Songs that trigger randomly weird memories

Recently I was going through my music and came upon an old song that I once downloaded for my sister's house parties (she wanted dance music). This song was Brandy's "What About Us?"  For those of you that might need a refresher click here to listen. Obviously because I downloaded it for one purpose only, I hardly ever listened to it again.

However, listening to this song at that moment, I was struck with a memory of one particular house party during college. It was at the same place I was always at my freshman year: a basement of an apartment across the street from Camp Randall. My sister and her friends knew the guys that lived there, so I had an "in" and didn't have to pay for a cup and the guys always seemed to have an eye out for me. It was always good times.

Anyway, one particular night at one of these house parties, when I was feeling a little bit saucy (please see definitions 1-4 on Urban Dictionary), I found a guy on the dance floor and started dancing with him. While we were dancing, I managed to lead him in a stealthy-sheepherder style into the closet where everyone kept their coats and proceeded to make out with this young fellow. I want to point out that I did not know the guy's name. To this day I cannot tell you much about what he looked like other than he was white and taller than me. And I only recall this because I was on my tiptoes while kissing him. The fact that he wasn't leaning down to reciprocate did not mean nothing to me!

Then, after no more than 10 seconds into the make out session, I just stopped kissing him and walked away without saying anything. Like I was bored and over it. The entire minute that this was happening, Brandy's "What About Us?" was playing. Needless to say, I made it back to my dorm room safe and alone. Probably for the best.

I don't know why the memory sticks out. Probably because I am actually quite prudish and I can recall, for the most part, all the people I have made out with in my life, even if they were barely make outs. Also, this particular event was so unlike me, because I initiated it. Usually I wait for situations to present themselves to me like a puppy laying on my lap and demanding its belly to be rubbed. I was very un-Holland-like aggressive.

I feel bad for the guy. I mean he missed the opportunity for a proper make out with this:

He probably questions his own existence or what is there left to do in life after knowing the sweet kiss of all that hotness. Yeah, that is totally what he is doing. I ruined his life.

Remember that time my sister was (and still is) a big pants-on-fire-liar?

Almost every woman (and man, even if he doesn't want to admit it) within my age range has the same feeling about Alanis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill. That is a feeling of utter love and devotion. And if these individuals don't have that feeling for the album, then they are just kidding themselves. No one is that too-cool-for-school. I am proud to say that it was the first CD that I owned....or was it?

My memory: My aunt Carol, who was also a huge fan of the album, bought me the album for my 13th birthday.

My sister's memory: Basically the same. Except she was the gift recipient, for her 14th birthday.

The differing stories came out when my sister and I were splitting the CDs when she moved out for college. She took the CD and claimed it was hers. I disagreed (I still have it by the way, so I think I won this argument). However, she sticks to her story to this day when the topic is brought up.

My sister and I lived together for a few years during college...I marked all of my CDs with nail polish....

Now, to quickly touch upon why this album impacted me so much at 13. Songs about getting your heart broken...about that bastard that used you and then left you? What would my young little mind know about that?  It was if I was preparing myself for a life of disappointment by listening to that album. Thank you Alanis for preparing me.

And yes, for those of you that noticed it and are still thinking about it, it did take me until 1995 to have a CD player. Get over it!

Holy Mark Ruffalo was that man good looking!

So the only knowledge that I have of Chris Sarandon is that he was once married to Susan Sarandon and he is the bad guy from The Princess Bride. 

 

As a child watching Princess Bride, I never though much about Prince Humperdinck as far as the looks department go. I mean he was the bad guy! And he had to compete with dreamboat Westley/Cary Elwes! And I was a child and hadn't even began to start forming my personal taste in the opposite sex.

Not too long ago, I watched Dog Day Afternoon for the first time ever. (I thought it was excellent by the way). I knew Chris Sarandon was in it, as the main character's lover, but I had no idea what he would look like. I was stunned to see that I actually thought he was quite handsome, or as handsome as a guy can be playing a disheveled individual that was just released from a mental institution.

Automatically I knew why I found him attractive. He looked like Mark Ruffalo! Apparently I was not the first person to make the connection. From the lovely people at "Totally Looks Like:"

I'm pretty sure Mark Ruffalo is perfect. Please watch all his shirtless scenes in The Kids are Alright and disagree with me.  Just try and do it! I mean...he's from Wisconsin....

So in conclusion, young Chris Sarandon was one good looking dude.

Photos of me = ridiculous faces and poor wardrobe selections

[whispery voice] confessions [/unwhispery voice] I am a lifelong horribly unphotogentic person.

One might think, by my self-deprecating sense of humor, that I think I'm ugly. Not true! I think I fall in the range of pleasantly normal. In the flesh, I don't get catcalls, but I don't get "Gah!  What is that?" either. So I think I am winning overall. But pictures of me are something else.

As soon as a camera is pointed at my me, my face just contorts. My eyes widen to crazy person size (or just completely shut altogether).  And my body seems to stiffen or just loses the ability to take a normal stance/position.

I once worked for an AmeriCorps program which posted pictures and a short bio of the volunteers on their webpage. The managers of the program decided to take pictures during one of our Friday training sessions. When it was my turn they kept on taking my picture over and over again ("Ok, smile this time." "Stop making that face!"). After a while they just gave up.  The program did not post the pictures online that year...Correlation?

So, instead of explaining myself, I think I should let the pictures speak for themselves. A retrospective of a terrible photo subject (done in random order, because I can't remember exactly when these were taken)

From left to right, 1st to 5th...I think. The elementary school photos! Always a sure fire way to look your worst. It conjures up memories of things your parents did to you, like give you horrible perms or make you sleep in curlers. Or perhaps make you wear the same outfit two years in a row (Mom, please note the first two!). It started out pretty good though.

Not a child pothead, I promise!

My best Steve Urkel impression

Aspiring model to be

Just don't smile. It will make it better.

Awkward teen years. Who doesn't love them?

Key to lessen your impact of a bad picture?
Surround yourself by cute siblings
(I cut them out to show you the actual impact).

Another way to lessen your impact? Just go with goofiness!

Those glasses were a great idea!

I decided to gain my Freshman 15 before I went to college

Always happy on high school picture day (hiding inner rage)

Clearly, I was not a brusher of my own hair.

So I asked my Mom for old photos of myself, for the purpose of this blog entry.
My mom saw me picking this one out and said,
"Ugh that picture!"

Purple pants and purple suspenders!
Fancy.

And a palate cleanser that I actually think I look adorable. Sure I was oddly dressed, but I was forced to wear it!

Preschool Circus Show.

You are cool, and I mean that in the non-sarcastic way

I like to think that I have a lot of friends. My weekends typically don't end up being lonely, because I usually have someone to hang out with it. I even have a number of friends that I can't easily hang out with because they have moved away from me or I have moved away from them (tear). I'm really one really lucky lady to have so many awesome, sincere, intelligent people in my life.

With these friendships, there is usual a moment that occurred between us, in which I said to myself, "Dang, that person is awesome! I most have them in my life forever." Here are some  highlights:

• Watching someone you had just met, run (soberly) into and bounce off of a closed screen door. Only to watch her follow-up with a Mary Catherine Gallagher "Superstar" pose.  FRIEND!
• Participating in a river clean-up with a friend of a friend that you barely know and getting him to help you make the couple nearby (that is on there first date no less) feel uncomfortable, by serenading them with super sexy renditions of Ginuwine's Pony and Silk's Freak Me. FRIEND!
• Working late one night, and hearing your co-worker start singing the Humpy Dance out loud, alone at his cubicle. FRIEND!
• Your new work friend hiding in the bathroom, while you use her t-shirt to demonstrate to the rest of your co-workers your fancy t-shirt folding trick. FRIEND!
• Being the worst spotter during a trust exercise and letting your friend fall and end up getting a real bad-ass bruise (I was the bad spotter in this situation, sorry!).  FRIEND!

If your story is not in here, don't fret!  It's probably because A) It's too embarrassing to share with the world (not our friendship, just the situation), B) We've friends for so long, that I cannot remember the moment that defined our friendship, you were always just there, I love that you were!

Laundromat is the new bus

In the year and a half that I haven't been updating this blog, I have moved to a new apartment and a new neighborhood.

In my old apartment, I had a designated spot in an indoor garage that allowed me to keep my car parked for long periods of time. I could then take the bus to and from work. The bus trip was quick, free (work paid for my bus pass) and environmentally conscious. Also, as I have mentioned before, these bus trips have led to some interesting stories. At this particular apartment, there was a number of washing machines and dryers which allowed me to do laundry in peace because there was usually no one else doing laundry at the same time.

At my "new" apartment, I do not have a designated parking spot, so I have to drive my car to and from work to avoid getting a parking ticket. I park in my work's garage (for free again, because my awesome employers pays for the downtown parking ramp access). One would think that I would be missing out on the awesome bus-related stories. But with no washer or dryer in my apartment now, I have to use a laundromat, which means AWKWARD STRANGER MOMENTS!  yaaaaaay? Here are some examples of the stories I have collected in my brain jail so far:

I'm sure, for that particular guy, that the door was leading to Narnia 
I have tried the two different laundromats. The first one was closer to my apartment. It was extremely small, and all of the appliances were so old they ended up ruining some of my clothes with what looked to be rust stains . It wasn't more than a few months before I decided to switch laundromats. But before I did, I had the following experience:

Being too lazy to travel back and forth between home and the laundromat, I parked myself on a bench with a magazine, snack and my phone to entertain myself while I waited for my clothes to finish their washing and drying. Early on in the washing period (and I should probably note here that I was completely alone in the building) I notice a man pacing back and forth outside glancing in the window. Finally he walks in, goes to the bathroom, stays in there for a few minutes, walks out without acknowledging me ever. This little cycle of disappearing, reemerging, pacing outside on the sidewalk, jaunt to the bathroom for 3 minutes, exiting , REPEAT, occurred about 3 times during my entire "stay" for the night, which was about 2-2.5 hours.

Just before I left, I stuck my head in the now empty bathroom to see what the big deal was. What I saw with my eyes can only be described by the afternoon specials, or Lifetime Movies, or weird Current TV documentaries as a heroin and/or crack den.  Ok, I will admit it.  It wasn't the rust stains! I'm pretty sure the probable druggie was the catalyst to me selecting a new laundromat.

Maybe YOU make faces when you fold your laundry
At the second laundromat, I was shaking out my clothes and folding them after they got out of the dryer. I could see out of the corner of my eye that a lady was laughing (no, not giggling, or smiling - just full out laughing) at me. 

Me: May I help you (with a hesitant smile)?
Lady (not too much older than me): Your face just looks real funny when you fold clothes (contorts face to mimic what I was doing).
Me: Oh, ok. 

How Rude

Getting down with the adult contemporary
If my phone battery runs low, I will tempt the fates by entering the laundromat without a form of distraction while my phone charges in my car. Which also means I am subjected to listening to adult contemporary which plays overhead instead of sticking my head phones on and listening to music play on my phone.

This one time a woman was seriously getting down to the music being played by the laundromat. Not a fully body get down, but more of a "Holland get down" which involves sitting down, and moving the upper body.  Except this lady's upper body movement was all quasi-thrash metal, quasi-Keith Moon (or name another crazy drummer). She was totally pulling out the bull horns too. And all while there was some Hall and Oates song playing (probably not true, but in my memory it is the soundtrack to this particular event).

Ok, so this entry is getting too long and I am too tired. There is more to tell, and I am sure more to share. But in meantime, adieu!

Things that are better than...

I sit at my desk lightly clearing my throat followed by a swallow when I feel it..the beginning stage of a sore throat. You know that feeling...the feeling that this sore throat will rapidly spiral down into an all out head cold. I sit there imagining myself a few days from now, surrounded by mountains of used tissue. Nose all flaky and red from the nose rubbing and already cursing myself for getting the cheap version and not kicking in the extra few cents for the aloe tissues.

The only way I can ease my anxiety, is to make a list of things that are better than a sore throat (that will turn into a cold):

• Left over baptismal cake brought into work by colleagues (sugary frosting always soothes the hurt)
• When my dad hugs me so hard it cracks my back
• The term "stupid fresh"
• When I go to Sheboygan for the weekend and my Mom makes breakfast and coffee for me in the morning
• Getting that special corner space in the gym where I can do my balance squats without people's judgey "you're doing it wrong" eyes
• Cuddling with my nieces and nephews (who were probably the ones that got me sick, but whatevs)
• Leaving work at 5 pm and it being pitch black outside (I actually hate this, but even this is better than the stupid sore throat)
• Stealing candy from my nieces' and nephews' Halloween stash. Haha, suckas!
• Everything else in the world!

 Excuse me while I chug water, Vitamin C, hot tea, and anything else to ward off the doom!

It's not me, It's you...Err...Reverse That

This might be shocking for you to find out, but I never broke up with anyone. In my prior dating experiences, the break up was mutual or it was the dude that did the dumping. My favorite break up line is still, "I hope we can continue to be friends because you are a cool chick." Surprisingly my response was not, "Can we still be friends after I punch you in the throat?" Needless to say we did not remain friends.

When/if the day comes that I get to experience being the "breaker-upper", I don't have any prior experience to call upon, to do so in the most compassionate way. But, I have recently realized that my job as a meeting planner does give me an opportunity to learn the best way to let someone down easily.

Typically my client contracts certain services of our meeting to outside vendors. Decorators, audio-visual, security, printing companies, etc., will all contact me to find out how they can provide their services for the meeting. I end up looking through several proposals before I make a decision on the specific company that we will use. (Look at me: I am also finding out how it feels to have a full dance card. I'm the prettiest belle of the ball!)

When it comes time to update the companies that my client is not utilizing, I always rack my brain for the best ways to say "I'm just not that into you." I have found that there are a few ways of approaching it, which in reality are the same ways (I assume) to break up with someone:

1. Delaying the inevitable - It is pretty hard to tell a vendor that spent so much time putting together a proposal, that they are not getting my business (hehe, my business). So when they call to see where I am in my decision making process, I might say, "Um well, I am still weighing my options. But I will definitely update you once that is done." More often than not I am just giving myself some time to write a good regrets email or I might conveniently forget to update them. The dating equivalent is seeing someone you are dating with someone else, and they tell you, "Oh it's just a friend. Don't worry about it." Expect to get a Dear John/Jane letter shortly after.

2. Be totally blunt - Flat out tell the company that another vendor has given you a better offer. Or that the other company provide better services. The dating equivalent is saying "You're ok, but John Doe is a doctor and he drives a Lexus, so....."

3. Backburner them - Quickly let them know that you went with another company, but that you are keeping their information in your records for a later day. The dating equivalent:  "You are so great! I'm just not in the right place right now for a relationship." It's also kind of like the Friend Zone.

4. Blame someone else - This can easily be tied to obligations of a board of directors or the hotel venue. Sometimes you are just tied to a certain company, despite getting proposals from other companies. The dating equivalent would be to blame your parents, friends or even more easily: work.

5. Make them not want you - In the business world you can simply show that you might have the budget to pay for their services. Or you can show them that the cost for them to provide the services might outweigh any profit they might get. The dating equivalent would be "letting yourself go" or acting crazy/weird. You know... letting you be you.

Man...there is no good way to dump someone without being a total asshat!

They only bite you if they like you

*taps on microphone* Hello?....Is anyone there?....

Wow. I haven't updated this blog in over 17 months. Even then, I only did so sparingly.

I forget where exactly I heard it, on some TV/movie, but someone talked about having a blog, and their friend said, "What is it, 2002?" This made me laugh because, A) I never even log into this blog let along write/update it and B) I started a blog way after it was popular. Please don't blame me on my tardiness to the blog party. I live in the Midwest, which is notorious for getting into trends way past their expiration date.

I blame Facebook/Twitter for killing the blog. Why go into a long tirade about your thoughts and/or life when you can capture it in 140 characters of less? Part of me thinks it is the dumbing down of human existence. On the other hand I also think it forces individuals to be more thoughtful/witty/intelligent in shorter form.

Well, I'm fighting against the machine/the man/the whatever you want to call it. I'm going to make myself write down my thoughts on this, my old friend, peoplegoingtoheaven.blogspot.com. It will help me freshen up my writing skills, which I have found have been rapidly going downhill over the years. It will also help me dump the random thoughts I have running around in my head at all times of the day that I want to share with others (and by sharing with others, I mean my Mom who is probably the only one reading this...Hi Mom!).

Now on to the random title of this entry. This is a memory of my childhood that I have been recently thinking about. I was about 3-4 years old. I lived in a house on Alexander Court in Sheboygan. In our neighborhood there were two boys that were around the same age as my sister and I. They both had the same name, which I cannot recall right now (Brian?). One of them was a blonde, the other was a brunette/ginger. They liked playing with my sister and I, we liked playing with them. I remember in the mornings how they would wait for us outside of our house to come and play, while my sister and I sat peaking out of the window, in our underwear waiting for our Mom to get our clothes ready.

Anyway, I completely forget the circumstances that lead up to the situation but I do remember that the brunette/ginger one bit me on my back. Enough so that it left a welt on my back. Those that know me and my sensitive skin, it doesn't take much to leave marks on my body. Regardless, it was pretty traumatic in my little girl mind. I don't even recall how the situation was handled by my parents or by his parents. I don't think that my sister and I hung out with him much after that, but that might have been due to my family moving to another neighborhood, for unrelated reasons, shortly afterward.

Part of me thinks that my Mom probably explained to me that he only did that to me because he liked me and he didn't know how to deal with it, because that seems like something my Mom would do. Also, that explanation makes the most sense: People like to bite things they like! If I see an adorable baby with chubby cheeks, the first thing that runs through my mind is, "I want to bite those cheeks!"

Wait...you mean everyone doesn't have those thoughts? I blame the brunette/ginger "Brian" for ruining my appropriate reactions to things that I like. So to any future men that I might find attractive, if I bite you, don't worry! It is only because I like you so much!