Going to the chapel and we're gonna get married...
Welcome to 2009, folks! Being that it is 2009, it goes without saying that December's Ten Happy Things list is late. I know, I know, I know. I warned you all that it would be late. I
write this crap at work and I forgot to email the running list home to
myself so it had to wait until I got back in the office. I guess the logical question would be "why couldn't you just do it from memory? Can you not remember the things that make you happy over the month?" Dudes, I'm lucky if I can remember my name most days. I'm in charge of managing a lot of shit. My brain just runs out of room sometimes. I can remember all manner of useless information but there's just so much pertinent data my brain can hold at any given time. So,
count your blessings because this probably means you're getting two
lists in one week as I still have to gather my 2008 together and come
up with a Best of the Year thingy. Anyway, here we go…
10. My friend Andrea got engaged…..and it's kind of like YES! FINALLY! WAHOO! Ann is the quintessential bridesmaid. The girl has been a bridesmaid like a dozen times. She's going to be one again in the months before her own wedding. She's not quite 27 Dresses but she lives in the same neighborhood, so to speak. However, her time has finally come. Her
long-time boyfriend, Matt, took her out to Vegas for her birthday where
they went on a gondola ride on Lake Las Vegas with champagne and
truffles and the whole bit, he presented the ring (which is fabulous by
the way), and presto! Bridesmaid transformed into Bride! Honestly, Matt kind of outdid himself. He's very much a guy. He's not good at the frilly crap…but he did very well with this. He put a lot of thought and planning and heart into it. He made it everything Ann deserved to have. Yay! :-)
9. I've filled you all in on the news that my slightly older sister is pregnant. (Yes, I said slightly older…..by 17 days, to be exact. If
you can't figure out how that can possibly be, you need to broaden your
horizons and watch a few episodes of The Brady Bunch.) Right, so, Jaime is pregnant. Old news. The new news is that Jaime is pregnant with a girl. This is good news for more than just the obvious reason that I don't think Jaime would know what the hell to do with a boy. Please keep in mind, I have nothing against boys. Should I ever have my own children, I'd like to have boys honestly. That's beside the point. In my family, the boys are golden. They're referred to as "the penis people" by the female members of my immediate family. We do this because the boys are pampered and coddled and favored far beyond the girls. My sister put it best when she said "well, since we don't have penises, I guess we just SUCK!" That's the general idea. That being said, our only viable tactic is to take over the penis people by sheer numbers. The more girls we have, the easier it is to tell the penis people to sit down, shut up, and leave us alone. Jaime is giving us one more girl to add to the front lines in the War Against the Penis People. Rock on.
8. I attended a slew of holiday related parties this month. I'm going to single one particular party out here because it was, as Swarley would say, "legendary!" Topher the Beagle Giver turned 30 this Christmas Eve…so he had a bit of a shindig in celebration. I attended said shindig and I am beyond happy that I did. Aside
from the fact that I had a killer time myself just hanging out and
drinking and dancing and watching other drunk idiots make asses of
themselves, the party came with a side bonus that I did not expect but
would not trade for the world. The great and powerful Barksdale was in attendance. He brought with him his lady friend who, let me just say, is a complete knockout. I mean, a KNOCKOUT. The chick has it going on. None of us can figure out how the hell Barksdale landed this girl. I mean, Barksdale is great….but he hit a World Series winning grand slam with this chick. Topher,
who is the definition of Beer Tard, set the tone when the young lady in
question removed her coat revealing a fantastic blouse that was, well,
revealing…causing Toph to turn around and look at me and say "HEL-LO!" It just kind of went from there. Barksdale was feeling his oats, drinking his beers with his hot date, and – the best part – DANCING. Therein lays the serendipitous party bonus. Barksdale is a tall, lanky, 40-year old white dude from Virginia. Nothing about him screams "funky." Nothing. To make matters ever better, he thinks he can dance. He believes it in his soul like Red Sox fans believe the Yankees are evil. He will even go so far as to proclaim that African-American women he knew in his youth told him he had rhythm and soul. Personally,
I think these African-American women were just trying to spare his
feelings because they found him cute or something. I couldn't tell you, honestly. However,
I can tell you honestly that watching Barksdale get his shwerve on is
just about the best comedy a birthday party can ask for. He has one dance…one…that he employs regardless of beat or tempo. Every song gets the same dance…and it's just stellar stuff. The
only way I can describe it is to say that it looks like a skinny white
guy doing a slowed down version of a 1970s groove dance with an
expression on his face like "yeah, I'm the coolest dude you know." The
best part of all of it though is that throughout this whole exercise of
dorkness, the completely hot chick Barksdale was with was TOTALLY into
him. It was just great, great, great stuff.
7. My younger sister Mary is beautiful. It's a rare occurrence that she thinks so but it's the case nevertheless. She's got a rather interesting sense of style that is some kind of wacky blend of emo, punk, cutesy, and circus clown. She's usually a jubilee of color with pin straightened hair and not a drop of makeup on her face. She's a jeans, t-shirt, and crazy socks kind of gal. Not very girly…never has been. This New Year's Eve, though, she kind of let me play dress up. She wore a dress (GASP!) – a really cute red and blue plaid strapless number – and she let me do her hair and make-up. We did loose, bed head style tousled curls with one side pulled up in a little red clip and then make-up with smoky eyes. She was gorgeous. I mean GORGEOUS. There were people at our family's restaurant who have known her almost all her life who didn't recognize her right away. It was friggin awesome.
6. I got the Disney movie, Wall-E, ..ay for Christmas this year. I hadn't yet seen the movie but I knew just from the previews that I wanted it. So, a couple of days after Christmas, I sat down and watched it. Let me just take this time to say that it is quite possibly the cutest movie of all time. It's so damn cute, it's almost unbearable. It's sweet and it's funny and it's terribly entertaining….but it's warm-your-heart cute. I cried through half the damn movie just from being overwhelmed with the sweet cuteness. I think everyone with even half of a heart should own this film and watch it all the time. It was really one of the best highlights of my holiday season.
5. In case you didn't know (and just so I can rub it in), I had a really long Christmas vacation this year. I've been at my company for nearly ten years…meaning that I've racked up a fairly decent amount of vacation days. Because
I really didn't go anywhere on vacation this summer, I had a lot of
days left over by the end of the year that I had to use up. Being
that the end of the year is a historically slow time for me work-wise,
I was able to take vacation from work from December 18th to January 5th. It was like being on Christmas break from school...just with a paycheck. I played lots and lots of video games. It was awesome.
4. With Christmas all around, so was the obligatory Christmas tree. I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of Christmas most of the time. My family is very hectic and there's always a lot of stress and drama thrown into the Christmas mix. Honestly,
I've reached a point in my life where I feel like presents almost ruin
Christmas because it's so damn stressful finding them all. Plus, how much damn stuff does an individual really need? Nevertheless, I LOVE my Christmas tree. It makes me very happy. I just like having it up in the house with all my ridiculous ornaments on it and the lights and the angel. Every year when it's time to take it down, I get a little depressed. I think the tree just makes the living room look happy…which makes me feel happy. I'm starting the take-down process this evening but for the month or so that the tree's been up, it's been very joyous. There
is also the added bonus that I put Love Actually on the television
while the tree was going up, which added significantly to the happiness
quotient. Most people don't regard Love Actually
as a Christmas movie but it is, in fact, a Christmas movie and easily
in my top three favorite Christmas movies of all time. If you haven't seen it, see it. It doesn't have to be Christmas to watch it like most other Christmas movies. So, you know, there's that.
3. I got a new putter for Christmas. It's pink. Well, not pink pink. More like a mauve pink but still pink nonetheless. It weighs more than my previous putter, which is a positive. I also putt much better with the new putter than I did with the old putter, which is also a positive. I was pretty jazzed when I opened it. I kind of just walked around the house with it for a while so the putter and I could make friends. I think it's my favorite Christmas gift….the putter and the brick from Shea Stadium that I got as well. If I could figure out a way to make the putter and the brick work together somehow, I'd be in Christmas gift heaven. However, outside of putting golf balls off of the brick, I really can't come up with any logical combination. I'm open to suggestions.
2. You thought you were going to get through a whole list without me talking about sports or sporting athletes, didn't you? You totally did. Well, you thought wrong. You all know how I am with my golf obsession. You've read me going on and on about Sergio and Ian and this tournament and that tournament and the like. So, there's this new dude that's creeping up the Mer's Favorite Golfers list. He's
been around for a while but I've been paying more and more attention to
him lately for no other reason than he's got, like, the most beautiful
golf swing ever. It's just beautiful. It's gorgeous and smooth and effortless. I think you have to play golf yourself to really appreciate it but his swing takes my breath away at times. It's kind of like Roger Federer's backhand. Plus, he rotates his front foot like I do, which makes me happy. I'm getting off point. Anyway, the dude's name is Henrik Stenson and he's from Sweden but lives in Dubai
because he can't stand the cold (which is just insane to me…how the
hell are you Swedish and you hate the cold?) and he's ridiculously
funny. He's not unintentionally funny like Sergio. He's just a goof. He's
kind of known for it on the Tour…he's a tremendous goofball that plays
jokes on people and makes lunatic faces into the camera and wears neon
green Troll wigs while celebrating Ryder Cup wins. And his caddie is a chick, which I think is like the coolest thing ever. Right,
so, anyway, there was this tournament in the beginning of December
called Nedbank Golf Challenge in Sun City, which is kind of a big deal
golf tournament in South Africa. Well, it's a big deal in South Africa anyway. They
invite 12 of the best golfers in the world to come play and there's
baboons on the golf course and all kinds of strange animal sounds in
the background while play is going on. It's terribly fun. I mean, what's not fun about putting around the green with a baboon hanging out by the cup? So, anyway, Henrik Stenson totally won. Well, he didn't win, he conquered. He won by like nine shots or some such thing. He scored a 63 in his opening round. He fucking killed it. It was kind of Tigeriffic actually. It was a joy to watch. The best part was the trophy presentation though. First,
they handed him the obligatory enormous check representing his winnings
which he promptly pretended was far too heavy to hold, much to my
amusement. Behold:
Then came the actual trophy, which was in two parts: a big crystal golf ball on a pedestal looking thing and, more execellently, a saber of some sort. Being
that he's such a lunatic, he almost immediately began waving this saber
thing around like some kind of Swedish golf pirate, much
to my even greater amusement. Again, behold:
If I didn't like him before, I sure as hell liked him after that. How could you not? It doesn't hurt his cause that he's kind of adorable as well…but that's regardless.
1. This
last one is really lame but I don't care because, really, it's about
the simple things in life and this is one of the simplest things that
just really makes my damn day every time. You just read about the South African golf thing that Henrik Stenson won and all that. Right. Well, Sergio played in it too. He didn't do all that fantastic but he did give me my absolute hands-down favorite image in all of golfdom. I give you…..Sergio in green and white!
I don't care if it's stupid or superficial or overly girly of me or whatever. There are just not too many sights that make me happier than Sergio golfing in his green and white Adidas clothes. Sergio
in white pants is always a good time in Merland but really, without a
doubt, there isn't anything better than Sergio in green and white. I always love watching golf. I love it even more if I get to watch golf and see Sergio simultaneously. But nothing brings on the full sighing dreamfest like watching Sergio play golf in green and white. BAM! I'm done! The
only thing I can think of that I'd rather see Sergio wear than the
green and white ensemble is maybe his yellow and red Spanish flag
Adidas golf hat. You know, like, just the hat. And maybe some socks. Yeah, that'd be good.
There you have it. Better late than never I suppose. Stay
tuned for the Best of 2008 list, which I'm hoping to have up later this
week providing I don't get some actual real work to do. ;-)
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