Can you see my vagina in this?

WOO HOO! Procrastination is fuuuuuuuun. I've written 3 pages in 2 days. Not good, not good, not good. So, I'll tell you what I'm doing this weekend, since that's fun, right? When you should be writing about 50 words per minute to actually meet your deadline?

I was in an a cappella group in college. It's true - I'm a singing dork. Seriously, singing has always been a huge part of my life. I'm actually singing in a blues/R&B band right now, which is way fun, even though everyone else in the band is a 50+ year-old business school professor.

Don't ask.

ANYWAY, this a cappella group was really important to me in college. The girls I sang with were some of my best friends and we spent practically all of our time together, even aside from the substantial time we spent singing (3 hour rehearsals twice a week, plus concerts, plus road trips to sing at other schools on weekends). Not surprisingly, given that we were a bunch of college-aged women, discussions about what we would wear to each concert took up so much rehearsal time that we eventually elected a "fashion chair" to decide on options for each concert that we then voted on. Seriously. Being that this was the mid-90's, our outfit choices ranged from jeans with blazers (way before the days of cute, cropped, fitted blazers), overalls(!), and "jewel-toned" tops with black pants. We were hott (1995 hott, that is).

So, this year is the group's 15th anniversary and we're all going back to school this weekend to hang out, have a big concert, and relive the good ol' days. AND to feel really fucking old. We actually had a 10th anniversary reunion too, and not surprisingly, spent considerable time talking with the youngun's who were currently in the group to come up with a simple theme for what we would wear so that we would all sort of coordinate when we were on stage together. We settled on whatever combination of black and white you wanted. So, all the alums show up in tasteful, stylish dresses, skirts, whatever. But, the current group? Definitely sang in black tube tops that had been bedazzled with the group's name. Yeah.

So, as I get ready to go back again, five years older, I can not wait to see my friends, sing with them again, meet people's babies, but I am NOT looking forward to standing on stage next to 20 year-olds in white halter tops and black miniskirts or shorts that expose body parts that "I would normally only see if we were romantically involved (see Zoot for reference)."

Maybe I'll wear shoulder pads and peg my faded black jeans, just for kicks.

Holy shit.

So, say, back in May, you received one of your biggest work assignments to date. Say that this project required you to call bazillions of "experts" in the field (which is especially awesome when you have phone phobia, like I do) and schedule lots of meetings. Say that all these interviews and meetings generated, like, a hundred pages of notes that you are then supposed to read and transform into a very long and extensive guide on your topic that will be useful to organizations all across the country. Say that your client, who is very intimidating and supremely unavailable for help, guidance, questions, has decided that this project is her "baby", which really increases the pressure on you to produce something fabulous. Say that she is returning from a month's vacation next Monday and is expecting a full draft of this guide.

Now, say that, thanks to a lifetime of honing your procrastination to an art form, you didn't actually start writing the damn thing until last Tuesday.

Yeah.

Happy Fall!

Um, hey guys...what's up? Happy, uh, September. Hmmm...blog take two has, so far, not been very successful. Do I dare post another entry, just to have it mock me for the next two months? What? Pretend like it never happened? Okay, la la la la la la.

So, hope everyone had a lovely summer. Mine was mostly boring. Work around the house, play with new puppy, visit family, go to Barcelona and then a wedding in Amsterdam. Oh wait, that last thing was actually pretty fun. A college friend, Dutch-born but raised in the States, married an awesome woman who is also Dutch-born, but raised in London. This was advantageous to all us ignorant Americans who attended the wedding, because it meant that the wedding ceremony and just about everything else was in English. Although, then we learned that pretty much everyone in the Netherlands speaks fluent English. You learn something new...

Anyway, highlights of the trip included:

1. Keeping ourselves on Eastern time the entire time we were in Barcelona by staying up until 5:00 am and sleeping 'til 2:00.

2. Eating at the Hard Rock Cafe the first night in Barcelona. Actually, this was not a highlight, but a source of shame. I know lots of people like the Hard Rock, but when you're in a kick-ass European city with amazing food? Not so much. In our defense, it was 11:30 pm on a Monday, and while most people in Barcelona don't even consider dinner until 10:00 pm, most local restaurants are closed on Mondays.

3. Not getting our luggage until Day 3 because we missed our flight to Barcelona because of congestion at the fucking Philly airport and had to be rerouted at the last minute through Paris. Also, having to go to the Barcelona airport in person to look for our bags because Air France's phone operators are ASSHOLES. Turns out there was a baggage handler strike at the Barcelona airport and our bags (and 4,000 others) had just been sitting in the warehouse for 2 days, with no one to get them where they needed to go. But it's okay. I like wearing the same underwear for three days in a row.

4. Canal cruise in Amsterdam the night before the wedding. Until we hit the wall of the canal and my friend spilled her entire glass of red wine over my white pants. Actually, given that I had already had about 7 glasses of wine, this was surprisingly funny.

5. Attending a big, fancy wedding reception in a castle in The Hague. Apparently, in Dutch custom, it is traditional to split everyone up to be seated for dinner. So, not only did I not sit with my friends, but I didn't sit with my husband either. He ended up between two, young blonds, and I ended up next to a drunk, 75 year-old man, who was a close talker and tried to look down my dress throughout dinner.

Seriously, the trip was amazing and the perfect way to end the summer. And now, wheeeee, back to work, in my basement. Next up: procrastination, or why is my house so clean when I have a 50-page draft due for work next week?