Making an Ash of Myself

Our soccer coach in college also happened to be a minster at a church near campus. He was a great guy and a good coach but was a bit forgetful and often running late to the practice field. In the beginning of the season, all of us girls gave him a hard time about it, but after the first 10 times he forgot to bring something important to practice (like his whistle or, say, THE TEAM SOCCER BALLS), we picked up the slack and started doing things for him so he wouldn't be so crazed.

This didn't stop him from wearing mismatched socks to our games, but we wanted to choose our battles.

We always got our practices off to a good start with stretches and running a couple of laps around the field (which really bought Coach a good 20 minutes to flip the mentality switch from his day job to his night job), after which we'd circle up at center field and find out which drills we were going to be doing.

One particular evening, I noticed something about him didn't look quite right. We all got settled at center field and just before he addressed our team, I said, "Hey Coach! You have something on your forehead!"

Everyone started giggling.

I said, "What's so funny? Nobody else was going to say something to him? If his zipper was open you'd want him to know!"

Coach smiled and said, "Which one of you wants to explain Ash Wednesday to our Jewish fullback?"

We don't have to fast forward or rewind cassettes anymore either!

I have a follow-up post for the Vaginatine's party but that will have to wait for the pictures! In the meantime, I love Louis CK and this video of his appearance on Conan is making the internet rounds. Thanks to my friend S for shooting it my way:



Related:
•Growing up, I LOVED a black rotary phone we had so much that as soon as my parents got our first cordless phone, I swiped it. I didn't even have a phone jack in my bedroom but it was mine! I put glittery lip stickers all over it and in our next house I actually put it to use on my desk. I had some kind of weird nervous system malfunction each time there was a zero in the phone number I was dialing. For some reason I would get the dial about halfway around and my finger would go rogue, come out of the zero position and I'd have to hang up and start dialing all over again. Always, always, always.


•I wrote out a check at the grocery store yesterday because I accidentally left my debit card in my jeans pocket at home. The last time I wrote a check out for anything besides my car payment was so long ago I can't even remember, and I felt so annoyed at myself on behalf of the people behind me in line. It only takes a minute longer for the cashier to deal with a check than it does a debit card, but WHOA, it seemed like forever. It was all I could do to not say to the guy behind me, "Sorry, I NEVER DO THIS. I am a good person with a working debit card and I will never leave it in my jeans again!" Awkward.


•When I was living out east, one of my friends was moving to California. I was looking over the map he'd marked up for his upcoming drive from NYC to San Diego. I gestured toward the yellow highlighted path, a long cut directly across the midsection of our entire country and in between laughs this is how our conversation went:

"How long will it take you to get there?"

"Three days."

"I call bullshit! It's only a 6-hour flight and you're saying it'll take you three days? Are you WALKING to California? "

"Jules, that yellow line represents 3,000 miles of road. It's going to take me three days because it's 43 hours of drive-time, and at some point, I will need to sleep."

"3,000 miles? Whoa. Talk to you in 3 days!" (Because neither of us had cell phones back then, and he couldn't call me until he got there)


•Every single time I get on a plane (going back as far as I can remember*), I look out the window about 1/2 way through the flight and think to myself, "What am I doing? I have NO business being this high up in the air. NO BUSINESS WHATSOEVER!"


*When I was about 9, I flew by myself to visit some family friends. While in the air, I wrote my sister a letter that said the plane was, "at 40,000 feet and above God." Nobody needs to be up that high! I figure she'll mention something about that in the comments!

Not for the easily offended

You read the title, right? Mmmkay, you've been warned. This makes two posts in a row with the potential for a pillow fight ending. Sorry guys, that last post about my Angelina dream didn't deliver, but this one just might....

Some of my friends were talking about how the significant others decided to go on a man's trip this weekend. The conversation evolved into a retaliatory Ladies Night. That'll show 'em! One of the Lovely Ladies came up with the idea to have a Vaginatine's Party tomorrow night. You read that correctly, I don't have to repeat it. The gauntlet has been thrown down, we women are a witty bunch and are all bringing V-themed food & drink. Last week, I was text messaging with my friend Scooter with our random ideas, which included:

Scooter's ideas:
Fish tacos
Crab dip
O-face rings
Tuna casserole
Head cheese platter
Cream pie

My ideas:
Forbidden fruit salad
Finger sandwiches
Landing strip steak
French silk panty pie
Crab cakes
Muffins
Yeast rolls
Erogenous scones (I am proudest of this one.) (That is sad.)
Pork loin (a joke in itself)
Beef curtains (I actually found a recipe for flank steak that I'm calling Beef Curtains for the purpose of this party.)

The friend responsible for the party theme idea is bringing "Labia Lick-her" for our party beverage. Beaverage?

My own mother wanted to help me out with suggestions while I was brainstorming and emailed me a recipe for chocolate covered cherries. She called me to say, and I quote, "You can call them poppin' cherries!" If you knew how much of an actual-for real-not joking LADY my mom is, you would understand better how I am both amused and offended by her suggestion, or rather that I didn't think of it myself. I'm totally going to make those, by the way.

I can't wait to see what the other girls are bringing. Some of their ideas are not even fit to print. Oh boy... and so it begins. Enjoy your weekend, however you celebrate it! I'll have a beaverage for you. A drink, I mean.

She did try that fake-yawn-to-arm-around-shoulder maneuver though, which worked on Brad but not on me!

This is what happens when I catch the last 10 minutes of a late night Friends™ rerun and follow it up with a quick scan of Hollywood gossip before going to bed at 2 a.m., as told in Twitter tweets this morning upon waking up :







The first thought I had after opening my eyes was that no matter how much Angie tries to manipulate the people around her, there's no reason I can't remain friends with Jennifer Aniston. My second thought was that I couldn't believe I was actually awake & had that first thought.

A bit later, my friend Jen (well, my OTHER friend Jen!) e-mailed me THIS link she stumbled upon after reading my tweets. Turns out there IS a list!

My friends (Friends™?) are the best because they totally get me.