glasses and dirty clothes

I lost my glasses five or six weeks ago. I figured they were somewhere in my apartment, but I hadn't seen them, and my old glasses weren't exactly the right prescription, and I'd never used my vision benefit that's about to run out, so finally this week I ordered a new pair.

Then last night She Gre e-mailed me: "There are some glasses in the laundry room, those aren't yours....are they?"

Yeah, they were. If you're doing the math at home, that means I haven't been to the laundry room in five or six weeks. In my defense, it's been a stressful month. Also, I did wash a load of socks, underwear, and t-shirts at my parents' house once a few weeks ago. And it's the time of year when you wear winter clothes some days and summer clothes other days, so it takes a long time to run out. But...still.

old music

I spent all day today at the Christmas Show office - Ogram, two teens, and I moved several car- and minivan-loads of boxes out of the office and into storage. I wore my new t-shirt. Here, I'll show it to you.


Actual conversation with 16-year-old girl:

Teen: [Towwas], why does it say "rem" on your shirt?
Me: It says "R.E.M."
Teen: What does that mean?
Me: It's a band.

project runway

Blatant bid for comments, because I know some of you are fans: I watched my first-ever episode of Project Runway tonight, and I'm totally hooked! It was the first episode of season 2. Work buddy Mr S loaned me the DVDs (he thinks one of his daughters has season 1 at college). I am so ready to hold a weekend-long marathon. New show to watch = so exciting!

full weekend

This weekend was the Big Rehearsal Weekend for the Christmas show - 9 to 6 on Friday and noon to 6 yesterday. Saturday we had various different activities, music rehearsal and handbell practice and blocking the second act. Then yesterday was the biggest day - we had to get in costume, then run the whole show.

First, and I feel terribly ungracious saying this and am therefore saying it on my blog which no costume people read, I hate my costume. This year is Elizabethan, right? So everyone says, ooh, beautiful costumes! Yeah. Not me. Think "frumpy." One of the chorus members said it best: "What, you don't get a waist?" (Others used variations on "What is this?") This is particularly annoying when I'm surrounded by people in lovely, cleavage-baring fancy-fabric dresses. Mine is red and woolly in clashing patterns.

Second, I have the best stage husband ever. Ok, I can only compare him to the one other stage husband I've had, and Z.Dog was a very good stage husband. But he had a lot of business to do, and we weren't really blocked together that often. Mr.M and I are together basically all the time, he always knows what's going on, *and* he told me I look gorgeous in my hideous costume. Major points.

Third, this all-day rehearsal thing gets easier every year. The first year, I nearly melted down on the Sunday of this weekend. By the second year, I'd realized that when they went around yelling about how you aren't allowed to eat in costume, they didn't actually mean it. By the third year, I'd realized that I could ignore a lot of what was going on. And hey, this year - I basically followed Mr.M around. No worries.

The show's going to be great...can't wait! My ticket sales are way down this year, and I don't know why. I'm hoping it's just because of losing all the people from my former employer, not that people saw last year's show and hated it.

blogger

If it weren't for the fact that our blogcon pictures are of feet, and also do not include faces, I would request that we all buy this t-shirt and wear it when we meet up. I kind of want one anyway.

denim blogger moment

This morning when I got off the metro, I'd walked about halfway to the escalator when I heard this voice behind me calling, "Miss! Miss!" I looked back - maybe I'd left something - and realized it was the train operator, leaning out of her little window. I pointed at myself. Me? Yes. So I walked all the way back, wondering if she was going to, like, ask me to tell the station manager she was being train-jacked, and she said, "I just wanted to ask you, where did you get those jeans?" I told her (Ann Taylor Loft - take that, denim snobs) and she said, "They're cute" and drove off.


I'd been told before that these jeans look good on me, but it was by people like Miss Shirley who are nice to me anyway. It was pretty cool to hear it from a stranger.

scarf

This afternoon I was waiting for the bus to rehearsal and there was really cool light reflecting off a building. I completely failed to capture it, but I did take a picture of my cute scarf:


I got the scarf this summer at this museum in Delaware, when I went with J.Chu to look at their quilt exhibit. And I happen to have worn this scarf now three Wednesdays in a row. How do I know this? Because Wednesday night is rehearsal. And at rehearsal, I carry around a hanging file folder so I can harass people about the emergency contact forms they haven't turned in yet. And the little metal tabs on the folder snag in the scarf.

I can't tell you how annoying this is.

threadless

It seems that there are times when this shirt would really come in handy. Although...the only time that comes to mind when I've had a complete language barrier was in Turkey, and I'm not sure the t-shirt has a sign for "Ok, it's fine if you don't have a direct bus to Antalya today, but could we get there by taking a bus to somewhere else, then transferring?" Fortunately, I was able to communicate this with diagrams in my notebook. (And it occurred to me later that the guy probably spoke German. Oops.)

Oh, wait, there was another 100% language barrier moment - once in Morocco I had to explain, "No, this is my father, so we'd like a room with two beds." (Most people in Morocco seemed to speak French, but not that lady.) Fortunately, sign language got the concept across.

saggy pants

Doesn't it seem that looking like a complete idiot should be punishment enough?

sorry

If you hadn't already given up on me, fashion-wise, it's time. I now own TWO pairs of crocs. It was so sad every morning when I had to take off my in-house crocs and leave for work, that finally I gave in and ordered a pair of black mary jane crocs, which, I swear, are way more presentable than my other pair. At least I should be able to wear them to work and change there without feeling like I'm commuting in clown shoes.

In fact, here is an anecdote to show you how relatively acceptable they are. Last night I gave them their first outing by wearing them to a party with a very snazzy dress. After I'd been standing around for a while talking to some of my fellow science writers, S.Vix said, "Are those your new crocs?" And! one of the others, who hates crocs with a passion, said she'd noticed them and didn't realize they were crocs. So I think they're way more acceptable than these.

brown dress

Fun with the self timer:


I was taking pictures of two dresses I'd just bought so I could send them to Miss Shirley for a fashion consult - I wasn't sure which one I should wear to K619's wedding this weekend. This one won that competition, but I ended up keeping both. Because a girl just can't have too many cute strappy brown dresses, that's what I say!

I feel like I'm not normally that in tune with fashion trends, but I now have three chocolate brown dresses in my closet. What is that? Anyone else noticed all the brown showing up this year? Or has it always been there and I just now noticed it?

washer of dishes

What's your favorite appliance? Mine is definitely the dishwasher. I mean, I guess other appliances have a bigger effect on my life - I'm fairly certain I'd have to quit my job and cancel my hobbies if I had to wash my clothes by hand - but I've never lived a life without laundry machines, see. The dishwasher I have lived without. And BOY am I happy to have one in my cute-as-all-get-out apartment.

laundry

Robin Givhan says not to wear Crocs. The lady has a Pulitzer - she speaks with authority. In my defense, I have not yet worn them outside of my building, and the only time I've worn them out of my apartment was down the hall to the laundry room.

Tonight I was hanging out with some science writers of the female persuasion and mentioned that I've only done laundry once since I moved in 2.5 weeks ago. Most of them thought this was weird. Help me out here - is three weeks a decent interval, or is this final proof that I own wayyyyy too much clothing?

ideas

A good chunk of my new job is supposed to be generating story ideas. And, just between you, me, and the people who get here by googling "Norwegian clothing," I don't think I'm very good at generating story ideas. This week, though, I made my first attempt at proposing stories and had a total story idea triumph: I submitted two ideas I thought were good and one I thought was marginal to lame, and they loved the good ideas and rejected the other one. Yay.

Both the good ideas came from people I know - one was from something sent to a Norwegian dance listserv (random, I know - maybe I'll run a contest in six months or so for you to guess which story it was) and the other was a comment a scientist friend dropped at dinner on Sunday. For as long as I've been doing this journalism thing, I've tried to find ideas by reading, but, really, the good stuff comes from people who know me. I used to feel bad about this, but then an older and wiser journalist told me this was a really good way to get story ideas, and I felt better.

So, the solicitation: if you hear about anything and think, "Oh my god, that sounds like something I could read in the front pages of [towwas's employer]," shoot me an e-mail! Nine times out of 10, you'll be wrong (a lot of the time, I'm wrong), but hey, give it a try! Bonus points if you also think, "That sounds like something towwas would think was funny!" because that's the stuff I really like to write about.

Hm...I wonder if they'd go for a story on high-end denim?

REI sale

Here's a hospital picture I'm proud of.
That's my brand-new down jacket, the green spot on the floor behind the wheelchair. I went to the REI winter clearance sale Friday after work and...kind of went crazy. The thing is, this nerd workshop in Norway, it's not only for dancing - it's also for cross-country skiing. And I don't really own cross-country skiing clothes. And, uh, they had a lot of them at REI. (But the sale was so *good*! And, ok, the down jacket isn't actually for skiing, but it's cute! and warm! and lightweight!)

Anyway, nice of REI to schedule their winter sale (a) in the middle of the coldest cold snap we've had in years and (b) a week before I leave for Norway.

u2 shirt

When Kay Ray went back to Hawaii for the U2 concert, she bought me a shirt. It's awesome. It's American Apparel, and it says VERTIGO on it. Sort of like you might expect of a U2 shirt. Sunday I wore it for the first time, to a dinner party (actually a planning meeting for the new choir, masquerading as a dinner party), and when I walked in the room, U2 was on the stereo.

I think it must be some kind of sign of something, like how excellent a person I am. Or perhaps a sign that I like the same music as...everyone else in the world.

threadless

Threadless is having a sale and I just ordered this shirt. I don't get it at all, but it makes me laugh every time I look at it. (I also ordered this shirt because of the whole writer thing.)

clogs

See what I mean? Way too cute to leave behind. They're green! wool! felt! clogs! with flowers on them!

crafty

I made a purse, I made a purse! It started life as a wool sweater from Old Navy. Then it found its way to the Value Village near my house. Then it came home with me. And after a bunch of cutting, pinning, repinning, recutting, and sewing (and then some more cutting and pinning and so on), here it is: a bag! It's slightly goofily-shaped - you have to hold the top bunched together like that or it just looks weird - but it's mine, all mine!

shoes

I wish they made these in grown-up sizes.