Tex-Mex and cheesecake in Dallas and drank a ridiculous amount of free alcohol.
· I learned that putting my right thumb on top when I cross my hands makes me “sexy” rather than “sneaky.”
· I toured Dallas Cowboys stadium with my work team. I admit that I wasn’t that excited about it when I first heard about it, but being out on the field in this HUGE stadium was actually pretty cool.
· I swam in a hotel pool that had a freaking swim-up bar! Best way ever to celebrate my sessions for the week being done.
· I crossed an item off my bucket list by riding an mechanical bull! And I have video evidence:

· I went to the Newseum with Erin and Jackie, where you can easily spend a whole day.
· Erin and I met Pam for lunch. Pam, after being surprised to hear that Dawson’s Creektook place in Massachusetts: “I don’t know things I should know.”
· Erin, Pam and I went to the Holocaust Museum, which was horrifying and intense.
· Then we decided to get pedicures, and Jackie was going to join us. After Jackie texted Erin to say that we should walk to 14^thStreet, Erin said, “We’re on 7^th. How far is it?” Jackie: “Well, it’s seven blocks.”
You know how sometimes when you’re not quite asleep, a weird thought enters your mind? Before bed, we saw a notice in Jackie’s apartment lobby that said that an exterminator was coming the next day. So, not quite dreaming, I thought, “What if the exterminator comes while Erin and I are still asleep and tries to exterminate us? Like, hmm, here are two rather large bugs?”
· The next day we met up with Tiana and went to the National Zoo, which was awesome and FREE. There were pandas!
· We also really wanted ice cream but couldn’t find any except what was in vending machines. Erin really wanted a chipwich but somehow the vending machine gave her Scribblers instead. The look on her face when she opened them was priceless.
· Then we went back to Tiana’s place to get her car and met her adorable (and HUGE) Tibetan mastiff, Kiro. He was very happy to make new friends and cuter than anything in the zoo!
· Then we drove up to Baltimore to see the Sox/Orioles game. The game didn’t go so well, but Camden Yards is a nice park! It was my first time seeing a Sox game anywhere other than Fenway.
· The next day Erin and I met up with my friend and former chorus buddy Amy, then headed to the airport to get ourselves back home.

Back to life now. Time to squeeze in as much summer-y goodness as I can before summer’s officially over!

Katie Recommends: Hymnal for Dirty Girls

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So my friend Rebekah Matthews is kind of a big deal. And not just because she overanalyzes TV more than I do, is a mom to two adorable cats (including this one-eyed YouTube star), and sits next to me at work, which means she hears me swearing at my computer under my breath a lot. She’s also a ridiculously talented writer who has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and made Wigleaf Magazine’s list of Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions TWICE this year. Don’t believe me? Read a few of her published short stories here, here, and here, and tell me she’s not awesome.

So, you liked what you read? You’re in luck, because Rebekah’s first short story collection, Hymnal for Dirty Girls, was just published by Big Rodent. I got my copy in the mail today and it completely made my day!

Those three stories are in it along with one about a Mormon fashion blogger, one about the things teenage girls confess to each other, and one that awesomely begins, “Someone keeps leaving used condoms outside my apartment.” You can order the book here, and you definitely should!

Song of the Moment: Brandy

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Happy birthday to one of the finest girls I know, Christiana Krump! I am so excited to be seeing her soon.

In honor of her birthday, the Song of the Moment is a song she loves that’s about another fine girl- namely, Brandy. This song is kind of like a character sketch- aside from being supremely catchy, it also has great lyrics.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-tRXewCAmU]

Attack of the Vodka Bottle

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Last night, vodka almost killed me. And not in the way you think.

So, it’s Restaurant Week in Boston, a misnomer since it actually lasts two weeks. Julie and I decided to go out to Tremont 647, a restaurant neither of us had been to. I was wearing a cute red dress from ModCloth for the first time. The food was excellent, and afterwards we decided to go out for some after-dinner drinks. I had been to a South End martini bar called 28 Degrees for a Boston Bloggers event last summer (there’s another one coming up soon, and I’m looking forward to meeting some new people!) and I wanted to go again for a normal night out.

Julie and I went to 28 Degrees, which is a very nice, lounge-y bar that also has a DJ playing. We were delighted to secure seats at the end of the bar, near the wall. I ordered a Ginger Snap Martini and Julie had a Cranberry Sour. We were sitting there drinking and talking and having a lovely Friday night.

Then all of a sudden there was a gigantic crash and my new red dress was absolutely soaked, and the bar in front of me, my purse, and my lap were all covered in shards of glass.

What the hell?

My first thought was that someone behind me was either crazy or somehow offended by us sitting there drinking and talking and had thrown a drink at us, so I turned around to see who was there, but the people behind me looked as bewildered as I felt. The bartender was apologizing profusely, so then I thought maybe he’d broken something, but then he told me what had actually happened: on the shelf on the wall next to me, the vibrations from the music had inspired a big vodka bottle to start dancing, and it had shimmied its way off the shelf to its spectacular demise on the bar in front of us.

Seriously. Aside from being very lucky that it was something clear rather than red wine or something else that would ruin my brand-new dress, I don’t know how we weren’t hurt. And what if we had been? Can you imagine being killed by a falling bottle of vodka? I just finished Six Feet Under, a very weird but sometimes touching show, on DVD, and someone dies at the beginning of every episode, often in a very strange manner. Death by vodka bottle seems like something that would fit right in on that show. And can you imagine calling my parents if I had been hurt? “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. H., your daughter was injured at a bar. No, she wasn’t drunk. No, she wasn’t in a bar fight…she was just hit by a falling vodka bottle.”

And dying this particular Friday night would have been especially tragic. Not only would I have not gotten to accomplish the rest of the items on my bucket list, I would have missed the return of Mad Men and the Hunger Games movie!

To be clear, though, I still definitely recommend 28 Degrees. The staff was very nice and found us two new seats at the bar. They also gave us all our drinks on the house and threw in some bread pudding as a we’re-so-sorry-please-don’t-sue-us gift. Julie, I’m sure, will be blogging about our Friday night desserts soon!

So, that wasn’t the way I would have chosen to get free drinks, but, hey, I’ll take what I can get.

Filling Up the Bucket

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Today in “I’m a Moron”: you know that camera cable I was looking for so I could write this post? IT WAS IN MY CAMERA BAG. Duh.

Anyway: two weeks ago, I flew out to Las Vegas for Jon and Steph’s wedding. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I will say that their wedding was lovely. The vows they wrote were very sweet, the decor was beautiful (all in my favorite color, purple!) and the reception was just the right mix of classy and fun. They had appetizers themed after places that were significant to them (i.e. Sam Adams and Fenway Franks for Boston, Bass and mini fish and chips for London, etc.) and table numbers with numbers that had meaning to them. They also gave away flip flops to everyone at the reception for dancing and had both a photo booth and an Elvis impersonator who showed up for one song! Also, it was kind of a weird mix of people at the wedding– a handful of people I knew from college, but many more I didn’t: Jon’s friends from home, Steph’s friends from home, Steph’s friends from when she studied abroad in London, Steph’s friends from when she worked in London for a couple of years, Jon’s work friends in LA, Steph’s work friends in LA, their neighbors in LA…you get the picture. But they were all so much fun! After an awesome bachelorette party, a day spent by the hotel pool (part of it in a rented cabana), and an after-wedding trip to a club in the hotel, I made a lot of new friends. We’re all in a wedding Facebook group now and want to reunite to party again.

It was great to see Jon and Steph, whom I hadn’t seen in awhile, again. It was also awesome to spend more time with Christina- after not seeing her for almost two years, I saw her for two separate occasions in one month. We enjoyed staying in a lovely hotel, played some slots, went to a cool aquarium, and ate some great food.

Also, I crossed a couple of items off my bucket list.

You have a bucket list? you’re now saying. Why, yes, I do. Housekeeping detail: if you read this blog in Google Reader or another method that’s not directly on the site, I now have a new design (it was time for a change) and some new pages. One is on me, the other two are on my bucket list and my travel goals.

I first made the bucket list (which includes the travel goals) the summer after college, just a couple of months before I started this blog. I’ve only modified it a bit since then, and I’ve accomplished some of the items on it–living in Davis Square, traveling to places like Philadelphia and San Francisco, etc. Some items on it are totally do-able (taking a Spanish class, joining a book club, spending the whole day reading a novel); others are harder (becoming a best-selling author, attending an award show, owning a boat). The travel goals range from typical (London, Paris, Rome) to more quirky and Katie-specific (Washington Depot, CT, which inspired Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls, and Quechee, VT, where I used to go skiing, in the summer rather than winter). As my life progresses, I will update you on which items have been accomplished.

So, what’s now been crossed off the list? Traveling to Vegas, first of all. But also?

I WENT TO A CELINE DION CONCERT.

…I KNOW. You’re jealous, right? Well, you should be!

Okay, in all seriousness, I know that it’s not a concert most people would make it a life goal to see. She’s not, and never has been, what the cool kids are listening to. Some guy wrote a book about her that’s subtitled “A Journey To the End of Taste.” Ana Gasteyer did a famous parody of her on SNL. Most people roll their eyes at the mere mention of her name.

You know what? I DON’T CARE. I’ve been a huge fan of hers since I was twelve. There is nothing the least bit ironic or guilty-pleasure-ish in my love for her. I genuinely enjoy her music. I love the things she does with her voice. I love almost all of her songs, from “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” to “Taking Chances.” I love that she seems like a genuinely nice person, and that while people sometimes trash her music, I’ve never heard about her doing or saying anything bitchy or controversial– and with her level of fame and the kind of celebrity culture we live in, the press definitely would have jumped on any story about that. I love that she takes her singing seriously, but not herself or what other people are saying about her, as you can see in these videos.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEggoXwoXEY]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7sTDpAtjEo]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pytrKPnhwlA]

And if you don’t believe me? Believe Michelle Collins (thank you, Megan and Rebekah, for introducing me to her brand of hilarity). She will never apologize for her Celine Dion love and neither will I!

The tickets were an early birthday present from my parents. The seats were awesome and did not disappoint. (They didn’t allow photos in the theater, so I have no pictures from the actual concert.) I could see her really well, and she sounded fantastic. She did a lot of covers, which surprised me- it was about half and half her own stuff and covers like Journey’s “Open Arms” and Janice Ian’s “At Seventeen.” One of my favorite songs she did was actually a French song called “Ne Me Quitte Pas.” I don’t speak French at all, but this is a sad love song, and she cried while singing it- it was surprisingly very moving.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxjYv0N6PoQ]

And of course, the finale was “My Heart Will Go On,” a favorite of mine since my days as a Titanic fangirl. It was amazing, and I didn’t stop smiling all the way to the airport.

What’s next to be crossed off the list? I don’t know, but I’m ridiculously glad to have checked these things off my list. What an awesome trip this was.