I've been MIA since I started this up; sometimes being a receptionist means I get swamped. Whodathunk?

Anyway, anytime I ever feel down on myself for graduating from a public ivy and being a mere receptionist, I'll just look at this article and smile, because apparently my school isn't that smart.

http://www.cavalierdaily.com/news/2009/aug/27/animal-attacks-students-near-lambeth-rugby-area/

Really? A roped-off area is going to keep a small animal at bay? My favorite part of this article is, "The animal, as of press time, is still at large." If they catch this fox in a shorter period of time than they caught the serial rapist, who worked at the grocery store that all us students shopped at, then UVA will have outdone itself. Or shamed itself; take your pick.

Things That Have Been Ruined For Me Recently

1. The song "Like A Virgin"
Yesterday, one of the ladies at work was trying to jam one more file into a UPS box. I innocently asked, "Can you get it in?" She began singing the famous Madonna song, then declared "It's been a while since I was a virgin!"
It's interesting how once adults start viewing YOU as an adult, they are so willing to share things with you that they wouldn't have dreamed of saying when you were an adult - but in college. Welcome to the real world, baby.

2. Marriage
I used to tell (most of) my guy friends that we'd probably get married one day. Either because we got along so well or because I needed a safety net - it didn't matter, I was marrying one or all of them. However, recently a close friend of mine got engaged to an old friend of mine, and now I feel like I can't treat marriage as a joke anymore. Apparently it's legit to be 22 and about to be married. Makes sense; we're trying to act like real adults now, why not try our hands at a real institution? But so this makes marriage very real and present to me now, and I can't just tell F "yeah, we'll get married someday, it's cool." Further complicating my stand-by joke is my male friends' significant others. It's hard to joke with a fellow adult that we'll get married when a girlfriend is standing right there and we're all in our 20s and marriage really is right around the corner.

3. My birthday
June 25th will forever be remembered as Michael Jackson's Deathday. It's not fair. June 25th was my birthday long before Jacko decided to kick the bucket.

That's all for today.

Is it stealing if it's already stolen?

I decided to commemorate my "first" night out in my soon-to-be-new-neighborhood by starting a blog. Normally I'm pretty opposed to the idea of blogging, especially blogging as a 20something post-college grad dipping her toes into the waters of the real world - buuuut then I remembered: all I do all day, every day, is read blogs. So this is kind of like the flip side of give-and-ye-shall-receive.

Last night, my best friend and I went to Curbside. I don't know much about it, other than that it's a bar in this lovely little town I call Richmond. We don't go to bars often. We're plenty over-age, but since we still live with our parents, the whole going out thing hasn't materialized. There are plenty of stories that accompany that little factoid, but I'm saving them for posts later. Anyway, we arrived at Curbside around 10 p.m. Pretty early for the going-out-folks, but we had just lost - again - at trivia and A was pretty tipsy, and why shouldn't we go out?

Remember when I said we still live with our parents? This also means we live in the suburbs, and this also means that we frequently need GPS to get around these hip parts of town that we don't frequent very often. Nothing is more hilarious than that crazy British-voiced lady on the GPS squawking that we should be merging onto the highway when the absolute last thing I am going to do right now is merge onto a highway with a toll. I hate tolls. So I skipped that instruction, and British lady pauses, then says in her cold, cold voice dripping with condescension: "Recalculating route." As if I caused her so much inconvenience. Sorry, lady, you were about to cost me 70 cents that I do not have.

So we're at curbside. We've met up with a couple guys we know, and drinks are ordered, and it seems like we're settling into a nice little gabfest to dull the bitterness of defeat at trivia. Then, A spots it. A street sign. HER street sign. Her street has the indignity of being named "Gaylord," which never fails to crack up fifth grade boys. And apparently patrons of this bar. However, A was offended. How dare they?! How dare they take HER street sign and put it above the bathroom as if it were nothing more than THEIR little joke??

At this point she approaches the bartender and explains to him that they have stolen her street sign. Okay, maybe the sign has long since been replaced, but it's the principle of the thing. This sign should not be in a bar! He laughs at her increasingly frantic arguments that she should have the sign, that "look! look at my drivers' license! I LIVE on this street! It's mine!" He explains that a patron brought it in as a gift.

This is the exact wrong thing to tell this girl. Because, well, shit, they stole it in the first place - how much trouble could she possibly get into for stealing it back? She tries to get the waitress to sympathize with her cause, to rally to her aid, but A earns nothing more than the designation of "the most hilarious thing I've ever heard!" from the waitress. In return, the waitress receives a cold, cold glare from A when she comes to check on us later on.

Unfortunately, A wasn't steady enough to steal it herself, and I didn't really want to flirt with a tall man and convince him to help us. The night wouldn't get much better, as one of the guys we were with stuck A with his tab when he decided to just leave the bar.

So anyway, welcome to my blog. Guard your street signs with your lives.