Give Me a Y!

Ahhh, Labor Day weekend. For the north, this holiday symbolizes the end of summer. Memorial Day weekend is the beginning... who knew? I'm from Florida, where it's summer year round. Therefore, I wear white whenever I want. And if I can wear flip flops without freezing my toes off, dammit, I am in flip flops!

For the last year or so, I have spent Memorial Day '06, Labor Day '06 and Memorial Day '07 in Avalon, NJ, with my Boo, Sweetness, Denise and Scooter. Kevin showed up for this year's festivities... love it.

I was reminded about last year's Labor Day because I stumbled across my free putt putt golf game ticket stub a few nights ago in another purse. (I have many purses. All of which serve a very important purpose, I swear!)
Anyhoo, I won that sucker post game, where I believe Boo beat us all (shocking...). I won it from the return-your-ball pirate game. Visualize an upside down pin ball machine flat against the wall. You place your ball in a whole at the top, and it meanders through in an attempt to find 'treasure'... whole one - nothing. whole two - free game. whole three - nothing. And so it is my turn and weeee, my free game of putt putt golf ticket!

We spent the rest of the day at the Wildwood boardwalk. If you haven't been, change your Labor Day weekend plans now and go, immediately. Wildwood is AMAZING. The eye candy alone. We played skee-ball, go-karted, rode a wooden roller coaster (which I still have the pic) and ate the best carnival food ever!

I love Labor Day weekend. I love Avalon. Mostly, I just love the idea of remembering yourself 'jump up and down excited' that you won a free putt putt ticket only to find it in your purse a year later... what a dumb ass.

This year, I am switching it up a bit. Kevin and I are headed to Lake Norman, NC with 18 of his friends from college. There probably wont be much skee-ball, but hotpokkets are expected.

For fun, here is a pic of HP this past Memorial Day weekend in Atlantic City. Scooter, Denise, Kevin and I decided to take a trip-within-a-trip. Post Avalon, we drove to AC to meet Mario and Lindsay... hilarious. As Scooter says, "Give me a Y!"


Have a great Labor Day weekend, HP!

Here's Looking at You Kid

Today I learned that Ingrid Bergman, star of Casablanca, came in and out of this world on August 29. I mean, who knew. I sure didn't. The only two famous people I know with a similar coincidence are John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of who died on July 4, 1826.

Yeah, yeah... I love American Revolution history. Now you know why I live in DC. but my point, and I promise I have one, is today is also Rita's summer goodbye, Wednesday Night Drinks (WND) celebration. And those of you who are not privy to the WND e-mail invites each week, man are you missing out!

Let me provide a few of my favorite snippets from Rita's 'why we all need to celebrate' e-mails:

"In those moments of unrest, when what you want and what you need leave you feeling perplexed, nauseated, and unknowing, I find a helpful trick is to think about what you already have: my desire to be above all trends, yoga, my shoe collection and that wild fearless voice inside me that says never give up..." Bend it WND 18th Street Lounge

"All the prepping and spraying and pinning and styling and posing and smiling brought us to a simple question and a simple answer -- I Do. And with that, let me just say HALLELUJAH, life resumes!! Now the bride is safely off to the Maldives honeymoonin' and I am safely (and oh so gratefully) back in DC. So listen, I realize it's a Tuesday....and I realize it's last minute, but I just simply cannot wait. So here's my one question for all of you: Do you wanna come out -n- play tonight??" Come Play With Me WND PLAY

and today's...

"Sweet summer....in all her muggy sticky glory is coming to a close. She's given us her best -- months of sunshine and swamp-like conditions. The happy hour deals on my blood have sent the mosquitoes into intoxicated bliss as the days of sun-sexed skin and natural hair highlights grow shorter and shorter. In honor of open toed shoes and borderline oppressive heat I think it's high time for a WND...." Perfectly Seasoned WND The Reef

The premise of WND is very similar to hotpokket. We all need and want time to celebrate with our friends for no good reason other than it's Wednesday! And unfortunately, some of those I love the most are not in my zip code. Hotpokket is my way to celebrate all who I love and hold dear without having to consider distance.

That said, this hotpokket goes to Rita, a district resident! She is one of the three real girl friends that DC has blessed me with. In my four years here, we have been through a LOT... moved four times, changed jobs three times, had both hearts broken and drank a ton of red wine. So, "here is looking at you kid." Thank you for being in my corner, for WND e-mails and of course, coming to 'Boats on Boats' this weekend!

xxxx HP

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."
Ingrid Bergman

Straight Hair, 3rd day and Counting...

For the past two days, I have had straight hair. This is an amazing feat given DC is a swamp right now, and well, I have curly ass hair.

And yes, I got my hair did on Friday night. This involves three hours of work. One hour spent with my hairstylist to determine what 'look' we want, to create the hair dye and to place a ton of tin foil in my head. And if you have never had highlights, visualize Medusa but with tin foil, not snakes. One hour spent waiting for my highlights to take hold and then for my stylist to complete the dude's haircut appointment she conveniently placed in between mine. And one hour spent straightening my hair. Don't laugh. It involves using a massive amount of products, drying my entire head of hair with a straight brush and then finally, straight-ironing the whole mop. Final product -- Beeeyooutifffulll. :-) And the best part is it lasts for three whole days.

If you are lucky enough to have Lindsay's hair, see above, which doesn't take hold of the smoke smell, largely because NYC doesn't allow you to smoke in bars, it lasts four days. Beeyotch. But hey, at least she is stuck with the curls too. It's a complete bonding factor. Come to think of it, it was Lindsay who introduced me to a diffuser... so I take back the Beeyotch comment, she might as well be my sister, aka Sissy!

Hope everyone had a great weekend. I know I did, enjoying smoke-free straight hair!!

The Stoop

The stoop is one of my favorite places in the summer. Mostly because the one I frequent is on a busy street in D.C. right by the National Zoo. And trust me, the amount of Saturday strollers on the sidewalk rivals Disney World. But outside of the eye candy, I love the activity of being in the thick of a neighborhood.

And it helps that I have the cutest puppy, ever. More often then not, a little girl, comes up to us and says, "May I please pet your German Sheppard puppy?" I love, love it.

I frequently have coffee, lunch and cocktails on the stoop. And on more than one occasion, the stoop has been the place to meet up post bar or for the last drink before calling it a night.

After one festive night, during the weekend my good friend Campers was in town, a photo shoot commenced on the stoop. Cement stairs, drunk people and a camera do not mix well.

Here comes the hotpokket. I woke up the next morning all excited to view the pics, and my camera would not work... For the life of me, I couldn't remember what happened. Until about a month ago when my favorite person quietly and without judgement returned my now fixed digital camera.

With 30 pictures of evidence, it looks as though after the twenty cigarettes, putting t-shirts over our 'going-out-dresses' and killing an entire tub of french onion dip (or at least I think it was french onion), yes, you can say it, DISASTER, my camera found itself bouncing down cement steps on my beloved stoop.

And since I will be calling the building attached to the stoop home soon, I figure it is time to institute a few stoop rules.

Number 1: "No french onion dip on the stoop." Obviously, the dip directly impacted my ability to hold the camera firmly.

Have a great weekend and enjoy your stoops! I know I will.

@#!$ or get off the pot!

A blog! I have been talking about creating my own blog, well, for too long. And since one of my favorite sayings is, "I do what I want." I figure it is time to get off the pot and just simply start.

Perhaps the best place to start is explaining 'hotpokket,' pronounced, hot pocket. This is a term that took hold about a year ago, when mid my morning-after-post-night-out story, I said to my best friend, Lindsay "We were at Bourbon, then I have a hot pocket, and then, we were in a cab on our way home and I got a text from.... " You get the idea.

And Lindsay says, "You had a hot pocket after the bar? Wha?" And I say, "No Linds, a hot pocket, meaning, I don't remember what happened during that pocket of time... But I remember the cab ride home, yes!" Lindsay says, "Well you dumb ass, I thought you were eating a hot pocket outside of the bar..." So it stuck, hot pockets are those moments of time where you simply don't quite remember what happened or the details are fuzzy.

I love hot pockets. Because eventually, the memory pops back in, and for the most part, it is a hilarious memory. And what are the best blogs, hilarious recounts of moments in time. So mine are called hot pockets, or in this case, hotpokkets. I am very excited about Hotpokket.
It will be filled with 'pops' of memory peppered with visuals... photography, my favorite activity.

That said, I am a twenty-something single gal (only because my Dad says gal...) in Washington, D.C., although I believe I have finally found a good egg. Girlies, you know what I am talking about. I work in communications, and I've been in the Washington bubble for about four years.

I grew up in Florida, but was born in Indiana, and fortunately both took hold. There is nothing like the smell of the ocean and basketball is well, life.

I am a Florida Gator, and let's just say, Gainesville is now officially called, "Title Town." Yes, we are that obnoxious. I am looking forward to keeping track of this life and all the wonderful, amazing people I share it with. This is one roller coaster, and thank gawd, boring is for the birds.

And so it begins.