KjB

I’ve been busy.

In the past two weeks, I:

• Gave a full-fledged creative presentation, complete with a 7-minute dramatic reading of a video script…in the restaurant at the Watergate hotel.
• Helped host what was a pretty groovy party (for a client party) at the Kennedy Center
• Experienced one diverted emergency landing and two mechanical problems during one round-trip
• Adopted out my dog (yay, yay, yay!)
• Worked feverishly on various work projects
• Worked feverishly on zero personal projects
• Played flat-basketball and climed the rope wall in an abandonded boys’s and girl’s club at 3am
• Scaled the wall to the roof in said abandonded building at 4am, after power failure and inability to find the correct door outside
• Consumed more than my fair share of: captain’s and coke, bombay and tonic, red bull and vodka - in two different countries
• Told a custom’s officer that I was a “film student”
• Watched Dan be hauled off to immigration for not constructing his own lie convincingly enough
• Won a “canada vs the US” pool tournament, in which I practically cleared the table in one turn
• Treked through the snow at minus 8 degrees celsius
• Was thrown out of the Federal offices of Environment Canada
• Was somehow NOT thrown out of the Majestic Diner for taking part in a pretty great food fight
• Was elbowed in the face (so hard it bloodied my lip - and it still hurts) by a moshing skinhead
• Witnessed something surely pent-up and slightly dangerous be released in a few well-placed and hilarious acts of civil disobediance
• Slept like the dead for most of a whole day

Whew.

Star Bar, L5P. 2AM, post st. patrick’s

I love photobooths. Especially on St. Patrick’s day.

From top: CW and dan — me and scott — joe and pieces of bryan and the lovely Eva. (yeah. then, some black stuff, and dan’s lovely nose.)

a random list of things irish and green-related, from me:

* having green eyes DOES count (as does actually having irish heritage, i.e. ‘green blood’) in terms of the damn pinching thing. i have relied on both my entire life on St. Patrick’s - until today. because this year i have a green sweater i like, and i am wearing it.

* my father refers to my grandmother as ‘the irish nazi’. she doesn’t find it flattering. i think it’s hilarious, but horrible.

* drinking is supposedly the irish pastime. i think that it’s sad to pigenhole an entire country into one rowdy, red-faced vice, but i do have to say that all the irishmen (and women) i know do enjoy the odd nip here and there and well, kind of everywhere. Including me. And i’m a writer to boot. So, it’s quite likely i’m sauced right now.

* growing up, green was my favorite color. somewhere along the line it changed to red, and i’m not sure why. i’m fairly certain it had something to do with my parents’ house being a SHRINE to the color - as every velvet-and-foil wallpapered wall and two-tone shag carpet was one shade or another a verdant green.

* i like green jello. it gets a bad reputation.

* the company i work for has a client that serves green-apple martinis at their functions, and calls them ‘environmental.’ some days my job makes me want to drown in a green apple martini.

* I am a member of the Murphy clan, by blood, though I don’t know what county, etc. I’ve never really researched this. CW and Caleb are of the Kelly family clan. Dana, a Duffy. Dan-0, from county Mayo. Some of these people have coffee mugs with their family crests on them. I do not.

happy st. patrick’s day

To kill me, it would take me drinking about 40 more cans of Classic Coke than Coca-Cola’s foul-tasting KMX energy drink - according to this nifty little calculator.

Somehow I have a horrible feeling the equation that made this diversion possible is actually something that was researched, tested and proven inside the coke tower on north avenue. As evil as I know they are, (don’t ask me how i know, i’m totally not allowed to say. no joke) they’d want to know just how much will do you in…and then give you some coupon for exactly one can shy of that amount, leaving you wanting more, more more…

Because it is Friday, between bursts of frantic typing on the script i’m working on i’m surfing, and today, taking personality tests.

I’ve already found out that I am an English “genius”, that I am of the INTP personality persuasion (something I already knew) and that I am, according to a random political-affiliation test, a ’socialist’. Which i disagree with, but whatever. (The quadrant that my political views fell within was signified by a little snapshot of Ghandi. I’m just happy I’m not in the quadrant that had the unibomber’s picture in it.)

All of these questionnaires came from here by the way.

Anyway, one of the statements in the political-test was “I feel guilty when I purchase items from a chain store owned by a large corporation”. To which I answered, truthfully “Agree.” And I do. I don’t go to wal-mart or Sam’s club, I try to stay away from fast food (for other reasons, but also because most operate under a terrible, destructive business model and feed into a system that is systematically shutting my midwestern relatives out of the family businesses they’ve cultivated for generations), and if Atlanta had ANY kind of second-hand clothing market, I’d never set foot inside a gap or jcrew again.

But, for some reason, my buying guilt doesn’t extend to Target.

Because they sell cool stuff, and they believe that good design should be for everyone, and because Atlantic Station is 6 months behind on finishing our IKEA.

And now, because they’ve built one in my neighborhood.

It opened yesterday. (so i hear). And I don’t really need anything, but i’ll probably run right over there after work. Because it’s close. And it’s new. And i’m apparently no better than anyone else when it comes to being a ‘consumer’.