house of wax - part ii

so against my better judgment (and because natali made fun of me for being 25 and not being skilled in the art), i decided to try waxing my legs again last night. standing in front of my waxing options at target, i was almost tempted to get nair again just because it was cheap. then i remembered that cheap usually means cheap and chose sally hansen spa wax hair removal, $9.90-something plus tax at your local target. i was already more optimistic – the lady on the cover looked much smoother than the lady on the cover of nair (also, there wasn’t actually a lady on the cover of nair, which should have tipped me off).

at first it was kind-of exciting – i had to put the wax in the microwave to melt it. it looked like gak – all purple and oozy and such. and they gave me popsicle sticks to spread the gak on my legs. i was starting to wonder if i would get to make macaroni ducks next.

to my surprise, and relief, it was working like a gem! that gak pulled my little leggy hairs right out of there and i didn’t even scream once. the problem came when i started accidentally touching stuff…see, when you buy cheap products like nair, the wax doesn’t actually stick to anything (legs included), so cleanup is cake. but that sally hansen has figured out a way to make her wax stick to everything. she should probably consider starting a line of crazy glue. slowly but surely, my bathroom started turning purple along with my hands and various articles of clothing. i would try washing my hands but that sally hansen is clever and somehow made the gak-wax water/soap/fingernail/chainsaw proof. i looked like the purple people eater - even my two-year old nephew ran in looking for me and immediately hid in my closet once he saw me in all my monstrosity. even though my bathroom looked like the cat-in-the-hat got hold of it, my nephew wouldn’t even come in.

also when wax doesn’t come off easily, you start wondering if you’re actually ripping hair out, or if you’re ripping the first few layers of your skin and then your hair just kind-of falls out because there’s nothing more for it to hold on to. my left thigh is actually proof that this theory is true – i debated posting a picture, but remembered that this isn’t bodies: the exhibit and probably nobody wants to see my thigh innards since all my skin is now gone.

so bottom line, the waxing itself was a significant improvement from last time. but if my legs don’t stay baby-butt smooth for the next 8 weeks, i vow to never wax again. two hours of my life, missing leg skin and a bathtub full of perma purple gak stains just isn’t worth it.

happy birthday bug!!

birthdays are kind of a big deal. whether you use them as an excuse to draw attention to yourself (my favorite approach) or just as an excuse to pack your day as full as possible with random things (meghan’s approach), you just can’t complain with a birthday. here is a sample list of what we did for meghan’s birthday yesterday:


free day at the denver botanical gardens (it also helps to share a birthday with earth day) we got to visit the tropical steam room that reminded me (but didn’t make me homesick for) d.c. summers. a good indicator of not fun humidity is when your glasses fog up upon entry.



also since most people associate delicate lovely flowers with over-sized disturbing bugs, the botanical gardens decided to combine the two and add giant statues of various garden bugs (made me want to run right out to my local greenhouse and get some flowers to start my own garden). my favorite bug was the one with a rotary saw on its back. i was a little bit disappointed when meghan informed me that the saw doesn’t actually spin. what kind of cruel joke is that?

next we went to the denver aquarium, which is probably about my favorite aquarium ever. they’ve figured out that most people are getting bored pretty quickly looking at fish, which is why aquarium profits have gone down 32% over the past five years (i’m completely making up all traces of that statistic). but the denver aquarium doesn’t stop at fish. no no – the denver aquarium has real life tigers! who knew tigers had anything to do with fish?? three big ol’ tigers strutting their stuff and eating any fish in their way…seems like a bad investment to buy something that eats your main attraction right? wrong! the tigers are great. i’m still not sure what they’re actually doing at the aquarium, but i like it all the same.












another thing the denver aquarium has is tandem bike rentals. you can rent a lovely surrey bike for a measly $12 per half-hour and ride around the platte river. this is what we decided to do. how could we resist? the dumb thing had a canopy and a little bell! we made some friends and probably some enemies on that thing. one biker tried to get around us (we were kind-of large) and biffed it on the gravel…we rang our bell as an “i’m sorry” gesture. we even tried off-roading a little bit, but got stuck and had to push our bike out of the rocks. it was probably the best half hour of my life.


finally, we went to a decemberists concert. the concert itself was great – especially the part where they were singing about a whale eating everybody and then a whale actually came out on the stage and “ate” the entire band.



the concert was definitely shadowed by what was going on right in front of us. a fabulously nerdy girl and a guy were being very cuddly – holding hands, kissing…the whole bit. we thought it was cute and made some comment about how the right people find each other. then, the girl turns around and kisses the boy directly in front of her! they started holding hands and smooching! turns out there were about 4 guys surrounding this girl and she was acting all lovey dovey with all of them and they all knew about it…it was really bizarre. meghan had to drag me to a different area because apparently i was “ruthlessly staring” (i don’t think meghan used the word “ruthlessly” – after all she is only 23, you can’t expect genius yet)

so all in all i have no complaints about the day. wait – one complaint about the day. next time, i’d like the saw on the back of the giant bug to spin. happy birthday meghan!!

what'd you say??

so since you now know about my inability to hear correct song lyrics sometimes, let’s expand on that. what are some of your misheard song lyrics? if you’ve heard the new fallout boy song “this ain’t a scene,” you know that those lyrics are next to impossible to understand…i don’t know, maybe it’s just my aging 25-year-old ears that are starting to get muffled to the ruckus of rock and roll…probably not.

anyway, the point is, watch this video – it’s hilarious.

here are some other misheard lyrics i’ve heard about and like quite a bit:
- stone temple pilots – “interstate love song”
correct lyric – feeling like a hand in rusted chains
sounds like – feeling like a ham and mustard shake

- sting – “if i ever lose my faith” (ignore the x-files part of it…)
correct lyric – lost my belief in the politicians
sounds like – lost my briefs in a pile of tissues

so come on, let me know that i’m not the only one who hears weird lyrics in songs…

go to where they don't dye beets

on account of it's easter today, meghan and i felt it only appropriate to dye some eggs. lucky for us, our local grocer had the world's best egg dying kit ever! i was so satisfied with my product that i feel pitching a little promotion for paas eggheads is appropriate here. the gist is this - you dye the eggs and then give them little faces and hats (included in kit). hours of fun for the whole family, or just for two twenty-somethings.

here are our final products

and here is our little egg city, including business associates, jealous boyfriends and depressed inhabitants (what, it's a city - we wanted it to be life like)

and yes, that is a beatnik egg

these are the eggs attacking meghan...i told you it was hours of fun..

after our eggs got tired and told us they all had different plans tonight that didn't involve us, we realized we still had a ton of dye left. now, once upon a time, i used to think the phish song "heavy things" lyrics "go to where they hoped i'd be" actually said "go to where they don't dye beets." listen, it sounds like it. my dad and i would hear the dumb song every morning on our commute to work and it became very dear to us...maybe we'll dance to it at my wedding...

so naturally, meghan and i decided that we actual live in a place where we DO dye beets...and we did

turns out beets aren't too easy to dye. but at least our leftover egg faces looked good on them

happy easter!

discovering america

meghan and i went to lunch today at hops, which wasn't necessarily my favorite ever, but our waiter (who also wasn't neccessarily my favorite ever) made it entertaining. first of all, his name was church. which made it easy to say things like "i need church's advice" or "church is teaching me how to better serve others" and really mean that.

church seemed to forget about us and didn't come over to our table until after we had not only had time to read and memorize every menu item, but also to make perfect oragami swans out of our napkins. we didn't actually make these swans, but i guess it would have made the time go quicker. meghan had an oragami calendar last year - a new lesson in paper folding everyday...i don't think she learned much but those skills would have been helpful today.

i digress - church finally came over and took our drink orders. when he brought our drinks back, he asked us if we wanted to see something cool. having just come from the denver art museum, which is surprisingly pg-13 rated in some sections, we weren't sure if we wanted to see anything he wanted to show us. he pulled out a photo album and told us how he was the modern day louis and clark. he and a couple of his buddies (i'm guessing their names were synogogue and mosk) made canoes and went on the exact same expedition as louis and clark (minus probably the part when they discovered new plants and animals) on the exact same days of the year. it took them 2.5 years to finish! that immediately explained church's long hair.

i felt priviledged to meet somebody of such history. it's pretty much like i was actually being served by the real louis and/or clark. and that's when i remembered that i was hungry and that church wasn't going to get a big tip because this was taking forever.

i've been brainwashed!

is it funny that i was just going through a list of names at work and saw the last name "tafoya" (which i think you'll agree is a rather unique name). but, what are the odds? that was my second grade teacher's name - mrs. tafoya.

so naturally and nostalgically, i open up the contact information for this mysterious tafoya entry to see if it is indeed my second grade teacher. i knew right away it wasn't her - her first name wasn't mrs...

and then it occured to me - no matter how old i get, i don't think i'll ever be okay with seeing one of my teachers in the grocery store or knowing they have real lives

papa johns - part ii

this is what we should have done

better ingredients AND better workout incentives

there are two stories to be told here, but i'm going to skim past the first and focus on the second. the first, in a nutshell, includes meghan and i deciding on a beautiful evening to walk to our local blockbuster to drop off a movie. we missed out turn and ended up walking 10 miles roundtrip, instead of the needed 1.2 miles...oops...

the second story starts near the end of the first story. it includes us finally dropping off our video and figuring out dinner. we had been discussing what sounded good for dinner our entire (10 miles if you forgot) walk, but by the time we dropped our video off at roughly 10pm, the thought of going home and putting any effort at all into cooking was just grueling. so, we did what any logical thinking american would do - decided to order a pizza. lucky for us, blockbuster's neighbor is papa johns. all the lights were on, but the door was locked and the closed sign was up.

now i've ordered pizza a lot later than 10pm and knew this was some sort of mistake. i told meghan (i'm a pushy sister...) to call the number posted on the door and tell them we wanted to order a pizza. she did and we heard the phone ring inside the store...AND we heard somebody answer it! we ordered our pizza from the guy we heard both on the phone and through the door. he asked us in surround sound what our delivery address was and we told him we wanted to pick it up..and that we were standing right outside his door.. he said no. dumb. so we gave him our address and started walking home (we still had about a mile to go).

i asked meghan what she would do if we saw our pizza guy pass us and she said nothing because she was too tired to run...but sometimes, what you think you'll do and what you actually do are two different things - it's like when you're in an emergency situation and all of a sudden you're crawling out the window of your car even though you don't consciously think doing that is a good idea and you have no recollection of doing it later (this has never happened to me, but i've heard stories and they're good inspiring stories). anyway, the pizza guy called and introduced himself as "your papa johns guy" (papa johns sure has a way of making you feel like you have servents). he was at our house. so, even though she didn't think she would, meghan started booking it. i tried, but then remembered that i'm blind at night (don't worry, i wear glasses when i drive) and kept tripping on little hills and stuff. i recently broke my elbow running...a story for another day...so, i was a little hesitant and decided i'd catch up after she paid for the pizza (sucker) and just in time to dig in.

our papa johns pizza guy was sitting on our front steps like a homeless man wanting money. poor guy - i wish papa johns would pay their employees more. meghan paid for the pizza while huffing and puffing and the papa johns guy made some comment about working off the calories of the pizza before even eating it...wow...thanks for keeping us trim papa johns guy!