too much writing

Now that someone's actually paying me to write(part time), I find it a lot harder to come up with creative energy to blog. This is not a bad problem to have, but I feel bad about not having this outlet anymore. I'm excited about all the articles I have coming up that I have to do, and trying to teach myself NOT to get overwhelmed by it, and to just GET STARTED, bc that's the hardest part for me, and then I get all anxious for nothing.

My best friend is eloping tomorrow with a guy I've never met that she's known less than half a year. I'm very conflicted about this. I want her to be happy, I love her, and she's a big girl, but I can't help but be worried and feel like she's moving WAAY too fast. Also, I knew she was never going to be a poofy-dress-fancy-wedding person, but getting married in City Hall? I'm sad I don't even get to stand next to my best friend on her wedding day. I never thought she'd be the first of us to get married, mostly bc she'd never been in a serious relationship. I feel like I've lost my last "single in the city" friend, and now it's just me. She and I could always make chat about our hs friends who have married and have babies and live in the suburbs and how we just aren't interested in that life. I'm sad that now I can't just up and go stay with her whenever I want. We're only children, I"m not used to sharing her. I don't want to have to think about what he'll think , or that it's now THEIR space. What about holidays? She and her mom have always been my family, especially when I didn't have any. Now she'll have a new family. I don't even know how to relate to this concept as it comes to her. She's my longest friend. We've been friends for 20 years(!!). I don't have a current relationship anywhere NEAR that close with anyone else.

Worried

I am in a WEIRD mental headspace right now. I can't talk about it without crying, and damnit if I didn't get teary at work today. I'm not going to say more about it than this, but it's been a harrowing weekend. I drove over 500 miles in less than 36 hours. I slept for about 1 hour on Saturday night, in a chair. My brain and heart are all conflicted and I don't know what I want to do about it. Everything will be okay, but it's very very scary when you think you might lose someone you love. And I'm not sure what's worse really, the idea of losing them to death or the idea that they may never figure out how to be a part of my life again. More or less the same thing. I have things to look forward too, but I can't bring myself to be quite as excited about them as I was before Saturday. I am conflicted.

So I'm going to try very hard not to get overwhelmed and overanalyze everything and just take it one day at a time.

Hug your family, call your friends, invite someone over, tell someone you love them. Life is too short.

New friends

Isn't it just delightful when you meet someone new and you have lots in common and conversation comes easily? I'm still kinda high from the meeting I had this week with a new acquaintance. Lately I've been fortunate to have met all kinds of fun new people, and continue to be grateful for my twitter friends, both those I have met and those I only know from online who I haven't (only a matter of time really).

This week's meeting started as a meshing of minds about coffee culture in RVA. I couldn't quiiite tell from the invitation if it the sender was strictly interested in business or not, but I figured I'd give it a go. The coffee shop where we were going to meet was closing by the time I got out of work, so we headed down to Cafe Gutenberg instead. It was half price wine night (which is the only day you should even get wine there, because all but the house wine is marked up so high it's ridic), so instead of coffee, we had to say yes to wine.

We brainstormed lots of great ideas about future Barista Jams and other coffee related things, but then got off on personal tangents too. Conversation flowed easily and after 3 hours, we finally parted, since it was a school night and all. I had quite a high after that, and I can't tell if it was just the wine talking. Either way, I'm always glad when meetings are both productive and interesting.

Spontaneity

I am not a spontaneous person. I think a lot of people like to use that as one of the words to describe them, but I am NOT one of them. I am a planner, I like itineraries, and planning ahead, and lists, and the giddy anticipation of looking forward to something.

That said, I do appreciate when friends call for a last minute get together, or people who actually follow through on the rare case that I ask them to do something last-minute. This is also why I love having friends within walking distance.

Sunday night was like another weekend night for me because I was off Monday (the only holiday we get until Memorial day-notwoot). I didn't have plans, and wanted to go out after watching the Golden Globes and drinking wine.

Thanks to the magic of Twitter and Facebook (didn't we use to use IM for this?), 2 friends responded, one who was traveling via bike, and the other who lives just a few blocks away. Bike friend had showed his penchant for impromptu meetups before. I walked the 6 blocks to my friend's house, and then another 6 to White Dog, which turned out to be closed. Through the magic of my friend's iPhone (I don't have a data phone), we found out RVAFoodie had ended up at Bamboo, where I happily go now that there is no smoking. Johnny ordered the fries, which were thin and abundant and AMAZING. We chatted, I drank $4.50/glass Merlot, and then walked/biked our respective ways home. The warmer weather made the walking bearable. Now that I add it up, it is a lot of blocks, but didn't feel that far away.

Gotta love RVA

Nights like tonight make me love Richmond. I had an impromptu meetup with RVAfoodie tonight at new restaurant, Garnett's in the Fan. The nice thing about 2 degrees of separation in Richmond is that it's easy to get to know people. Had a lovely chat with the owner, Kendra Feather, who was manning (womanning?) the bar. We talked about community blogs, gluten allergies, and her other restaurant, Ipanema, which I love even though I am so not a hipster. I will go there so much more now that the smoking ban is in effect. I will be going to Garnett's for dinner tomorrow with my Church Hill restaurant owner friend.

RVAfoodie and I discussed anonymity on the Internets, online learning and higher education, and local food and food blogs, since he writes about food on his blog and organizes Richmond food blogs over at Eating Richmond. We even discussed this post here, where he calls-out the concept of "Best Of" restaurant lists. Go see for yourself and chime in.

Garnett's had gotten great reviews, from all over, but mainly from blogger I Could Go On and On, who writes so eloquently and descriptively about restaurants and fun things in RVA. This being Richmond, we've not met yet, but of course have 900 friends in common, and have just narrowly missed each other, including just this weekend at First Fridays.

Since putting together my list of RVA food/drink specials, patio dining, brunch, and cheap drinks early in 2009, I've gotten interest from other parties to continue this, so I'm going to make an effort to keep updating my list.

At Garnett's tonight, I discovered they have happy hour from 4-6 nightly, which means their already-affordable beer and wines are $3. Tonight I enjoyed the Sallies Malbec (I do love a Malbec) and my drinking companion had the San Vito Organic Chianti, though mentioned it was dry.

Tonight I will be walking to a friend's birthday party to hang out with a bunch of 22yr olds. This will make me feel even more old, especially since I found a new grey hair just this morning :) The friend, turns out, lives in an apt I drive by every day on my way home, so I will happily get drunkitydrunkdrunk if I so desire, and walk home in my chic, flat boots. I hate cold weather, but wine makes it a little more bearable.

Beach and Bikes and Bummed

Back home from the beach. It was cloudy and/or rained for pretty much the entire trip. Sigh. I have bad luck with vacations and weather. We rented bikes, and I biked 17 miles, which was amazing because it felt like nothing. I brought back my dad's bike, which I misremembered as being a standard mountain bike. It's not. It's a cruiser. With pedal brakes. It's fairly large and a bit unwieldy. I rode it to an event that my friend Kevin, the creator of Gay RVA, was having a few blocks away. I wonder if I can sell it and buy a decent used bike? My dad had bought it new, just a few months ago, but it already has some wear and tear on it and I doubt I can get near the cost of what it was.

In other news, nursing homes are just sad, sad places. No one should live like that. I've never been one to exclaim that if I ever get sick, I just want people to pull the plug, am not in general a fan of Do Not Resuscitate orders, and think one should try all possible to maintain life (after all, we only get one), but I don't want to live like that when I get old. It's not a life. My grandmother has Alzheimer's and it's a terrible, terrible existence. What are we doing to our fellow citizens when we just make them hold on to life when life is no good any longer? I will try not to launch into a Euthanasia speech, because people are afraid of that word (see also: abortion, socialism, condoms, feminism, queer), but there's gotta be a choice here. My grandmother fell in the bathroom for the SECOND TIME (Nursing home, get your act together), and now she's in the hospital because she has gotten sick and has another infection and isn't eating or drinking. I find this out as soon as I arrive home, 4 hours away from having seen her for 2 days.

It's good to be home though. I'm having some leftover wine and eating some dinner and going to meet some of the OMGWTFRVA crew out for Karaoke tonight. I don't have to work tomorrow, yay!

Wii ski and sleep

I am not impressed with the first 5 pages of so-called stylish people on Chictopia. It doesn't usually take me 5 pages to find someone I'd consider stylish, but I guess like all things, this is cyclical. It's funny what people consider stylish. Skinny is definitely one of them, which I have to agree with even though I don't like it. An outfit, even if not that spectacular, looks great when you have legs for days.

I took a short trip out of town this weekend to see an old friend from college who moved out of state and was back visiting. We did crafts and played Wii and stayed up late talking like girlfriends should do and man do I miss that. I need more girlfriends. We played a skiing/snowboarding game with the Wii Fit, which was a lot of fun with the board reading your movements side to side while you skied. I love that the Wii is the first social gaming system. It's just as much fun to watch as it is to play, and everyone can be involved. I laughed so hard that I cried while watching her try to figure out some of the moves. I love laughing til I cry. I needed that. With all of the stress I've had lately, it felt good to laugh really hard. It's impossible to be in a bad mood while watching/playing Wii. Gotta figure out a way to play more often. I know lots of people with gaming systems, but it seems hard to get together. I love Rock Band, and lots of people I know have it, I guess it's just hard to make plans.

Here's the black sheep I cut out and sewed together out of felt.

I really miss staying up late chatting. We talked about relationships and travel and religion and society and politics and sociology and man do I miss having someone to talk soc with.

I think work has really been taking a toll on me, since I slept most of the weekend. While I am a sleeper, it's unusual for me to sleep this much and be this tired.

Also, my new upstairs neighbors need to learn how to walk lighter. Would it be passiveagressivenotes of me to leave a note asking them to pay attention to how they move in their own home?

Ha, one of the words of the day over at Urban Dictionary is blinker beat

When the tic-toc of the blinkers [on a car] syncs with the music playing on the car radio.

Dude, check it out, I got blinker beat happening on this Jay-Z song.

I didn't know there was a term, but I so notice this. Love!