in boston, part 2

The next day, Angie took me to Newberry Street.


(Lots of department stores and boutiques. Everything was very, very expensive. I did not buy anything.)

We went to a sweet art-jazz bar called the Beehive.


(This is what i look like standing next to the Beehive chalkboard.)

We ordered some wine, and i noticed there was Chartreuse behind the bar. I asked the bartender about the spirit, and he says:

"Here, i will let you taste some." He fills a rocks glass with ice and pours me a double shot of yellow Chartreuse. (there is a green Chartreuse as well, according to THIS WEBSITE the yellow is milder.)

And here i am drinking Chartreuse.


(it was awful. this was all Quentin Tarrintino's fault. if you've ever seen Death Proof that's why.)

we took pictures of ourselves.



(damn right, we're cute.)

Later, we went out for beer, which is also very expensive in boston. It was Valentines Day, so we decided to celebrate by going to a dive-y place called the Silhouette.


(7$ pitchers of PBR. We had 5.)

We met some of Ange's friends, and walked over to her favourite bar called Deep Ellum.


(not to be confused with Deep Ellum, Texas.)

The biggest difference between the Silhouette and Deep Ellum was the cost.
Silhouette: 7$ pitchers.
Deep Ellum: 7$ beers.


(by this time yours truly was a very happy girl, and needed to rest her very happy eyes. which i did. about 20 minutes after this photo was taken.)

day 2 was awesome.

in boston, part 1

this is ange.


(visit her blog, see her artwork HERE)

she lives in boston:


(thats in massachusetts)

i flew there. it was scary. i hate to fly.


(i call this: clouds with plane wing)


she goes to SMFA. this is what she looks like when she poses for me in her studio:



(master at work)


she took me to a place called The Squealing Pig:


(art students call it "the pig")

we took trains and busses all over the city:


(because public transportation is actually FUNCTIONAL in boston...)

night one ended in much joy:


(and a hangover the next day)

i am baaaaaack

hello!!!!

i am in boston (it is my last night)

pictures coming soon- and details to follow. i have been a bad blogger, i know- BUT

i plan to redeem myself full throttle

check itout

i am silly on wine-

EveRYONE!!!!

HOW HAVE YOU BEEN????

bars, bad moods, boston

yet again today found me in another terrible mood.
it was lightened, however, when a bar guest asked for a captain and coke-
his wife stops him and says

"or- wait- did you want the 151?"

he asks

"well whats the difference?"

wife replies

"they're the same thing."

hah.

***

in completely unrelated news i am going to BOSTON to visit my angie.

i couldn't be more excited, although this trip might constitute an entirely new winter wardrobe.
cincinnati is at a balmy 23 degrees, while ange informed me the "high" in Boston today was 0.

evidently i have an enemy

whilst working this afternoon, a phone call came in from a woman who asked to speak to:

(ahem)

"...that stupid, slut-bag mandy."

my bartender approached me, perplexed, holding the phone to his chest and said

"someone on the phone isn't very happy with you."

i never found out forsure who it was since they hung up almost immediately.

***

damn.

i guess not everyone in the world thinks i'm as awesome as i do.

i will try not to get on prozac over this...

another l8 night

good ol holiday blues

gonna get kicked by some wine and wii fit-

we'll see

i hear you shouldn't drink and exercise at the same time...

somewhere to sleep

I BOUGHT A BED!!


!!!!!

now i have somewhere to lay my head AND subsequent remaining parts of my body....

((as previously lamented in this post...))

my awesome news!!

so i had a follow up doc visit with whom i was referred by the e.r.
and he agreed that it is an injury to my ligaments and he had THIS to say:

"Oftentimes, soft tissue injuries can be more painful than actual damage to the bone. If you're feeling better a month from now you're on the right track."

??

a MONTH?

so i'm supposed to just chill. i'm not allowed to exercise, which SUCKS for at least 2-3 months. the pain has to be completely GONE before i can start doing anything again- and i'm still not supposed to lift, so you know
tell that to my 2yearold.


(fig1.human spine)

so i suppose we will wait and see.

gosh, i'm excited.

anyone have a small violin?

so my back is not better:: in FACT
it feels worse
like my vertebrae are crackling
i couldn't believe how much pain i was in today at work- i tried SO hard to keep it together
but after a certain point i just broke down crying
this went on for at least an hour
so i tried to stay away from customers and just do office work
but everyone could see it in my face-
that and i continue to limp.
i will be following up with that doc the e.r. physician referred me to
but i have a bad feeling he wont believe me
its funny-
you get a couple tattoos and suddenly everyone thinks you're a drug addict.
i know i know-
i kind of knew that going in and
its not like i have a tattoo on my FACE
but FUCK.
the pain is breathtaking- and the spasms haven't quite quit.
and the best way i can describe it is feeling as if someone is perpetually
swinging a baseball bat into the small of my back.

on top of this
i got VIOLENTLY sick on thursday
"vomiting with a vengeance", really
****

i hate throwing up-
i am genuinely SCARED of throwing up, which is weird i know
and i woke up fine on thursday
but as the day elapsed my stomach turned itself into a knot
and it wasn't just my belly that purged
it was my entire body
i have never felt anything like that before

a few hours after i started feeling a little better-
Wn was mega-sweet and got me some popsicles
which are the ONLY thing i can stomach after i vomit

but the next day (friday)
i barely ate anything
maybe four bites of breakfast- they didn't feel too good
some easy mac- which i finished but the taste was abhorrent
i had some greek yogurt which i needed desperately for the old g.i. tract
some noodle soup later as filler
and for some reason pizza, which i am STILL tasting
and
that can't be good

later that night i drank not EVEN 3 sips of wine
it tasted HORRIBLE
and made my stomach CHURN

then today-
going on not much sleep anyway-
back all a-fucked
i had maybe a 3rd of a mocha i attempted to treat myself with
a muffin- which went down decently- but
that was it
i have not eaten anything else
mostly because i don't feel like i could keep it in me
and for some reason
i feel extremely full
like i don't have any room in my belly- even for liquid
and the only thing that even tastes right is water

on a brighter side i have only smoked maybe 4 cigarettes in the past few days
i just can't handle the flavour
i feel like i really want some alka-seltzer

***

so now if you know all this and you know how important it is for me to eat
(considering the hemoglobin/blood sugar issues)
then you know i am EXTRA f-ed up because i haven't been eating so
i am totally out of my head
and while i am supposed to take my mega-huge heavy iron pills on an empty stomach
i can't because they give me the worst cramps
and while they truly make me feel better
i couldn't handle the extra pain

so....

bleh.

yeh, i'm having a bit of a pity-party for myself.

i need hugs.

i like channing

we made faces at each other

guess what i did!!

i hyper-extended the ligaments in my spine!!

this is fantastic!

so, the awful twisting injury of doom occured on wednesday
and tonight i finally made it into the emergency room
because no one should cry
on account of sitting
(which i did. sitting shouldn't HURT)

(right?)

yeh
so i went and they took like 5 xrays
which will cost me a small fortune
and they all looked fine
so
i waited in my room for an hour for the doctor to come in
and ask me to walk around on my toes
then my heels
then i had to bark like a dog
and catch a Frisbee with my teeth
and jump thru a flaming hula-hoop
and renounce satan
THEN he says

"it appears you have yah yah yah yah yah yah yah"

and he gives me some muscle relaxers and steroids and painkillers
and we hugged and kissed each other

then i waited for another 45 minutes for nurse to give me my discharge papers---

i won't lie
i thought they forgot me so
i counted the blood stains on the floor
(14 total)
((yeh, there was this weird little trail of blood around my room and into the hallway which no one had bothered to clean up))

then some other stuff happened
now i am blogging about it and
i feel very talkative
because i am also drinking a mix of baileys and egg nog
which is great, a little, right now
but i probably won't mix the two ever again

write it down, ladies...

too cold for the river

my datr's most favourite thing to do::

go down to the river and throw rocks in the water.

so since it's cold and snowy and wet, i'm thinking

no river. i told her::

it is too cold for the river.

she gave me that blank "dora the explorer" blinking stare and replied:::

"ah river?"

***

sigh

***

so instead
i took her to what was once the bane of my existence- first job- lost circle of hell- cess pool

chuck e. cheese





it would have been insufferable had there been anyone else in the building
but it actually ended up being a genius solution to sunny ohio's awesome weather festivus.

she doesn't grasp at all the concept of games and prizes
and she has the attention span of a tube sock
and i was pretty for sure we were going to be asked to leave during her very first skee-ball lesson wherein she insisted on throwing overhand as opposed to the official skee-ball association appropriated underhanded roll...



but i taught her how to pull the tickets just right from the machines so that you end up with a couple extra
and she got to pick out a prize, which ended up being laffy taffy and some incredibly well put together foam plane flyer that flew from her hand and into the abyss...

all in all a good day

x-static

i only bartend on occasion these days
sure, it hurts the old purse a little
but even though i still mingle with the regulars as often as they come in
it is very nice and nostalgic to serve them
the dynamics of our relationships- the whole web of it- has evolved so nicely over the past year

anyway
"bronco" brought in some window paint
and wrote me some notes on the beer glasses



this one is a smiley face



this one says "hi mandy"


and then he wrote on a bathroom mirror (which irked the owner)

later i found writing all over my vanagon

onlookers seemed a bit surprised i wasn't angry
i wasn't
i was quite pleased

****

it is nice to feel appreciated

today today

i get new tattoos today.

...

i can't even describe my excitement.

...

oh my god.

.f.-.y.e.h.

so i couldn't .s.l..e...e....p because my bed feels like feathers and cue balls,
THUS i was (irrevocably) up by 4:42, even though i pretended to sleep
on the couch...

this, naturally, was intercepted by my neighbour who may as well be some sort of
dinosaur--

her noise bothers me exceptionally, because i have grown quite fond of a program on
DISCOVERY
called A Haunting, wherein REAL people tell REAL ghost stories,
which causes me a great deal of paranoia, and i begin to believe there
is a well under the house full of decapitated heads....

anyway...

so now i'm at school
and i somehow have abundant get-up-and-go
and i want to do all me homework

so horray for me

flaming dr. pepper of doom

recipe:
3/4 amaretto
1/4 151
in shot glass
drop into
pint glass filled 1/2 with beer

Andy's recipe:
151
beer



i feel awesome

who's watching the eclipse?

is anyone seeing this?

fucking incredible

quandry

"Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still"
(t.s. eliot, ash wednesday)

...on my wrists

OR:



on the back of my leg....

vegans bite harder

a girl's gotta get her beta-carotene.

yeh, i make all the other veggies jealous...

three.cats.joe

have i told you about three cats joe?

we worked together at an upscale tavern about 3ree years ago. he liked to tell everyone he was a retired pilot, but really he wore a little skirt and pushed a cart around-- i'm sure if he ever got into the cockpit it wasn't on upright circumstances...

he was the strangest bird...

he would spend hours with me reviewing the dressings at the salad station- pointing to one pan, asking me to establish the condiment (RANCH, jackass), and then carefully catalouging the results in his handy dressing-identifier notebook he kept close in his dressing-identifier holster that hung fashionably on his hip--

i tired of this after a few weeks, and remarked "I thought you were manager of the dressing station when you were at delta, joe"

his nickname, three-cats, came from a conversation he started with me about pets one afternoon, and i told him i had three cats and he replies "THREE CATS??!!!??!" as if three cats was some sort of outrageous number, that one cat- even two cats would have been acceptable, but THREE cats?? that was just one cat too many!

he was eventually fired due to a set of fresh hands and an underage hostess named Beth.

anyway-

this comes up because before he got the can job, he talked endlessly about an english pub he wanted to open in mariemont. and i assume that by english pub he really meant coffe kiosk. i sometimes frequent this spot of the way to class- the coffee isn't bad, and it's inexpensive.

i went thru it the first time about a year and a half ago- and when his head popped out of the drive thru window, i nearly gagged on my tongue, and his face lights up and i'm getting ready to dissolve because i know he recognizes me and i don't want to do this, but then he exclaims, "Stephanie!!"

?? wha..

and so i'm like, "Hey, Joe!!" (Holding the three-cats like a jagger-shot revival in the back of my mouth)
and he can't think of anything eles to say, so he says "Nice seeing ya!" and disappears inside.

he has no idea who i am. and he only half-believes i'm this "stephanie".

This manifested again today, when he tried asking me how my job was going, he says "Are you at home depot or Lowes?"

and i said, "Lowes"

he made a face like he didn't feel right about this information, so he asks "Hows that going?"

WITHOUT skipping a beat i say "Real well"

he nods uncomfortably and departs

and here i am writing to you about this looney old man, who has the distinction of being known to me and everyone i know as

three.
cats.
joe.


(heh)