Lucky Coincidence

Today I woke up for the second morning in a row at 6:30 a.m. to greet my electrician and landlord. There have been some issue with the lighting in my place and apparently this particular electrician likes early morning house calls. I don’t exactly understand how this works. I mean, you call the cable people and they’re like, “We’ll be there between 11 and 1” and then they show up at 3. Not this guy. 6:55 sharp.

Anyway, so, in an effort to make use of those extra early morning hours, I decided to take Rosie to the vet this morning for her final shots before she goes to the land of rabies and potential heartworm – otherwise known as my parent’s backyard in North Carolina.

Apparently though, I misunderstood the vet’s hours because even though the website says 7:30 a.m. opening, they don’t actually open until 8:30. So, as Rosie and I tried to burn an hour on that side of town (me, drinking a chai tea latte, Rosie, chewing on my March issue of British Vogue) I decided to give my brother a call.

This morning, he was departing from the Charlotte airport en route to Colombia (South America) where he will be backpacking the next two weeks before meeting us in Fiji. I figured I’d call and say “good bye, see you in Fiji,” that kind of thing – mostly because this will probably be the only time in my life I’ll get to do that.

After he picked up it occurred to me that I should probably confirm where we were meeting. (Keep in mind, I wasn’t even planning on having this conversation. And we’re not going to speak again until I see him in Fiji.) The conversation went something like this:

Me: You know where we’re meeting right?
Everett: I figured you were picking me up at the airport.
Me: No. We’re meeting at Smugglers Cove. Laura and I won’t get back from the islands until like 4:30 in the afternoon that day. And your flight gets in at 5 in the morning.
Everett: Smugglers Cove?
Me: Yes, the place we’re staying.
Everett: Where is that?
Me: In Nadi.
Everett: Close to the aiport?
Me: Yes, you can get a cab.
Everett: Good. I’ll see you there then.

This kind of conversation epitomizes everything that is different about us for this trip. And in life in general. On the top of my list of “things I’d never do,” flying from Colombia to an island in the south pacific and having no clue where I was going to meet up with people I know, ranks right up there.

It’s a good thing the electrician was early coming and the vet was late opening, else I may have never located my brother in Fiji. This is going to be a fun trip.

B-Day

Today, in lieu of an Ibex update or another ode to Rosie, I want to wish a very happy birthday to one of my favorite (and probably most consistent) readers, Jenn Thompson.

Jenn, who right now is probably happily eating cupcakes and sampling Charlestonian cuisine* for her upcoming nuptials to her lovely fiancé Joe, is a birthday lover. As a bit of a birthday hater myself (I can’t explain this. I just don’t like birthdays), I have had many birthdays (including my last one) dramatically enhanced by Jenn. She’s thrown me a surprise party and serenaded me at 4,000 feet above the Atlantic—with qualifications like this, she’s pretty much a birthdayer extraordinaire.

And so Jenn, happy birthday! Later, I am going to call you and Rosie and I are going to sing to you together. I think you’ll be pretty impressed. For now, just know that I think it’s really awesome that 25 years ago one of my favorite people was born.

*I’d just like to put a vote in for crab cakes and/or shrimp if they’re available. Also, cheese. Any kind will do.

Guess What?

I have a few things changing in my life.

I haven't really mentioned them thus far in this space because, well, this blog is more about middle eastern mountain goats and bubble gum flavors if you know what I mean. But, I've decided to give a little more insight into my life than the length of my dachshund's legs and my preference for air mattresses over traditional ones.

Two weeks from today I will depart on a seven week sojourn to the following six countries: Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Thailand and China. And I am SO excited. I have resigned (a pretty word for quit) my job. I have moved out of my condo. I am dropping my dachshund off at my parents (I can't talk about this because it makes me cry). And I am going to cram about 30 pounds of stuff into my REI pack and set out to see the world. Or at least a few parts of it I haven't seen yet.

I'm going with my brother (this should be interesting) and my friend Laura. We have booked hostels on an island off the coast of New Zealand and plane tickets to make sure we're at the Full Moon party off the coast of Thailand. We're planning on seeing the Forbidden City and the DMZ and the Outback and Mt Cook and the Yasawa islands and everything in between.

And so, in two short weeks, this blog is going to take on a rather different format. More journalistic if you will. Also, probably more brief. Because internet cafes cost money and Vietnamese keyboards are hard to understand. But stay tuned. Because I assure you, my brother is the funniest person I've ever met and I plan to pretty much chronicle his ridiculous antics right here for all to read for seven weeks straight. (Unless I die from a Japanese Encephalitis contracted from a night biting bug. But the chances of that are slim.)

In the meantime, don't worry. There are still plenty more goat and gum stories to be told. And if all else fails, I can write about my dachshund for pages on end.

Empty Nest

My condo is empty. Like seriously, there is not one single piece of furniture left. Unless you count a TV and a printer as furniture. I don’t. The weird thing is though, instead of missing my stuff, I am really enjoying this new, minimalist lifestyle.

I didn’t enjoy it the first night, but that was in my pre-air mattress days. I think we can also refer to those times as “the night of living hell of trying to sleep on a hard floor with your brother and a dachshund.” It turns out my body isn’t built for sleeping on a floor. I guess I’m just too bony. You know, my hip bones and ribs just protrude from my thin, thin figure. Wait. No, that’s not it. Yeah, I don’t know what the problem was, but I do know that I woke up the next morning and if there had been a bed for me to get out of, I would have definitely gotten up on the proverbial wrong side of it.

However, last night my friend Laura was gracious enough to loan me her air mattress. And wow. I mean, it is like a little taste of heaven. Laura calls it “the crème de la crème” of air mattresses. And she is right. It is perfect. It is, dare I say it, better than my bed.

It’s better on two levels. 1) It’s more cushy. There’s more give. I’m no mattress scientist, but I think this might have to do with the so-called air. 2) It is at a low enough height that a dachshund whose legs are more just feet sticking out of her shoulders than actual appendages with any length, can get on and off at her leisure. For anyone who knows Rosie, you know that she is a rather demanding animal and slightly fickle. As in she may want to be on the floor one moment and on the bed the next – or vice versa – and in her mind, it is my sole job as owner/slave to Rosie to make sure that she is precisely where she wants to be at all times. So there is a lot of taking her on and off the bed. And also a lot of barking when those demands aren’t met immediately. Hence, this air mattress is phenomenal. Rosie gets on and off when she wants with very little complaining. Life is good.

This continues into every other aspect of my new life as a hobo in my own condo. There are no dishes to wash. No rugs to vacuum. No plants to water. No shelves to dust. It’s amazing. And I love it. This feeling probably won’t last forever. I assume eventually I’ll want a couch again. And come Thursday night at 9 pm I might be crying a little thinking about my missing big TV. But for now, I think this is a nice start to my upcoming seven weeks of every one of my possessions being those that are on my back.

Box Hunt

It's 10:30 p.m. and really, I shouldn't even have paused from packing up my condo to check my email. But I did. And then I started making the rounds on all the random websites I look at and ended up here. My own blog. Where I noticed that someone (ahem, Jenn) is getting pretty antsy waiting for me to update the world on the happenings of my life outside of checking out stuffed mountain goats. I'm not making any promises for excitement in this one.

Tomorrow I'm renting a Budget truck (16 feet long! I'm a trucker! I'm going to strictly fill up at truck stops and maybe even shower there. Or at least buy a few lotto tickets). Anyway, so I'm renting this truck to take the massive amount of stuff I have managed to accumulate during my time in Atlanta and dump it back in the basement of my parents' home. That's right. I'm moving home at the age of 26. I'm not going to dwell on that for long right now. I'm sure it will come up later.

Moving sucks. I mean seriously, there is nothing fun about it. I have spent hours trying to organize boxes according to where they go in my home. "Beauty products," "Towels," "Pots and Pans" - you get the picture. But now I'm to the last ones and the box I just packed was labeled "Curlers, blue fruit bowl, make up organizer, Christmas tree cookie pan, hair dryer parts, can opener." That is not a lie. I can't believe I have a box labeled that. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep at night with the thought of my can opener being in the box with my curlers.

There is one fun part of moving. Well, it's probably not fun for everyone, but I've come to enjoy it. Box hunting. I consider this a sport. Boxes are not easy to come by and I absolutely refuse to spend a penny on any cardboard box that someone else would just throw out. And so, I have gone on an epic search around Atlanta over the course of the past three days, hunting for boxes. Mostly at liquor stores. And wow, have I found them. Today,at lunch, my friends Chris and Sarah accompanied me on the box hunt and I have to say, I was pretty proud of our finds. Chris kept talking about how we were in his "territory" and how we were going to "hit the jackpot" at one particular liquor store. I'm not sure what all of this meant, but it certainly made lunch hour more exciting.

I now have enough Corona, Jack Daniels, Smirnoff and Sutter Home boxes in my living room that a person could get a hangover just looking at it. Which is precisely what I think I'm going to feel like in the morning when I realize it all has to be loaded... and then unloaded onto my truck. On that note, I'm back to packing.

Ibex. Again.

So, I do have a few exciting things in my life these days. Two weeks from today I will have moved out of my condo. Three weeks from today I will no longer be working at my job. And four weeks from today I'll be in the south pacific living out of a rather small backpack. So between malaria medications, transfering vet records, researching UHaul options and taking daily trips to the liquor store in search of boxes, life is pretty full. However, the thing that was probably most exciting in my day today were the positioning of the Ibex.

I should pause here to note that on Valentines Day last week two of my coworkers and myself were walking to our cars and passed the store and noticed that one of the Ibex was missing. We stopped in our tracks and stared, searching the store front. Nothing.

The lady inside, noticing our distress came out and assured us that the other guy had just had to take a break from the store front for cleaning. Obviously we were pretty upset that he'd been split from his mate on V-day, but we could understand. He has a very white coat after all, cleaning is crucial. In our discussions with the saleslady though she told us that we weren't the only ones - several people had stopped and asked where he had gone. She also filled us in on some interesting facts. The most interesting being that they're not Ibex at all. They're mere mountain goats from Kashmir and were given to the store when they purchased cashmere sweaters from some company. She then went on to explain where cashmere wool comes from (goat throat) and how these particular replicas were actually made from it. We petted them.

Thankfully, the next day, all was right with the world and the goats (which we persist in calling Ibex) were back in their places. However, today something went terribly wrong.

We'll probably never know what happened here. A lovers quarrel? Over the Eiffel Tower purse? An unfortunate accident? Whatever the case, I think we can all see the tragedy here.

Four Legged Fashion

So, the other night, I was kind of bored. Well, really, not so much bored as procrastinating. Ok. That's not true either. I really don't have an excuse for why I spent my time the way I did and not in some other fashion. However, an excuse kind of seems necessary because there needs to be some kind of reasonable explanation for why a fairly normal person would spend any part of her evening dressing her dog up in random outfits and taking pictures of her.

Yes, that's right. That's what I did.

It was pretty late and Rosie really just wanted to go to sleep, but for some time now I had been considering how good Rosie looks in all her clothes and that I needed to capture that on film. And so, poor Rosie was forced in and out of repeated outfit changes as we went through the majority of her wardrobe.

I considered posting all of those photos here but in mentioning this thought to friends I've gotten some fairly negative feedback. Most of it along the lines of "Are you really sure you want the whole world to know what a crazy dachshund lady you are?" And, well, that's fair enough. It's probably best that I keep that kind of information off the internet. So, I'm just posting one pic. For now. More may come later. But this one was one of my favorites so I really just wanted to share.

Congrats

Today began rather strangely. As I walked into work, Chris, who manages our office, indicated that I should come read an email he’d received. The title was “Maternity Leave?”

The email, which was sent from a person who works in corporate in the company, read:

“Hi Chris! Someone mentioned on a phone call that they thought Sarah Crosland was out on maternity leave. If she is, who should we direct her calls to in Atlanta?”

Chris had already responded:
“I can assure you she is not pregnant. She is also not out.”

The response from corporate?
“Ok -- good to know. Me either.”

And Chris’ final response (on which, I was cc’d):
“I think congratulations are in order for everyone involved.”

So there you have it. In case anyone was curious as to whether or not I am with child, it has been officially confirmed that I am not.

When I woke up this morning I really did not anticipate having someone congratulate me on not being pregnant before the day was over.

Take Note

To the person who works in my building and is the owner of the new black Range Rover with the license plate that reads “1PAYCHK,” I want to punch you in your face.

I’m sorry. I know this reaction may be a little bit much, but seriously? One paycheck? You want us all to know that you make enough in one paycheck for your car? (Which, by the way, I do love a lot.) I understand your pride. If I made that kind of money and drove that kind of car, there’s a chance I might be puffing the old chest out a bit.

But really, vanity plates are kind of pushing the douche bag envelope enough without having one like that. And with that plate, I can only assume that you’re the type of person who wears sunglasses inside which is going to make it all the more painful when I punch you. That and the fact that I frequently walk a pretty strong 10-pound dachshund so my right arm is pretty powerful. Sorry. But seriously, you asked for it.

Ibex

There’s a shop in the lobby of the building where I work that reminds me a little bit of a mix between Talbots and Chicos. I think this is mostly because those are stereotypical “mom” shops in my mind and this is definitely a “mom” shop. Occasionally (like once every six months), I’ll see something in the window that I think I might consider wearing, but then again, some days even Talbots can tempt me with a nicely cut sweater set. (Chicos with its “travel nylon” concoctions is staying away from my closet until I’ve succumbed to a minivan and elastic waistband jeans)

Anyway, I digress. So, every day I walk past this shop. And until about three weeks ago, the only reason I even bothered to look in the window was because it was more entertaining than staring at the marble floor beneath my feet. But that has changed.

The shop owners, in what I can only assume is a rather bizarre marketing ploy, have added a new addition to their storefront. Two miniature, stuffed Ibex. (On the off chance you don’t know what an Ibex is, let me educate you. It’s a mountain goat. This is something I didn’t know until our office manager Chris shared it with me. Tell me I don’t get an education at my job!)

So the Ibex (I don’t know the plural form, so I’m just going with that) are in windows, but each day, they change location. Sometimes they’re across the store from another. Sometimes they appear to be nuzzling. Other times they’re standing next to each other, gazing into the distance. And other times they’re gazing at each other.

Why are they there? No one is sure. Why do the workers in the store feel the need to move their location first thing every morning? We may never know. All I know is that those two little Ibex have given me new motivation for coming to work in the morning. What will they being doing today? These are the things I live for.

In other news...

So my parents are out of the country for the week. They left yesterday and have since sent three emails describing just how nice and relaxing Cabo is this time of year. To say that I'm envious doesn't really get close to touching on my feelings when I read emails about siestas, jacuzzis on balconies and lounging poolside.

However, the best part of getting these emails isn't really what they're talking about. It's the fact that they've CC'd both my brother and I on them so that I get to see what Everett is writing to them about his time house sitting for them in North Carolina.

This line from his email this morning might be the best thing I've ever read:"In other news I finished the spaghetti and the cat brought a dead bird to the back door."

It was just as randomly placed in the email as it sounds. I will probably spend the rest of my evening trying to figure out how, in his mind, the completion of the spaghetti and the dead bird at the back door went together as relevant news. If anything, this email speaks volumes to the reasons why it is best that I do not live for any long period of time in Shelby because these are actually the kind of things you start to consider "news."

R.I.P.(ped) Jeans

I have purchased many pairs of jeans in my life. They are, after all, one of my favorite things to wear. They go with anything, they’re relatively comfortable and occasionally, I even like the way I look in them.

About a month and a half ago I was vacationing in Charleston with some friends whose idea of “shopping” is kind of like a sport. It was like three days of hard core, shop to shop, checking out every last bit of available merchandise in the Charleston metropolitan area. I should have known there was a problem when on the second night of a trip we were sitting in a Bed, Bath and Beyond at 10 p.m. That is some serious shopping.

However, on that trip, I experienced one of those rare, elusive moments during which I was just casually rifling through a stack of jeans and decided to try on a pair that was on sale—and it fit. Perfectly. No tugging, stretching, belting etc needed. Just nice fitting jeans. I bought a pair and so did one of my friends.

Tonight, that pair of jeans pretty much disintegrated in my hands. I have worn them fairly frequently since my purchase. But, I mean, considering I only purchased them six weeks ago, there’s only so many times I could have worn them. And that number is definitely not enough to excuse what happened to those pants.

It started three days ago. I put them on to wear out to dinner and noticed that there were some odd worn patches on the left thigh. Then, yesterday, I put them on again and the worn patches were larger. Tonight, when I put them on, I squatted down to get something and two large holes ripped across the top of my leg. When I got into the car tonight after dinner, I heard a rather distinct ripping sound as a massive hole occurred across the back. (I cannot express how happy I am that did not happen earlier in the evening) I then decided to see just what kind of material we were dealing with here. By the time my friend dropped me at my condo, they were in shreds. I was pretty much wearing cutoffs in February. There are photos, but they will not be shared here because me wearing cutoffs in February is just as pretty as you might imagine.

The truly ironic part about the total destruction of the jeans is that this very evening, I had gone out with a friend in search of the same jeans. I couldn’t find another pair in my size. She, on the other hand, bought three pair. In one sense, that’s a little depressing since there is clearly an issue with the fabric. In another sense, with three, I figure she’s got a good 18 weeks ahead of her of wearing some of the most comfortable jeans I ever owned. And I’m a little envious.

The View

A good deal of my days are spent sitting at my desk in my office. And while I’m supposed to be focused entirely on what’s going on on the computer screen in front of me or the magazine proofs all over my desk, I occasionally (always) become rather distracted by what’s going on outside my window.

I’m on the 14th floor facing several other buildings so you wouldn’t think I’d get to see a lot of actual human activity, it’s kind of amazing all that I have seen in my time here. In the Sovreign, the massive building being built to the left of my window, two construction workers fell down an elevator shaft and died one day. For hours we watched emergency crews, ambulances and eventually the coroner arrive. In the parking lot of the building directly across from my window a drunk driver drove his car directly off the 7th floor of the parking garage where it was suspended by the cables until firemen scaled the wall and got him out of the car. I didn’t get to see all that as it happened in the middle of the night, but I did get to see all of the investigative work the following day. One evening, around 6ish, I saw two cars drive up to the very top of the parking deck across from me where no cars ever go. There was an exchange of two black suitcases by two men who kept their heads down the entire time and were never out of their cars at the same time. I’m pretty sure that was something I wasn’t meant to see.

The thing is, when my time at this desk is over, I will miss the daily drama that unfolds outside my window. What I will not miss however, is the pool that is in my direct line of vision – even when I’m trying to look at my computer! It is blue, tempting and looks oh-so-relaxing. And in the summer, it is packed. All day long. People splashing, laughing, laying out, reading books, floating around and just generally seeming to have a fantastic time.

Where do these people work?!? I want the job that ends with me living in a nice condo and lounging by my pool all day. And so, because my job actually involves me having to watch this display of happiness and not be a part of it, I think it’s best that I’ll be gone from my window post before the warm weather arrives. Because I think it might have been awkward when I snuck away from my desk and my co-workers noticed me soaking up the sun on a float in that pool. Which is exactly what I had planned to do come April.

Sawyer and Kate 4ever

Tonight I intend to watch the finale of season three and the premier of season four of Lost online. If I do this, I will be completely caught up to watch it in real time with the rest of the world tomorrow night. I’m not sure if I can explain how excited that makes me. But I can explain what that means as far as where my time has been spent the last several weeks.

I started watching January 7th. Then I went to London, where they don’t allow access to the streaming version of Lost online (what?!?!), January 19th through the 27th. This means I’ve had a total of 22 Lost viewing days. There have been 72 episodes. This means I’ve been watching more than three episodes per day on average. Each episode is approximately 43 minutes long.

I think this might indicate that I’m just as lame as my brother who has been in town for the last three days keeps telling me I am. This, and the fact that I’ve watched 90% of these episodes lying on my stomach in bed with my dachshund chewing rawhide on my back.

Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxkBYzkBnW8

On so many levels this is easily the best video I've seen in a long time.

(Sorry, you'll have to cut and paste to see it. I can't get the link to work.)

My Bro

My brother Everett and I get along pretty well. This hasn’t always been the case. In fact, most of our lives were spent with me attempting to kill him on a daily basis. I don’t really know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I guess I had a lot of pent of frustrations for various reasons and he was a little bit smaller than me, definitely less of a fighter than me and in general susceptible to me luring him into fights I always knew I could win.

I wish I could say this ended when I was in middle school, or even high school really. But, if we’re going to be honest, sometimes when I would come home from college, we’d still get into all out fights which usually ended with me screaming for Boots, my parents’ dachshund to “kill” Everett and cackling as she charged into the room and latched on to his ankle.

The fights definitely slowed though as he grew much bigger than me. I remember the first time I provoked him and he won. He actually hit me in the jaw so hard I had a bruise for days. I remember thinking that I’d hesitate the next time I went into his room with the sole intention of beating him.

With a history like this, it’s no small miracle that we can even stand to be in the same room with each other. But, now that he’s a good 6 inches taller than me and significantly stronger, I don’t really challenge him physically too often. And when I do, I’m shut down pretty quickly. And for some reason he’s decided to forgive me for a good 16 years of beatings and, after considerable thought, I’ve decided to forgive him for that bruise to my jaw.

So, we’re going to travel together for seven weeks. That’s right. Seven weeks. Seven weeks of making choices that directly affect the other. Seven weeks of all day, every day.

When I first broached this idea to Everett, his response was, “Sarah, I love you, and I’d love to hang out with you for two… three… four… five……….minutes. But seven weeks?” After a little convincing though, he’s come around. But I think he’s a little apprehensive.

Right now, he’s visiting Atlanta for a few days and tonight we decided to go for a walk in the park near my condo. Immediately there were several disputes. His total inability to understand Rosie’s leash, left me screaming at him not to kill my dachshund. Then, all of two minutes after we’d entered the park, which is in the middle of a neighborhood and has a golf course in the middle, he proceeds to tell me that he needs to relieve himself and then walks across the golf green to go pee on the other side. Seriously? I’m supposed to deal with a public urinater for seven weeks?

As we walked, we talked about the trip. I voiced my thoughts and he argued with them. By the time we’d made it the two miles around, Everett had pretty much established that he was going to just drink his way through the trip because that was the only way he could get through it. As we climbed into my car, he kept saying over and over again that he was just going to think of it as a party. He actually kept muttering this under his breath as if he was saying it to himself as a mantra to comfort himself. I thought he was going to need a paper bag to breath into just to calm him down.

I think we’ll do fine though. My friend Laura will be with us and chances are, Everett won’t murder me in front of another person. In fact, he’s already emailed Laura, who has never met him, to tell her that it’s good she’s coming because otherwise “I would literally kill my sister.” So I’m kind of banking on that. That, and the hope that public urination isn’t illegal in some countries.

Chew this Over

Friday morning started just like any other day.

I arrived at work, threw my purse down next to my desk, walked over to chat with friends about what we’d done in the last 12 hours since we’d last seen each other, came back to my desk, pulled my window shade down to shield me from the bright morning sun, took my blueberry flavored Nutri Grain bar and Diet Sprite out of my bag, ate my “breakfast” while I checked my email and flipped through a copy of WWD. Typical Friday morning.

Until, I reached back into my bag and pulled out my pack of Orbitz spearmint gum. (Seen above) I was on my last piece.

I popped it out of the packaging, put it in my mouth and clicked over to read a few celebrity gossip blogs.

And this is where things got strange.

The gum was not spearmint. It was, without a doubt, original Bubble Gum flavored. It was delicious. It was refreshing. But it was definitely not what every other piece of gum in the spearmint labeled pack had been.

How does this happen?

I felt that I should share with others in my office, but no one seemed to have a good explanation of how the bubble gum made its way into the spearmint pack. I mean, in my mind, at the Orbitz plant, these gums are manufactured in totally separate rooms. Maybe even different buildings. And yet that one little piece was all sealed up in there, masquerading as spearmint.

I think is probably one of the great mysteries of our time. I know it’s something that will baffle me for years to come.

D

Tonight I shared with my friends my plan in future weeks to write haikus at the start of each blog entry as I travel around the world. None of them seems sure where I’m going. Some seem to think I’ll be traveling in Europe. Others seem determined that I’ll be in Eastern Europe. Still others think that we’ll be visiting the “world’s biggest intersection.” Whatever the case, wherever I am in the coming weeks, I have a goal to write haiku poems at the start of each entry. I don’t really have a reason for this. I didn’t even know totally what that meant until tonight, but it seems like a hippie thing to do and since I’m going on a “find yourself” kind of trip, I figure it’s only natural that I smoke a lot of pot and write a lot of ancient far eastern poetry. Right? (Just kidding about that pot smoking part)

Anyway, as I was sharing my big poetry penning plans, there was some insistence that I share with all the world (or the two of you who read my blog – thanks Mom and Rosie!) what my friends and I were up to this evening. And so I will.

Today was my friend Daryn’s last day of work at the magazine where I spend the majority of my days. And I am really going to miss her. Somewhere along the way, Daryn became not only one of my closest friends at the magazine, but also one of my favorite people in Atlanta. And so tonight we celebrated her departure. There were tears. There was reminiscing. But mostly there was a lot of laughing because with that group, there always is.

So now, in my ode to Daryn, I will share the things I will miss most - sorry Mom and Rosie, you won’t totally get these.

I will miss the way Daryn calls herself a Grandma like every other day even though she’s easily one of my hottest, most vibrant friends and is only like 2 years older than me.

I’ll miss her blunt fashion sense. “I’m sorry, I like all your other shoes, but not those boots.”

I’ll miss her adoration of Malcolm-ish, small furry dogs.

I’ll miss her imitations of a certain person in our office. They were uncanny in their similarity. And hilarious.

I’ll miss her ghetto dancing. And her rummaging through “the beauty box.”

And her ability to eat things like mayonnaise and French fries and still be the size of my pinky finger. (Well, I’ll only miss this a little.)

There are lots of things about Daryn I’m going to miss around the office and especially in the small group of us who have become close friends at the magazine, but I guess really what I’ll miss most is that group itself. Because it won’t be the same without Daryn. And because that group of five is what has made my time in Atlanta the gift that it has been for me. While I’m happy for Daryn and know that she is taking advantage of an incredible opportunity, I am a little sad too because tonight was the end of an era. And I guess that’s always a little sad. So, in an effort not to end on a depressing note, I will write my first official haiku:

daryn is awesome
she loves gucci and doodoo
she will be much missed