breaking...

remember my stories about the stink in our office's lobby due to the dead mice in the ceiling/radiator/walls? well, in the past two weeks there have been random funky smells around the office, and a few dead mice have been found in radiators in private offices.

guess who's turn it is today?!

i knew something smelled amiss/gross when i walked into my office this morning. periodically i've been walking out into the hall and stepping back in, to see if i was just being crazy - or, horror, if it was perhaps me - but no, the air in the hall smelled different. still bad, but of a different magnitude.

so overhearing two coworkers discussing a smell in our area of the floor, i bounded out of my office, thrilled that others noticed this too, and joined them in a sniffing hunt. (for someone with allergies, i think i make an excellent bloodhound)

upon entering my office, one of my coworkers confirmed my suspicion announcing, "yes. there's something dead in here."

he could've been referring to my spirit.

but more to come when the undertakers get here. oh the excitement!

getting back on track.

before i mislead anyone, i'm only currently into ninjas because i think this 'ninja burglar' story is freaking hilarious. when it comes to that age-old debate, ninja vs. pirate, i am totally, 1 million percent, on the pirate team. ninjas, i assume, must have a commitment to fitness that i just can't handle. the carousing life of a pirate is entirely more my speed.

speaking of, i even missed Talk like a Pirate Day last week! a very happy belated one to all.

so what have i been up to that i've been so neglectful of my little patch of the web? tons. missy and i threw an amazing (if we say so ourselves) apartment-warming party, managing to squeeze a record 30+ people into our new place. i discovered the power of WD-40 and eradicated the vexing three-year-old issue of having a super-squeaky bed. i celebrated my one-year anniversary at my 'new' job. i learned how not to mop a wood floor and how to infuse my own vodka. i finished watching every eddie izzard comedy special that exists on dvd. i got my bangs back. i received a bossy bear**!

and, most importantly, i had my faith in the dry cleaning industry restored, when they lost a pair of my pants - my very favorite work pants - but then found them for me a few days later, with just about every employee at the cleaners leaving me voicemails to announce that my pants were safe and sound. (and no, i'm not just copying that recent episode of curb your enthusiasm - i actually lost my pants the day before it aired. i always knew i felt a special kinship with larry david.)


**missy calls me "bossy bear". but i'm not actually bossy. i'm just doing my job as the older, wiser, sibling. really.

does the second amendment apply to nunchucks?

a ninja burglar bill! oh this story just keeps getting better and better...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/09/24/2007-09-24_ninja_burglar_strikes_fear_in_staten_isl.html


(i know. its been ages and the first thing i come back with is a mere link?? how rotten! but i needed to report the very latest on the n.burglar, plus i'm working on a post of substance recapping the whirlwind of the past two weeks. we'll be up and running again soon, i promise, dear handful of wonderful, loyal readers.)

they say you are what you eat.

we apologize for our absence, but its been an insanely busy week over here - the highlight? an awesomely fun night of irish music in philadelphia last night. the lowlight? loveandcyanide's first trip to the gastroenterologist.

i shall spare everyone the details of the trip, but i would just like to say that i've never filled out a more invasive pre-doctor visit questionnaire in my entire life. the highlight of this lowlight, however, was hearing a fellow waiting roomer comment that his answer to the question "what color?" was "like a benjamin moore chart". i am still torturing missy with that line two days later. you know how she hates bathroom humour.

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so while at wendy's today - figured this was the only logical segue after talking about my visit to a stomach doctor - i realized that they have changed the look of their menu boards, and have upgraded to a faux wood finish around the menus. snazzy! i always felt wendy's was the BMW of the fast food world, and this just seals it.

does your hometown have a ninja burglar?

coming across this bit of news about our darling home borough has made my entire week.


http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2007/09/his_fight_with_the_ninja_burgl.html

morning observations.

i hate carrying food onto the subway - in this particular case, a foil pan full of brownies that i made for today's office party. oh, chrissy, you domestic goddess, you! - because everyone just sits there staring at whatever wrapped item you're holding. clearly its not a suspicious package people, settle down. i decided that if anyone actually asked what was in the pan, since it seemed like it might come to that as a short man in a plaid cap sidled up into me/my brownies, i'd tell them it was my pet turtle.

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another thing i hate - clear bra straps. i have dear friends who swear by them, so i won't go completely off on how dumb/disgusting i think the straps are/look, but i will comment that clear does not equal invisible, ladies!! when you wear them with a tube top we can SEE THEM!! really, a tube top. holy cow, some people are stupid.

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a less hateful observation - a woman got onto the train this morning and when she turned around, i noticed that the back of her shirt read, 2007 US OPEN. HAIRSTYLIST TO THE PLAYERS. i found this curious. do the players have their hair coiffed before their games? do the stylists come around after the match to arrange their sweaty locks for post-game interviews? do all professional sports events have the luxury of hair stylists for the participants?

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and a final one - there was another, less curious but more entertaining, shirt of note spied during today's commute. the back of it featured two cartoon clams smiling at each other, with the line "let's shuck" printed above their shells. juvenile, sure, but i got a good chuckle out of it.

thursday shot of vitamin C.

as everyone around me has fallen ill throughout the course of the past 24 hours - friends, siblings, coworkers, friends' coworkers...i'm really not exaggerating, is there something in the air that i'm unaware of? - i think its a good time to talk about something healthy.

like fruit.

thanks to reader PH, i was introduced to a most interesting new fruit today - the plumpricot** - which is, you guessed it, the offspring of a plum + apricot. i'm a big fan of the plum, and not so much a fan of the apricot, so i figured my feelings on this new fruit would be mixed. but no - its absolutely delicious. great texture, great coloring, and great taste. nothing could ever knock the mango out of my top fruit spot, but this tasty little hybrid could possibly make my top 5 after having only one. i will be stalking the supermarkets for these little gems until they go out of season.

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its ironic that as i finish this post about fruit someone near my office is eating either fried chicken or fast food, and i'm seriously thisclose to drooling due to the deep-fried scent wafting through the air. sigh. i sit so precariously close to the edge of the healthy food wagon.



**after searching online, i've found this hybrid called a plumcot, pluot, aprium, plumpricot and plumicot. i personally think that plumpricot is the most fun to say, so even if its not the most agriculturally-correct version of the word, it'll be the one i use.

update.

since my last posting elicited such a response about pennies - pennies! what will happen if i write about nickels? - on the comments page, i wanted to follow-up and let everyone know that after 3 days of lurking at the base of the porcelain bowl, my toilet penny is now gone.

so either pennies require about 95 flushes before they make it down the pipe, or someone was in desperate need of change.

bathroom talk.

when missy and i were going over our criteria for a new apt, one of my top priorities was the quality of the bathroom - more specifically, i preferred for the tub to have shower doors. why would i care? well, since the age of 10, with the exception of the college years (and i blocked those gross showers out of my memory, so they really don't count) and various stays at friend's places and hotels, i've always lived in a place with shower doors. and once you get used to shower doors - the plethora of light they allow in to the tub, the fact that they don't billow about and ensnare you in their plastic grip like curtains do - its hard to downgrade back to a curtain.

as we could barely find a apartment that had a bathroom that looked like it had been remodeled anytime in the past 50 years, "shower doors" was quickly crossed off my wish list. and although in the end we wound up in a brand spanking new place, the tub was still doorless and required a curtain.

i quickly saw the good in the situation as i spent an entire workday perusing for curtains - who knew there were so many fun ones out there?! - and when missy and i hung up our awesomely clever new one and it totally made the room, i couldn't help but think that i might actually be swayed out of the door camp.

but i haven't been.

although my adjustment to showering with a curtain is going pretty smoothly thus far, there's still one major, major bother - what i refer to as the "psycho factor". i never had to worry about someone sneaking into the bathroom and attacking me when i had clear doors to look out of. now, its all i can think about. i actually obsess over it the entire time i'm in the shower, tacking on a good minute or two to my bath time as i constantly need to peep my head around the curtain, to make sure the door is still closed and no intruder is lurking near the toilet with a machete.

i know this sounds nuts, but its not just me -- missy is having this issue as well. we discussed our dilemma the other day, and it seems like our next curtain might have to be a see-thru one.

-----------------

in further bathroom news, there has been a penny in one of our work toilets for the past two days. this doesn't necessarily bother me, as i kind of like the wishing well effect it lends to our otherwise disgusting women's bathroom, but my question is - why won't it flush down the toilet? is it a chemical thing? or did some creep glue it there?

full circle.

forgive me for being a slacker this week, its been an exceptionally busy one. its ironic that i manage to find an awesome new apartment that i just want to sit in, all the time, and then fall into an especially busy social period, so i wind up spending no time in it at all.

so, in a rather amazing coincidence, not one, but THREE things i've mentioned in recent months came back to haunt me today (and its only the early afternoon) :

1. as i walked to the train this morning, there idled a small commercial van. outside the back of the van was a cardboard box containing ice...and fish heads.

really. i couldn't make this stuff up. while wondering about the usage of cardboard and, again, conditions that i believe the USDA would not consider sanitary, i also prayed that maybe a horror movie is filming in a nearby building and that would explain all the miscellaneous early morning animal parts. if not, i might rethink all the dinnering we do in our local establishments.

2. my office mate, the mutant fly, has returned. and this time he's brought an equally monstrous friend.

i've resorted to playing music to drown out the racket they are making as they buzz through my blinds. i will also be adding "purchase massive fly swatter" to my weekend to-do list, as i just had to use Kleenex as weaponry when throwing my tissue box at the blinds. which made an even louder racket. i really am thankful for the fact that no one was passing by my office to witness my (slight) freak-out. but the flies are actually making me nuts - another hour and i see myself tearing the blinds off the windows, wildly waving files, and flinging office supplies in attempted insect murder.

3. the kicker - about an hour ago, the back of my chair fell off. the comedy gods must be off today, as i happened to be leaning forward when it happened and thereby escaped a tumble to the floor.

on a positive note, i finally figured out where that "extra" knob goes.

i'm just the yin to you noisy, nosy, yangs.

"you're so quiet"

i can't tell you how many times i've heard that line throughout my life. why, i just heard it again about 2 minutes ago, making it the catalyst for this rant.

is this an insult? i've never understood what someone is trying to insinuate when they come upon me, standing there/sitting there minding my own business, and make that comment. yes, i am pretty quiet - some people are. does my peacefulness bother you? does the fact that you can't hear my voice reverberate around the office annoy you? what exactly is the problem? if you're just trying to begin a conversation, i can think of 100 better starters than that one.

under certain circumstances i can understand being told this, but those are mainly all personal situations, where the person telling me "you're so quiet" is saying it because they want to know whats on my mind. totally acceptable, especially when the other party knows me well enough to know that only 70% of what goes on in my mind comes out of my mouth.

but i just do not at all understand being randomly told that i'm quiet by someone who doesn't really know me. it would be rude of me to comment to another "you're so noisy", wouldn't it? this is technically the same thing.

oh this irks me to no end.

i believe this model came with some spare parts...

while twirling around in my office chair earlier today, there was a clang and a knob and some washers (father is handy, or else i'd have no idea what those things are called) appeared on the floor. fearing i was about to find myself in a similar position, i got up, flipped the chair over, and attempted to reattach them.

no dice. having examined every single little inch of the base, back, and sides of this chair, it doesn't appear that this knob can be screwed back in anywhere. which is strange as it had to fall from somewhere... so i'm going to pretend that it was just an extra knob that had been taped to the bottom of the chair in case of emergencies.

--------------------

speaking of emergencies, an incident occurred yesterday morning that had me briefly considering vegetarianism. (i know...i didn't think it was possible either)

as i did my short little walk to the train i passed by some men unloading items from a truck. as i approached the truck, i noticed one man passing what appeared to be a whole, skinned, duck down to another man on the ground, who then placed it in a shopping cart. thinking i was hallucinating - wouldn't that be unsanitary? - i shifted my gaze onto the cart, and found that i was unfortunately correct. it was filled almost to the brim with duck carcasses. and, atop the ducks, a giant cow head. the cow gazed accusingly at me while i climbed the subway steps, wondering if the burger i had saturday night might be my last.

it won't be. i somehow managed to bounce back from the traumatizing 'shopping cart of horrors' experience within a few hours, and found myself cheerfully helping missy cook steaks later that evening.

but i did have a nightmare last night.

a new level of multitasking.

having already expressed our love for supermarkets many - some may say too many - times here, you are well aware of our support of the industry.

that said, i'm not quite sure how i feel about this:

check out.

a singles event at a supermarket. in one respect, i think this is sort of clever - a shopping cart full of goodies makes for an easy conversation starter. oh hey, you prefer rice pasta too?

on the other hand, i think its sort of creepy (and not just because i think all forced singles events seem sort of creepy). and really, what are they going to do about the harsh supermarket lighting?

we haven't done an animal post in awhile.

since the death of our beloved cat tigger two months ago there's been a dearth of all things cute and fuzzy in our lives. thankfully, a new season of meerkat manor (or meeeeeerkat manor, as i so like to whiningly say) is starting up this week, so cute/fuzziness will be restored.

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so at our rather raucous family gathering this weekend we were treated to two very different, yet equally ridiculous, animal stories from family members.

first up was the tale of the seagull - "the little bastard", as my mother called him - who menaced my parents for their funnel cake on their recent weekend down the shore. inching closer and closer as they ate on a bench, the "brazen" seagull infuriated my mother so much that she threw her napkin at him in an attempt to distract him from his cakey target. unfortunately, the tossing of the napkin prompted a seagull swarm, and my parents were chased from their bench by about 20 seagulls diving down to see what had been thrown at their leader. and my dad wonders why missy and i prefer to vacation without them.

never one to be topped, my aunt launched into her recent encounter with a garden snake - an encounter that included screaming, a 10-minute weed killer shower for said snake, the apparent death of snake, joyous celebration by aunt, and then the subsequent discovery that snake had disappeared, meaning she either vaporized it with the weed killer, or, most likely, simply maced the thing into a temporary stupor.

its really no wonder i can't handle killing a giant fly when i see how poorly my relatives react when put in man-vs-beast situations.

mr. met might have a harder time stalking me now that i've changed my address.

well, mr. met isn't personally stalking me (i wish! i would love to see that giant baseball head ducking into bushes and behind cars as he followed me home), but his organization is.

for the past few weeks i've received a 'courtesy call' on my cell about every 3 days from the mets. why?? i think i've purchased mets tickets maybe once in my life, and i know that i didn't give them my cell phone number. whenever missy and i have to give out numbers, we offer up our parent's. hee.

-------------

so besides the MLB harassing me, all has been going excellently - most especially, the move, and the new apartment. i know we were complaining, and everyone complains, about how hard it is to move - but we were never informed about how glorious it is to actually use movers. to stand around idly while your stuff magically gets from one place to another. in our valid attempts to help them - having grown up with our mother, its impossible for us to feel anything but guilty as we stand by and watch others do things without pitching in - the guys actually took items from our hands and carried them out themselves. of course this could've been because the moment i picked up our decorative metal wheel i managed to knock it on the floor, where it made a deafening clang in the near-empty room, but nevertheless, it was absolutely amazing how efficient these guys were.

missy even commented that she intends to hire movers to get her kids to and fro college. which, if they have even half the amount of crap she and i managed to cram into our dorm rooms, isn't really as outlandish as it may sound.

is shoe-free the way to be?

so i know i was bitching last week about the barefoot old woman on the bus, and we all basically decided that she was just a crazy old bird that i shouldn't concern myself with, as it wasn't my feet touching the dirty bus floor.

well, now its more than that. its no longer just one batty old woman...its a whole epidemic of shoeless people running around NYC.

yesterday i was on the circle line for our office's "summer outing" and i spied a young woman walking around barefoot. ok, so we were on a boat. but it wasn't a private yacht, it was a tourist mecca that i am certain has seen the soles of thousands of passengers tramp across its floors.

then just before as i was walking to the deli to pick up lunch i passed a boy wheeling his scooter down the block while wearing only white socks. i did a full examination of his entire person and there wasn't a pair of sneakers in sight.

seriously, did i miss some memo that the streets of new york are suddenly super clean?

the great ______ caper.

the _____ in our headline is for our last name, which, to protect the innocent, we don't use here at loveandcyanide. if you do happen to know it - i believe 3 of our approx. 7 readers do - feel free to insert it in the blank when reading it throughout this post. if you don't know it, just use some other two-syllable word. we suggest muppet since "the great muppet caper" is a fantastic movie (and our favorite charles grodin film).

the great _____ caper occurred last night around 9:30pm. slightly delirious from a long day of work and packing, missy decided to clean out the pantry and discard any and all old food items (the winner of the Ms. Expired pageant, a rather close race between a bag of rice, boxed mashed potatoes and a few packages of jello, went to the packet of pistachio jello, dated 6/05). in retrospect, this was entirely too arduous of a task for this time of the evening, being in our current state of affairs.

so i had a bad feeling when missy squealed with excitement over discovering an unopened - and still edible - jar of capers in the pantry, and i therefore wasn't all too surprised when a few minutes later i heard the melodious tinkle of glass hitting the kitchen floor. ordered to put on shoes, i arrived in the kitchen to a salty stink, and saw the little green guys rolling all over our floor amongst shards of glass. shoeless missy stood in the midst of it looking forlorn, and it took a good two minutes for us to decide exactly what our plan our action would be. i believe someone suggested just leaving it on the floor for the new people.

a short while later the mess was (mostly) taken care of, the kitchen only smelled slightly briny, and as we skated back and forth on paper towels drying the floor, we had a good chuckle over our tuesday evening 'caper'.

which was slightly messier but certainly less serious than our monday evening caper, which involved the unplugging of our nintendo and the subsequent destruction of our satellite tv service. we have no idea what missy did with the wires, but it is now impossible to hook everything back up. and so we're tv-less.

lesson learned this week: do not turn back on sister during packing.

revisiting first crushes.

i try not to get suckered into reality series, but a new one started up that i'm finding impossible to resist -- scott baio is 45...and single.

scott baio was my very first celebrity crush. according to various family members, i was completely obsessed with the show joanie loves chachi - well, i guess as obsessed as a 2-3 year old could be with something she clearly could not at all understand - and when people used to ask me who my boyfriend was, i used to answer, "chachi!". i wonder if my parents found this adorably precocious or just plain frightening.

so they nicknamed me 'joanie' for awhile, and although i don't completely remember watching the show or the feelings of chachi love i apparently held in my itty-bitty heart, i can vividly recall the old ladies who used to frequent my family's grocery store calling me joanie whenever they came shopping. so apparently most of brooklyn was aware of my crush.

but regardless of these nostalgic reasons, it's actually a pretty compelling show and mr. baio makes for a rather sympathetic almost ex-womanizer as his life-coach helps him along. AND, and, the kicker is one of his best buds and the producer of the show is...jason hervey! older brother from the wonder years and another former celeb crush of mine. i know, i know - why did i like the chubby asshole brother while everyone else liked adorable little kevin arnold?

perhaps scott baio isn't the only one in need of a life-coach.

moving is tough.

last week's excitement over discovering an awesome new apartment has waned the past few days. while the packing part of the process is a little less stressful than the initial hunting part, i wouldn't call wrangling three year's worth of stuff into bags and boxes easy. or fun.

so while we declined plans with friends all week in favor of packing, there is nary a filled box in site. instead we've managed to:

• update Bear's myspace page
• get drunk
• make ice cream sandwiches
• watch Beerfest
  

we will clearly do anything to avoid packing.

---------------

so in an earlier post i mentioned about the plethora of shady real estate agents we dealt with. seriously, i had no idea what i was in for as my last apt was by owner. not like he was a prize - more like a pervert and racist - but at least we didn't have to fork over 1 month's rent to him.

but in the past few weeks we've come to meet a variety of evil agents - liars, cheats, scoundrels. how do these people sleep at night? (with the exception of the kindly greek santa claus-like broker who we would've been happy to give business to. we're sorry we just didn't like anything you showed us, manny!) i understand they're just trying to make a buck, but really, there has to be more ethical ways to go about it. missy and i came home practically in tears some nights.

thankfully the broker attached to our dream apartment turned out to be a reputable guy. he also knew the right things to say, as after showing us the apartment and giving us an application he said, "and thank you girls for the entertainment".

we're thinking that's what catapulted our application above the rest. thank goodness for our shtick.

ick.

dear older woman in yellow sundress on the bus this morning,

i understand it was raining - no, POURING - earlier today and that wet shoes can feel really really really gross on one's feet. trust me, it's over an hour after i came in from the rain and i am still completely regretting wearing open-toe flats...

but did you have to take the city bus BAREFOOT????? the sight of your bare feet squishing on the presumably filthy bus floor almost made me lose my breakfast.

please invest in galoshes.

your concerned fellow commuter,
chrissy

movin' on up.

it's been a crazy/awesome week for us, mainly because loveandcyanide has found new headquarters! after a grueling hunt for a new apartment - more on the search and the plethora of shady real estate agents that exist in astoria to come - we found a new place. a new and improved place that completely fulfilled our #1 new apartment request, which was to move closer to the train.

never ones to settle for half-asseyness, we will now be living in spitting distance from the train. seriously. Bear can sit on our balcony and heckle commuters as they pass. if you took a running leap out of our windows you would actually land on train tracks. we may have taken our wish to the extreme.

but while we do realize we might need to invest in earplugs and probably wear more than underwear when prancing about the apartment near the windows, we're still excited as hell.

hot. hot. hot.

we're back, and in high spirits over here at loveandcyanide. having spent the past 8 days in basically perfect summer weather doing nothing more than sunning on the beach and having fun with friends, how can we not be?

the massive fly is also gone from my office.

so being on vacation high myself, i've taken notice of those who are vacationing in my hot humid disgusting fair city today. they all look miserable -- i didn't see one happy vacation face roasting atop the big red bus. and as i passed one guy i heard him sorrowfully comment to his companion "it stinks like urine here".

my question is, what would possess someone to come to new york in the middle of the summer? i'm curious to see if guidebooks suggest against it and mobs of people just don't heed the suggestion, or if maybe the guidebook industry is in a conspiracy against summer tourists and therefore encourage them to come here when its gross.

insectual harassment.

for the past two days a giant fly has been buzzing around my office. if i worked in the zoo, i would find this tolerable. but i don't, and so i really don't know what its doing in here. i also don't know why this fly is so large - about the size of a fully-popped piece of popcorn, which i think is a bit too large for your general nyc fly - although i'm thinking it must be the air in this building that creates mutant bugs. (see: elevator ride from hell)

anyways, i suppose you're wondering why i'm complaining about a fly buzzing around my head, simply doing his little fly thing near the window looking for an exit, as flies usually do. well, this fly isn't doing that. this fly is randomly dive-bombing me as i try to do my work. this fly hangs out on my sudoku puzzle daily calendar watching me type. he'll occasionally fly over to the window, or out my office door, but shortly returns and is again buzzing right over my shoulder. he's shown up on the chair next to me and perching on my mousepad.

i know i should have managed to kill this thing by now, but for some reason i can't get it together and swat him in time. i think its a combination of his size - daunting for a novice bug-killer like myself - and his buzzing, which is excessively loud when he's so close to me and throws me off to the point where instead of grabbing a notepad and swatting him i'm instead doing an indoor-voice girly shriek (translation: an eek-like noise low enough that only the person in the office next door would think something is amiss. blessfully, he has been on vacation.) and jumping out of my chair away from him. its pathetic. and rather distracting - not just the swerving out of his way but also the constant worrying that he might nest in my hair, given its current state of "big + curly". i would hope i could feel him on my scalp if he attempted such a move. - and if he ever emerges from his current lair in my blinds i will have to buck up and destroy him. let's see if i can manage that.

but the good news is, even if i can't handle it, i'm leaving for a week-long vacation later today and having checked out the lifespan of a fly -- which for your average male is 10 days (i'm assuming he's a male due to his size and aggressive nature) -- i'm expecting him to perish naturally and be gone by the time i return.

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so yes, loveandcyanide is heading off on a little vacay for the 4th, so we won't be around for a bit. where are we going? Long Beach Island. go ahead, snicker and make your little jersey shore comments...but LBI is actually a rather nice and quiet little island off the coast of the j.shore and isn't very j.shore-like at all, as the fist-pumping fools that flock to the j.shore have not found their way there yet.

hopefully, my fly won't either.

road rage: 2-wheeler edition.

while waiting for a friend after work yesterday i witnessed a near-miss between a woman crossing the street and a delivery man on his bicycle. as the man screamed angrily at her as he whizzed past, i couldn't help but have a flashback to my own harrowing experience with an irate cyclist.

i had been in the midst of doing a walk to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis, crossing over the Brooklyn Bridge during the midway point of the walk. now i'll admit that i might have stepped from the pedestrian lane into the bike lane as i was walking, but the pedestrian lane is of a decent width, and it was only missy striding next to me, so at most i was maybe a hip's-worth into the bike path. not very much.

i suddenly felt something closing in behind me, and i heard a shout - "watch it!" as the biker flew past i sort of stumbled in to missy to move out of his way. and as he passed me he turned and screamed "rot in hell!"

rot. in. hell. was that really necessary? we were completely taken aback. i don't think anyone - exes, enemies, shouting homeless bums, anyone - ever told me to rot in hell. and to think, crazy cyclist even yelled this at me while i was wearing a pinny stating that i was there, only so slightly in his way, for a charitable cause. hmmph!

suffice to say i became a little wary of people on bikes after that. sure, i still am friends with people who bike (actually, two of the sweetest girls i know are avid cyclists) and i even attended the bicycle film festival (to see pee-wee's big adventure, of course), however i've seen one too many wrathful cyclist/pedestrian interactions to truly feel comfortable near anyone pedaling around on two wheels.

and so it goes.

i know. where have we been???

unfortunately, we didn't go anywhere. even more unfortunate, loveandcyanide took the break to mourn the death of our beloved little cat tigger, who after 17 years of ruling our roost, succumbed to throat cancer and diabetes (it makes me ridiculously sad when animals have human diseases). its been rather difficult - having never lost a pet before, i had no idea how hard the grieving process would be. i've probably cried more the past two weeks than i ever did for any relative that passed away, which i suppose is slightly disturbing and/or mean, but i've also never lost anyone who slept at the foot of my bed for 10 years. so in that respect i think all my carrying on is fitting. even when i was weepy in the produce aisle of shoprite and you made me wear my sunglasses, missy.

as is typical of my family, we've managed to turn tragedy into comedy to help cope, so currently there is much ado over what to do with the cat's ashes - father wants them to remain in the house, mother wants them buried in the yard in the hole father started digging weeks ago when he made a coffin (yes, coffin) for the cat. last i heard there were threats of father putting mother in the coffin and moving off to tahiti with the little urn. and here you thought i was exaggerating when i said that our cat was the most important member of the household.

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last week i also endured my first experience with layoffs. although there turned out to be only one - one very deserved one, if you ask me - there were office rumours afoot for days that there would be multiple ones, so we all sat in terror that we would be cut as well. not like being jobless in the summer would be the worst thing in the world...but thankfully things have returned to normal this week, and i can sit here writing instead of having to comfort tearful junior members of our staff in my office all day long.

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but things haven't been completely gloom+doom over here. there's been birthday parties (including an 'explosive' family one featuring a bbq grill fire), the acquisition of an awesome set of vinyl warrior bears, the nerve-wracking-yet-exciting start of a hunt for a new apartment, impending vacations, a new favorite snack (Tings), and a new addition to my list of favorite movies (stranger than fiction).

touching on the elements (sans fire).

i just finished reading a lengthy article in the NY Times real estate section that featured someone i graduated college with, which was a little bizarre to see. more bizarre is that the guy was a degenerate in school and is now about to become a father. most bizarre is that this is actually the second lengthy Times piece i've recently read that featured one of my classmates.

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the roosevelt island tram absolutely fascinates me. it always has - taking a ride on it has been on my daytrip to-do list forever - but now even more so as i have a great view of it from my office. so i get to stare at it all day long. which is nice, because watching a little tram float by every few minutes makes me feel like i'm in disneyworld as opposed to an office.

but notice how i said every few minutes. seriously, the tram must be the quickest mode of transportation in the city because its like the minute one arrives, the next one is already on its way in. we're in the midst of a seriously major downpour right now, and i just spotted one gliding across the sky. i guarantee the subway is screwed up due to this rain (or at the very least the N train is, since a mere snowflake sets that one off-schedule), and yet the city's sky transport is still going strong. amazing.

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speaking of amazing, we finally got around to watching the squid and the whale last night. SUCH a good movie. despite the rampant literary pretension - you would think working in publishing i'd be accepting of it. NO! it bothers me more than most other sorts of pretension - it was incredibly well-acted and just a really good story. and at less than 1.5 hours, it never dragged. then as the credits rolled we discovered that one of the leads was played by kevin kline's son. <3! we love kevin kline...

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and speaking of sea life, tomorrow is missy + bear's big day. (don't bother wishing them birthday greetings here since they won't see it. although i suppose you could wish me greetings for them, as our family used to buy both of us gifts on each other's birthday's so the non-birthday sister wouldn't feel left out...) what does that have to do with the ocean? a good third of missy's gift this year is related to the aquatic. why? as a tyke she went through a phase where she carried a dried seahorse around with her in her pocket at all times, and i just love taunting her about her peculiar little marine phase.

vacation, revisited.

the past few days have been rather overwhelming, due to a giant book expo and a 5-year college reunion. one of those events involved hoards of middle-aged women wielding giant tote bags, the other copious amounts of alcohol and a dorm sleepover. i'll let you guess which was which, and at which i had the most fun.

having finally recuperated, i'm ready to reveal, as promised last week, the reasons why i'd like to move to good ol' texas upon having visited it. (have no fear, i'm not actually going there unless something major necessitated it. my bangs could never handle the humidity and i'm not into driving trucks.)

1. THE BBQ - seriously, amazing. i literally wanted to snuggle in and take a nap in this batch of pulled pork i ate.

2. SONIC - the establishment taunts new york (or maybe just loveandcyanide) as its commercials play all the time here while the nearest one is in virginia. hours away! you cannot show us a banana creme pie shake featuring nilla wafers that we can't have. thankfully, texas had one about every 20 ft.

3. $850 RENT - not per person. per apartment. per gorgeous apartment my friends lived in that featured a fireplace, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a community pool that looked like it was pulled from the caribbean. and what do i pay for my 750 sq. ft. box?

4. THEY SELL BACON BY THE STRIP! - oh, you don't believe me? behold the photographic evidence:


its a little fuzzy, but that whataburger sign states "bacon per slice - 0.35". we wound up at that drive-thru at about 1:30am, so you know the insane amount of willpower it took me to just snap photos and not pull away with a $2 handful of bacon.

chrissy: preschool style icon/remorseful commuter.

while flipping through a magazine today, i spotted a photo of maddox (jolie-pitt), in which he is wearing a tshirt that i have. have. not had, when i was five, you know, like he is.

do you have to retire your clothes when the kindergarten set starts turning up in the them?

*******

i hate to admit it, but i think i was a little overzealous in all the excitement over my new bus stop. similar to when i purchase shoes, it appears i might have valued aesthetics over sensibility.

as the sun bore down through the clear glass roofing the other day, i couldn't help but remember, wistfully, that i never used to sweat at the bus stop, as the old shelter provided shade. and as it poured yesterday morning and i got soaked stepping on the bus, i recalled the good old days when the bus shelter covering used to extend to the curb, so one could step dryly on to the bus.

damn you, pretty-but-useless phenomenon.

i guess this is why most people opt for souvenir tshirts.

hi y'all!

we're back from the lone star state. it was a terrific time, despite the crazy storms (figures i head south for memorial day weekend, and then its nicer in nyc...). on the plus side for the weather, while i didn't get to act out PW'sBA in the alamo, i did get to pretend i was in another fave film, Twister, whilst driving through a corn field in the pounding rain with a scarily dark sky above. oh if only philip seymour hoffman had been in the car with us...

but i digress. so i was going to celebrate loveandcyanide's big return with a listing of all the reasons why i want to move to texas - shocking! i know. but its a rather short list and 90% of the content has to do with cured meats, so really, not so shocking - but that one will have to wait, due to a ridiculously appropriate trip-related situation that ties in to the last comment we received from one of our dear readers.

so, i bet when chuckles wrote that he imagined me elbow-deep in bbq sauce he didn't envision it the result of an incompetent fool working for continental airlines.

but it's true -- my sauciest experience didn't occur in texas, but in my parents' living room, about an hour after landing in newark airport. i knew it was bad news when i pulled my suitcase off the conveyor belt and saw that it had been stamped "inspected". it actually should have been stamped "rearranged", since the two bottles of bbq sauce that i had brought home for my grill-happy father, that had been snugly packed in bags wrapped in clothing in opposite parts of the suitcase, were now next to each other. and of course, one of the bottles was broken, and had spilled all over a good 1/4 of my belongings.

and so there i was last night, elbow deep in my bbq sauce-covered suitcase. had it not been for the worry of ingesting glass shards, i most definitely would have had it all over my face as well.

happier bbq stories to come, kids. yeehaw!

nothing is certain but death and texas...

season 3 seems to be the kiss of death for all my favorite tv shows.

last night we said a sad farewell to Veronica Mars, which ended with such little closure that missy and i found ourselves in such a state of despair that we wound up persuaded into watching the end of Dancing with the Stars. while Bear cheered for joey fatone ("fat one, fat one", he chanted), we sat around in a mild state of shock that our favorite tv series had ended. just. like. that. thank goodness for dvds.

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loveandcyanide will be off the air - for a short while, don't worry - as well, as i'm taking a little vacation to...Texas! (houston and austin, to be exact. unfortunately not san antonio, news that shattered my dreams of acting out Pee Wee's Big Adventure.) although i need to use both hands and feet to count the number of countries i've visited, i have yet to travel beyond the east coast and see the rest of the US - weird, i know - so i'm sort of excited to see what the wild west has to offer me. i'm hoping for stagecoaches and a shootout at dawn...but will settle for a rodeo and some good bbq.

143 DOT.

i don't know what level of rock-bottom i'm hitting that the Department of Transportation is responsible for the excitement of my week.

it was announced last year that the city would be getting some snazzy new bus stop shelters. i recently spied one near my office, and was quite impressed - totally modern and sleek, made of metal and glass. and it could even fit more than 3 people under it. but i haven't noticed too many others throughout the city.

so imagine my surprise the other morning when i got to my bus stop, and the usual crappy old shelter was missing. in its place were some construction cones and a hole in the sidewalk. could it be??? i marveled. but i live in an outer borough!! i was probably the only person standing at the stop that day having a complete glee attack about the removal of our old covering/possibility of a new one.

so my hunch turned out to be correct - as missy and i sat on the bus home from the gym yesterday, we came to a stop further down the main avenue and there sat a shiny new shelter. a veritable work of modern art compared to the rest of the junk that sits on steinway street. missy managed to contain her elation, but i was beyond excited.

hopefully by monday my stop will be finished, and i'll be able to hang out in the new shelter. i might even take pictures for you guys! oh the anticipation..

really people, i'm still just a child myself.

there's been a disturbing new trend lately where i'm being mistaken as a parent. i suppose this is just a by-product of aging, but its still a little disconcerting.

about a month ago, i needed to make a drop off at the dry cleaners one morning. as i was running late, i opted not to put the clothes in a bag, and just clasped the pile to my chest. when i arrived in the cleaners and put the pile down on the counter, the woman started chuckling and saying something. i suppose i looked confused, so she pointed at my chest and said "baby! baby! haha, toys!" i looked down, wondering what the hell she was talking about, and there stuck to my sweater was a giraffe finger puppet**. i did a little embarrassed chuckle and plucked the giraffe off my shirt, shoving him in my pocket, while the woman continued to exclaim about a baby. so instead of trying to correct her - we have a pretty large language barrier between us when just counting the number of shirts i bring in, let alone trying to explain such a story - i just gave her a weary nod, like, yes, can you believe my kid stuck his toy to my shirt? kids. sigh.

so i left the cleaners thinking it was sort of amusing that this woman thinks i have a child, meanwhile the puppet belongs to two adults.

well, apparently she's been speaking to the National American Miss association, since yesterday i received in the mail a packet addressed to the daughter of chrissy. it was stunning to see. missy put it on the top of the mail stack and we both just sort of stared at it in horror. so i opened it, figuring it must be some sort of mistake on the envelope. but no - the letter inside started off with the line "we are so excited to notify you that your daughter has been chosen..."

why on earth would i receive such paraphernalia? don't these junk-mailing organizations take your info from some sort of national database? and in one, shouldn't i be listed as single? i didn't claim any dependants on my taxes. (i technically should, taking care of missy and bear as i do. although neither one of them are really pageant material.) i've never signed on the line above the word mother on a birth certificate. where did this new reputation come from?


**you may ask how a giraffe finger puppet found its way into my clothing pile. well, it was on the kitchen table, and when i put the pile down on the table, he somehow got tangled in it. why do we have finger puppets on our kitchen table? if you must ask such questions, you mustn't know us very well.

P.S.

having gotten so carried away with describing the questions i was asked during 'career day', i didn't reveal the important things that I took away from this experience:

1. an insight into what my mother goes through every day
2. that nice glowing feeling that you get after performing a good deed
3. strep throat

i'll find the irony in all this much more amusing once the pain in my throat subsides.

career day.

i got weaseled into participating in 'career day' at my mother's school today. while honored that my mother thinks that i actually have a career, i was rather nervous (read: had nightmares all wednesday night) about how i'd be able to pull off a speech about publicity that would appeal to a bunch of unruly inner-city 5th graders.

well i worried for absolutely nothing, since i forgot how much cachet being a teacher's child carries. from the moment i was introduced as mrs. x's daughter, i became a minor celebrity. kids shouted out what year she taught them, debated whether or not i resembled her, and begged me to reveal her age.

when i actually did get to speak about my career, i managed to engage at least two of three classes i spoke to (in the first one the kids seemed completely stoned, and oblivious to the fact i was even there. i pity their teacher.), and the kids had a ton of questions for me. some of the best:

• are you married?
• do you ever think about quitting your job?
• on your day off, do you just sit around your house? that's what my mom does on her day off.
• would you ever want to promote video games?
• can you order breakfast and eat it at your desk?
• can you leave your office for lunch?
• if you bring your lunch, how does it get warm? do you have an oven there?
• if there is another girl in the office with the same job as you, are you jealous of her?
• how much money do you make?

and my personal favorites:

are there signs in your office that say no running in the halls, no yelling, and no smoking?

and

is there anyone in your office who is really weird and no one likes them?

as you can tell, they were mostly preoccupied with my workplace eating habits. it was all sort of adorable, but i was quite happy to be able to come back to my peaceful office. maybe being an aunt is really all that i'm cut out for.

wednesday questions

why... does going to the dry cleaners make me feel more productive and fill me with a greater sense of accomplishment than almost anything else?

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when...did i become so health consciously inclined? i just had a phone fight with missy about how we had to go to the gym after work today instead of enjoying this beautiful balmy evening dining outdoors at our new favorite neighborhood joint. this is the first time ever that i've chosen exercise over wine + bbq'ed octopus. and i don't even regret it. scary.

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doesn't it...violate some sort of workplace code to shut off the water - thereby closing the restrooms - in an office for four hours during a workday, with the closest alternative being in another building across the street?

i should really have OSHA on speed dial.

entomology for beginners.

in case you didn't know, its spiderman week here in nyc. a whole week devoted to all things peter parker...the movies were alright, but i don't think any movie really needs an entire week's celebration devoted to it. we only get one day to celebrate our independence as a nation, don't we? one day to honor our births?

nevertheless, i checked out the week's website and there are seriously a billion events going on. i'm pleasantly surprised i've managed to avoid most of the them already, although i'm sort of curious about supercuts' "mary jane madness" deal -- would anyone really want their hair to look like hers?

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in further insect news, since the warm(er) weather has arrived, so has a giant swarm of flies in the lobby of the my office building. a serious swarm. they hang out near the radiator right by the door, and typically a handful of them will buzz around you while waiting for the elevator, and the whole lot of them surround you when you try to exit through the door. it's charming.

why do you work in such a dirty building are they there, you ask? i believe it has something to do with the dead mice that are supposedly in the ceiling, a rumor i didn't really believe until all these flies appeared. although, if the fly brigade is any indication, i'm guessing the deceased rodents are in the radiator, not the ceiling.

i'm really so curious about the people who actually live in this filth factory.

all love, no cyanide.

it is typically hard to maintain a general feeling of goodwill towards others in this town. whether its someone shoving you off the subway, a self-important corporate guy stealing the cab you've been patiently waiting for, or a slightly crazy fellow duane reade shopper holding up your transaction while complaining to the cashier that the quarter they were just given "is too thin to use in their laundromat, can they have a different one?" (really. i don't understand that either.), there is usually something occurring that makes you just kind of despise everyone around you.

but every once in awhile a magical little altruistic moment happens that restores your faith in humanity. i had one of them on saturday.

after a rather fun and eventful friday evening, i took a cab back to my apartment around 10am saturday morning. upon exiting the cab and coming in to my abode, i suddenly felt a pang of dread and wouldn't you know - for the first time ever i had lost my wallet. (well, my pouch, since i don't carry a wallet like most adults and prefer little change purses. i think i picked up this trait from my grandmother.)

i had dropped it in the cab and after a good two minutes of cursing myself and panicking, i started the motions of trying to get it back/canceling my credit cards/minimizing damages. i must say, nothing sobers you up faster than the realization that a majority of your valuable belongings are no longer in your possession. so suddenly hungover - and therefore even sadder - i pouted over my losses and attempted to be proactive.

amazingly, about 40 minutes later my phone rang...and it was a woman named lillian asking if i had lost something in a cab! she gave me her address and by a short time later i had my beloved pouch back, all items inside perfectly intact. i'm really still sort of blown away at how quickly and nicely the whole situation resolved itself, since i'm certain the odds of having one's wallet returned are generally pretty slim.

so thank you, lillian. i hope good karma comes back to you in spades.

sewer rats killed the internet star.

"aging cheddar becomes internet star"

i mean honestly, don't people have anything better to do than watch an online video of cheese ripening? although i guess my taking the time to bitch about the people watching the cheese ripen is almost as pathetic.

but, my favorite line of the article: "Watchers have tuned in from as far afield as Albania and New Zealand, although most are from the United States (ed note: of course) where a school has even sent in pictures of two crocodiles to guard the cheese."

why in the world would a crocodile be an appropriate sentry for a hunk of cheese?

i'm all about balance.

i believe it is a true testament to my piscean nature that the two highlights of my week thus far have been:

1. joining a gym
2. deep fried meatballs

those crazy little flakes.

unlike most people, i don't like milk in my cereal. i'd rather pick at dry cereal - i mean, really, aren't soggy flakes just SO gross to look at? - as though its a snack mix. this makes for a sometimes messy experience, especially when i'm breakfasting at my desk.

today was no exception - although my mess turned out to be quite exceptional.

while tearing through my mini-bowl of special K i dropped a few flakes on the floor, so i bent down and picked them up (seriously, its amazing i get any work at all done in the morning with the amount of time i spend on my hands and knees behind my desk, scouring the floor for bits of cereal). while transporting a final handful into my mouth, i felt one flake drop. so i again inspected the floor, my lap, my chair, but the little guy was no where to be found. after a few minutes of looking, i gave up, assuming i must have imagined the drop.

fast forward to 6pm. i'm leaving my office, and am waiting at the elevator. as i go to zip up the hoodie i have on under my jacket (thanks, abnormally cold april) i feel something in the fabric next to the zipper. i look down at the hem, and notice a little bump next to the zipper. upon touching the bump, i feel it crumble. there's no way....says a little incredulous voice in my head.

but oh yes, there was a way. somehow, that little special K flake managed to find an opening flap of extra fabric inside of my hoodie, fall inside it, and then tuck itself into the hem at the bottom. i was amazed.

and a crazy old flake.

there have been few disturbances in the halls of our building lately, but tonight the truce between "cuckoo" (old woman across the hall) and "junkie" (woman in the apt below us) - both names we've heard them call each other, we wouldn't come up with such nasty monikers for our neighbors - was broken.

while watching the rangers kick ass! whoo! this evening i heard a ruckus starting up in the hall almost as loud as the one going on in the Garden. i dashed to the peephole, and saw cuckoo's door open. i then heard her yelling from the stairwell. junkie was shouting back at her. cuckoo raised her voice (a boon to the girl huddled behind her fireproof door, listening intently) and let loose a stream of threats that ended with "if i ever hear you or see you again..." junkie cut her off, and suddenly junkie was cut off with the spraying sound of an aerosol can.

door slams, cuckoo comes back up to our floor. i think its safe to say the elderly woman across the hall maced a fellow purdy court resident with lysol.

goodness i'm going to miss this place when we move.

future goals.

after a particularly hellish meeting this afternoon, i've decided that if and when i ever run my own company, i'm outlawing tuna fish. i won't mind if my employees wear sweatpants to the office, call their friends every 15 minutes, and refuse participation in our office 'secret santa' - as long as they don't eat tunafish for lunch in our workspace.

especially not in the conference room, where a short time later, a fellow employee might have to sit for a meeting and keep her nose buried in her sleeve for a 1/2 hour lest she pass out from the lingering noxious fumes.

friday afternoon fruit medley.

i had a tupperware disaster this morning while transporting my breakfast to work, so my bag absolutely reeks of pineapples. as do i, since i've been trying to clean the juice off/unstick my belongings for the past few hours and i've gotten juice on my sweater, and possibly in my hair. which isn't necessarily a bad thing - i've come to realize i'm never unhappy when i eat fruit. so sitting here feeling/smelling like a giant pineapple, while messy, has been rather uplifting.

*****

which is greatly needed, considering the past week. its been rough, to say the least, and i'll focus on one of the more insignificant troubling aspects of it, since words couldn't ever do justice to the actually significant part. in loveandcyanide land, overzealous humidifiers and tumbles in trannie heels are the worst things to happen to us.

so my ipod is broken. upon receiving a heap of new music two weeks ago, thing 1 (missy and i have matching ipods engraved with "thing 1" and "thing 2", named after the mischievous cat in the hat characters. the book's characters, not the movie's. the movie does not exist to us. if dr. seuss had intended for his characters to look nightmarishly frightful he would've drawn them that way, not face-painted jim carrey and mike myers to look like weird animal-esque clowns.) decided he had had enough, and shut down in the midst of a song and has yet to turn back on. i haven't yet had a chance to get him looked at due to more pressing matters, so my commutes have been tuneless.

which is basically torture. without my headphone buffer, i've been subject to all sorts of nonsense from the outside world that my books and magazines just cannot as effectively tune out. however, on the train yesterday evening i was privy to a performance that i would've completely missed had thing 1 been working.

i've seen/heard this subway car singer before - he is quite memorable as his voice is so unique, yet somehow familiar, although i can't put my finger on who exactly he sounds like. the closest thing i can come up with is a more feminine-sounding gargamel. with a voice like that you would think one would stick to, say, ad jingles, but no, his favorite song is "amazing grace".

so he appeared in my train car yesterday, and started singing his signature tune. after a few choruses, while i was bracing myself for another yodel of "saved a wretch like me", he suddenly launched into everyone's favorite sleazy disco hit, "do ya think i'm sexy?" i chuckled aloud at such a priceless mix, and for that i am grateful my pod is currently out of order.

although not so grateful that i won't be hitting up the apple store this weekend.

when banks compete, you win.

i stole that line from some commercial, but i truly experienced it today. i don't know if chase has been losing a lot of customers lately or what, but my trip to the bank just before was the most hardcore helpful customer-service experience i've ever had. i daresay if i had asked mark, the bank manager, who personally delivered my money to me (doesn't the branch manager have more important duties to attend to?), to shine my shoes, he so would have.

and keeping on the subject of ads, i've decided that the usage of the muppet's "manamanah" song in the new saturn commercials totally distresses me.

a beary good time.

not like we don't usually speak of all things ursine here at loveandcyanide, but this week our lives were even more bear-filled than usual. as if that was even possible!

to cap off our bearalicious week, last night we had the pleasure of watching the most entertaining documentary we've seen in awhile - Project Grizzly. the story of a man on a mission to build an indestructible suit of armor that would enable him to get closer to these sometime deadly bears, this film has it all - humor, pathos, insane bearsuit-testing that involved much pummeling, and of course gratuitous grizzly shots.

we give this one two thumbs - and a (stuffed) paw - wayyy up.

smells like a comeback.

first off, i'll apologize for being a slacker...its been a rough two weeks and as you can see that there is a new (old) post below that was written awhile back, that means i wasn't even able to hit the publish button let alone write anything new. considering loveandcyanide has dwindled from a trio to a solo project, its gotten a little tougher to keep up the good work. but i'm persevering. if anyone ever wanted to know the difference between missy, chrissy and bear, its that two of the three not only abandoned this little project but don't even read the site anymore, whereas the last third is holding up the fort all by herself. yes, in these ritalin-addled times, one of us still foolishly believes in loyalty.

anyhow, we're back in business. in the past few weeks a lot of good stuff has happened, a few bad things have happened, and of course a few crazy things have happened. there was a nutty religious zealot cab driver, a 5-day bacon binge (um, hello heaven), a possible OD on Sparks malt beverages, an exotic familial discovery, a mysterious raise, a viewing of the dumbest television program ever made, and a rash of new nicknames for missy and i inspired by the bachelor (if you shouted "star spangled ass muffin" into our apartment, i guarantee one of us would answer you).

but instead of talking about those things, i'm making my comeback with a tale of a rather mundane experience i had leaving my office today. you know when you catch the whiff of something and you automatically can place the scent? well, when stepping into the elevator i caught the unmistakable whiff of plumeria.

remember the body shop's plumeria? that brilliant fuchsia colored potion that at least 3/4 of your friends were sporting in high school? (it was my personal fave). well, there it was in my elevator. i actually had no idea they even still made it, but the second it hit my nose, i knew what it was. and i couldn't help but smile, since it reminded me of the most humorous perfume-related experience i've ever had:

freshman year of college, one of my close guy friends was hanging out in my room, and discovered the spray bottle of plumeria that either my roommate or i had on our shelf. after sniffing it, he went on a tirade about an ex who wore the scent and how he couldn't stand it. so enraged by the memory of this girl, he commented that i could never, ever wear it again. apparently not satisfied by my nod of appeasement, he then wound up and tossed the bottle out the window and onto the lawn behind our dorm.

i never wore plumeria again. but to this day i'll still chuckle when i smell it.