Kristabella: Full of Snark Since 1977

Posted By Kristabella on September 23, 2010

People, I’m tired. I’m confused as to what day it is, where I am and what on Earth is going on.

Last weekend I drove up to Madison with my friend Jess to go see ASU play the Wisconsin Badgers. We were meeting my friend Julie and her husband a bunch of his family, and my friend Amanda, who was driving in from Milwaukee. The weekend was a blast and it was so nice to hang out with everyone and watch my Sun Devils almost beat the 11th ranked team in the country.

And we represented well, horns and all.

.

After getting back from Wisconsin and spending Sunday afternoon (and evening) in the bar with the cutie bartender, I was off to New Orleans for work. It was a very long three days, but fun. And I got to eat beignets, so there’s really not a bad thing about that.

But I got back Wednesday night at 9 PM and was back at work today. And apparently I thought I was still in New Orleans, out on Bourbon Street, most of the day at work. Case in point:

Me: *sneeze*

My cubemate, after a five second delay: “Bless you. Sorry, I was swallowing.”

Me, in a really loud voice: “That’s what she said.”

So now I’m off to bed. Because I think tomorrow is Friday and I have to go to work. But for all I know, it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow and I’m in Helena, Montana.

It’s been that kind of week.

Category: A Day in the Life of Me, Land of Random, Travel | 12 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on September 15, 2010

Thank you everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday here or on Facebook or on Twitter or in person. Y’all really know how to make a girl feel loved.

So apparently turning 33 has made me revert to being in my early 20s and partying on school nights and spending late nights in bars. Because I not only celebrated on Sunday, I went out again last night for my actual birthday. And stayed out until almost midnight, which is not what a 33 year old woman should be doing on a Tuesday night. Let me tell you, I may have been partying like I was 23, but I woke up feeling every single one of those 33 years in my aching body.

But it was worth it, mostly. The shots? Probably not worth it. Especially the warm shot of gin I had to do because I kept my friend waiting. Although, I’m sure she wasn’t too sad to be sitting at a bar talking to the cutie bartender.

So yes, we did go back. It was a fun night. There were a lot of shots taken and some people (*cough* my sister Alix *cough*) got a little out of control, but it was an excellent way to spend my birthday.

In hindsight, I probably should have spent my evening on my couch, watching bad TV and cuddling up with my new friend.

Internet, meet the new love of my life:

I had it shipped to work, so my friend at work wrapped it for me so I had something to open on my birthday. Isn’t that cute?

So far, I’m in love with it. And hey, if I don’t buy me a present, who will? The cats? Please, all they gave me was dirty looks and a litterbox full of crap to clean. Ungrateful assholes.

All in all, it was an excellent 33rd anniversary of me being expelled from my mom’s uterus. I had a blast with friends, flirted with a cute bartender and showered myself with gadgets!

And now I’m off to read Hunger Games on my new Kindle. (I think she needs a name.) I want to see what all the hype is about with these books.

:::

So I’m walking in the Chicago Race for the Cure next Saturday and wanted to reach out to all of you to see if you would be willing to help this awesome cause. Breast cancer is such a horrible disease and the more money we raise, the higher the odds we can kick this disease to the curb and save all the boobies!

If you would be interested in donating, I would really appreciate it. I know it is a tough economy, but every little bit helps and I know that breast cancer research would appreciate every penny we raise. You can find my donation page here.

Category: A Day in the Life of Me, Age is Just a Number, Gotta Have Friends | 19 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on September 14, 2010

I’m currently writing this on the 13th, but in a few short hours I will officially be 33 years old. How did I get that old? How am I getting that close to 40??? And yet I still act like I’m 12.

My birthday is my favorite day of the year. It is no secret that I like attention focused on myself, so nothing better than a whole day where people have to be nice to you and shower you with gifts and attention. Sadly I’ll be working for most of the day, but should be going to dinner and out for a few drinks with some friends. I say should because my friend and I spent most of the day in bed with food poisoning or something from whatever we ate on Sunday night. Just when I thought the Kristin Johnsons were gone, I was sadly mistaken and thankful to be home and close to a bathroom.

(I have no direction to this post, can you tell?)

So this month is crazy busy for me. I spent part of the past week/weekend in Pittsburgh for work. We had a meeting and then the company picnic on Saturday. It was a good trip. Usually my trips to the ‘burgh are for 36 hours and I never really get to hang out with my friends/co-workers there. But this trip I had Friday night free and was able to actually go out in Pittsburgh and hang out with people outside of a conference room.

My friend Tiffany owns a bar and so we went to her place on Friday night. It was a blast and so fun to hang out in a casual setting with her, even if she was working as the bartender. Also, it’s nice to have friends who own bars.

The picnic on Saturday was a lot of fun. The food was amazing and it was so nice to meet my co-worker’s families and kids. My flight left at 5 PM on Saturday and then I headed back to Chicago. At that point, it had already been a long day. But it was far from over. I had to head over to my aunt’s house, since she was throwing a party for my cousin who just graduated and got her PHD. The party included a pig roast and thankfully, I missed the pig cooking and being decapitated. But damn, that was a good sandwich!

The  biggest reason I trekked to the party was this little one:

Is she not the cutest baby ever? She’s gotten so big! She’s three months old now and is a little chubby baby. I LOVE chubby babies! She’s such a good baby and laughs at her Auntie already. She must know, at such a young age, how ridiculous I am. I must give off some sort of crazy scent.

Yesterday was my official birthday celebration, watching football at our regular Sunday bar. And there was a new bartender this year and we totally hit it off. The interesting thing is that I thought I had hit it off with previous bartenders at this place, only to realize that they were just being nice to me for my tips. But this guy was different! He actually hung around after his shift ended to hang with me.

AND! He’s from Wisconsin so I told him I was heading to Madison this coming weekend for the ASU/Wisconsin game. So he spent like 20 minutes looking up the addresses of places I HAVE to go when I’m there for the game! How cute is that? Oh, and he gave me his digits. So all in all, the food poisoning was totally worth it.

And then, of course, the cab driver gave me his number. And since I was giddy over bartender guy, I wasn’t even offering mine up. IT IS A GIFT! I should so have a cab driver whisperer show.

Category: A Day in the Life of Me, Age is Just a Number, Spinsterville Here I Come | 27 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on September 6, 2010

Hey, it’s only been a week since I’ve been back from Portland, how about we finish up this recap?

When I last left off, I was boring all of you with details of my trip. So to continue, I will keep boring you with details of my trip, but at least talk about Rhi’s wedding, which should be far more entertaining.

So this was my first “blog” wedding. And by that I mean this is the first wedding I’ve attended of a person I met through the internet. It’s not that big of a deal. As I’ve mentioned a million times before, I’m happy to have started this blog if only because of the fantastic friends I have made through it.

But, this becomes a little odd when you attend an event like a wedding and people ask “so how do you know the bride or groom?”

I wasn’t actually posed with this question until Friday night at the rehearsal dinner. Most of Rhi’s friends knew me and knew I was from the internet, but we happened to sit with some people at the rehearsal dinner who weren’t aware of this.

Internet, meet Nick. He was one of the groomsmen, one of Bill’s longtime friends. He had the fortunate, or unfortunate, pleasure of sitting with us at dinner and getting to hear all about blogging and Twitter:

Nick did not understand Twitter at all. Most people who aren’t on it don’t understand it. And I can’t explain it very well besides telling you it is awesome and I love Twitter. Because sometimes people NEED to know that I’m out drinking, or my thoughts on Jersey Shore. People are dying to know this!

Nick’s solution? Why not just create an email distribution list with your friends and send them updates. And well, I laughed and then I didn’t have an actual response. Because how is Twitter different than that, really? Again, just get on Twitter. Just try it! You’ll like it!

I told Nick I would blog about him and even gave him one of my blog business cards. He was all “Full of Snark, that’s cute. Is Snark your last name?” Oh Nick, I wish.

:::

Anyway, so back to my trip. Saturday was spent doing lots of fun Portlandly things, like going to Powell’s Bookstore and getting a photo taken in front of their sign! It was a green screen:

And day drinking Oregon beer and eating my weight in pretzels and beer cheese at Deschutes Brewery with Kerri.

And seeing the Portland skyline from the beautiful Rose Garden. (Portland is the city of roses, you know. And they aren’t kidding.)

(Kerri stops to smell the roses. I’m pretty sure no one has ever thought to take that photo.)

And then it was on to the wedding! Rhi looked absolutely stunning in her dress and it was a perfect evening! Except for the fact I forgot to get new batteries and my camera died during the ceremony. This was the last one I got, not too shabby.

This was the table I was seated at. (Fitting, no?) (It’s actually a brewery in Portland!)

The food was amazing, we danced until we were soaked with sweat and a good time was had by all. It was a blogtastic wedding!

(Photo of me, Kerri and Kramey, courtesy of Kerri who took photos with me in them after my camera shit the bed.)

:::

My last day in Portland was pretty chill and relaxing. We had brunch, walked around the waterfront and then decided to catch a movie. We saw Get Him To The Greek, which is high-larious! Puff Daddy should get an award nomination for his role. Like “most unlikely person who Kristin thought would be hilarious!”

The best part, though? Portland movie theatres serve beer! And for a good price! They have beer/popcorn combos! I HAVE FOUND MY HEAVEN!

It was such a great trip and I was so honored to have been apart of Rhi and Bill’s special day. And it was nice to spend time with Rhi and Kerri outside of BlogHer, when there isn’t 2,000 other people around, and really get to hang out and laugh and talk and totally prove that internet friends really are the best.

If you want to see more photos, you can find all my Portland photos here.

Category: A Day in the Life of Me, All Things Blogging, Gotta Have Friends, Travel | 17 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on September 1, 2010

Oh yes, people. It is going to be more than one post. Because it was that awesome of a trip! And YOU ALL CARE!

Also, my blog stats are in the tank with my infrequent posting so it doesn’t really matter. And this way my mom will know how my trip went.

Portland, where do I begin?

This was the first vacation I’ve taken in awhile where I went somewhere I’ve never been before. And since I know a few people there who are big fans of the city, I knew I was going to have a good time!

This is just going to be a bulleted list of highlights with some photos interspersed…

• Portland is a drinking person’s city. Wineries, breweries and drinkers, oh my!
• We started my first morning off in Portland with probably one of the best things I’ve ever eaten – a fried egg sandwich with bacon and pimento cheese on a homemade biscuit. (Washed down with a big mimosa in a pint glass, of course.)

• I would now like to put pimento cheese on everything.
• Before I left for the trip, Rhi asked what I wanted to do on Thursday afternoon – a brewery tour or a winery tour. I told her I was under the impression that 2 days before your wedding, you have time for neither. But being from Portland, Rhi makes time for booze, and we headed to the wineries.

• We hit up Sokol Blosser, where Rhi is a preferred guest at. Also the winery doing the wine for her wedding. And the first woman-owned winery in Oregon. We got our tasting for free! And we enjoyed ourselves! After that we headed to Ponzi, not the actual winery, but their shop. We drank wine and snacked on meats and cheeses and I cursed the fact that I couldn’t get any of this wine home with me.

• In between all our fun, we did get some wedding errands done. And I made sure to help whenever and wherever I could, so the bride could enjoy her company with me. I mean, I am awesome, let’s face it.
• Thursday night I went to dinner with the bride and groom and I sampled some local Oregon beers. And I noticed we were on Flanders St. And I was like “ha! I saw a Terwilliger street today too! Like The Simpsons.” And Rhi is all “um, you know the creator is from here?” No. No, clearly I did not.

• So I did what every other drunk person would have done, I sent a photo of it to my brother in the middle of the night because he’s the biggest Simpsons fan ever.

• After dinner and a stop for one more beer, we headed back to the house and opened the wine. Rhi and I decided to don some some lovely hair bows. And then we decided to get nice and drunk and I decided I needed to cut Rhi’s cat’s nails.
• This is Gelsey, who also answers to Goo and Fat Cat. She had really long nails. They would click-clack on the hardwood floors like she was wearing kitty high heels. She couldn’t sneak up on anything, poor thing.

• And Rhi was improperly trimming her nails because Rhi is weak and doesn’t like to hear her cat sad or uncomfortable. Whereas my cats are a bunch of whiney bitches so that doesn’t bother me one bit.
• I think Goo was a little traumatized, especially when she later went to use the scratching post and bounced off it because her nails weren’t as long. And then I laughed.
• May I remind you, we were three sheets to the wind when this was all going on. The Goo will thank me some day.
• Or she probably peed in my suitcase.
• Also while the bride-to-be and I were wasted off 100 beers and a lot of wine, we decided to alphabetize the seating cards for the wedding. Which were written in fancy script. And very hard to read when you were seeing double.
• Rhi had to completely re-do them in the morning.
• So much for making less work for the bride.
• Being severely hungover the day before the wedding is not our smartest move. Probably for me more than her, since I seemed to be struggling all day. We did all the last minute things on Friday – picked up the dress, ran to Target, got our nails done, stuffed the wedding confetti into bags and tried to keep Rhi calm. (We succeeded. Mostly. There was a small incident at lunch, but Rhi recovered like a champ and I distracted her with my dancing like a chimp! Or something.)
• And then it was on to the rehearsal! I served as the official photographer for the rehearsal and I think I got some good shots. I tried to capture it all. It was a lovely venue (more on that come wedding day) and it was so nice to meet both Rhi and Bill’s family and friends.

• The dinner was at a lovely Peruvian restaurant and we had a private room and it was a beautiful way to spend the evening, talking to old friends and new, and anticipating the big day for Rhi and Bill on Saturday!

And now I think I’ll leave it at that because this post is long enough! And there is still two whole days left of the trip, including the Wedding of the Century!

Category: A Day in the Life of Me, All Things Blogging, Crazy Cat Lady, Gotta Have Friends, Hooch Hilarity | 13 Comments »
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