There are no boundaries!

Now, if I've learned anything from 2Birds1Blog (oh, and I have. I really have), it is that you should never bitch about your job on your blog. So, this will not be a blog post about how completely effed up it was that I had to clean the bathrooms at my place of business yesterday. It's not that it wasn't completely ridiculous and that I'm not completely livid (it was, I am), but I do know that the internet is not the place for these things. Big Brother and all that.

No, this is a post about what happened to me WHILE I was forced to clean the bathrooms yesterday, and how apparently men either have no idea how women's rooms work or have absolutely no boundaries.

There I was, in my business casual outfit and brand new shoes (but hey, that's how we women love to clean, amiright?), dragging a huge garbage can, broom and duster into the men's bathroom of a busy establishment. Holding to what I believe to be a normal sense of decency, every time I entered this room I placed a sign on the door that indicated the bathroom was closed for cleaning. I naively thought this would keep me safe.

To be fair, the gentleman in question DID ask if it was ok for him to come in. It is very possible that he didn't hear me say, "Sure, but GIVE ME A SECOND" so that I had the time to wash my hands (men's rooms, btw, are disgusting) and step out of the room. But even if he didn't hear me, it completely blows my mind that he would still walk over to the urinal and proceed to use it while I was two feet away. Maybe men are used to doing this next to (male) strangers, but rest assured that the women who are being forced to clean your disgusting mess are not! Now, I am not a prude, but being alone in a men's bathroom save for a strange man with unzipped pants is just not a comfortable situation! Not, not, not, not ok. I'm not blaming this dude for not knowing proper co-ed bathroom etiquette, but there just has to be a way to spread the word. Perhaps this begins with not forcing your office employees to clean the bathroom while they have their own g-d work to do, but I guess that is a discussion for another day.

In happier news, I made Michael Emerson laugh. My life is complete.

Happy Day Which Must Not be Named

I've never been huge on Valentine's Day, so it's not something that I jump to celebrate. However, I do have a wonderful boyfriend who loves to eat, and I love to bake, so I thought a nice, chocolate-y treat would be an acceptable middle ground. And, wow, did I find an amazing recipe.

I hadn't made cookies in awhile, so I wanted to find a semi-romantic cookie recipe. Chocolate was a must, but I wanted to find something fruity as well. I correctly assumed that the boy would like the combination of raspberry and chocolate, so I finally settled on this incredible concoction. The result caused one of my biggest baking fans to say that it might well be her favorite thing that I have ever made. So I definitely consider that a win.

Unfortunately I only had milk chocolate chips, so if I could change anything, I would definitely have used dark chocolate. I also considered using sea salt, but the combination of chocolate, white chocolate and raspberry was tasty enough. Also, I'd probably use a little more chocolate, but that's just a personal preference.


For those who know me, you know that this is just about as romantic as I get. Unless I were to receive a really meaningful card...

Live in New York, but leave before it makes you hard

After an annoyingly unproductive day at work (I hate my computer), you can imagine my excitement when I walked up to the top of the subway stairs to catch the N train, only to realize that the line (mass) of people reached all the way to the OPPOSITE platform. With calmness I only dreamed possible, I waited my turn for the train. However, as I edged ever closer to the front of the platform, I found myself thinking thoughts. Horrible thoughts. Thoughts involving noticing the closeness of my fellow passengers to the edge of the platform and thinking, "Wow, I hope that person doesn't fall because then my train would be delayed."

I'm admitting this mostly as online absolution for thoughts that I deem unimaginable, but I have to accept that it is New York that has made me this way. As a fresh faced Pennsylvanian, I would have worried about those surrounding me for their proximity to danger, not their (annoying) ability to delay my commute. The Sunscreen Song man was right, I have definitely crossed over to the dark side.

Will I be leaving New York anytime soon? Nope. I'm well past saving anyway. I'm going to law school.

Any food is better with the word Dharma in front of it...

If there is anything my friends can do, it's theme parties. So OF COURSE we had a Lost season premiere party on Tuesday night. Amongst us were Dharma station signs, Dharma Peanut Butter, Dharma Ranch, and memories of friends lost along the way (It's NOT PENNY'S BOAT, you guys!).

Being known as the "baker" of my group of friends, I was given the task of providing a tropical-flavored desert to remind everyone of the beauty of the Island that so many of our beloved characters are desperate to leave. There was a suggestion that mango be involved (are there mangoes on the Island? I'm not sure), so I decided to take that advice and run.

Having never baked with mango before, I decided to call upon my favorite food blogger to help. She sent me many incredible recipes, but the one for mango cupcakes caught my eye. Unfortunately, the recipe was vegan, and I didn't want a bunch of boar-meat loving losties on my hands. Thus, I searched the interweb to find recipes that most closely matched the vegan cupcakes, but choc full of dairy and eggs. The combination was magical. The cupcakes were beautiful (see the flecks of vanilla bean in the frosting below), and oh so tasty. If you are a baker yourself, you have to give these a try. Cupcake recipe is here, cream cheese vanilla bean frosting is here.

Finally, on a completely unrelated note, Stephen Spielberg was at my work yesterday. While we were closed for maintenance. So I met Stephen Spielberg, while covered in paint. My life is so weird.

I'm back!

Ok, so I've been SUPER lame in the past, um, 5 or so months, but I'm making it a priority to get back to the blogging. Not that anything necessarily exciting has been happening to me lately, but I always like to keep up on the writing skills and I KNOW that there have been things that I could have commented (ranted) about in the past few months that I have let slide. So here is a quick catch up, and a reminder why this day is an important day in my own personal history.

Why I've been MIA: I know, I know, I hate excuses too. But back in September I had to decide between blogging and working on my law school applications. Unfortunately, the apps won out for awhile, and then I was out of the groove, so during my free time I turned to episodes of Always Sunny and watching my cat chase his tail for hours on end (is your cat making too much NOISE all the time?). But the applications did prove fruitful, and I am glad to announce that I WILL be attending law school in the fall. Where hasn't exactly been determined, yet, but I am leaning very heavily towards Fordham.

Oh, also I joined twitter, which kind of makes me hate myself. But I secretly love it already.

Anyway, back to why I would choose this day, of all days, to begin blogging again. One could argue that it is because the greatest show of all time (no, not gossip girl) is premiering its 6th and final season tonight. But as happy as I am that Ben Linus, my one true love, is reentering my life, this date holds much more history for me than the last season of Lost. This day, 8 years ago, was the day that I made possibly the stupidest decision of my life. Yes, on Golden Groundhog's Day (02/02/02) a group of friends and I traveled from Lewisburg to Punxsutawney, PA, to see the world's most evil rodent crawl out of his cage to inform us that there would be 6 more weeks of winter. Which we PROBABLY could have guessed after staying outside all night in 19 degree weather with, wait for it, ABSOLUTELY NO ALCOHOL. Long story short, we almost caught on fire, my lung partially collapsed, we lost a few of our friends for several hours, froze half to death, had our palms read incorrectly, took some horrible pictures, realized that no one should EVER be my partner at the game Taboo, and found out the Groundhog zoo doesn't even have a groundhog. I blame every second of this on Bill Murray.

So, in short, I have come back to the world of blogging to both apologize for my absence and to warn you to never travel to Punxsutawney for any reasons related to weather prediction or small rodents. It is, however, lovely in the summertime.

Wisdom is not in words; Wisdom is meaning within words

For all my wordsmith friends -- this is really fun! I typed in my blog address, and out popped a beautiful word cloud of the things that I apparently deem important enough to write about. Quite shockingly, it does not include the word "Britney." But, thankfully, it also doesn't contain the word "moose."





Thanks for the link Hailey!

THANK YOU!

I want to preface this by saying that I very much support people's right to challenge their government. If you have a problem with a policy, by all means, tell your representative -- that's why they are there! But if you ARE going to take up everyone's valuable time, please make sure your argument is based at least somewhat in reality.

Personally, I feel that health care should be a right and not a privilege (aren't our inalienable rights "LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?"), but I absolutely understand why people might have legitimate concerns about a public option on health care. But you know what, these real concerns will be brushed to the side if the most vocal members of the plan's opposition make dangerous and hate filled claims, such as "this plan will kill your grandparents" (a horrific lie), and "Obama is a Nazi" (will someone PLEASE explain to me how providing health care to people who need it the most in any way resembles the systematic murder of 6,000,000 innocent people???). And, to not only blame the people who are making these claims (with whom I so clearly disagree), the government officials who allow this insanity to go on are in no way encouraging genuine debate.

So, thank you Barney Frank, for finally telling one of the crazies to STFU. When people realize that only rational worries are worth debating, we will finally be able to have a real discussion that will hopefully lead to the compromise that we really need.