Detoxification

I've taken such a beating in the last month that I've decided to change up a few things. First off, I've stopped eating.

Well that's a lie because God made cows so we could enjoy juicy steaks, and who I am to argue with God? I've just decided not to eat for the next 5-10 days, depending how long I can subsist on lemonade.

That's right, I'm doing the lemonade fast. Just like every other person you know.

Why? Because my life is so horribly out of balance that all I do is spend my time screaming at people while my stomach screams at me.

In a related story, I had my stomach lining photographed on Friday. It was the best sleep I've ever had. Anesthesia is made from the best drugs on earth. And also, no ruptures in the lining, which is great and just means that all those awful stomach aches are stress-induced.

Lovely. My body hates me. It's time to take drastic action. Hence, nothing but spiked lemon water till next weekend. Clean out the system, regulate my psyche, blahblahblahnewageshit.

You're supposed to do this crazy thing for 10 days, but I figure if I can stick it out for 5, that's a good start. Plus, I'm doing this on Saturday, so I kind of want to be able to eat pretty soon afterwards.

Wish me luck. Today was Day 1 and while it wasn't horrible, I also didn't do much other than sit home, watch the foosball, and knit. Tomorrow I have to work, which means I have to stress.

We'll see how this goes.

***UPDATE @ 8:30 PM 10-1-07***

Well that lasted all of almost two days. It turns out that when you have stomach problems, citrus drinks aren't all that great. And when you need have a job that demands 110% of all your mental faculties, starving your system isn't the most fabulous of ideas. I don't know how people with real jobs like brain surgeons and trapeze artists would pull this off.

So at 6:35 pm, I had a Balance bar. It immediately made my tummy hurt, but then my headache disappeared and I commited to going back to solid food.

I'll save detox for when I'm on vacation and don't have to think, or command, or be "on."

Yeah.

Photoblogging Friday 9.28.07

Today is my favorite Muppet's birthday. He hates it when I call him that, but I don't think he's reading anyway, so we're okay!

Back to the current project. Continuing on with the creepy parking lot:

Through the tempered glass

Taken in the elevator and looking out onto the 4th floor of the lot.

You can almost smell the urine.

The Miracle of Childbirth

My boss is schedule to give up vessel duty for her twins this Friday. And it can't come soon enough.

I had 3 women in my office today comparing war stories. The endless labor, the complications, the missed window for drugs, the whole gross gambit. I cannot tell you how repulsed I was.

Nobody is doing anything to convince me having children is necessary.

Il S'appelle...

I've decided that the man's nickname is going to be Monsieur. C'est trés appropriate. Skooky isn't going to like it, but I assure you he's not French.

Just like I'm not French but we both have Frenchy names.

Et il est mon ami.

In a related story, Sunday night I was caught up in the middle of a rant about being a grammar nazi and ended up confessing about the existence of this blog to him. But I assured him that I don't really write about him.

Um...

Overheard in the Family #9

Sunday I met up with the boys for breakfast. And by boys, I mean three generations of family members: dad, baby brother, and baby brother's baby.

I had pancakes. 3B had formula. In a bottle. Because he's a baby, get it?

3B was wearing pants that his daddy referred to as Aladdin pants. So his new name, since Baby Werewolf wasn't really catching on, is Baby Aladdin. Because he's part Indian, get it?

After breakfast, we met up with the rest of our generation and his progeny to watch the foosball.

My two brothers had the following conversation while the older one rocked 3B to sleep:

Baby Brother: Man, Baby Aladdin's got the life. All he has to do is eat and shit. I wish that's all I had to do.

Big Fish: You did have that life. Right up until you were 18.

That exchange might not be funny to you, but the way my brothers clown on one another makes it fucking hysterical to me.

And that's all that matters.

TV Rots Your Brain

Today marks the beginning of the end for some. It's the kickoff of Premiere Week on most networks. But it's also Countdown to Cancellation for a lot of the new shows hitting the airwaves.

I like playing a deathpool type of game with this every year, betting on which shows will crash and burn in ratings hell. I usually call it pretty easily. Anyone remember that Ray Liotta disaster Smith? No? That's because it was only on for about 3 episodes (I had a friend who was a writer on the show. Unemployment came quickly for him). I didn't think Heroes would make it either, because the pilot bored me to tears. Now that it's back for it's increasingly popular 2nd season, I remain baffled but uninterested.

Back to the game: Metacritic has the entire primetime line-up for network tv. All you have to do is determine which won't make it to November sweeps. Or February. Or May. If you live in the upside down place and don't get American television, it's okay. Just toss it out there and see what sticks.

(That's kind of how network execs do it anyway.)

Here's the short list (asterisks next to the ones I might actually watch):

Sundays
- Viva Laughlin! (It's like Vegas, but not)
- Online Nation
- CW Now
- Life is Wild

Mondays
- Samantha Who? (never even heard of it)
- The Big Bang Theory
- Aliens In America
- K-Ville (can anyone explain why a show in New Orleans is called K-Ville? Does it have something to do with Katrina?)
- Journeyman

Tuesdays
- Cavemen*
- Carpoolers
- Cane*
- Reapers (like Dead Like Me, but not?)
- Chuck

Wednesdays
- Pushing Daisies
- Private Practice
- Dirty Sexy Money*
- Kid Nation
- Gossip Girl
- Back to You
- Kitchen Nightmares
- Bionic Woman
- Life

Thursdays
- Big Shots*

Fridays
- Women's Murder Club
- Moonlight (like Angel, without David Boreanz?)
- American Band
- Nashville (like American Idol, for talentless country twangers?)

Winners like me will get to watch football and then basketball from now until next June. Yay!

Photoblogging Friday 9.21.07

The other day I went crazy taking pictures in a downtown parking lot. It's dark and creepy as all hell, but I have to park there to see my chiropractor. Not good for a single woman, but visually great for a photographer.

I like the way the light comes in through the dirty stairwell:

Enter...

What's really misleading is that the outside of this building is a gorgeous Art Deco façade. It's currently surrounded by scaffolding as it's being restored. But the inside? Ick.

Expect to see more from this session in the coming weeks.

10 Points When Lit

Today I felt like a pinball. It was just meeting after meeting after meeting. I didn't sit in my office for more than 30 minutes at any point during the day.

There was the 8 am at the office, a 9:30 in the Historic Core, noon on the westside, 2 pm back downtown, and then a 4:30 at the LA Athletic Club. It was a grand total of something like 35 miles driven to meetings alone.

At one point, I actually ran into the bookcase in my office. Me = human pinball.

At another point I found a Blackberry sitting on my desk. It's not a sexy one. It looks like a brick. And it isn't forwarding my emails so it's just as worthless as one right now too.

But at no point during the day did I have to pay for a meal. Including that steak for lunch, lobster for dinner, and creme brule for dessert.

It's really great to having friends in catering.

Not so great being too important to take a fucking break. But what can you do?

Overheard in Los Feliz

La Ria and I work in the same industry. So when one of the industry trades threw a party, off we went.

We had one drink and then left to Eat. On Sunset.

It was a very Hollywood night. Right down to our conversation, which somehow centered around Scientology:

La Ria: And that actress Erica Christensen was there. She's been in...

GPG: Yeah, I know who she is. I get her confused with Julia Stiles sometimes.

La Ria: That's random.

GPG: I know. But Julia has straight hair and Erica has curly hair, so I can usually tell them apart.

La Ria: Good thing.

GPG: Yeah. I like to keep my curlies straight.

And then we laughed at my unintentional pun. I'm funny on Tuesday nights.

Growing Up is Hard to Do

This post is unfinished. I can tell you that right from the outset.

It's because my thoughts are seriously jumbled. I should be at the gym. I should be working out my exhaustion. Instead, I'm sitting in front of my computer trying to make sense of my life.

(And waiting for my toes to dry. I have a party to go to tomorrow night. I'll be wearing open-toed shoes. I need pretty toes.)

I've accomplished a lot more than I thought I would by now. It shouldn't surprise me, but just last summer I was unemployed and feeling worthless. And now tomorrow marks one full year at my current job, where I quickly rose up to manage the day-to-day operations of an entire department.

Talk about coming full circle. When did that all happen?

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Probably because I'm not completely comfortable with where I'm at in life. Either professionally or personally.

And that's about all the introspection I'm going to allow myself tonight.

Two Things

1. The Raiders were robbed.

2. Ironing a shirt with a ruffle is really hard.

Photoblogging Friday 9.14.07

I must confess that these photo posts are growing increasingly difficult to make. Not for lack of content, but I started doing them in order to force myself to shoot more pictures. And I haven't been doing that. In fact, it's become a pain in the ass to find something to post because I'm tired of looking at the same old shit.

Regardless, we soldier on. I need to validate the moniker I've given myself, after all. This is from a headshot session in 2004. We were out on a residential street, the corner of which was functioning as a repository for recently discarded bathroom fixtures. I couldn't resist taking a shot of the debris:

Abandoned Sink

And then it was over and we went back to shooting the client. And this is still my favorite picture out of all of them.

I was always better at the still life than people life. Mainly because objects don't move. Or get crabby. Or argue with me about what the shot should look like.

That's the least fun part of shooting people. But at the end of the day, I do own their souls.

There's always an upside.

Russian Holidays

Did you miss the opportunity to take Wednesday off just so you could make babies? I did, and god knows I could have used it. The sex, sure, but mainly the day off.

Except I'm not Russian, so it didn't apply. However, I do have vacation time banked up, so I can basically make Conception Day any day of the week I want.

I also already own a car and have no desire for babies. Plus my baby-making counterpart works worse hours than I do, so no babies for us.

My life is so very hard.

Signs of Exhaustion

It's only Tuesday. Did you know that? Why does it feel like tomorrow should be Saturday already?

You know what happens when I spend too much time in the office? My brain gets fried by the fluorescent light exposure.

And that would explain why I put powdered creamer in my chamomile tea this morning and wondered why it turned a slight shade of green and didn't taste like coffee.

I need sleep. NOW.

For more entertainment, read True Office Confessions. The miserable guy at the top looks exactly like my ex. Hahahaha.

Overheard in the Family #8

My cousins and their kids came over to see the new baby. While we waited for him and his parents to arrive, we looked at pictures of his first day on my dad's laptop.

During all the oohing and aahing, my cousin Richardo says to me:

R: So are you feeling the pressure to deliver one?
GPG: Hell no. But Big Fish really wants me to have one. He said he wants me to feel the same type of life fulfillment that he's feeling from having children.
R: *deep belly laugh* Oh really?
GPG: Yeah! So I told him I'm not having children just so HE can feel fulfilled. That's bullshit.
R: I think you're going to surprise us all one day.
GPG: Don't hold your breath.
R: Except you'll be coming in saying you don't know who the father is.

My mouth dropped open as the rest of the adults (including both my parents!) cracked up.

That was so not nice.

My Lucky Stars Aligned

Just because I'm accident-prone doesn't mean I don't get cut a lucky break every once in a while. I've taken out enough insurance on Lucky Stars.com to guarantee that I manage to just skate by disaster instead of running head-on into it.

Ways I am luckier than you:

1. When I accidentally threw my keys in the dumpster, there was no real trash in it. Just bunches of leaves and a newly-discarded computer box. So it was very easy for me to simply jump, lean, and retrieve. Luck factor: 4.

2. Walking up the street to meet my man for football at the downtown sports bar, I tried avoiding some water that was running into the gutter. Step, step, slip! I'm not so good at the manuevering. And I was wearing flip-flops. And my foot somehow turned upside down, so my exposed toes were in for serious hurting. But I came away only filing off the nail polish on my big toe. This was super cool in two ways: that didn't hurt, and it wasn't a professional polish job so no big loss there! Then the guy who was standing at the entrance to the bar and witnessed the whole thing told me I was beautiful and that God loves me. Expert testimony from homeless people. Luck factor: 5. Because I could have broken something. And sued the city!

3. Blowing a tire is not a good thing, ever. But with high-performance low-profile tires being so fucking expensive, it's a worse thing. And when you do that, it's going to probably cost you another arm and a leg to replace that specialty rim too. But none of these things happened to me when I woke up at 6 am Friday morning. When the AAA guy pulled the tire off my car and saw that it was completely chewed up down to the metal threads, he said I was lucky it didn't come off during my nightly jaunt down the freeway at excessive speeds. More expert testimony right there. Luck factor: 10+. LA freeways are no joke.

4. Not knowing that I was allergic to egg whites, or that my frozen yogurt concoction thingy had egg-anything in it, you can imagine my surprise when my throat closed up and I spent the next hour trying not to die from lack of breathing. But eventually Death loosened its grip on me and I was able to go about my Friday with live comedy and slow pizza delivery. It turned out to just be a low-level allergy. Luck factor: 10+.

5. Last night, I dreamt that I found money. Lots of it. This morning I got up to do laundry. And as I was loading pants into the washer, out fell a huge wad of cash. It was mostly just ones and fives, but that don't matter. Unexpected denari is like a gift from the gods. And now that I can make it appear simply by sleeping? Clearly, I'm the luckiest girl on earth! Luck factor: off the charts.

How lucky are you?

Photoblogging Friday 9.7.07

Since we had fun with the photoshop art from 2 weeks ago, I thought I'd give it another go. This isn't a contest, unless you want to guess who's wearing the red shirt in the background. The only person who can't guess is the one who was having breakfast with me that morning.

Here's what happens when you take a shitty picture with your cellphone and then curve the hell out of it in photoshop:

Nuclear cocktails.

Sunday morning cocktails are FUN! Especially when you're on holiday. Or a drunk.

And to keep with the theme of the season, this is the same day the Raiders fucked the Cardinals' shit up last season.

It was a good day.

Clang, Clang, Clang, Goes the Trolley

Hear that? It's the work shackles.

I feel like hell.

The end.

August by the Numbers

Summer is officially over. At least, according to the calendar. The passing of Labor Day usually brings with it the death knell of summer vacation. Someone forgot to tell the weather gods though, because it's been hotter than hell here.

Nonetheless, 'tis the time for the number rundown:

5 solid hours drinking bourbon
1 street festival
1 game of pool in a random bar
12 water balloons launched at my opponent
8 more nights spent enjoying scotchy-scotch scotch
3 childhood friends bonding over bad Cuban food
7 hours spent learning to deal with difficult people
3-hour lunch enjoying the most succulent steak on someone else's dime
4-hour lunch spent downing bourbon martinis and accepting the F-torch
30 minutes spent drinking cheap champagne to celebrate a retirement and a promotion
15 days between the offer and the pay raise
65 minutes tolerating unpaid actors
48 full hours of vacation spent cleaning
30 minutes of the awesome Pee Wee's Playhouse
5 minutes of the greatest Swiss claymation penguin show ever: Pingu
3 hours babysitting the sweetest little boy
4.5 hours chilling with the G-brat dressed as Snow White
2 birthday parties with piñatas
2 Disney princesses present at the four-year old's
1 4-foot tall Superman piñata presented to the thirty-two year old
45 minutes of guitar rock
0 minutes spent playing Guitar Hero II
3 beers ingested instead
31 years of wedded bliss celebrated by my parents
31 days enjoying their newest grandchild