Saturday, June 28, 2008

no poetry, just public service.

actually, its not friday anymore so technically we missed ipod poetry day anyways. shocker.

so we just wanted to make a quick announcement that we'll be taking a little vacation for the next week. missy, chrissy, and bear, along with some of their nearest + dearest, are off for some fun-in-the-sun beachtastic adventures down the shore. the last time the 3 of us were together on this island, one of us got lobster guts all over our dress at a local fishery, and the dress stunk so fishiously still after repeated washings that we had to wind up throwing the outfit away.

we intend to be more cautious when eating seafood this time around.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

a puppetacular wednesday evening.

As you might have gathered by now, loveandcyanide loves anything that has to do with the sea. and puppets. and meat products (although that doesn’t really fit in here – just wanted to remind).

So when we heard about Jollyship the Whiz Bang, a “pirate puppet rock odyssey”, we were beyond excited. missy and i and two of our puppet-lovin’ friends finally got to see the show last night, and it totally lived up to the hype. They extended their run through mid-July, so if you like any or all of the following we highly suggest you run out and see it (and for our more exotically located readers, when it hopefully hits a city near you!) – rock music, grog, rain slickers, crabs, sea shanties, and/or ukuleles.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

occupational hazards.

new career areas i'm looking into, to get me out of impending jury duty*:

- the medical field
- the dental field
- the volunteer rescue squad field
- the legal field
- the caregiver field
- becoming a stay-at-home mom
- becoming a member of the clergy


for the past 2 days our receptionist has been wearing a blue surgical mask. as i've mentioned before, she is big on health tips, so yesterday i assumed she was ill and thoughtfully did not want to infect the rest of us. or, that the dead mouse smell permeating from my side of the office was too much for her to bear.

but then this morning when i walked in and saw the mask again, i began to panic. what did she know that i didn't about the air in the office? nothing, apparently...

turns out she is replacing batteries in calculators.


i've been trying to write this last part for more than a week now. so at my reunion two weekends ago i was yet again reminded that people do not quite 'get' what i do - BUT, that there is a great pop culture way for them to figure it out. thank goodness!!!

i personally don't think it should be that hard in the first place - teachers teach. farmers farm. publicists publicize. - but maybe i'm biased because i've been studying the communications industry since college, and am supposed to know what a publicist is and does, while the rest of the world is kept in the dark about this mysterious occupation.** in any event, being friends with teachers and lawyers and people in other such 'no need to explain' professions, i find sometimes when meeting people that when its my turn to say what i do their eyes just sort of glaze over.

this happened in chicago. at a memorial day family bbq of the friend we were staying with, it was our (chrissy + fellow nyc friend) turn in the spotlight to tell the friends and neighbors what we did back home (as well as the requisite question from people who've never been here before: is it really that dirty?!). friend says she's a lawyer, gets into entire discussion with neighbor about the sort of law, etc etc. the man shows a super amount of enthusiasm for the legal field.

then its my turn, and i give my little spiel about book publicity. neighbor seems confused, and for the first time during the entire bbq he has absolutely nothing to say. conversation turns to something else, and we all carry on. about 20 minutes later, neighbor gets the ol' lightbulb! face on, points at me and says "i know! you're samantha!"

he then proceeds to explain to the table that i'm samantha from sex and the city. everyone knowingly chuckles. i proceed to tell him yes, he's correct, but in profession only. more chuckles.

fast forward to the high school reunion - talking with a married couple, they ask what a friend and i now do - she says "teacher" - they smile, nod, ask questions - i say "publicist". crickets chirp. about 2 minutes later, the husband announces "oh, you're samantha!!"

really, people. really? please do not make me resort to SATC stereotyping of myself. and stop making your husbands watch the movie!!

*and why do all these people get out of it in the first place?? no wonder the stupid juror selection bureau stalks me every year - there's no one else left to serve.

**i basically know that this isn't the case, because i found out about publicists long before college when watching Another World back in my early teens soap-opera-watching phase and seeing Lorna Devon run around as a public relations director***, but i'll give everyone else the benefit of the doubt.

***yes, i hope as much as you do that i did not subconsciously pick my career based on a soap.

Friday, June 20, 2008

ipod poetry. v. 7

today was one of those days where i was reminded that all i really do in my profession is sit around all day having to make people happy. and frankly, i don't want to anymore. i'm tired of keeping my clients happy. i want to do something that makes people unhappy. what kind of job can i take that would make other people absolutely miserable?? an IRS agent? a burglar? a clown?

and so, ipod poetry, pissy edition:

a girl like you,
a good idea at the time;
a hard day's night.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

things we do instead of sleeping.

a real live text conversation between chrissy and missy,after they retired to their beds this evening, purportedly for sleep.

m: B* said he's going to slap you around.
c: him and what other nerds!***
c: either Bear is strangling you or you are misspelling laughter. either way its time for me to go to bed. good night!
m: Bear can't find his training bra. are you still borrowing it? its a 34 bearly B.
c: grover**** thinks you guys are jerks.

[phone rings] Bear ends the conversation by pranking chrissy, breathing and giggling into phone.

*B is missy's boyfriend**. a few minutes earlier he had texted chrissy to find out missy's whereabouts. chrissy had responded with a cheerful "who died and made me her secretary?"

**who would never actually slap chrissy around. no need for alarm.

***quote from rizzo the rat, circa muppets take manhattan.

grover lives in chrissy's room, and is bear's part-time lover/part-time nemesis/all-the-time victim

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

i'll be the worshipful pagan at the breakfast table.

i had been mentally preparing another post, but then was alerted to this, which basically trumps anything else i had to say this afternoon.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

pigeons and sisters and bears, oh my.

tomorrow is a super-special friday the 13th over here at loveandcyanide - NO, jason voorhees is not coming to visit us!

it's missy's/Bear's birthday!

because i am the nicest* sister/caretaker in the entire universe, i'm spending my evening baking my little brains out, as missy requested some (wheat-free) goodies for her big day. the rest of the weekend will then entail lots of celebrating and eating aforementioned goodies, since i just learned i am not allowed to bring them to the establishment we're throwing her party at, meaning that i'm baking for about 50 and only the 3-5 people sleeping over our place afterwards will actually get any baked goods. fantastic.


also on tap for the weekend is another big occasion - my 10 year high school "reunion". i say "reunion" as its being held in some dinky bar and i don't think there's going to be a huge showing (although our class was about 170 people, so i guess if 30 show up its still a decent percentage), so its not your typical fancy Reunion.

but considering our h.s. mascot was a freaking seagull, i never really expected very much from the school for my milestone alumni events.

i'm oddly looking forward to this little soiree, even though with the emergence of the social networking sites, all mystery as to what my ex-classmates look like/have been doing the past 10 years is pretty much gone, and i sort of feel like my reunion has been happening slowly over the past few years with every new friend request/subsequent message of pleasantries about what we've been up to. but its an open bar, so i imagine that after an hour i'll have completely forgotten that so-and-so is now married and that so-and-so's facebook status told me they just finished traveling the world, so i can act all surprised and interested anyways.


finally, as though there can be anymore excitement packed into the next 48 hours, we also discovered that tomorrow is national pigeon day.

we kid you not. there's a site devoted to it. and an event. and a song!

so treat the little birds with respect tomorrow! i think i just figured out where all my excess baked goods can go...(if you read about a pigeon swarm in queens tomorrow, you'll know who's responsible).

*alright, in the interest of full disclosure, i'm just the most reciprocal. missy played chef on my birthday for a dinner party of 6. so the least i can do is turn out a batch of cupcakes.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

wednesday coupling report.

another sweet elder-love story (once you get past the gratuitous first two paragraphs), although a slightly sadder ending on this one.

why keep them apart? aren't we all kind of demented when it comes to love?

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

its a small, sweaty, solitary, scary world.

it sounds like i'm talking about prison. but its just my weekend.


so saturday night i met up with one of my guy friends, who on the way to the bar had happened to spot a lost cell phone in the cab he was in - the owner called it, and they decided she would come to the bar to retrieve it. girl shows up, he chats with her for awhile, us girls let him be figuring he's trying to get digits (which he does, but then decides she 'seems crazy' and 'has a bad laugh'...and people call me picky), and then he brings her over to introduce her to us. when i tell her where i work, she says "oh, so you know *insert name of loathsome manager here*!!!" and then proceeds to spend the next 20 minutes chatting with me about our mutual 'friend'. its baffling how tiny new york can be sometimes.


so i'm not going to complain TOO much about the weather we've been having, since i know we're all suffering. i'll just mention that typically when its above 95 degrees loveandcyanide camps out by the family pool and doesn't deal with the steamy, stinky mess that is the rest of nyc. this past weekend, however, that proved impossible as two different factions of friends decided to do daytime outings and while i adore them all, and had a great time both days, i most definitely could have done with rescheduling our summer fun to a time when our urban adventuring could have been a tad less sweat-filled.

so, a short list of things i wouldn't suggest doing in 100-degree weather:

  • waiting ages on a (wrong) line thereby missing the boat you were waiting for (the last boat of the evening) and not getting to the (fake) beach you were heading to, all because teenage water taxi employees are complete morons who can't point/speak properly
  • going to a flea market
  • walking clear across town to a bar because a friend is going through a "forrest gump phase"
  • drinking heavily, eating light, sleeping little
  • operating a vehicle after drinking heavily, eating light, sleeping little
  • taking the subway to an important business meeting*


for the first time in about 2 years, mine and missy's vacation schedules don't match up, so for about a week i'm here and she's off sunning herself in the tropics. i realized today as i went shopping after work and finally meandered home hours later how weird it was to not have anyone wondering where i was and what i was up to. and how i had nothing urgent to get home to. so this is what living alone is like. i guess it is kind of liberating, although on the other hand it totally sucks because when Bear demands a fancy dinner, i'm the one stuck handling it all myself.


and finally, after months of having it on my netflix queue, i at last got to watch the documentary maxed out. its traumatizing. i am SO happy i just bought about 8 pairs of summer sandals as i am totally never purchasing anything ever again.

*this happened today, not over the weekend, but its probably the one that most belongs on this list. its probably also the dumbest thing i've been forced to do all month. isn't the first rule of good business not to show up looking like you just finished a marathon? right. someone inform management of that one.

Friday, June 06, 2008

ipod poetry. v.6

you thought this was gone for good, right?

but how could we abandon our most popular feature...

boy, i've been told -
boys don't cry;
boys wanna fight!

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

three cheers for unusual couplings.

its one of those soul-sucking, heart-smashing, joy-exiling weeks in the office. you know, the sort when you leave at the end of the day and want to just shove everyone on the train who is shorter than you. and you can feel your heart shrink to the size of the grinch's (circa the first half of the book/15 minutes of the cartoon).

one of those.

so this brought some life back into my cold, stony heart when missy sent it to me earlier today.

as did a viewing of this the other night. the most unexpectedly touching film we've seen in awhile. even Bear was in tears.

Monday, June 02, 2008

open letter to the bar security industry.

dear bouncers,

i understand that some of you need to keep track of who enters/exits your place of work by inking our hands as we walk in to your bar/lounge/club/etc. we are all aware that the morning-after-stamp-on-the-hand is a by-product of socially drinking. however, if you are unable to use a regular stamper, is it possible for you to at least use some sort of non-permanent ink instead? your patrons don't mind being marked for an evening, but its a little much to be branded for life.

i knew it meant trouble when one of your own came at my hand with a Sharpie on friday night. it is currently 3 days, 2 showers, and 1 hand-dip-in-the-pool later and i still have the weird little green design drawn on me.

had i know i was getting another tattoo that night, i would have at least asked for it to be centered.