It's an Arabic thing...you wouldn't understand.

صئ تط سسس غضع"

That is arabic. It's very hard to read...it's even harder to write...I am not arabic, but I have decided that I am going to only write in arabic (starting RIGHT after I finish this blog post...of course)

This is an attempt to take back my soul from this blog. When white producers and money men started to steal jazz from the black artists who created it and water it down for mass white consumption as big band, BE BOP was invented...a musical form that was based on convoluted note structures (sometimes the exact same note "recipe" as a more popular counterpart but newly minted with more improv and MORE notes), smaller instrumental groupings and freer rhythmic patterns, ensuring that the music industry henchmen couldn't reproduce this music as easily as they had earlier jazz.

This is still happening today in Hip Hop culture. Fo Shizzle. The oppressed taking back what they created and tweaking it to represent them once more.

Because people read my blog, I am sometimes a little less apt to post what I am really feeling. I write about things that will amuse the masses to feed my little ego demon. But I think I need this blog to be a place where I can write about sad things, nay, depressing things...things that break my heart and experiences that I can't get rid of with just a pen and paper. Things that are so big in my soul that they require the vastness of cyberspace to contain them...lest my head implode. I want to write about God, bad dates, new crushes, old love that breaks me, my family, my job...things I shouldn't write about if other people are going to read it...things that I should filter. Things that I do filter.

Hence I will write only in arabic. It may take a year, but be-bop wasn't born in a day. I'm taking back my blog...and if you get bored or offended...so be it. And if you go out with me or care about me, I ask your forgiveness in advance.

Please Forward

What better way to celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday than by starting a NEW THANKSGIVING CHAIN E-MAIL FORWARD????!!!!! That's what I'm doing right here, right now to show my gratitude to God for all good things in the world. That's right...A Chain e-mail for giving to those you are thankful for.

Here it goes:

I'm so thankful for so many things.

(picture of person praying)

and this is my prayer of thanksgiving.

I am thankful for money. Lots and Lots of money. I wish you would give me some money. Then I could be thankful for money AND YOU!

(picture of me swimming in money ala Scrooge McDuck)

I am thankful for Love. I am thankful for kittens. I am thankful for kittens in love.

(picture of two kittens holding hands)

I am thankful for the Weight Watchers holiday cookbook that will make me feel completely satisfied without losing precious weightloss ground. You'll see a little less of me next year...haha.

(picture of me ingesting an entire pumpkin pie in one fell swoop)

I am thankful for crystal light, caffeine free diet dr. pepper, and a whole host of other diet beverages that make each day just a little bit better.

(picture of me running to the bathroom 10 times a day, thus breaking up my work day into manageable bite sized pieces)

I am thankful for family. Especially my stripper sister-in-law and my nanny and pappy for giving me stories that I may entertain at cocktail parties.

(picture of nanny and pappy cage dancing)

I am thankful to God for inventing ipods. Although I can't afford an ipod yet (please see 1st thankful item on list) it feels like I should still be thankful that the promise of one exists in the world.

(picture of me and God giving you a big hug with caption "you really shouldn't have...it's much too extravagant a gift for little ol me...but now at least God loves you...so that's good!")

I am thankful for friends. Friends don't let friends drive drunk or with a cell phone in one hand and a diet coke in the other.

Please forward this list to 32 of your closest friends and family or someone will get hit by a bus in the next year.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!

My Best Friend's Wedding

My very best friend in the whole wide world got married this weekend. And contrary to seemingly popular premonition, I didn't pull ONE julia roberts weasely hollywood move to try to stop the wedding...I love her new husband, and although I was a little teary eyed at the thought of the end of our Reign as the Park Terrace Triumverate, I was so excited to see her in love, in love, in love.

In fact, I was suprised to find that I didn't have any prickly feelings of jealousy or a desire to be anywhere other than where I am right now. This is a milestone for me. I am a hopeless romantic and ALWAYS want to be madly in love with someone, something ANYTHING. And here I am content. Not aching for anything that I don't currently have. Is something wrong with me? Or am I just growing up?

Her new sister-in-law, who likes to tell people that she hand-picked my friend for her husband, informed me at the reception that I am her next matchmaking project. My friend's older brother couldn't believe I wasn't married and said I was the kind of girl that would be fun to go with to the grocery store. My point: Everyone else is more concerned with my single status than I am right now. A cute boy(we'll call him my wedding party boyfriend) flirted with me at the wedding and at bowling afterward. He sat too close, he made me feel beautiful and acted like I belonged to him. 5 minutes later, another wedding party boyfriend leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Next time, don't tease me...". I'm just discovering how to be THIS girl. I feel like I just won the cheerleader tryouts and I am finally allowed to wear the GIRL uniform. I think I'd like to live it up for just a little bit longer and maybe get this out of my system. BUT of course I'm saying this now when I'm not in love with someone...so give me another week and I'll be singing the song of the committed, dreaming of wedding dresses and sales at the target pregnant lady department.

I laugh when I am making a fool of myself 

I will never get sick of this skyline 

my city and my school 

yet another blog picture of me dancing weirdly. 

me and my girls in NYC 

college revisited 

not from the wedding...just a vintage chair I bought at DI. 

Mockery is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

You may have noticed I've been gone. But you shouldn't feel bad...I swear it wasn't you...it was ME. I took many hiatuses (is that how you spell that?) during the beginning of the month of November...I stopped counting my weight watchers points, I stopped answering my telephone or returning most calls, I stopped doing my work at work, I stopped cooking (viva la microwaveable corn dogs), I stopped ironing my clothes, I stopped having crushes, I stopped cleaning ANYTHING and I think I may have even stopped breathing once or twice (mostly right after walking up the 4 flights of stairs to my apartment but whatever...). Most recently, I stopped physically being in Salt Lake City. I just got back from my most dramatic hiatus which was a trip to the Mother Land also known as the East Coast.

After eating my way through Pennsylvania and New York City (scrapple and tastykakes and thin crust pizza...oh MY!) I am back and ready to once again share my life with anyone and everyone who may wish to read about it. My renewal is complete. I was offered an upgraded position at work, I have a new interest in my "Women with Significant Lives" project and I am once again in love with my blog, men and life in general.

A "FAN" just sent me a little send up of my blog style that has encouraged me to continue per usual...I've copied it here for your enjoyment:

"Ninny Beth's Blog Style: As I walked to work today from B Street to G street I saw a homeless man and wondered how such a person could arrive in such a state of existence. When I was attending school at Penn (Ivy League) I was part of a theatrical group where I actually played the part of a homeless person. Given, I have never been homeless (although I once spent the night in a car), I did have some idea of what it must be like to be homeless. The sun was beautiful as it rose above the mountains. I HATE boys."

I'm either flattered or offended...but it's pretty accurate except that I never ONCE slept in a car all night. Either way, I'll start writing again even if it is only to vindicate myself from such slander. I love you, blog! I do!!!!

Platonic Boy Friends

This post is not, as I had originally intimated, about Arrested Development (season Two).
Instead, I would like to address a very serious and tragifying phenomenon in my life and the lives of my girl friends..."THE PLATONIC BOY FRIEND EXPLOSION" and it's subsequent effect known commonly as "BACK DOOR DATING". Let me first recognize that several of my consistent readers are of the male persuasion and I in no way intend to incriminate them. If you see yourself in the disturbing descriptions that follow (and you may...you've all done it at one point or another), please know that I will not condemn you, but am available to help you re-direct your efforts.

"THE PLATONIC BOY FRIEND EXPLOSION" happens to girls like me in fits and waves. Here's how it evolves in my world. I meet a boy. He's cute. He flirts and is flirty. We banter. There's some touching that would indicate mutual attraction. I smile. He smiles. We find out we both drool over swedish fish and David Sedaris books. SOmething is exchanged...email, phone number, bodily fluids (haha, not REALLY!!!! that would change the title of this phenomenon, now WOULDN"T it?) Then there is some other form of goofing off over IM or email or in person and just as I'm picking out wedding invitations....BAM. I get the email or the phone call that IS the "PLATONIC BOY FRIEND EXPLOSION" and leads to an attempt at "BACK DOOR DATING"....sample:

UNDEFINED RELATIONSHIP BOY: blah blah blah...inside joke 1...inside joke 2...you're so cool...um, so that girl you were talking to the other day, what's her story? A "friend" of mine wants to know. She's pretty hot.

BAM. that's the explosion. now UNDEFINED RELATIONSHIP BOY becomes PLATONIC BOY FRIEND. which in and of its self is not the real problem. The problem is that the explosion almost always leads to attempted "BACK DOOR DATING" which is the act of getting the girl that you've just become platonic friends with to cruise direct your social life as though you are a character on the Love Boat. The boy always wants me to host a party, organize an event, recommend them to the hot girl or set them up with said girl...just call me Love Boat Julie and hand me an F-ing clip board for hell's sake. And UNDEFINED RELATIONSHIP BOY goes from PLATONIC BOY FRIEND to ASS in 3 seconds flat.

Do I sound bitter? I'm not...I'm just 28 and I have what one man recently told me was a plethura of platonic boy friends. I know I am a good friend. I'm easy to be around as are most of my highly educated, witty and talented girlfriends that experience this same thing. I'm just advocating for one thing. If you decide that after flirting and getting to know me that you don't want to date me, kiss me or molest me in some way...please have the decency to extract yourself from the "BACK DOOR DATERS"...you will win my respect and save yourself an unsavory name calling session at the next Girls' Night.

Just an idea.

In Response to a Challenge.  

OK, computer and Camera and ipod

I used to be a literati, now I am a digirati. I bought a digital camera this weekend and now I am obsessed. I have pictures of my hand, pictures of my feet, pictures of the prom, documentation of the mess that is my room, pictures of homeless people outside my apartment, pictures of the dead plants in my office...you name it, I'm capturing it in digital.

Since I bought the camera, my desire for an ipod has increased exponentially. I realize that for the amount I spent on the camera, memory stick and such (such being the second season of arrested development which I will have to give it's own blog since it is such a beautiful thing) , that I could have been 2/3 of the way to the true happiness of digital music. I also acquired 2 new cd's this weekend that I feel would be better served via ipod. The bands are called, Magnet and Spoon, (I'm not sure when bands started naming themselves after Dora the Explorer characters, but at least it makes it easy to scream them when you are at the concert! Try screaming SPPPPPOOOOOON as opposed to Orchestral Manuevers in the Daaaaaaaarrrrrkkkk!!!)

Anyway, I'm getting an ipod with my tax return assuming I haven't LEPT into a new tax bracket with my non-profit job raise...haha. UM. And life will be digital all over the place. Dreamy. Enjoy the prom pictures!

me and my little sister.