Last night I was out until 4am.  This is not a sentence that regularly crosses my lips, and on the rare occasions when it does, a new Harry Potter midnight release generally plays a part.  But nope, last night I was drinking jack and coke and rocking out to a punk band in Santa Barbara, without a Horcrux in sight.  And you know what?  I am no longer 25.  Just in case I had any doubts, I have been made acutely aware today that 25 was a full decade ago.  You know what else?  Crazy people sure do love me.  I must be wearing some kind of perfume: eau de crazy.  I'm not surprised anymore when random people will come up to me in the grocery store and start telling me all their crazy stories.  That happens regularly enough that I expect it now.  But I don't expect it to happen at a punk concert, when I'm half drunk.

So the fun starts off when we're waiting outside for the Velvet Rose to open.  Doors for Lagwagon open at 8, the poster says.  It's 8:30.  No open doors.  And I'm freezing my trendy butt off, getting crotchety and frustrated because in my day, when a poster said the doors would open at 8, the doors would open at 8, dammit.  And we'd walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways.

A homeless guy walks past the line of us, asking if anyone has a quarter.  When someone gives him a quarter, he then take a play out of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying  and tries to flip it for a profit.  Only he must have missed a few days of that lesson because his offer isn't at all favorable to himself.  He offers $2 to anyone for a cigarette.  It goes from, "does anybody have a quarter," to "i'll give anybody $2 for one cigarette." The 7-11 was selling packs for like $4, so if he could have saved up a bit more, he'd have been able to really be set, but I guess that's how the rich get richer and the poor get lung cancer.

Anyway, so the doors open at 9, and I immediately hit the bar.  It's been a long time since I've been drunk, what with trying to get preggo, and having a husband who goes to AA.  He's going to drive home, he's cool with me drinking, so jack and coke it is.  Only thing is, I forgot that I'm not 25 anymore.  There was a time when I could pound those things.  But my head started spinning on the first sip.  Well, I'm a cheap date, I think to myself, and follow my hubby up to the balcony, staggering along the way, marveling at how the disco balls are so shiny.

You know what one of my favorite things to do is?  Ok, before I say, you have to promise not to judge me. Because I don't get out much.  So humor me.

One of my favorite things in the world is peeing when I'm drunk.

You know why?

Because:

1)  You're generally in a club where there is loud music, and you go into the bathroom and it's nice and quiet, though you can still hear muffled club noise.

2)  You sit down on the seat and everything slows down for a second.  It was all spinny before, and now it's just like, "woah.  I'm in my own little cubicle, and it's all in slow motion."

3)  Generally it's warmer in the bathrooms.

4)  There's usually makeup in club bathrooms, and it's fun to play with makeup when you're drunk.

Ok, so I had my fun drunk-bathroom time, and I'm standing on the balcony watching the bands, when this crazy lady comes up and asks me if it's ok to smoke pot up on the balcony.  Then she says, "well, not legally, I mean, but do you think it's ok?"  I tell her that the security guards have been coming around every 10 minutes or so, so if she can do it quick, she's probably ok.  She says, "ok.  Do you have any?"  I didn't, much to her disappointment.

Then I turn around and some older guy wearing a Lagwagon shirt is going around asking everybody who they're there to see.  Everybody looks at him like he's nuts, because he's wearing a freaking Lagwagon shirt, but we humor him.  "Lagwagon," we say.  He goes on to the next person.  Then he circles back around and pokes me on the shoulder.  "I'll give you $20 for your chair."  There had been a bar stool behind me, which I wasn't using.  I was like, "you can just take it," because I feel weird selling stuff that's not mine.  "I don't take anything for free," he says, and pushes a $20 bill into my hand.

Damn, I just sold something that wasn't mine in the first place.  I wonder if this is how Mitt Romney feels when he leverages companies he doesn't own, and then sells them for a profit to pay his investors.  Man, I should be a hedge fund manager, I think.  I clearly have a knack for it.  Anyway, his $20 bought me another round of drinks, and I spent the next hour spacing out.

Then my Drunk Inner Nerd came out.

When I went to my Sr Prom, it happened to be timed to be the week before all the AP tests, right?  So I thought nothing of having a bunch of flashcards stashed in my beaded clutch to study during the down times, like waiting in line to get pictures taken, right?  Makes perfect sense to me.

So I'm always prepared with a book or flashcards or anything else that will make my Inner Nerd happy.  I leaned against the back wall, pulled up my kindle app, and read The Spectator, a British news and politics magazine.  Specifically, I read an article on Rupert Murdoch's new Sunday newspaper he just started; the Sunday Sun.  And I read about the LibDem/Tory coalition government falling apart.  In a club, with really loud punk music blaring.  You know how people say that when you get drunk you just become more like who you really are, because your inhibitions are down?  Well, I clearly am one hell of a nerd, then.

Oh, and then I started postulating on the social implications of a mosh pit; the primal urges that a mosh pit satisfied, and what type of person is drawn to a mosh pit in general.  I wasn't talking to anybody in particular.  I was just talking about it to whoever would listen.

Then, because I'm not 25 anymore, I start to pass out.  I nap right there, leaning on J's shoulder.  I'm going to start a new trend.  Napping in clubs.  You know how in New York there was that restaurant called Bed that served you dinner on a bed?  I'm going to start a new club: Nap.  For people over 30.  It will feature live music by bands popular when we were teenagers, and after every few songs, the mosh pit will be replaced by a big comfy bed with lots of pillows and comforters.  Girls will remove their uncomfortable shoes, and you will be able to buy pajamas if you want.  Everyone will curl up and cuddle with each other for 20 minutes while the bartenders clean up and restock the bar; and the band, seeing as how they are older too, will join in and we'll all nap together.  Then we'll get back up, the girls will have fun time in the bathroom while the boys buy us drinks, the mosh pit will resume, and everyone will play and dance and rock out for another 20 minutes.  We'll do this until approximately 1am, because no one should be up after 1am, unless they have insomnia.

Oh, and I'm so proud of myself because I avoided the greasy pizza they were serving to all the drunk people, though I pined and longed for it all night.  It looked so disgusting, the ex-frozen pizza swirling around under the heat lamp, the cheap cheese glooping up and dripping down the sides, the grease wanting to be shot directly into my veins to soak up the alcohol.  But I stayed strong, and just ate a Power Bar on the way home.  Yay for willpower, even in the face of total impairment.

Two Highlights from the Brit Awards

Last night the 02 Arena hosted the Brit Awards, the UK version of the Grammy's, and two things need to be pointed out:

1) Host James Cordon (he's famous for playing Smithy on Gavin and Stacey, and I totally love him) cut off Adele in the middle of her acceptance speech for Album of the Year so the Blur could play.  She gave the crowd the middle finger.  MIA gave everyone the middle finger at the superbowl halftime show, and you'd think that the world was ending from the reaction.  I haven't heard much about Adele yet, but maybe nobody pays any attention to the Brit Awards.  Anyway, why would you cut off Adele for Blur?  When was the last time they won any awards?  Like, 2000?  I was still getting carded when I bought cigarettes.  Which I didn't do that often, but, you know, I was trying to be all Bridget Jones and everything.  True story: I really did buy Silk Cut cigarettes because it was the brand that Bridget smoked.  It didn't last long.  Unlike coffee, I never could get used to the taste.

2) This song beat out Adele for Song of the Year. Apparently they're the UK version of Big Time Rush, but not nearly as good (says the girl secretly harboring a crush on Kendall)

An awesome way to spend a Saturday

Last Saturday I was in San Francisco singing the choruses of the St. Matthew Passion.

If you don't know it, you must start this video while you finish the rest of this post:



It's awesome stuff!  Really gets the blood pumping.

Every year the American Bach Soloists put on a free choral workshop.  They always pick music that has something to do with their current season (they're doing the St. Matthew Passion at the end of February), you sign up in advance, they email you the music, and then you get to spend six hours singing Bach in a gorgeous church with 250 other people.  Their Director/Founder is awesome, PLUS he's from Pennsylvania (like me), so I bonded with him talking about pretzels.  What more can you ask for?

The organ of the church where we sang

Also, I have to give a shoutout to my 4square app because it helped me find a really good sandwich place in Little Saigon.  And the tips even warned me that the proprietors didn't speak much English.  Another win for social media!

And you know what I love?  I love that the San Jose airport has a meditation room.  Every airport needs a meditation room, as I first discovered last spring when I was in a rental car shuttle in Oakland and saw a baby who was exactly the same age that Baby T would have been, and when I got off that shuttle at the airport, all I wanted to do was go somewhere quiet to cry, away from the Auntie Anne's and the magazine stores.  I went to the end of the airport, to the furthest gate, buried my head under my jacket, and cried until it was time to board the plane.  I thought then that every airport needs a quiet place for people, and San Jose has one.  Even though it's a little further from my office than Oakland, I'm going to fly there from now on.  Plus, you can get to the car rental area without having to take a bus now.  Rock on, San Jose.

Hey, I'm starting my weight loss journey again.  I kind of hit a plateau and quit there for a little bit, but not anymore.  We're taking a little more time off before we try to get pregnant, and I'm going to use that time to lose another 20 pounds.  I was reading Fitness magazine yesterday, and there was this bit about how, if you spread out small treats, you don't feel the need to binge.  That makes sense to me, I think.  Then I read the example:  "have a few squares of dark chocolate every other day, to stay satisfied," they say.  Seriously?  How big are these squares??  You think a few damn squares of dark chocolate every other day are going to keep me from going on a binge?  My God.  Who are these people who are satisfied with a few squares of dark chocolate every other day, and what do I have to do to become one?  Do people like that even exist?  Or is it an urban myth, perpetuated by Fitness Magazine, to make me feel bad about myself because I gotsta have me my Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches?  Seriously, do a few squares of dark chocolate every other day even count as a sweet?  Isn't that, like, your daily requirement of dark chocolate antioxidants? 

Anyway, I'm down 1.4 pounds so far this week.  Go me.  Yay cabbage.  The other day my afternoon snack was beets.  I'm not kidding.  Beets.  But then I step on the scale and it's down 1.4 pounds, and I think, Ok, I can sacrifice some cake for beets, I suppose.  

I just finished reading The Information Diet, which I think I mentioned before - it's all about how we need to stop ingesting the equivalent of twinkies into our brains, and spend more time on the stuff that's important to us. I can happily report that I haven't looked at The Huffington Post all week, nor have I watched The Daily Show.   I miss it a little bit - I do have a crush on Jon Stewart - but it's nice to have time to listen to the podcasts I love, read the magazines I enjoy, and not get all riled up about politics.  I also started using Rescue Time, which is a bit of software that sits in the background analyzing the sites you spend time on, seeing where you lose productive time.  So I can't sneak little breaks checking out the new Jason Wu collection at Target without Rescue Time noticing.  It's a little creepy to be honest, so I might not use it forever, but it's definitely nice to be able to get a reality check on my attention span.

I haven't been as good about meditation lately.  It seems so difficult to set aside 20 minutes to just sit and do nothing.  Yet I know it's important.  I know the difference it makes for people, and could make for me.  So I keep trying.  Eventually it will become second nature.  Like the oil pulling I do every morning.  I know it sounds crazy and new agey, but I haven't been sick at all yet this winter, and normally I come down with every cold that passes through the neighborhood, so I'm stoked about that.

This week I'm going up to my office in San Mateo, but the highlight will be Saturday, when I go to the American Bach Soloist's choral workshop in San Francisco.  A full day of singing the choruses from the St Matthew Passion.  Ahhhhh, bliss....

It's been a while since I posted a Funny Local News video, and when I searched for one on youtube, I found this one, from LA's ABC 7, filmed in a Target parking lot in Fontana, which is, coincidentally, the Target I most often go to.  I park in that parking lot!  It's a good thing the rogue carts don't get my car. Man, if you only watched local news, you would be forgiven for being afraid of your own shadow. If you're ever looking for something to be afraid of, watch local news. They'll make sure you know about some new killer disease or rogue shopping cart that you should watch out for.