Holiday recap

I was planning a nice photo recap of the holiday weekend back east, but when I went to upload the photos, and, for the first time read the manual, I accidentally deleted all the pictures from the camera. Oops.

So, for now, here is a brief, bullet-pointed list of the highlights:

- Flew out on Thursday morning. After a brief delay, ended up sitting next to a nice young guy on the plane who chatted my ear off for three of the five hours. He was fun to talk to but I always think it is so awkward to have a conversation with your seatmate because you either strain your neck, or have to physically turn your body to face them, either option which results in talking about six inches away from their face. I've felt less intimate making out with certain people.

- Spent Christmas at my father's house with about 10-12 friends and family members. Learned my dad's house has a ghost, which I always kind of suspected, but just based on my own crazy paranoia, and nothing concrete. Now I'm wondering if my 33 years of crazy are well-founded. I'm never sleeping over there again, in any case.

- Ran lots of errands with my mom and let her cook for me. Did you know my mom is going to Ft. Lauderdale for New Years? Hanging out at the Hard Rock? How cool is she?

- Saw some old high school friends, and their kids, which I really enjoy.

- Went to see "It's Complicated" in the theater. Cute movie. A little over-directed, but very funny. Alec Baldwin plays a character similar to Jack Donneghy, and he, I thought, was the best part of the movie.

- Woke up yesterday at 4 AM (EST) to make a 6:15 AM (EST) flight, which delivered me in LA at 9:15 AM (PST) which basically meant I had been awake for eight hours before even starting my day. Though I did sleep on the plane, so that helped in terms of exhaustion, though not in terms of making me feel like I'd been through some arcane mode of time travel.

There were probably a few other highlights that I am forgetting, but I should be getting back to work, even though it's fun just to sit in my office and play among the quiet. I hope you all had a nice Christmas or just a few days off, and that you'll join me for some decent blog writing in the new year.

Vanity and vapidity

The laws of living in LA require me to note that while my family and friends in the northeast were getting pummeled with snow, I was sipping sangria outside on Venice Beach on the 79 degree day.

Sorry, kids. Just fulfilling my civic duty.

After a week or two of genuinely cold temperatures, it began warming up on Friday. I noticed when I went outside for lunch, and started sweating through my heavy sweater. Which got me thinking... why are they called "sweaters"? It can't be because they make you sweat - that would not be a selling point. Why aren't they called "warmers"? Or "woolies"? Or something that highlights their best attribute, that they keep you toasty in cold weather? I guess because "toasters" was already taken?

On that note, why do the British call them jumpers? What do sweaters (or, warmers, as I'm going to start calling them) have to do with jumping? I can understand why we (Americans) refer to a certain style of dress as a jumper. At least, when I think of a jumper, I think of what I wore as a four year old, when I was doing a lot of jumping and playing and romping around the room (see also: romper) - there's a certain implication that because they are long enough and heavy enough (my imaginary jumpers are all made of corduroy), one could actually jump in them without the material flying up and exposing the midsection. Of course, this all made sense in my head but was just invalidated with a quick Google search that resulted in this explanation. So, never mind.

Those same deep thoughts continued to occupy my brain as I walked towards my parking garage at the end of the workday. As I passed by the neighborhood diner, I turned to the window to check out my reflection. I was surprised to see a woman a few steps behind me, walking so close in stride, I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed her at my heels. Instinctively, I looked over my shoulder, perhaps to confirm that I should move out of her way. She wasn't there. I looked over my other shoulder; also not there. Confused, I looked back into the window for this invisible ghost woman, and realized that she was not walking behind me at all, but was, in fact, a customer at the diner. She was inside the restaurant.

I don't know which came first but the egg will certainly outlast

So, it's been more than two weeks since Thanksgiving, and I'm still working on all the leftovers.

No, I don't mean turkey, sweet potatoes, or any of the main course dishes - those I finished early into the first week. What I am still working on and feeling guilty about neglecting are the odds and ends like carrots and celery stalks, four types of both cheese and crackers, and a seemingly bottomless supply of eggs.

Since my mom was flying in late the night before Thanksgiving, I had to do the food shopping ahead of time. She gave me a list, checked it twice, and on it were two dozen eggs. "Seriously?" you may ask. I did. We were only hosting four people.

"Sure," she said. "Whatever we don't use, you can hardboil." Okay.

We used four. Four eggs out of 24.

Now I like hardboiled eggs well enough. I typically only eat the whites, with a little yolk thrown in for good measure. But no one, other than perhaps the Easter Bunny, ever needs 20 hardboiled eggs on-hand.

I boiled eight of them two Sundays ago, and ate egg salad every day for lunch that week. Then last Sunday, I boiled the remaining 12, and ate spinach salad every day for lunch that week. Except Friday, which was our office holiday party, where we get taken out to lunch. No matter. I included three eggs per salad, so by Thursday, I was officially finished with my marathon egg-eating anyway. Or so I thought.

This year, instead of our annual white elephant gift exchange, my company thought it would be festive to hold a cookie contest. The entries didn't have to be cookies - they could be any dessert - and they didn't have to be homemade to win. But you know that nothing store-bought would. So after pouting and shouting and generally sulking about having to bake during my busy week, I got in the spirit and decided to just pick up a box mix. Which, you know, meant buying more eggs. (This time, at least, I purchased only half a dozen.)

Since I knew my box mix wouldn't win on originality, I thought maybe I could at least make mine look the most festive. I found this recipe for M&M's Gingerbread Picture Cookies, and it seemed simple enough. Except that when I got home and started baking, I didn't realize until after I poured in 1 and 1/4 cups of water that I was following the recipe for gingerbread cake and not soft gingerbread cookies. Crap.

I contemplated running out and buying another mix, but truthfully, I just didn't care that much. I figured I would cut the cake into squares and decorate them anyway. Not to mention that once I took a closer look at the two recipes, I realized that the cookies didn't even NEED eggs, and then I would have bought them for no reason.

What I should have gone back for was "Mini" M&M's. I somehow missed that word when reading the recipe, and just bought the original-sized M&M's. And this is how you know I am bad at math since it never occurred to me that they might be too large to effectively decorate a 2-inch cookie. But because of my poor reading comprehension skills, I wasn't making 2-inch cookies anymore, so I managed to pull a Tim Gunn and make them (kind of) work:

Cute as they were, it probably won't surprise you that they didn't win. That prize went to a red and green jello mold that, in fairness, tasted better than it looked. The good news is that I did win $100 in a belly-dancing contest, which was probably one of the last things I would ever want to do in front of co-workers, but at least I was compensated for my loss of dignity.

What? Your company doesn't bring in a half-naked dancer to your holiday party and expect everyone to get up and take a lesson? You mean that might be considered awkward or inappropriate? Oh, that's just par for the course around here. Though nothing could compare to the money machine.

So that was a nice, unexpected end to the week, but I'm ending my weekend exactly as I have for the past few Sundays - hardboiling this week's lunch. I'm letting you all know now - I'm officially skipping Easter this year.

It's not supposed to look like this, right?

On the plus side, if I stand close enough to it, maybe my bathroom could double as a tanning booth?

I can be their long lost pal

Well. That new camera couldn't have come at a better time.

I know I might complain sometimes, but I've NEVER been able to complain that my job doesn't have perks.

A few months ago, my company started working with the makeup artist on this show. We provide products, and have gotten some great press in return. It's win-win, all around. So it was above and beyond when the makeup artist invited us over to the set to meet the cast. But, um, okay!

Now, I've been on sets before, but not usually when the actors are working on them. Or if I have, such in the case of when I spent five minutes representing an actor on All My Children, I was there to be working, myself - not meeting-and-greeting and sourcing out personal photo opps with the co-stars. The cast of AMC, for the record, was quite friendly and all really nice, but I was too intimidated by my own role (I knew nothing about entertainment PR) to feel comfortable.

This was completely different. Not only because I know what I'm doing (beauty, not entertainment, PR), but because everyone welcomed us like we were these crazy long-lost relatives they'd heard so much about. We were enthusiastically introduced to every lead on the show (I wasn't expecting them ALL to be there, but they were shooting a group scene when we arrived), as well as a special guest star that I can't reveal but did get to talk to, who could not have been more adorable and endearing. Meeting the guest also made me recall how I used to think my last boyfriend-like-person resembled him, which, when I tell you what celeb it is, might make you question my taste. He definitely does not fit into my Carson Daly/Dave Lieberman Boyfriend Lookalike Profile.

Anyway, the cast was fantastic. They complimented (raved) about our products MUCH more than they had to, and stuck around to talk about other things. Everyone was naturally hilarious and seemed intent on making us laugh, and there was genuine camaraderie among them. My career has introduced me to dozens of celebrities over the years, and while they have almost always been professional and nice and exciting for the story I could tell later on, none have ever just plain been so much fun.

Either that or they're just really, really good actors.

Unfortunately, time ran out before I could get photos with everyone in the cast, but more can be found here.

It's like having an imaginary, extremely well-behaved but severely narcissistic kindergartener

Five years ago today, I sat in a $29 butterfly chair from Bed Bath & Beyond - purchased because it was the only piece of furniture I could conceivably carry the six crosstown blocks home AND fit into my shoebox-size living room - and put all of my plastic-cuppa-wine-swilling effort into giving birth to this little baby blog.

Yikes - sorry for that last TMI visual.

Anyway, my little baby blog turns five today, so please join me in a trip down memory lane as we see what the last five anniversaries have brought:

Like a blogging virgin: 2004

From the mouth of a babe: 2005

I want you to want me: 2006

Celebrating good times, come on: 2007

Solid goals: 2008

Or, just pretend I've poured you a plastic cup of wine and make a toast. After my last recent bout of dish issues, I definitely don't see myself with stemware before year six.