sick

oh how sick you are of the never ending saga that Tom & Katie. I stumbled upon this article which I thought was quite good and sums up those mixed feelings I have about the whole pairing. Established star picking up the starlet, running the show, and Holmes' outward innocence ... will all this result in making Katie a bitter woman a few years down the line??? Is she a victim of Tom's crazy shenanigans??? We've most paid attention to Tom's weird behavior, but what about Katie???

buzzed

buzzed
Originally uploaded by ScelestiX.

'Man, could you turn the lights down, they are killing our buzz.' ... so how I feel right now.

andalu

is it just me or is that place run by Ukrainians??? I don't remember it being so scrubby two years ago, anything that was 'Moroccan' about it is now stripped away, with plain bulbs in apparently what looks like cheap burlap wall fixtures. The music is not house, it's 'nostalgic.' This now ranks as one of my places now not to go, along with Poly Esther's and Tequila Beach. Dupont is in the weeds. What exactly happened to Cities (you know that place filled with the suits in Adams Morgan)? And what is exactly is going on on the top floor above Heritage India?

This ranks with that alleged wine wholesaler with a fake address.

9 inch hell

You can file this post under drunken and jerks ... I was so mad I walked all the way home (at least 1/2 mile) in 4 inch heels. I gotta respect a guy when he literally steps into my shoes and tries to dance in them ... to understand why I can have the equivalent of 6 drinks in a short amount of time and not fall down ... the pain, the pain through my feet, that only black out oblivion can cure. Yes, girls are crazy, he said it straight. But don't fucking laugh in my face when I tell you I'm black belt in Taekwondo, don't tell me it means nothing, especially after I've kicked you in the face and then twist your arm so bad you won't have full use of your wrist for the next few days. Hey, Mr. Blahnik, you told me you knew Aki do ... well fuck you, I know hap ki do too.

You use that line, "You're so beautiful, you're so hot," don't mean a damn thing when you laugh in my face when I tell you I enjoy beating the jerk out of asses like you. I told you my favorite place is Black Cat, and those people who know me, know I'm a badass ... am I trying to prove it to the readership, the few peope who read this blog? No, but don't insult a girl who's been wearing nine inch hells on her feet with two martinis, scotch, and god knows how much champagne in her.

spice

I actually went to IndeBleu a couple days ago for a real sitdown dinner. The first time I went was to have appetizers and drinks ... I'm still a huge fan of the blackberry mojito. As usual the tuna tartare was good, as was the mushroom stuffed dosa (the Indian version of a burrito). I ordered Tandoori Lamb, my friend ordered veal tenderloins crusted with fennel. Tasty, can't say terribly memorable. Dessert was the tiniest gulab jamun I had ever seen in my life with saffron-cardamom ice cream put through a potato press to make into 'spaghetti.' My friend and I joked about the 'choco sutra.' The waiter must've dislike me because when he asked if anything special had happened that day, I said, 'I got off work.' Maybe he thought I was being a snob. Really we had a few things to celebrate, for instance me actually treating my friend to his birthday dinner two months after the fact and my promotion and raise (nothing to whoop about-your typical gov't promotion and raise--you have to actually try very hard not to get one ... ooh I'm going to hate it when they move to the payband) ... anyway, the meal was good, thankfully they served naan with the meal otherwise I would've run across the street to Chipotle and stuffed my face with a burrito.

admittedly

I am once again blogging profusely to avoid writing my wretched 15 pager on Spain's Response to ETA's Terrorist Activities ... I am so out of love with ETA ... why are they still around? I don't even want to write this pointless paper. But it's just one more class to me getting to the next that will leave me 1 credit shy of being half way done with my master's. Suck it up (to myself).

OBL

Osama bin Laden ... yeah, that dude? Porter Goss reminded us last week that OBL still exists and that he knows where the man is ... he also reminded us all that the CIA is wondering what the freak they'll do once the Director of National Intelligence becomes the intended czar of the intelligence community ... normally I wouldn't touch on my graduate studies, but Wednesday night I found myself raising my voice much louder than usual in my discussion class.

The discussion was on the use of 'targeted killings,' a euphemism for 'assassination.' Several people in the class made the argument that OBL ought to be assassinated for revenge, retribution, and because we're in a freakin' war AGAINST terrorism ... Now I'm no one to say that I wouldn't be happy and do a little dance if the guy ended up dead ... but my argument was, how can you take out a man whose al-Qaida movement rewards martyrdom? Makes saints out of those who die in 'battle?' Who are encouraged by the reward of the afterlife?

Apologies for getting on the soapbox, if anyone reads this I am interest in hearing what YOU think. Will killing OBL make a difference?

knock it out

great_beginnings
Originally uploaded by ScelestiX.

Featuring newly un-virginized pedicured foot over the Great Beginnings climb ... can't see the climb itself too well, but it was cool (from last week). Today I went out and climbed a couple fun routes on Aid Box. The most startling was this toad in a crack who was offended by my reaching into his lair and started croaking almost right next to my ear ... I thought I was going to become a buzzard's dinner!

ala partay

flag_day_fete
Originally uploaded by ScelestiX.

At my spacious penthouse ... not!!! Flash purposefully not used to obscure the identies of those who braved the heat wave to enjoy homemade samosas, which I laboriously made the evening before; platters of antipasto, sushi, cheeses and fruit catered by Whole Foods; killer apple-tini's made by me (featured in the pix), sparkling apple cider, rioja, and white bordeaux :P ... yeah, that's to rub it, rub it deep for those who couldn't come.

pix time!

beach
Originally uploaded by ScelestiX.

Hopefully through the summer I'll see more of the ocean, but not as windy as it appears here with the sand giving free exfoliation treatments and the foaming surf too rabid for wading.

severence

Sometimes I wonder if I could walk away from everything, everyone, and every place (home) that I love and take the flight to a place I've never been and just wander. With a pack on my back, a sleeping bag for the chance I can't find established accommodations, and a beaten passport with three years left on it to fill up with visa & exit/entry stamps. I must admit, my urge to flee the United States to a foreign destination at least once a year is tempered by homy-ness. I attribute it to my ethnic background, which is known for keeping unmarried women living with their parents, considers close family 1st and 2nd cousins and wants less than an hour apart between each relation. A culture in which it's the norm for the bride to cry as she is escorted out by her crying father and uncomfortable-looking new husband on each side as her female relatives bawl hysterically at the end of the wedding reception. A culture where mothers are known to lapse into depression when an offspring flies the nest.

Right now my mother is upset and my father has taken to riding his bicycle in front of our mother's house, begging, pleading for my sister not to go to South Africa for a two year Peace Corps stint. They did this to me when I went to South Korea. This is the second time my sister has endured this, the resilient girl, when she went to Kenya for the summer two years before. I'm not going to even try to think of the hell and anguish I'll bring on them and myself if I am ever selected to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. My sister asked me to do something outrageous to get their attention off her and onto me.

But enough about my family and on a lighter note, I do have a friend who has been wandering through this world, uprooted himself from the trappings of the job, the career, the home, kids and wife, who is missed. Neil.

freak

Because every night I've gone to sleep this week, I've woken up with bites, sometimes in places where elastic from my clothes bunched my skin in sensitive places I shall not mention, I went to CVS in search of an indoor mosquito repellent. I'm not sure how they got into my apartment, I think they must've piggybacked on my pack when I came back from rockclimbing in Great Falls. In the past I've doused myself with DEET before going to bed, but I find that to be a rather unappealing long-term solution, particularly after taking a refreshing shower before I go to bed. Everything and CVS either had to mounted outside, involved burning something, or spraying something. The only thing they had was a portable Sunbeam electronic mosquito repellant which allegedly transmits a sound that can't be detected by human ears but can be heard by pets and insects.

I turned it on and I could actually hear the transmission! Hmm, so I have super human ears ...

swamp love

This is my first summer actually living in DC and I am reminded of something I always try to forget from the last summer ... the itchy red blisters on my skin from the blood sucking denizens of this marble city built over a swamp. For the past three years all my bug bites have not come from my rockclimbing escapades, Shenandoah hiking excursions, or mowing my mother's lawn, but from enjoying Ben'n Jerry's in Dupont Circle, or dining al fresco in downtown for brunch? What the hell??? I thought the pest trade one made when moving from the suburbs to the city was mice for rats, bumblebees for pigeons, and dragonflies for other things. I suppose I should remind my self that the cicadas hit DC pretty hard with their fat clumsy bodies, but I am rather perturbed by the mosquito phenomena.

I HATE getting bitten. I would rather scrape my right arm 10 feet across a quartz-spiked cliff ... at least that'll heal in a couple days. In the past, my bite would swell to ten times their size and burn for a week, sometimes even scar. I went to my doctor and told her I might be allergic. She told me to take Benadryl when I get the bite, take a prescription anti-histamine during the day, and apply a topical steroid to the bite area .... "You're not allergic, just sensitive."

Okaaaaaaay ... yeah not allergic ....

before i forget

I spent this splendid Friday climbing ... yar so what's else is new? And unofficially I suppose my blog has become my rockclimbing journal. Today Mere and I headed to Great Falls on the VA side, tied up Seclusion: Great Beginnings and Snowflake, and something in between. Did I mention I HATE laybacks??? I hate feeling like my shoulders are being pulled out of my sockets! My favorite climbs are face climbs, with the little nubs for handholds and footholds. True, it's more of a balancing act and there's rarely a handhold that lets you wrap your finger around it ... grip tight and use the power of your legs and balance! I've found my male counterparts hate face climbs just as much as I hate cracks.

Great Beginnings is a climb I remember from last summer, but I remember taking the easy way up (literally a steep hike through the mid section) and then copping out at the top when I got to the flat face with cracks (yes it was a layback). Today we went up the way we were supposed to. Involved lots of interesting underhand laybacks and after my second attempt, when I finally gave up on that luscious looking hold for my left foot did I budge up through the face I had given up on last summer. Next we made up something between Great Beginnings and Snowflake ... started with a face climb, got stuck on a roof, swung over, cheated, using a crack traversed and continued climbing. Snowflake was the crack ... my shoulders weren't up for it after 3 layback-heavy climbs, maybe next time. It was fun to swing around though ... like the monkey I am. (I'll have pix too whenever I send my film in).

calluses

I bought sandals, a glittery sequined excuse to shorn my feet of its calluses. Developed for over 12 years through Taekwondo, on hardwood gym floors, vinyl mats, body bags, hand targets, and a few opponent's body parts. I stopped into the Oriental Day Spa ... (which I've always been curious about) on Thomas circle. It was my first pedicure. The lady smiled as she took out the callous shaver and attacked my feet with it. All I could think about was how many people those size 11 gnarly feet had attacked. Good at delivering lightning quick roundhouses to the torso, back kicking fools across the room, and my favorite, swinging my leg high above my head, to bring heel-come-axe on someone's head. Usually a good technique for making my opponent cry. And now I haven't stepped into a do jang since January ... every now and then at the gym, in my apartment hallway, sometimes an empty hallway at work, I'll spring into my sparring stance, bounce bounce lightly, do the roundhouse flurry, followed by the axe, maybe a 360 round, and jump back kick. Once my neighbor's pomeranian caught me and started barking like a banshee.

I'm super proud of my feet, even when dry and cracked. Frankly I think they have a great shape, and a nice size to clobber unwitting fools with. I'm not sure how many times my instep has been broken or ankles sprained. Once or twice they've been slipped out of sandals and massaged by a former 'keeper,' and now they're lacquered, pampered, and feeling a bit naked without their hardened armor ...

mr. & mrs.

Having a Tuesday serve as one's Saturday's means that at a whim, I can ride my bike to the Regal Chinatown theater, buy myself a matinee ticket to a first run movie and not worry about lines or obnoxious people in the theater. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Being a huge fan of Bonnie and Clyde and Angelina Jolie, I can say the film was entertaining ...

*** spoiler alert***

For a marriage on the rocks all I read in the chemistry between Jane and John was sex, not the stuff I imagine life-long loves are made of. In fact there was no mention of love, not even after they made up. There was very little character development ... no building of a love story like Bonnie and Clyde, there was just the first time they met where after getting drunk they have sex, and then fastforward 5-6 years into the future, beat the crap out of eachother and then have make-up sex. Also I wasn't satisfied with the ending. If they turn on the enemy that set them against each other, all they did was apparently shoot down an entire mercenary army that was very bad at aiming at two obvious targets in the middle of a home retail salesroom. So where did they go after the firm? Maybe it was just an excuse to watch two hot bodies shoot it out. And you can't make it tragic by having them die in each other's arms. They're bad asses, assassins. But even these assassins have hearts that don't melt and its about killing and fucking.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with sex. But maybe I'm a hopeless romantic and I keep thinking that somewhere actual courtship is alive. I don't get this going out with a group of friends and hooking up, and I don't get this dating someone just because they are a 'nice person.' Of course don't listen to me. I've been single, celebrated the one year anniversary on Memorial Day weekend. Maybe I'm willing to wait years to feel like I've been hit by tsunami, just because someone who made my knees turn to runny butter looked at me a certain way.

an ode

to my favorite beverage, the martini!!! Some have scoffed at me when I mentioned getting ridiculously drunk off of cosmopolitans and sour apple martini's. To them anything less than the classic or vodka martini was not really worth the wide cone shaped glass it came in. Well I discovered I make flat-on-your-back sour apple martini's. I don't let it sit in the ice ... I swirl just to chill the vodka and schnapps ... and then I pour and hand to some lucky friend a green bomb in a glass.

my saturday night

aka your Tuesday night. I threw a girl's only housewarming, overdue for my place (but not after a year). How fun it was. Pictures will follow. As for those who said couldn't they'd come and didn't, I'll let you make it up to me :)

alalalala ... the fun thing about living in dc, a resident of a fun young building, willing to party any night, Tuesday night. After most went to bed to responsibly cure hangovers or get to bed to get work on time the next day, I went out to 18th Street Lounge and Cafe Citron. Danced danced danced. Had plenty of brie, prosciutto, and samosas for a late night snack. I also remembered why I don't like dancing with guys ... one I'm horrible at following (must be the independent streak), the second must be because I hate for you to feel how sweaty I am and how hard I really worked to look that good on the dance floor.

80 samosas

To celebrate my temporary return to the civilization of 'day job-bers' I made 40 potato and pea samosas, and 40 ground turkey filled samosas. Besides my Bengalized Lebanese meatballs, this was definitely one of the more laborious kitchen-scapades I've committed myself too. Thank god I bought the pastry dough rather than make it myself. I worried all week that I wasn't going to be able to make these things, that they'd fall apart in my wok after spending hours crafting each one by hand. Right now they're chilling in fridge, ready to be heated up in a couple hours in the oven ... too bad I forgot the tamarind sauce.

black out

Part of the numerous purchases I make in-between semesters, I also purchased black out window treatments. Working the graveyard shift and having to go to bed at ridiculous times during the day I desperately needed them. I have one huge window in my condo facing South, which means constant light from fake dawn to twilight.

But black out window treatments really do work, maybe too well ... my body was so convinced it was the middle of the night that when I woke up at 12:30 PM (not AM), I promptly went back to sleep and didn't wake up until 3 PM.

moi on prejudice

050606 naz prejudice
Originally uploaded by ScelestiX.

Before I nearly fainted later in the day from too much sun ... knocked this one out like a salamander. Should've followed Mere's lead afterwards and hung out in the shady trees above us.

5.10

050606 prejudice
Originally uploaded by ScelestiX.

The sun was definitley against humans Sunday morning on this face. The climb in the pix above was a nice length so it make you feel like you worked it. However with the unforseen consquences of becoming delirious from the heat and the insanity of having the water right next to you ... I was only able to get part way up this face.

sith

Last night in an effort to start my staying up late marathon, I went to go see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I was a bit late on the ball game, but I thought it was so MUCH better than the previous two and I'm glad Lucas waited years for Hayden Christensen to grow into the male beauty he now is. I can't critique Star Wars for its dialogue, it's like criticizing a romance movie for the improbability of its plot. If anything Sith seemed like a cautionary tale on how uncommunicative partners ruin romances and love makes people blind. Like a chick flick.

no fries

No love ... this year Herndon Festival had no meaning for me as my yearly quest for sweet potato fries came up with fruitless results. Also I had no desire to go to Carpool and do the unofficial HHS reunion, although I'll be calling Lisa for the dirt on what went on that night.

spider people info

Over a week ago, I took advantage of a break in crappy weather on a Thursday afternoon and went climbing with my little sis at Carderock. Shortly after setting up the line, rockclimbers materialized out of nowhere and virtually tied up every nook, crack, and face on the C&O Canal. What was even more surprising, was they all knew eachother. And they were very friendly and willing to share their lines. Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. There really isn't any information on the website, but they have a loose informal rockclimbing group that heads out to Carderock every Wednesday afternoon.

I was a trial member of PATC back when I first came home for the summer from college. None of my high school friends were around so I decided to make new ones. Through the net I came across PATC and went to one of their meetings. There I met five people who never actually joined the club but we ended up organizing white water rafting, camping, and climbing excursions. One PATC thing we ended up doing was a cabin building/camping trip. One hot August weekend I hewed logs the old fashioned way, using the tools our pioneering forefathers did (no power tools, sorry gearheads), and swung an axe. I was incredibly sore from that weekend, but it was fun. I was one of two girls, and we felt like we had just stumbled upon the Old Boy's version of boy scouts. Rather than drinking beer in the evenings, they sipped brandy, and drank boxed wine, with claims to livelihood ranging from stock broker to grandfather. It was positively surreal returning to civilization.

Bust out of the city, your age group and era, check 'em out.

follow-up

I take back what I said earlier ... the Griffin iTrip sucks. Instead for twice as much I bought the Monster iCarPlay Wireless Transmitter. The sound is still not wonderful but it's better than the distortion I got on the iTrip. Also it's nice to be able to change the transmitter frequency in the car, rather than plugging into one's laptop (seems a bit difficult to do while driving). Overall, I can live with the sound quality, it still beats lugging my over 200+ CDs down to my car and searching through them for the song I want to hear (much less the album and artist).

sit on this!

zebra
Originally uploaded by ScelestiX.

Am I totally tacky for picking this scheme for my futon cover??? It feels like fur ... so nice, so bachelor-ette ... and such a twist to my otherwise not exciting apartment. I suppose I can sell it on craiglist if I hate it ...

beautiful

Night it was ... and kinda interesting ... I smelled Friday evening all around me ... the men's cologne in the elevator, the phantom of the social smoker in my hallway. After calling all my friends who lived near this city for one night on the town on my last weekend before enduring work for the next three weekends, I was in the mood to dance. These were the excuses I got:
"I gotta wake up at 5 AM to run 7 miles!" (alright props to you guys I know you'll whip ass),
"I'm going to the Spoon concert at 9:30 Club ... its sold out" (well at least somebody's getting out)
"We're at Soussa smoking a pipe, come" (I want to dance dammit),
"Eating thai, going to bed soon" (dance???),
"I have to work tomorrow" (okay, I feel your pain, that'll be my excuse for the next weeks),
"I'm still on a bus hours away from DC, but I'm staying in Northern VA tonight" (I fear for you)
"I just got back from happy hour and I'm sick" (yea, cuddle up with your dog ...)
and really the list goes on, most of the time I got voicemail ...

So what's a girl to do? Pop in her contacts, scrub her armpits, curl her hair, squish into her skinny jeans and hail a cab to an address she's not quite sure of ...

Agua Ardiente was where I headed, and IT WAS FUN!!! I ordered a cosmopolitan, chatted with two nice strangers, ran into an old co-worker, and remembered how to dance.

gyno

I'm dreading it, the usual check up, and I'm supposed to be there in a little over an hour. Nevermind battling through the Alexandria late rush hour traffic, or swerving around bicyclists and delivery trucks wontonly placed on major thoroughfares, but the thought of those ... stirrups, that crazy light, some person you barely know peering into your private innards ... don't get me started. I'm trying to think of excuses not to go, like ... umm ... I'm menstruating today (I know y'all needed to know that). But something in my memory from my last visit saying that a 24 hour cancellation period is required or I will be charged the amount of the visit? Or was it $25? I think I'd rather go running than go to the gyno ... and I loathe running ... but being outside and running somehow makes it okay, unless one of the quacks at the rehab/homeless shelter near me start talking to me like I'm an airline attendant (yes happened before). Ugh.

Update: So umm, yeah menstruating does get you off the hook (duh! took my asking the receptionist to find that out). Anyway, gave me an excuse to stop by Hecht's for pretty crystal barware on sale and Pier 1 for candles.

The Five-Bedroom, Six-Figure Rootless Life

From this NYT article ... I'm trying very hard not to just post articles on this site without any explanation, but despite being like 7 pages long or something, I was totally engrossed. Maybe this is what's wrong with America. Screwing your family for the sake of moving up. Mrs. Links whines about the long commutes, disrupting her kid's educations, and then she acquiesces to her husband's corporate shenanigans. I did a fair amount of moving when I was a kid, and besides the divorce, it's always been singly one of the most common traumatic things a kid can go through. I went from one school to the next, unsure of my place, and usually ending up the butt everyone's jokes ... shout out to my other brown 'smelly indian' friend (if you read this) who ended up being the rectum during an elementary school science class section ...

Screw it, if you're making 6 figures, why the f* can't you stay where you are? I don't make nearly as much money and I'm an uber happy urbanite in DC, where nothing is more than a mile away.

anatomy

ahem ... this will be one of my more soul-baring (we'll see), disgustingly honest (probably not) and revealing (for me) posts ... the anatomy of a hook up? Is there an expiration date? Is it ever, gotta be within a year or forget it? And what's even stranger, that after all this time has passed, you two are the same people, looking for the same things ... one in denial? the other afraid? What does one think when after three years and a failed relationship, an old sexual ghost from the past rings you in the middle of the night, someone who's voice you haven't heard in over two years, to ask how you are doing?

We watched my favorite movie (every guy loves this title--but it is a tragic story: Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love). I still found him hopelessly attractive after three years, the slender dancer's/martial artist's physique, the lilt in his speech, the way he would casually put his arm around me, and how when I talked about the few times we had before, his eyes would light up with remembrance. His thin glasses, preppy look, height next to me, and goofiness ... how we tip toed around on the roof because the contractors had forgotten to lock the door, with a bottle of Spanish wine between us ... me every now and then having to discourage his impetuous male urge to throw stones into the windows across the street and at birds perched near us, hoping for a crumb from these afternoon rooftop picnicers?

When he left, startled by the hour at 9 in the evening, he said I ought to visit my 'friend' in his town, two hours away... no it wasn't a direct invitation for anything, and then he cruised out my door ... hungry I ordered chinese.

So this ended up being all three of things I mentioned, and sometimes I wonder do I give up even before I give it a chance?