where i've been

wow- the past few weeks have been anything but the usual. let's see if i can attempt a re-cap with any semblance of order:

so my brief stint as america's next top intern at harvard's international office was the prefect segue to a shiny new job. luckily, while i was at hio i made a few invaluable connections and exactly as dionne warwick predicted (for the bahgain price of $3.99/minute) the planets aligned and out popped a bona fide solid career opportunity that seems to have been custom-designed pour moi. i have to say the interview process was rather full-on. i had to take 3 sick days from my soon-to-be-no-longer-job in travelparadise and met with 11 different people, all individually(!) but it was well worth the effort- starting june 9th i'll be the manager of immersion programs at harvard business school, working on existing short term study abroad programs as well as helping to research and develop new programs. i could not be more excited. i'm thrilled to have landed a job 'in the field' and so closely tied to both what i went to school for and what i'm interested in. it's also quite the novelty to work somewhere with actual stability and a professional, supportive environment. i suppose somewhere way down inside i will miss my current nuts-o VP that sees no issue with dropping the f-bomb during our usual weekly meeting.

so that's the big news on the jobfront. j.mo and i headed out today to the wrentham outlets to get me a whole new wardrobe- i've had the luxury of sneakers, jeans, and polo shirts for the last 8+ years of work. it's all shirt & tie and hookah shoes from here on out. that $600 gov-mint stimulus couldn't have come at a better time. i wonder if i can write it off as a charitable donation to the banana republic?

may 18th it was all about this:


and this:


it's kind of a curious feeling to no longer be a student. no more trekking off to class, hours of forced reading, no papers, no friggin groupwork. yeah- i don't think i'll be running back to school anytime soon!

the butter queen was kind enough to think of j.mo and i when she scored some excellent red sox tickets. we had a fabulous time a few nights ago at fenway-









after this lovely long weekend i'm off to washington dc for an international education conference- since i scored the HBS job, i don't have to worry about job hunting anymore, so i can just kick back and enjoy dc ;) when i get back to boston i've got one week left at work and then it's up, up, and away. may 2008 has been an incredible month. grad school was a wonderful experience and seems to have already paid off- but i must admit i'm thrilled at the idea of being able to spend more time at home and with friends and family now that it's back to a normal schedule.

so that's where i've been. hope you're all enjoying the long weekend.

-g

a ton of bricks (literally)

ok, i'm mostly going to ignore the fact that it has been over a month since my last post. in 50 words or less, here's where i've been: internship ended, graduation next week, 3rd round of interviews for what could possibly be the perfect job (more on all that later), exercising and running resumed. basically, it's been a thrill and a half to have a normal schedule again and i've been rediscovering all the things i used to enjoy. with this post i hope to be back on the blogginwagon.

there's nothing j.mo and i like more than a project- something around the house, maybe pet-related, an outdoor do-it-choself adventure. living in a relatively small space and lacking a bottomless budget, there aren't all that many projects left for us to do. but we did say last year that we wanted to do something with the front of the house. and for various reasons never got around to it. well last week we got together with the neighbors and decided it was time to get to work on adding a little gayspray to what was a rather sorry bit of front yard.

cue the visuals...

here's what we have been living with: litter-strewn clumps of grass peppered with 'dog treats'(of the non-Franklin variety, of course)- the whole lot inevitably turning brown and dying a crunchy death during the summer months.



not so sexy, huh?


bust out the gloves- you know you live in the hood when there's at least a pound of automotive glass shards in the front yard from the last time a car was broken into.


attack the 'lawn' and tear up all of the grass-







and here come the bricks- literally a ton of them. they're 22lbs each and we carted well over 100 of them home with multiple trips to our local home depot. bricks, oh my bricks. each lifted off of the shelf, loaded on to the trolley, loaded into the car, taken out of the car, stacked into position. and i wonder why i feel like i was hit by a truck this morning.



so 5 trips to home depot, all those bricks, 15 bags of mulch, and a whole bunch of plants and a lot of moaning and groaning later-





before:


after:


well worth the train wreck aching body this morning. hope everyone is having a good weekend- happy mother's day to the mums...

all cho'ed up...

recipe for a perfect evening

first start with a lovely early spring day...

the add
1 hot hubby
2 gorgeous friends
a generous round of nibbles
mix in
1 bottle moet
4 martinis
1 lg pesto, tomato, artichoke, asiago pizza
1 vegan chocolate cake

and then wander off across the common for some quality time with miss cho.


a guaranteed no-fail good time :)

it's a big fat gay easter

i'm not quite sure why it has taken me 30 years to notice just how gay the whole easter thing is...

first the opening ceremony- a mandatory glitterspray from chocopridebunny:


precious pastel-dyed eggs:


shiny foil wrapped eggs:


an edible egg orgy:


minilesbians, hunting and gathering:


baskets full of supergreen plastic easter grass:


armies of tiny cross-eyed peeps, straight from the i-just-swallowed-a-glowstick-rave:


creepy bunnies:


creepier republican bunnies:


big-haired lady rabbits:


a never before seen pic from the bunnyfarm, where unemployed bunnies pass the long months of the uneaster season:


and perhaps the biggest sign of easter's bleechblondstonewallroots- the sacred ceremonial easter ham, all glazed up in a chemical pink glory and topped with rings of fruitynutritious pineapple, plucked from the very hat of carmen miranda:


have yourselves a merry little gay easter ;)

and now a public service announcement...

10 years ago if someone had told me that by the time i was 30 i would be having chunks of myself cut away because of too much time in the sun i would have laughed and said 'yeah right.' that only happens to the tanning bed peeps and the florida nanas with leather handbag complexions. when i lived in australia i was *always* in the sun- yardwork, reading, lunch, napping, jogging- toujours au soleil, rarely with spf on... ah the myth of a 'healthy tan.' if you're white, you're not supposed to turn brown- it's just not in our dna.

sadly, i'm starting to feel like a 30 year old block of swiss cheese. on friday i had two more suspicious spots (and their surrounds) removed, leaving me with 17 stitches and a whole lot of uncomfortable.

i've certainly gotten better about being out in the sun- given my own situation and what my mum went through two summers ago with merkel cell carcinoma, i got it, loud and clear- the sun is nothing to mess around with. now a hat goes on if i'm going to be out in the sun for a while, as well as a slathering of SPF and an incessant badgering of anyone around me to make sure they are also adequately protected.

luckily, of the 6 biopsies and 3 excisions i've had, so far everything has been either completely benign or caught so early it didn't have time to develop into anything more serious. and for anyone who is still not convinced they need to cover up/hose down in SPF pre-sun, a pic from friday:



if that's still not enough for you, these few pics should definitely do it. honestly, though, don't click here unless you're ok with pretty gross stuff. i hesitated to put these pics online (hence a link instead of just posting them) because they even gross me out. but j.mo made a good point- it would be silly to go through this and not share the experience with everyone around me just in case anyone needs convincing of what can happen from too much time in the sun.

hamptonio tortuga

a certain favorite seasonal resident decided it was time to un-hiberbate himself and dug his way out of his wintersleepsession and was eagerly awaiting an airlift out of j.mo's mum's basement yesterday when we checked on him:



welcome home, hampton. oh how i missed the sound of salad munching in the corner :)

mmmhmmm

a few signs it's time for a new job:

yes folks, these things actually do hang from the ceiling above my head, hand-tied and painstakingly hung by our favorite central american facilities specialist, no doubt...

one example


i might be able to focus if it weren't for the dustbunnycoatedsuspendedoverheaddistraction every 4 feet


and one of my favorite


followed in shortstep with

'drink your koolaid'

and

'tom cruise is my baby daddy'

'tis the season

if memory serves, it was around this time one year ago that i sat down to blog about my post-hollywood-related-stress -disorder which inevitably bubbles to the surface when the oscarmoths circle round the self-important westbeverlybarebulb hanging from c.theron's left tata.

i'm a pretty simple guy, more or less predictable when it comes to all things consumable: beer, lighter than dark... wine- australian. music, independent... and movies, subtitled. i really don't do hollywood for the most part- mutli-million $ films that induce acid reflux in the first 15mins. more often than not, i'm gonna pass.

and then come the oscars, when hollywood eats a giant hollywood sandwich smothered in hollywood with a side of hollywood. all set to the tune of this redcarpetedcrotchetycrustmuffin:


it's the one time of year when the department of homeland security swoops in to raise the crispy-corpses-of-terror-o-meter from it's usual moderatedawnofthe deadmolestationprobable to elevatedburntsiennafleshtone/should have taken her out of the oven days ago-

you can imagine my deep dismay when joan rivers' oven stuffah roaster timer finally popped this year, and she's nowhere to be found on network tv.


insert sigh of relief (here). now if i could just get gwen stefani's turkeytimer to pop too- then we'd be livin lahge with both of my arch nemeses sent off to the giant perdue sanctuary in the sky...

snowstorm parking, dorchester style...

pretty typical after a storm:



definitely worthy of a special mention for best snow-related parking improv with a random household object:

big game corpricana

i really wasn't kidding in my last post when i mentioned there was a stuffed and mounted water buffalo bust in our conference room at work:



and a matching gazelle at the other end:



my buddhist/vegetarian/generally peace-lovin' self shudders a little once-upon-a-grassland-sigh every time i set foot into the room. i usually console myself with the faux rationalization that the the water buffalo is a rare tofudebeast and the gazelle a rather furry soybean by product... and if i look closely, turn my head to the side and squint with one eye i can see the little vermin-munching birds hopping about on their motionless heads. hours of entertainment in the usual mind-numbingly lifeless meetings. the idea of the owner hunting these poor things down and then shooting them and dragging their poor deflated shells back to boston doesn't do much for office morale, either. but the meerkats in HR haven't emerged from their burrow long enough for me to me mention that to them- it's hard enough to get my t pass from them every month. i fully expect to see the next mutually-decided-upon-was-been associate to appear stuffed and mounted as well. but that's something for the suggestion box in the kitchen, subject of my next 'yes i really work in a place like this' blog post.

if i had a tail, i'd be spinning in circles chasing it. (alternate title: i'll be camped out at the mailbox if anyone needs me)

in high school i ran into kristin hersh's music a la throwing muses and have been a fan ever since. without going gush-y, muses were fab. kristin's career as a solo artist has been unreal and her new band 50footwave gives whole new meaning to rocking out while de-dog hairing the entire house. she's *always* working on something new, music, touring, writing, photos...

last time froggie and i saw her in person we walked all the way home from cambridge to dorchester after the show because, well, it was just that kind of we-need-to-walk-home-type-bliss.

her blog and cashmusic.org bring it all front and center. if you send her an email, she writes back. it's kinda like i half expect to bump into her at the office copy machine tomorrow morning. (although i'd feel woefully unwell if she had to sit under the giant stuffed water buffalo in the 1st floor conference room- no one should ever have to sit there)

well, it all got upped a sabado gigante sized notch when this was posted. for a small bit of $ you get to pick any 10 kh or muses songs and she will record shiny new live versions just for you (along with a hello), sign the cd and mail it off. i'm sure it will be quite the scene when i'm wrapped around the mailman's leg on delivery day.

i don't sell anything- i'm pretty crap at sales in general and know it's best to steer clear. but if you don't know about kristin or what's she's up to, have a look/listen. the soundtrack to my days would be a sad brick of long expired astronaut ice cream without kristin in the mix. thanks k-

we need more lemon pledge

wintergarden

puppylove...

fancy a cup of tea?

yesterday i was at super88 poking around the piles of small pig-shaped new year's cakes, conveniently prepared and ready to eat chicken feet snack-packs, and every edible green you can imagine when i stumbled into aisle 9's tea-topia. the tea section is the only part of super88 that can rival the typical supermarket's requisite sugary breakfast cereal aisle in both overwhelming paralytical variety and mind-erasing packaging complexity. we're almost out of ginger tea, so i was wading around my own private jasmine-scented ginko-infused teaparty trying to decide which of the 1.2million varieties was gonna work when i found this:



potent man tea. watchoself- i've had my potent man tea this morning... i wonder- tea to increase male potency? or tea made from virile he-essence? i got so distracted by the packaging and then fumbling around to take a quick photo i completely forgot why i was there and it wasn't until i was loading the car with groceries that i realized i'd forgotten to buy tea.

happy superbowling...

30 for 30 days

so i've decided to opt for the no-risk free trial and attempt this whole 'being 30' thing for the next month. i know, i know- can you really trust the crap they're peddling on a 3am infomerical? if it doesn't work out, i was promised i can just send everything back (except the free knives- wickid keepahs), get my money back and return to being a happy twenty-something year old. i'll be sure to let everyone know how this works out so stay tuned.


my bday weekend could not have been more fun... the butter queen volunteered her family's place on the cape and eight of us (plus frankahs) trekked down yesterday for an overnight round of eating (a killer risotto and huge brunch), drinking (i think more than 8 bottles of wine and a case of beer disappeared), fireplace loungetime, and wandering around the frozen beaches of wellfleet. such a good time (and surprisingly, today's hangover was pretty mild)- the cape in the winter really is beautiful. the only drama happened yesterday, when for about 20mins franklin managed to go m.i.a. we had him on the beach and decided he was smart enough to go off the leash and not wander into traffic/drown. except he did happen to just trot off into the dunes and disappear. thank god/buddha/oprah we had the scottish dog whisperer with us and kenny managed to wrangle him back into the corral- he found him near a playground, sniffing in circles and completely unaware anything was wrong/anyone was mental over their nearly-failed attempt at being parents.

so yeah- other than the now-you-see-him-now-you-don't-franklin-at-large-fiasco and outrunning a snowstorm today to get home in one piece, we all had the best time. my stomach still hurts from all the laughing and the ungodlygastronomicstretchsession it just endured. thanks so much guys- a brilliant 30th!




and for all the rest of the pics

ps- mad props to j.mo for the tix to see the red sox v. the yankees!!!