7 parties. 1 fateful night.

Here's a top 10 list of things to know if you're going to 7 parties in one night.

1. Plan for parking. Especially if it's a snow emergency. And freezing outside. Because if you aren't patient and aren't willing to park at least 6 blocks away, you're probably going to miss the 8th party (sorry Bleric!).

2. Group your parties by location. Start with the farthest away, then work your way in so you can get to your eventual goal of being on foot only.

3. Someone needs to be sober sister. Consider the people traveling with you in your group. If one of them drunk-slept an entire day and night when you were camping, including when he was tubing down a river, perhaps it's his turn to be sober sister for the first half of your parties.

4. Bundle. The frick. Up. It's cold outside! We're talking scarf over your face, booze in a backpack, don your warmest and least attractive boots, and learn from me ladies. Double up the leggings next time, ok?

5. Spend a good chunk of time at the party with the best food. (You know who you are, party #3. Your spicy chicken bbq dip, your pickles and cream cheese appetizers, your caramel puff corn, your white chocolate dipped oreos, for God sakes!! I'm bringing you a medal, you hear?) 


6. If you're going to be a-holes and not stay at parties for very long, at least bring a gift. Our choice beverage was a variety of delicious sparkling juices, because every party has its token kids and/or alcoholics, right? Respect.

7. If you are the non-sober person of the group, I highly suggest no more than 1 drink per party, unless one party was a dud and you needed to double up (obviously). I found that 7ish drinks over 8ish hours was a pretty perfect combination of non-sloppy yet energetic, hilarious, and adorable. According to me.

8. Don't leave your sweater at party #2. That means leaving parties 3 through 7 you'll have to endure the cold inside part of your sleeves rubbing up against your bare arms. Bare arms! C'mon Anna.

9. Make mental notes of hilarious things people say and do so you can recount them the next day via text. Especially when someone whispers cryptic pieces of advice into your ear as he/she gracefully stumbles out of the party (*cough HANNAH, *cough BEST PART OF THE NIGHT).

10. Take pictures with all of the hosts of your parties, so blog readers can believe everything you actually accomplished that night.

My partner in crime.

Party #1, hosted by Dave and Kristin

Party #2, 1920's themed, hosted by the lovely Keira Gatta

Party #3 and winner of best food ever, hosted by Alyson Wise

Party #4, circus themed, by the homemade tutu-ed Ani Loizzo

Party #5, where the ball dropped, hosted by Bokensha x2 and Jessi!

Party #6, hosted by Allison, Marlowe, and my cuddle buddy Professor!

Party #7, hosted (until 4:30 am!) by Lauren and Bobby

And please, let's all have a moment of silence for our fallen party. I'm sorry Bleric.

...................silence...........................

The end. Happy New Year!

T'will be epic.

Denny Hecker and the Snowdays

How do you like my new band name? It's a working title, people. We've had one rehearsal which was primarily in order to come up with a band name and to eat spaghetti. More to come on this.

As you know, the sky gods crapped an enormous amount of white stuff on us this weekend. I've been sequestered in my tiny apartment for four days, with three short breaks to go to a movie, go to the Y, and go to the bar (priorities). Normally I would love to hole up in my apartment for this many days in a row, but for a couple of things. First, the last time I was in my apartment this many days in a row was when I had swine flu. Second, being in your apartment for this long really makes you realize how badly you need to clean. Third, my windows are 100% frosted over. As in, there is not even a tiny peephole to the outside world. I tried with all of my might to make myself a peephole yesterday, using my hands, a spatula as a scraper, and a warm washcloth. I had about 15 minutes of blissful clarity in the small hole that I made, then it immediately frosted over. Check it:

To beat the Sunday snowy sads, Troy, Pop and I went to Black Swan which if you haven't seen you have to stop whatever you're doing and go this instant. On the way, Troy just couldn't resist a good snow fall. If you know what I mean...



In other fun news, taking Christmas photos with TB Reed is an adventure. After I think the 4,000th photo we got a good one but it was extremely blurry.


In other news, check out how icy and death-y the back of my house is.

I haven't moved my car in 7 days because I'm nervous of taking it out of its parking spot and I don't even want to deal with the amount of snow on top. Neither of these photos are my car, but they are neighbors' cars and it gets the point across.

In other other news, this is a fellow I trained in San Francisco last week. He and his girlfriend made this jacket, and I want one STAT.

In one more bit of news, I want to tell you that last night I walked home from water aerobics class (yep!) and my hair immediately turned into frozen sticks of ice. Check it:

Until this daggonned snow goes away, I have resigned not to leave the house unless I look like this. Note: TWO scarves. Headphones. Hat. Hair tucked all the way into said hat.

K bye.

I just cannot even stand it.

Look who I got to hang out with all weekend! Five days of bliss, people. Pure bliss. She's 16 months old, and in her smiley/I love you phase...unless you wake her up from a nap in which case she, like me, becomes a vicious dragon lady.

Password = cutie pants
(in order to protect the little miss from complete randos of course).

Cutest baby on the planet, people. from satellitewalls on Vimeo.

Ireland: Land of wind and cows.

I spent the last week with two high school friends in Ireland. We started in Dublin, then headed south to Kinsale, then west to Limerick. It was beautiful. Here are pics.

Halloween picture tour!

I'm heading to Ireland tomorrow (hai-tee-tai-tee-tai!) so I thought I would leave you for a few weeks with a visual record of some fun Halloween festivities.

First and foremost, I present to you the greatest tri-person costume of all time. Hocus Pocus!


Note the Sarah Jessica Parker mop/swiffer:


Here is the amazing Hocus Pocus magical book that Taj recreated out of putty and makeup!


Steph played the role of Bette Midler, and her teeth are only about half the length of her character's, so we worked on her facial expressions throughout the night. Here's a cool shot of her hair, followed by the look we were trying for, followed by a horrible, terrifying iphone shot where she has NO NOSE AND ONLY ONE TOOTH!!!


Now a US Weekly-style "Who wore it better?"


And now, as a special Halloween present for you, the cutest lil' bee you've ever seen. Eeeeee! It's my niece!

Ukulele Fun

I got the best text message I have ever received earlier this week:

PS a ukulele will arrive at your house on Wednesday.

I am now a proud co-owner of "Ukie", the world's cutest and most Hawaiian ukulele.

I've never played a guitar before in my life. I have no idea how to strum, or play chords, or even hold it. But beef and I downloaded a few chord finder and tuner apps and chose two songs to start with.

Here is my extremely professional and heartfelt version of Hey Jude, dedicated to my sissy:



Here is Tom's haunting rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow:

Plane Karma

I fly a lot for work. And let me just say that I get easily annoyed whilst doing so.

For example, I flew from Philadelphia to Minneapolis last week and I had to race for my life to get to the gate because of a previous flight that took it's sweet, precious time taking off. Once I finally got to my seat, I took a breather, read a few pages of a book, then when I was allowed to use electronics I started watching Dexter on my phone.

Before I go on, you need to know that I love Dexter. It's the only thing that keeps me sane on airplanes. The moment when I get to flip it on is like ultimate relaxation for me. But Dexter can be...pretty gory. And kind of sexual. So watching it on my phone is the perfect solution for me because the phone is small enough that I can use my hands to block the screen during Dex's brutal murders. Unless, that is, the person next to me is STARING AT MY SCREEN.

That's exactly what happened to me last week. The woman next to me, though she couldn't hear a thing, watched my screen for hours. If I moved it slightly, she would adjust her posture. When I tried to block the screen with my balls of yarn, she would sit higher. I thought about saying something, especially since her watching meant I had to extra-screen the show for violence, but then I thought about something: Plane Karma. I am a firm believer that you have to be a really good passenger and airport patron, otherwise bad things will happen to you.

For example, a man took my window seat on the first flight, and he knew it. I could tell by the guilty look he gave me when I arrived at my seat. Not only did he take the liberty of boarding himself before he was called to ensure that he took my seat, but he didn't even mention it when I got there. I thought about saying something, because I chose that seat specifically and printed my boarding pass a day early to make sure I had that seat, but then I thought again. I fly all the time, I always get window seats, maybe this man NEEDED this seat. Maybe he would die without it. Or maybe he was just a jerk. Either way, I knew that if I gave him this one, it would get returned to me somehow. And me making that Philadelphia flight by about 10 seconds, I really think, was the result of this benevolence.

So back to the Dexter-stealing lady next to me. I thought about saying something to her, but I said to myself, "You know what Anna? You love Dexter. And you're always telling people that they need to watch this show. So even though you're annoyed right now, just think of it this way. Maybe she's so compelled by the show that she'll be a watcher of Dexter from now on. And wouldn't you want that?" So I let her watch for a couple of hours, then when it was time to turn our electronics off, I shook off my annoyance and asked her if she's ever seen Dexter before. It turns out, she hadn't. But she said this: "So, the plot is that there's a guy who kills only bad people, right?" And my mouth...dropped. How could she have gotten that just from the visuals of a couple episodes? "Yes, that's right!" I said. We talked about Dexter for a few more minutes, then the conversation switched topics.

"Hey...do you read?" she asked me. "Yes, I do read. Why?" I asked. Then she took a book out of her bag and said "I'd like to give you this". I looked at the novel she was holding and told her that it's ok, she didn't have to give me the book she was reading. She could just tell me what it was and I'd go check it out myself. "No, no," she said, "I wrote it. And I'd like you to have it." Turns out, this woman is a famous author that has been interviewed on MY public radio station. Exactly one year ago, she probably walked right by my desk! She autographed the book for me saying, "It was so nice to meet you, Anna". She told me that she had just been waiting, flight after flight, to talk to a nice person on a plane that she could give her book to. I'm very thankful I shook off my rage and spoke to this woman, because we ended up talking for a while and I might even babysit her kids.

Here's the moral of the story. Be nice on planes a) because of Plane Karma and b) because you might be sitting next to your new BFF.

This will either make you giggle or puke.

Ready for a whopping dose of adorable? I give you the top three reasons Tom and Anna are the cutest couple this side of the Mississip'.

1. Bread-staches. A creative use of that middle chunk you get at Erbs and Gerbs.

2. This video.



3. The cutest couple blog (besides TP) known to man.

randomdino.com

BACON COOKIES!

I can't believe I forgot to tell you this, but listen. Listen to me right now. One of my good friends is a professional chef. She's talented and creative and when I had swine flu last year she brought me homemade chicken soup, cinnamon applesauce, snickerdoodle cookies, and something else really good that I can't remember what it was (probs because of the swine). Luckily for me, she lives a few blocks down the street, and also luckily for me, a couple weeks ago she muttered the two greatest sentences I have ever heard: "We can't go out for sushi because I have to make bacon chocolate chip cookies. Just come over here."

So I went, and was greeted with sushi, pounds and pounds of cooking bacon wafting into my nose holes and sizzling before my very eyes, and my own chopsticks for which to eat said sushi and snag bits of chocolate chip cookie dough, pre, post, and during the cookie baking process. I am a lucky woman, no?