birfday witches

Yes, yes, it's that time again! My birthday is right around the corner. Yes, yes, I know. I'm bad at birthdays. Always have been. I get all caught up in the expectation to have the best time ever, and I go cray cray trying to control shit and then I'm inevitably let down. Last year was the crown jewel in a long line of bad, bad birthdays because I had just moved to California and did not know anyone besides my Dad and his girlfriend and my Uncle. So, I pretty much went to bed at ten o'clock on my birthday and may or may not have cried myself to sleep.
But this year will be different, I just know it! I have the most fabulous friends in the world to keep me calm and grounded and I'm gonna do my absolute best to just chill out and let it happen.
Now, I am not at all expecting presents. In fact, I could care less about them. If no one buys them, I will still be happy as long as I have a good time surrounded by people that I love.
-But.....
people have been asking me what I want, so to make it easier, and just for the sake of fantasy, here's what I'd like if you're buying.

-Tickets to Treasure Island (Saturday only! I repeat, only Saturday!)
I wanna see LCD Soundsystem! So fucking bad it hurts. Seriously though, I don't go alone, so I'm not actually asking you to buy me a ticket. I can afford my own. But, if this sounds like something you might wanna do, please buy yourself a tickets, that way we can go together and hold hands and dance in the sun!

-Moneys
I know that is a seriously weak request. Especially considering that I am not broke. I do however, have to afford a plane ticket home on Christmas Eve. In case you didn't know, flying on Christmas Eve is insanely expensive. If I had a choice, I would not do it. But my work schedule demands that I be there right up until the last second, and I cannot, absolutely cannot spend Christmas away from my family. Sooooo, any monetary gifts that I receive for my birthday this year will be funding that trip. I promise.

-A bike (pink, please!)
When I first moved here, I swore I would never ride a bike. It seemed like the trendy thing that everyone was doing, and therefore, I felt I should avoid it like the plague. But since then, I can't even tell you how many times I've wished I had a goddamn bike. Like when all my friends don't have to worry about parking/driving drunk but I do. Or the other day when my roommate and I were trying to decide whether to walk or drive to the farmer's market and the obvious solution was to just bike there, but since I don't have a fucking bike, we walked. In the rain. You should have seen my fucking hair after that.
And no, I don't actually know how to ride a bike, but many people have generously offered to spend their time teaching me, and I think it would be shame not to take advantage of their generosity.

-Bubbles
If you want me to love you forever I'll take bottles of Egly Ouriet, Pommery, Vilmart & Cie and Nicolas Feiullatte, please and thank you. Although, you could also just buy some cheap ass drugstore shit and I'd be equally pleased, as long it sparkles.

-Cupcakes
Do I really even have to explain this?

-Your beautiful faces
What I want most for my birthday is to see as many of my friends and family as possible. I understand that some of you live far and that makes it pretty much impossible, but those of you that can show up, please do. Having your friends three-thousand miles away on your birthday really puts this kind of shit into perspective. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would make me happier than to turn 26 surrounded by as many of you as possible.

Okay, now let's go celebrate!

love always

holiday

I finally had an actual vacation! Like, as in, I got on a plane and went somewhere new and different for fun. Not for work, not for some tedious family obligation, and certainly not anywhere near CT (even though I don't live there anymore, something about it is like, the anti-vacation). I went to San Diego to visit Scarlet and Geoff in their cute new house and celebrate the 4th of July by drinking copious amounts of alcohol and eating way too much food.
The best thing about Scarlet and Geoff's new house is their shower, for sure. I noticed their amazing shower curtain first, with it's impeccable detailing and flawless craftsmanship. Would you believe they sourced it all the way from Target?! Astounding! After cooing over it for like an hour when I first arrived, I was awed to find, the next morning, that behind this masterpiece lies the most fabulous mint-green tile I have ever seen! Of course I promptly forced Scarlet to take slutty photos of me standing in front of it.Unfortunately, the colors didn't come out the way I had hoped, but I promise you, it was the mintiest mint I've ever seen!
Also, check out my outfit! I got the cover-up at H+M and I've been dying to wear it ever since. I was so pumped for this trip, because unlike the Bay, San Diego actually gets beach weather. I wanted to wear my cover-up and get a tan and drink pina coladas! Alas, it was totally grey the entire time I was there, and I only actually wore this outfit for the above photo. Goddamn June gloom!
We still totally had a blast, though. On the first night, we went to this dive bar where they had this old chick handing out these awesome patriotic accessories.

We found some randoms and bought them home with us.
When the sun came up in the morning, Scarlet and I were still awake watching creepy videos like this one.
We slept for approximately five minutes. Geoff made waffles in the morning and Scarlet and I lit things on fire to make bananas foster. Then Scarlet and Geoff had a party.
Lots of people came and we ate lots of food and drank lots of beer and vodka. We went to see the fireworks at the ocean.We sat on top of this cliff and watched the fireworks explode over the water. It was dark out and the waves were crashing over all these dark, jagged looking rocks. It was one of those moments where it's so pretty you wish you could share it with everyone, so you sit there clicking the shutter on your camera, attempting to record it somehow, but eventually you just give up because you know it'll never look as beautiful as it did in person.
After the fireworks, we walked back to the house. There was another fireworks display going off in the distance. We couldn't see the actual fireworks, but it lit up the sky and made it look like magic. We stayed up drinking, yet again, until the wee hours of the morning, and by the time I got on the plane on Monday morning I was in this bizarre, slightly blissful half hungover state that lasted a good twenty four hours. I guess that's how you know you've had a vacation, right?
love always

pride

So, I went to the gay pride parade in San Francisco and it was pretty fucking fantastic.
I've been to gay pride parades on the East Coast, and while I was never entirely unimpressed by the spectacle of it all, I always felt like a bystander. A mere observer. Someone who is not allowed to truly take part in all the glittering festivities because I, myself, do not identify as gay. I have often found myself wishing there was a holiday in which heterosexuals were allowed to parade through the streets wearing nothing but a sparkly g-string. (and trust me, I get it. In our culture everyday is a celebration of heterosexuality. I just wanna wear the damn g-string!)
Prior to this event, all my friends assured me that it would in fact, be entirely acceptable for me to walk around in a sparkly g-string. I was planning to go all crazy with my outfit, constructing some elaborate costume-thing. But then I went to this party on Friday night and ended up spending Saturday throwing up and eating chocolate sorbet and burnt caramel ice cream from ici in an attempt to cure my hangover and I woke up on Sunday with nothing planned, or even laundered for that matter. So, I threw on some jeans and a fancy halter, hopped on BART (which was swarming with folks in rainbow tutus) and set off to meet my friends at Oona's office, which is three stories up and has floor to ceiling windows. Straight VIP status, I tell you!
From the second I got off the train, I could tell this was a different scene than I was used to. I swear to god, it felt like everyone in the entire city had shown up to watch this thing. I don't know how to say this without being totally cheesy, but I found it tender, heartwarming, touching that an entire city would show up to honor gay pride. Not to hate on my hometown, but where I'm from, there are people who wouldn't go to a gay pride parade if you paid them. Pathetic, I know. To most folks from the Bay Area, I imagine that it's no surprise to see their community united this way. It's a well known fact that San Francisco is a notoriously accepting city, not only of gays, but of people from all different walks of life. Still, to me it was really special to know that a place exists where being gay (or a sex-worker, or a radical, pagan feminist, etc.) is not only allowed, it's simply not a big deal. I got hollered at by mad straight dudes who showed up for gay pride and no matter how annoying it may have been (I had one dude scream down the street at me “Girrrl, you got a fattyyy!!”) that's actually kind of cool when you think about it.
Plus, the parade was breathtaking:So, yeah, I was getting all emotional, not to mention tipsy and feeling so damn warm and fuzzy that I failed to notice I was missing THE BACKSTREET BOYS!!!!!! They played a set after the parade and I was too busy holding hands with my girlfriends and crying happy tears into my gin and tonic to realize what the fuck was going on. The shame! The horror!

After I finally recovered from that massive heartbreak (2 seconds later), we decided to walk down to the castro, where, sure as shit, everyone was still out and about celebratin'. Oh, except for this chick:We started talking to her because Oona wanted to adopt her cat, but unlike most of the people you encounter posted up on city sidewalks, this woman was actually making sense. She told us this story, how she came from a small town in Ohio and couldn't wait to get out, how she was young and wild and having the time of her life in good old SF, and then, how she found she had HIV and her life fell apart. The saddest thing about her story was the earnestness with which she described attempting to get government assistance and then realizing that all the money that is supposed to be helping people like her is actually being embezzled by fat cat politicians who are using it as a means to their own end. I can't guarantee that she isn't full of shit or batshit crazy, but it was a good reminder that if you're donating to charity and you don't fully research or understand the causes you're donating to, you may as well be throwing your money in the trash for all the good it's doing.This chick is like, 60 years old and has been living with AIDS for years now. Can you imagine how beautiful she must've been when she was younger? And the whole bit about being from a small town and moving to San Francisco and loving it? That could've been me! Seriously people, if you're shelling out money to some random charity just so you can feel like you're doing something good, please stop. Find a legit program that's actually out there helping real people.

After all that heavy shit (plus a failed attempt at using a public bathroom) we were in desperate need of a drink. We found this place that basically looked like a swanky hall of mirrors and settled in with some dark and stormys

I took random photos in the bathroom.

Then we took off to another bar, where we engaged in more debauchery.This is where things start to get a bit blurry. Drunk drama, an insufferably long wait for the BART, I may have even eaten mcdonald's (ugh). Still, it was all so fucking worth it. I might not be gay, but when it comes to being part of a community that knows how to unite and truly go wild in celebration of our differences, I'm totally fucking proud.

love always

half of me is the gasoline, but the other half's the surf

When Vampire Weekend first came out, I thought they sounded like a bunch of pussywhipped bitches. I'm not even sure which song of theirs I listened to that gave me that impression, but for some reason, it stuck with me. That is of course, until I moved to California and I kept hearing this cute little song on the radio about drinking horchata. When I found out it was by Vampire Weekend I kind of felt like a huge d-bag for liking it so much, but I got over that pretty quickly, especially when they came out with a video starring not only my boyfriend Joe Jonas, but also my husband, Rza.

A few weeks ago they played a show here in Oakland at the Fox . Even though I've totally come to terms with just how much I like them, I was not expecting them to sound as mindblowingly good as they did. I read an interview with them once where they said their album Contra is about California, and holy fuck, they got it so, so right. The set they played sounded like everything beautiful about living here.




When they left the stage, they had the audience straight-up begging for an encore. Like, I felt like if they didn't come out and play another song, I might lose my shit temper-tantrum style.




Afterwards, we were super hyped, with no desire to go home at all, so we hit up the afterparty, for major debauchery, including a sick DJ set from the band (no lie, they played Don't You Want Me by Human Leauge - my favorite 80s jam ever!), and thus commenced the absolute drunkest Monday evening I think I've ever had.






By the end of the night, after dancing our asses off like rockstars, we were in total groupie mode, shamelessly begging the boys in the band to let us accompany them back to their hotel (I am all about the hot gay one), but alas, they drove off in their Honda Element, leaving us stone cold!




A few days later, I received word that some pictures of my friends and I had popped up on a local website.





Of course I am looking all bedraggled and busted like I'm about to fall flat on my face (fucking paparazzi!), but really, we're just having waaay too much fun!

sigh. such is the price to pay for a life of excitement and glamour.

love always
p.s. Thanks to the lovely and talented Ash for taking so many beautiful pictures!

my heart will always live here

this past week has been exactly everything i could've asked for when leaving the place i grew up. it was like all the things i love about being here happened in rapid succession, like the finale at the fireworks display. i will try my best to show you:
rose-petal-lychee-tini and cucumber martini at koji

tavern classic and truffle fries at plan b

mmm, cherries....

chicken tacos

vietnamese iced coffee

the durham fair, a ct classic

trade shows every two seconds

and of course every hug, every sad goodbye, every last second i got to spend with all the folks i love. see you all at xmas!

love always

if you never read this, i still mean it

have you ever found yourself wishing you could have a do-over? a second try at something that just didn't go your way?
last week i received an e-mail saying thank you for sharing your obvious passion for wine with us, after an interview in which i was caught terribly off-guard, and i couldn't help but wonder if it was perhaps, a bit sarcastic. in that moment, i found myself, for the first time as a result of fear, confusion and doubt, unable to articulate exactly how meaningful my chosen profession is to me.
over the years i have had many a revelatory experience in this field.
like on my first day at my first real wine job when i tasted the kim crawford sauvignon blanc and someone said grapefruit and i could actually taste that.
or how i thought that napa cab was a huge, overrated joke until i tasted the rich, heady terra valentine
or this moment when i tasted the cuvee louise from pommery and started to like my job again.
or the time when a friend and i ordered an entire bottle of anselmi i capitelli by the glass because it was just that freaking good.

the truth is, i am beyond passionate about wine, as anyone who has seen me run around a tasting shrieking "ohmigod, you have to try this!!!" can attest to. i'm emotionally attached in a way that borders on un-professional. and yes, there are days when i just wanna order a diet coke, but that's because i spend a good deal of time over-consuming, over-analyzing and over-working myself for the sake of what i do for a living.
if i was unable to convey this to a few select people, i would just like to state for the record: i love my job, i know my shit and if there's one thing i'm certainly not lacking, it's passion.

love always

holy hangover!!!!!!

last night was steff's birthday party! And......
i can't tell you much more about it because within like, the first hour i got stupid drunk off of a combination of red wine, spiked punch, beer and sweet tea vodka. yum!
i did however, discover that apparently people actually check this thing! so i'd like to take a moment and appreciate my loyal readers

the amazing thing about this picture is that vinnie was looking away when i took it, but somehow managed to look back and vogue for me as soon as he saw the flash.

and of course, the lovely amy who also gets her nails did at palm nails.

thanks for reading guys!


love always

numero uno

I'm writing this from my beautiful suite at the golden sands resort in dorado, puerto rico, although, you won't be reading it for at least another week. We have no wi-fi here. Still, it felt important to me to document this in real time. I've spent a vast majority of my time on earth so far in the same small town, so any change from that is still a bit of a novelty to me.

I must say, it's a huge relief to be warm and secure under clean white hotel sheets, with disney channel playing in the background. It's been a long, hard journey getting here. Although, I did a lot better than the last time I flew. I actually only felt nauseous for about ten minutes on our first flight. The hard part this time was not in the flying itself, but rather in the departing of middletown for the airport.

I had to work last night, so while fluff enjoyed a relaxing farewell dinner, I was staring at the clock, counting down the minutes until I was officially allowed to slip into vacation mode. Naturally, the second that I got out, I called him in a frenzy like, dude, i'm ready to go!!!! and he's all nah son, I gotta finish dinner and get a haircut. At ten o'clock at night he had to get a haircut! (granted, his brother was the one cutting his hair, but still) For some reason, this irked me beyond belief. When I finally got to his house, I was already all cranky, and then to add insult to injury, fluff's brother in the next room, decided that the correct way to prepare for a five am flight to puerto rico is to watch the fast and the furious at max volume, so I got zero hours of sleep. When it was finally time to go, it felt like pulling teeth trying to get these dudes in the god damned car and we were of course, sprinting to our gate at the last second.

Of course it was all worth it. By no means am I complaining even one little bit. I could've come here crammed into the trunk of a car, and I still would've been ecstatic to be here. I'm just trying to paint a picture of how confused, and stressed and just absolutely raw I felt. Case in point; I watched bolt on the plane, and absolutely lost it. I'm talking sniffling, tears, the whole nine. The grumpy puerto-rican dude in the seat next to me was looking at me like what the hell is your problem woman?!

As we were descending, we were still over the ocean, so we got an absolutely amazing view of the coast on the way in. when we landed, the whole plane burst into applause (fluff says: only in puerto rico). So, we got off the plane and everything was in spanish! I know that to most people that's probably a given, but i've never been anywhere where english is not the primary language. It just felt so insane to see ads for things like mcdonalds, only in a different language than the one i'm so used to.

Outside, it was pouring. Worse than in ct even! I hardly noticed though, I was so wrapped up in just looking around. The best word I can think of to describe what I was looking at: green. Everywhere. Things growing out of the sides of mountains, along fences and buildings, even in san juan, which is by no means rural.

On the way to our hotel we spotted a truck with pastel pink rims selling food by the side of the road and nearly got ourselves killed pulling a u-turn just to get to it. We ate alcapurias doused in goya hot sauce and a pionono, which was by far, the best street food i've ever tried in my life. Crispy flaky dough surrounding a filling of ground seasoned meat and fried platano. It was beyond perfect. The salty, spicy meat and then soft, sticky-sweet plaintain, all crowned with that golden flaky dough.

Our hotel was, perhaps, the most pleasant surprise of my life. We paid a relatively small amount of money for a villa here, and after reading numerous online reviews that described the place as “out-of-date” and “sub-par”, we weren't expecting much. So imagine our surprise to find our suite was huge and comfortable with five beds, a kitchen complete with dishwasher, two bathrooms (one with a jacuzzi) and two patios, both overlooking this:

never in my wildest dreams did I ever think i'd be this fortunate.

the hotel also has an astounding pool, with waterfalls, jacuzzis and a sweet little bar in the center.It seemed imperative that we hit up this bar immediately, in order
to make it clear to ourselves and everyone else that we were officially on vacation. We ordered an assortment of tropical drinks, my favorite being the black cocconut (j.w. black and coconut water-yum!).

The other place that we drank has a name, but I don't know it. It's on the main strip in dorado, and is identifiable by a large sign that states simply patio bar. But to call it a patio bar is a drastic understatement. There are actually two patios. One high and high lower, both shaded by lush greenery, and the place smells like fucking gardenias and jasmine, which I know sounds like something of weetzie bat, but I swear, it's the truth. We ordered these amazing fried cheese cubes, somewhat akin to mozzarella sticks, only served with a sauce of mashed garlic, mayo and ketchup, which, believe it or not, is my new favorite condiment.

Totally drunk, totally overwhelmed, completely exhausted, we came back to our hotel and slept like babies, eased into dreaming by the lullaby of the coquis. I woke up in the morning a bit dissoriented for a second. I sat up in bed and thought where the fuck am I? And then I remembered.

Paradise.

love always

i'm making a fashion statement

so they fired my friend shelly at work, and now i have to tend bar. this is good for a few reasons, namely that my primary expertise is in the consumption of alcohol, and also that i get to wear my own clothes instead of some dumb-ass, manly uniform.
it is also bad for a few reasons. i go to work earlier and stay a bit later, so my free-time has been minimized by a significant percentage. worse than that though is the large contingent of pervy guys who are regular customers at the bar.

some of them are really nice. i mean, they're not all terrible. there are a few gentleman who come in and talk with me, tell me i'm attractive, offer to take me out sometime, but know, in their hearts, that i will never actually date them. one of my favorite customers has made a game of trying to feed me the absolute worst pick-up lines, because he knows it cracks me up.
there's even a guy who comes to the bar, who i totally would go out with, if he got the balls to ask me.
then there are the desperate ones. the guys who have deluded themselves into thinking that i'm uber nice to them because i want them, and not because i work in customer service. i've started wearing my most conservative career clothes from my sales days in an effort to convince them that i am a frumpy, uptight bitch. it hasn't worked. at all. now they just say things like i love a classy woman and did ya dress up cuz ya knew that i was comin in?
the worst came the other day when a group of them was asking me about my upcoming vacation and i told them i was planning on going horseback riding. the grossest one out of all them of course, had to say this:
man am i jealous of that horse, hehe.
i was absolutely horrified! keep in mind that i can be kind of slow when it comes to shit like that, and so i'm sitting there thinking why is he jealous of the....OH!...eeeewww. i had to stop myself from gagging right in his face. and that was my frumpiest day of all. i wore a knee-length, collared, shirt-dress, that is literally shaped like a paper bag.
that night i was driving home from work, racking my brain for some way to get the message across to these guys, when it finally came to me:

i'm rocking this shit at work from now on. because nothing says i don't want to fuck you like the snuggie.

love always

the craziest easter ever yo!

today is easter. i have no clue what that's really all about since i was raised to fear catholicism. what i do know is this:
some people think that easter is like a knockoff version of the pagan holiday eostre, which is basically a celebration of the fact that it's fucking nice out finally.
also, easter is a day set aside for feasting on all the cute baby vegetables that grow in spring.
for these two reasons alone, i am down with easter.
i really wanted to wear a frilly, pink, layer-cake of a dress just like when i was five, but i didn't feel like that would be received so well at our yearly family easter dinner, so i wore this instead:

-blue rose-garden print cardigan from forever 21
-black babydoll tee from h & m
-the only pair of skinny jeans that actually fits over my ass from marshalls
-and some fake-ass native american fringey boots, also from forever 21
i topped it all off with a spritz of victoria's secret double body mist in candy baby, which smells just like marshmallow peeps and is therefore the official scent of easter.
the day started off perfect. i downed a few glasses of wine, ate about a pound of caviar, and was just sitting down to a fabulous looking easter dinner, when wham! the inevitable drama of being with my family came to what i just might call an all-time high (or low, depending on how you look at it)
seriously, words cannot do justice to the shitstorm that went down in my house on this holiest of days. one thing i love about my family though is that after everything was said and done with, we all ate cake and laughed hysterically about it.
now that's what i call a good old-fashioned holiday!

love always

you can learn how to dress just by checkin my fresh

last night i went for dinner and drinks, plus american idol on tv and camp rock in the car. it was quite enjoyable. here's what i wore:









bright pink aviators from urban outfitters
black zip-up hoodie from h&m
big black purse from marshalls by ecko red
vintage leopard tunic from retro2mod
bright pink studded belt from forever 21
black trouser pants from marshalls by michael kors
bright pink jelly flats from hot topic (*blushes*)

yes, yes, those are indeed jellies. take a closer look:

love always