To Be Installed in my first Big Girl Apartment

Last night the girls and I watched Sex and the City (the movie), which I had not seen for (if you know me) obvious reasons.

This Heineken commercial (sent by my dad) was stuck in my head during the closet scene.






(can I have both?)

Parents Weekend: Wrap-Up

Now wrapping up Parents Weekend coverage...


... So my family moves around quite a bit. When I came to BU they were still living in Zurich, Switzerland. Over the past two years they have moved to Columbus, Indiana and, currently, Detroit, Michigan. This mobility made it difficult for the entire family to be in one location at the same time.


UNTIL NOW!!! MUAHAHA.


Parents Weekend was awesome. I spent several days cleaning and decorating so my mother didn't think I was living in squalor. (And because the apartment needed it... bad.)

Friday afternoon they arrived. Earlier that day I decided to host a pizza party so my friends could meet my family. My family arrived and my friends waited in the room while I retrieved them from the lobby. All my favorite people in one place! It was great.

While Steve, Joe and I picked up four large pizzas from T Anthony's, my friends regaled my parents with tales of my (apparently) good dancing while intoxicated, Xena costume from last year and other fun college memories. In return, my mother shared every embarrassing nickname she's designated my brothers and I. They will not be repeated.

We laughed. We ate pizza. We watched the sun set from the 10th floor. It was beautiful.

Later that evening my family and I went to the BU hockey game. I got five tickets in the student section. I knew my dad would love it but I was skeptical about the rest of the pack. Lucking, everyone enjoyed themselves, especially watching the student section mock the opponents relentlessly.

My dad joined in on many of the cheers, including the one where the announcer calls the names of the opposing starting line and the student section turns their backs to the ice, circling and pointing at the players screaming, "SUCKS!" after their names are called.

Mom thought the "sieve" chants were funny, especially since one kid had an actual sieve that he held up whenever the goalie let one in.

My brothers thought the "ugly goalie" chant was hilarious especially since the opposing goalie got so upset that he cut his drink short to put down his mask and slam down his waterbottle, caving to the pressure.

After the game, mom and dad left while Steve and Joe and I hung out in my room. Everyone came over and we engaged in some responsible icebreaker games, specifically Beirut and Landmines. This was more challenging for some than others.

Enjoy this short video where Brian wins the Special Olympics, Jess displays her true inner Asian-ness, Steve lets out a family secret and Christina is her normal awkward self.


Untitled from Maria F on Vimeo.

Everyone left the room at about 2:30ish at which point I made about 6 quesadillas, two bagels and cleaned the entire apartment... again.

After the boys demolished the food declaring mine the best quesadillas they ever tasted, they passed out, each on a couch. Steve was on the short one so I put my comforter on the floor, made him move and tucked them both in. So precious.

SATURDAY WE...

...went to lunch at the Hyatt. I booked a window seat so we could watch the Head of the Charles Regatta. It was a beautiful day so we took some family pictures. They will undoubtedly be sent out in Christmas cards.





...went to he Pumpkin Festival. I got lost so we took the scenic route meaning we got off at Boylston, walked through the park in the wrong direction, walked back through the park in the correct direction and then walked to Government Center. Family bonding. You know.

There were a lot of pumpkins.... Not much else to say about that. We walked through Fanueil indulging in some delicous desserts.




Thus concluded Parents Weekend. Mom and dad drove Steve and I to Worcester so I could stay the night before his tournament. We parted ways until Christmas.

My friends all agreed they like my brothers better than me. I'd have to agree with them. My brothers are pretty awesome. (You too, parentals.)

Thanks for coming Family Unit!!! Good times.

(...Even though I had to sit bitch every time we drove somewhere.)

Maybe it's the food poisoning...

...but someone get me Henry Cavill and a layer of vegetation, STAT!

This CNET article describes the phenomenon surrounding my rapidly increasing phone bill. Americans (such as Maria) are sending more texts than they are making phone calls. I need to get a hold of Verizon and change my plan because my phone bill doubled this month solely due to texting. Is that even possible? I guess I have to entertain myself somehow during Cultural Anthro.

The next time I'm mad at any of you, I'm sending Jess to poison your chicken. Someone's got it out for me. Today was my first time ever having food poisoning. My dad sent me this article about a recent salmonella outbreak. Cook your chicken people! I already told Jess next time I cook her dinner it will be sprinkled with ExLax or something equally uncomfortable.

The upside to being sick was that between vomitting sessions I was able to catch up on season one of The Tudors, which my roommate Ali happens to have on DVD. CAUTION: This Showtime series is extremely addicting (probably due to all the good looking men). The story line differs greatly from The Other Boleyn Girl, which scarred me with controversial topics such as incest.

When not vomitting or drooling over Henry Cavill and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, I caught up on some very interesting reading in the Wall Street Journal, which I get delivered to my dorm because I’m smart like that Professor Nowak makes me. Basically we should all seriously consider adding a layer of vegetation on top of buildings. Not only is it super sweet but it is good for the environment and could potentially save some of those tax dollars.

In 2001, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, inspired by a trip to Hamburg, Germany, decided to cover about 20,000 square feet of the roof atop Chicago's City Hall. City officials in Chicago now estimate that their green roof saves the city about $3,600 a year in cooling and heating costs. If all of Chicago's roofs were greened, they add, the city's peak energy demand could be cut by 720 megawatts -- enough electricity for 750,000 people. The load on the city's storm-sewer system, meanwhile, would be slashed by about 70%.

In other news, we may have a problem. J wants to see a movie this week. What movie did he suggest? Out of all the movies in theaters? Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Yea. Did I mention I hate dogs? Great.

He suggested this movie and then read me the synopsis over the phone. I did not respond enthusiastically. He took the hint and said he was just kidding. Was he though?

He was either A) trying to choose a movie he thought I'd like (even though I spent several hours enjoying watching men beat each other to a bloody pulp with him Saturday), B) seriously just kidding and we simply don't get each other's sense of humor or C) truly hoping to go see this new Disney masterpiece mess up. I'm not sure which is worse but I will wallop him if he tries to make me see a romantic comedy starring a bedazzle dog.

Maria's Hooray List!

Hooray! Another movie based on a book by one of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahniuk. It's been a while since Fight Club. Can't wait to see how Choke does. In select theaters September 26. (Dad Disapproval Factor: 93% He may enjoy the song in the trailer but he will have no interest in the movie and he will scoff at the content.)




Hooray! Leisha Hailey, AKA Alice Pieszecki, from the L Word is in a band. Or girl group. Or something like that. Leisha sings and does synth and bass for Uh Huh Her. I haven't listened more than a couple seconds on MySpace but so far they sound like they could be on the L Word soundtrack. In fact they might be. I don't know. (Dad Disapproval Factor: 73% He may give these ladies a chance, but he's not really one to blast indie electro pop while mowing the lawn.)





Hooray! I have cinnamon buns in the oven. That is not a metaphor. (Dad Disapproval Factor: 3% He may not like the joke but will forget about it after two delicious buns.)

Incest is NOT ok.

Let's talk about incest for a minute.

Netflix sent me The Other Boleyn Girl. The movie was pretty entertaining. Natalie Portman's performance salvaged that of Scarlett Johansson's annoying face. [Scarlett is so overrated. Her co-stars always carry her. The Island. Match Point. Ghost World. Please.]

Back to the point. Incest. Ok. There came a point about 3/4 the way through the movie when Natalie asked her brother to bang her so that the king didn't kill her for not popping out a son. It's a long story. The point is, she wanted to do it with her brother.

I can overlook a lot in life and in entertainment. And her brother was hot. But I have brothers. Two. And Natalie Portman really messed with my head tonight. There is no situation in which the concept of incest may be mentioned without further thought. Not even a movie set in the 1500s with men in skirts dancing around like fairies.



















(Jim Sturgess. It's okay. He's not my brother.)





From the movie: To get ahead in this world, you need more than fair looks and a kind heart.
Thanks Boleyn family. I'll keep that in mind.

The Strangers (SPOILERS!! Get over it or go away.)

Joe told me today he used to think I was invincible when it came to scary movies but that he now knows I'm just a "vagina." I guess this is where I admit I screamed a little during The Strangers. You can tell my threshold for scary stuff has been passed when my eyes start watering. Despite my screaming, my eyes remained dry.

What bothered me about this movie was the circumstances surrounding their stay in the cabin in the woods. Ok. So Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are at a wedding when he whisks her away and proposes to her. She declines his offer with puppy dog eyes stabbing through his heart. So what does he do? He drives her out into the woods to the ranch-style house he grew up in as a young boy. Rose petals were strategically placed in a bath tub and around candles to set the mood for some victory sexy time. Only there was no victory. So really they shouldn't have been there in the first place. Seriously. The girl just broke his heart and shat on his dreams. Why would anyone want to stay in a romantically decorated house in the woods with someone like that? Ugh. Dumb.

I was also mad we never saw the killers faces. Imagine my surprise when I IMDB'd that shit only to discover Gemma Ward plays the main creeper. Gemma Ward! The little alien looking model! I'd like to say I'm happy to see her branching out but she probably probes, kills and hides dead bodies in her space ship when she's not strutting down a cat walk already. The bad guy is played by Kip Weeks who I don't know. The other girl creeper is Laura Margolis from Dirty Sexy Money.

Ignoring that minor plot discrepancy, Bryan Bertino wrote and directed one pretty creepy movie. The narrator said it was inspired by real events. Wikipedia told me the screenplay was a combination of different elements including:

• A memory from Bryan Bertino's childhood wherein a stranger rang his doorbell at midnight looking for a person who didn't live there. (Apparently Bertino later found out that neighboring houses were being robbed.)
• Charles Manson and his clan. (Reading Helter Skelter and researching Manson and his followers made my eyes water.) The bad guys tortured Liv and Scott by creeping around their house and moving things. Manson's followers would entertain themselves by entering houses while people were sleeping and moving things around. (I wonder if people attributed out-of-place items to strangers and not other family members or bad memory? I mean unless they wrote "hello" and "killer" all over the walls.... I hope I never face this predicament.)
• California murders where three people "were found tied up, stabbed, bludgeoned by a hammer."

So basically the idea was good. And most parts were scary. The music was loud and damning and painfully irritating just as the score of a horror movie should be. The end was fantastic. I anticipate a sequel but will still be furious when one is filmed.

Just another reason I'll never live in the woods and I'll always carry a frying pan around my house if I ever live alone. You can never be too careful these days.

Poopies.

After an extremely interesting conversation about politics, hicks and prostitution, Noelle and I decided to take the following quiz:

http://www.youthink.com/quiz.asp?action=take&quiz_id=960

According to the results, both Noelle and Christina are "mushy, smelly poops" whereas I am a "long and hard piece of poop that takes forever to come out." I'm not really sure what that says about me but I recommend you take the quiz too.

In other news, Andrea, Christina, Noelle and I saw American Gangster this evening. What a great movie. Drugs, mobsters, some hot sex scenes, guns, a Shelby, a dog being shot... what more can you ask for? Strangely enough, this is the second movie I've seen this week where a dog is killed. According to Noelle, "dogs are out." I always hated them anyways. At least this time the dog was dead after one single bullet. I don't think I could tolerate seeing someone tear apart a dog with a crow bar again. (Thank you P2. Was that movie even advertised on television?)

My cleansing diet ended five hours ago with a Boston Creme donut. And some peanut M&Ms. And an Arizona Iced Tea. I'm weak. In all honesty, I decided the main goal of this whole "cleansing" experiment is to detoxify my body. I started researching detox methods and realized there are many ways to go about it depending on your goal. I also realized it's a little pointless to detoxify before Thanksgiving. Therefore I will continue researching detoxification methods and plan out something crazy for after Thanksgiving. I have not given in yet. I just really wanted a donut. Damn you 7/11.

Let me know how that poop test went. If anyone even reads this thing.