Unapologetically Mundane » narcissism

Suffer for Fashion

katie ett — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:00:02 +0000

The only thing to do when you’re a wannabe photographer with a nosebleed? Whip out the camera and try to forget about the drips hitting your white t-shirt.

Badass?

Merry Christmas + Happy New Year

katie ett — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:00:21 +0000

I’m visiting my family and friends in Ohio until

JANUARY 8TH!

I’m going to get so many presents, eat so many of those sugar cookies with the Hershey’s Kisses pressed into the tops of them, and do so many gay things with my best friend.

Like so:

I’ll miss you, blogfriends!

How’s THIS for Unapologetically Mundane?

katie ett — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:35:28 +0000

It’s just an accident that my work slippers match my tights today.

But it sure is a happy accident.

Doughy Deschanel, Zooey’s Fat Sister

katie ett — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:15:49 +0000

I haven’t legitimately dressed up for Halloween for ages. Everybody else is already the Internet meme of the moment, and spending the night sweating in a rented gorilla costume doesn’t seem fun, and I don’t have enough boob to be Slutty Strawberry Shortcake or whatever.

But this year, my costume idea happened so organically I couldn’t not do it. My friend Anthony and I were sitting at lunch one day, discussing an article I’d just read about Zooey Deschanel. I may or may not have been rambling, and he may or may not have said Zooey’s name in an offensive voice just to shut me up, and it may or may not have come out sounding like “Doughy Deschanel”.

Okay, actually, it did come out sounding like “Doughy Deschanel”, and I said, “That’s the name of Zooey’s fat sister.”

And then we were both like, “Oh, crap, that’s the greatest Halloween costume ever.” So I bought myself a faux-vintage Modcloth dress, donned my pink velvet shoes that I so rarely get to wear, and used it as an excuse to buy a black wig and have straight hair for a night.

Great Halloween costume or greatest Halloween costume?

Narcissism Abounds!

katie ett — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:00:24 +0000

I bought a tripod recently from my long-time blogfriend, Kat, who was leaving the country and offering up all of her belongings. I was like, “Hey, sure, I’m new to this photography stuff and could use a nice tripod at a discounted price.” And then I was like, “HOLY CRAP, NOW I HAVE TO ACTUALLY MEET HER.” After, you know, five years of living in the same city and at least eight months of even living on the same subway line, like, six stops apart. But it went fine, and now I have a fancy tripod.

Which is clearly a big mistake, because this is the very first thing I did with it:

Pretty sure that first look could cut a bitch.

Pinch Day!

plumpdumpling — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:00:54 +0000

My dad, always a little too quick to torture my sister and me when we were kids, probably invented Pinch Day one year when he realized he’d spoiled us with too many gifts yet again. It’s the day after your birthday, the day when everyone can make up for how nicely they treated you the day before by pinching the crap out of you.

Similarly always a little too quick to torture, I’m sure I introduced my best friend, Tracey, to Pinch Day quite soon after we became inseparable in 7th grade. And since she’s the perfect best friend, she had these flowers sent to me at work yesterday:

with this note:

How personal and sweet, right?

My roommate/landlord/co-worker, Jack, recently wrote me this little questionnaire while I was on the phone with Tracey one day:

And it’s true–TV, movies, and leading insanely interesting lives does fuel our conversations. But just plain loving each other for almost 30 years doesn’t hurt anything. Thanks for making my Pinch Day special, Tracey!

It’s My Birthday, and I’m a Princess

katie ett — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:00:18 +0000

This weekend is my birthday. I usually throw myself an elaborate party just so my friends will be forced to dance, but this year, Kamran and I are just planning a nice, quiet lunch at Per Se. And by “nice, quiet lunch”, I mean the extended tasting menu. It will hopefully include:

• so much caviar and roe that I’ll spawn baby fishes in my stomach and pee out a hatchery later in my toilet

• truffles equal in value to the GDP of some of the wealthier small African countries

• enough drink pairings to put me to sleep so that I wake up just in time to have fully digested the meal and can down a dozen doughnuts

• a table overlooking Central Park, because if they seat me away from the windows, so help me god, I will downgrade their donuts4dinner.com rating to a 4.5 SO FAST they won’t even have time to ply me with take-home giftbags full of notepads and baked goods

Just kidding.

But it’s going to be awesome.

I’ve also requested that Kamran re-create the chocolate room from my very favourite movie of all time, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, so that I can bite the ears off gummy bears, drink myself sick on fat-boy-laden chocolate milk, and lick some cocaine paste off the tops of mushrooms. That’s what that was, right?

He claims that it ain’t gonna happen, but I’m pretty sure this is me in about 24 hours:

Boys Don’t Make Passes at Girls in Grandma Glasses

katie ett — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:00:26 +0000

I’ve been wearing the same pair of glasses since, like, forever. I still like them, the prescription still works for me, and I don’t wear glasses that often, anyway. Also I am cheap. So when my vision insurance offers to pay for either my contacts or my glasses, I always go with the contacts.

And then I found out that you can buy glasses online for ridiculously cheap. Like, ridiculously. I’d been thinking about clear glasses for a while and how they would look so freaking good on me, so I called my Ohio eye doctor for my prescription tout de suite. (I felt a little bad not buying my glasses straight from him, but then I remembered that clear glasses don’t exist in Ohio.) I picked out a pair and showed them to Kamran, who promptly told me that only grandmas wear clear glasses.

Well, if that’s true, then I’m one foxy grandma, right?

j/k. One of my friends actually called them “BCs” in the Hamptons this weekend. When I asked her what that means, she said, “Birth control glasses. Nobody’s gonna get you pregnant in those.”

I was like, “If I went to Williamsburg in these, I’d get raped in a second.” Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Not Colonial Williamsburg. You know what I mean. But yeah, I really do look like a grandma here, right?

But a really sweet grandma who makes cookies and crochets and doesn’t call anybody a whore, though.

If you want some (non-grandma) glasses of your own, I recommended EyeBuyDirect.com, and if you use code IF5Q63MJE6, you get 15% off your first order, and I get some dollars to help me buy another pair that will actually make boys like me!

Pass Me the Black Eyeliner

katie ett — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:00:20 +0000

When I wore my insanely rad FableAndFury two-headed deer necklace the other day, multiple people commented that they’re pretty sure it’s just two deer standing beside each other:

It’s not two deer, people! It’s not cutesy! It’s dark! DON’T YOU KNOW HOW INCREDIBLY EMO I AM?!

Maybe I need to upgrade to the REDRUM necklace so people will take me seriously.

The Difference Between Good Friends and Great Friends

plumpdumpling — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:00:11 +0000

Good friends stand back and mock you while you take vanity shots of yourself.

Great friends photobomb you.

Someone Once Told Me That Flies Poop Every Time They Land on Something

plumpdumpling — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:00:22 +0000

My favourite photo from Cape Cod:

Of course it’s of myself, right?

I Have a New Camera! And Apparently I’m Now a Nikon Person.

plumpdumpling — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:05:15 +0000

Before I bought my Canon S90 a year and a half ago, I thought long and hard about getting a DSLR. On one hand, I knew that a compact camera, all-manual functions and 3200 ISO availability or not, simply wasn’t going to take the best-quality photos because of its tiny lens. But on the other hand, I knew I wasn’t going to lug around four pounds of camera every day, and not having a camera with me at all times is not an option.

So I bought the S90 and have loved every moment with it; it’s forever impressing me with pictures like this and this. But no matter what photographers tell me, I still think owning a really great camera is half the battle, so I wrote $900 into my budget this year for a DSLR and figured I’d be able to afford it after Christmas if I didn’t blow my wad on more cat butt magnets for my cousin.

But then Kamran offered to buy one for me right away! My attachment to my Canon made me think that I was a Canon person, despite having loved a Sony before that and an HP of all things before that, so I almost immediately settled on the Canon EOS Rebel T3i. I read all about the differences between the T2i and T3i, looked at sample pictures from the Canon line, thought about the lenses I’d put on my birthday list this year, and pictured myself having a whole family full of expensiver and expensiver Canon cameras.

But then, on a total whim, I happened to find Snapsort, a site that compares cameras side-by-side. And it turns out that almost everything about the Nikon D5100 beat the Canon. And then I found a site that showed the same scene shot by the two different cameras, and I just plain liked the way the Nikon photos looked more: the colors were more realistic, and everything was just a little more crisp. Every review I read said that the biggest part of being a Canon or a Nikon person was just liking the way one or the other felt in your hands, but since I like the way all cameras feel, I just went for it and asked Kamran to get me the glorious Nikon D5100.

And I love it! I haven’t, you know, taken any actual photos with it yet, but it feels so fine in my hands, like it was molded just for them. Now if only I can get over the fact that Ashton Kutcher is the Nikon spokeman.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly, Incredibly Close

plumpdumpling — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:00:24 +0000

I got to Kamran’s apartment after work yesterday to find these signs taped in front of his building:

I know it really steps on a lot of people’s toes to say things like this, but I really feel like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close means more to me than it does to anyone else.

Okay, maybe it means more to one other person. And maybe it means just as much to you. But it means a lot–a lot–to me.

I read it just after I started working at Barnes & Noble in December of 2005. I had lived here for just over five months and was, as I’ve previously embarrassingly admitted–crying all over the damned city. And of course the book is about walking all over the damned city. I missed my dead mom, and Oscar was trying to find a piece of his dead dad. I knew I was being manipulated by cutesy phrases like heavy boots, but I felt like my own boots were dragging me into the concrete, so I didn’t care.

My then-boyfriend kept asking me why I was reading this book that would make me cry two minutes after I sat down with it, but it was too beautiful to put aside. Ability to produce continual, pathetic tears or not, a well-written book still eases my mind. I haven’t been able to touch it since, and my copy sits on my bookshelf still tabbed with sticky notes on every other page to mark my favourite spots. And I’ll never forget the way the pages leading up to the end just fly by, building up to the climax so much that I felt like I could actually hear a trumpet fanfare in my head. Apparently this is something that happens to me with books I really, really love, because I remember it with my very favourite book, Dandelion Wine, and one of my other Top Fives, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

So it seems really meaningful somehow that the movie version of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is taping right outside of Kamran’s apartment tomorrow. I feel like I should take off work to watch. I feel like I should have desperately tried to become an extra. I feel like I should rush the set and try to talk about the book with Tom Hanks.

But I doubt it means as much to him as it does to me.

In your FACE, Hanks.

That’ll Teach Me

plumpdumpling — Tue, 03 May 2011 16:00:19 +0000

I’m walking toward Kamran’s apartment and see a man just ahead of me stepping out of his little red sports car. He’s a little too short and squat, patterned scarf tied cunningly at his neck, expensive herringbone coat flapping open, pointed nose, grey hair curling away from his face. He aims his key fob at the car, and the headlights flash to draw attention to themselves.

I decide specifically to ignore him as I pass, even though I know a man with a car like that isn’t interested in curly-haired nerds in their late 20s, anyway. He stares into the window of the store on the corner, and just as I’m steps away, he turns and says, “Hello.” I stop pretending to stare at something off to the right and find he’s smiling. I say too breathlessly, “Hi,” and feel strangely good.

Inside the building, I’m walking to the elevators, and two of the maintenance men are parting ways. One of them looks at me, and I smile. He looks away. Then he looks back again and smiles. Then he waves. I’m friendly with all of the doormen, porters, and maintenance crew in the building, but I’m a little surrprised by the wave.

Still, feeling extra-friendly after my little sports car encounter outside, I beam wildly at him in return. And then he looks past me and says to the old lady at my heels, “Hello! Hope you’re feeling better.”

Bah.

So Lonely Even My Hair is Depressed

plumpdumpling — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:00:24 +0000

Kamran flew to California Friday morning to visit a client in Palo Alto but made a stop in Orange County first to celebrate the Persian New Year with his family, which now includes a baby nephew named . . . Cameron! My roommate wasn’t feeling well that night, so I went to Kamran’s apartment to take care of the 20 hours of “Criminal Minds” saved on his DVR but got out of the bus at 34th Street to enjoy a few minutes of walking through the almost-spring weather. I didn’t know anything about the whole moon-being-closer-to-the-Earth-than-it-has-been-in-18-years thing, but I did notice it looked particularly lovely over Long Island City across the river in Queens:

Along with the “Criminal Minds”, I watched the Alli-goes-to-stay-with-Johnny-at-college-but-they-don’t-make-out-WTF episode of “Degrassi” while recording the first two Harry Potter movies so I could later fast-forward through the FIFTEEN MINUTES OF COMMERCIALS the channel plays for every five minutes of movie and see how the films compare with the books now that I’ve succumbed and read the first two. (I guess I like all the detail in the books, but reading them is a lot more fun when I already know how everything looks in the movies. Maybe I’m unimaginative.)

On Saturday afternoon, I ordered the same kebab plate that Kamran and I get every Thursday night to enjoy while watching the previous night’s “Top Chef” episode. I’ve grown so accustomed to watching food-related shows while I eat with him that watching non-food-TV felt funny. It could’ve had something to do with the fact that it was a serial killer drama involving cannibalism, but still, it makes me wonder if I’d spend the rest of my life eating dinner to Tom Colicchio or Ina Garten even if Kamran wasn’t around.

My roommate, Jack, was planning to be home that evening, so I took a shower around 1 and then sat around for the next three hours checking obsessively for Kamran’s IMs, tweeting about hearing the ice cream truck for the first time in more than four years outside Kamran’s apartment, hating Dobby the House Elf so much, and finding out that left alone with the Ritter Sport Alpine Milk chocolate bar, I didn’t want to eat the whole thing in two bites as I had originally planned. At 5, I finally got bored enough that I decided to go for a long walk around the neighborhood and saw so many French bulldogs at the Beekman Place dog park and so many goddamned happy couples rubbing their coupledom in my face. A man with an impressive old-timey mustache made eyes at me, and I decided to reward myself with a black and white cookie, but it turns out I just don’t enjoy getting fat as much by myself and went home empty-handed.

I stopped by the convenience store in Kamran’s building on my way back up to the apartment for some soda and a Fage yogurt to replace the one I’d found all dried up without its lid on in the back of the fridge, and the man behind the counter said, “Where’s your guy? You look lonely.”

GRR! So even though I’d secretly been planning to stay at Kamran’s alone all night again, I decided to go to my own apartment and be entertained by Jack and his new Xbox Kinect. We ate bahn mi and bubble tea from Hanco’s, and I watched him play Halo for a couple of hours before taking the controls myself and learning that video games aren’t for girls.

The next day, I woke up late to meet my friend Ash for Macaron Day NYC 2011. My hair usually needs about 3 hours to air day, so I decided to save time and blowdry it for approximately the third time in my life and the first time in at least five years. I knew it had the chance to turn out looking like this, but I was willing to put up with that if it meant not going out with wet hair. So I took my shower, put on the big fluffy robe my grandmother got me for Christmas, watched an episode of “Southland”, made some oatmeal, and came back to the bathroom to check my hair’s progress. When I ran a comb through it, it was perfectly straight and lovely.

So I turned on the hairdryer, flipped my head upside-down, and came up looking like this:

So apparently you’re not supposed to blowdry upside-down when you don’t want a small afro?

When I met up with Ash, she said, “What happened to you?!” Luckily, the macarons were good, and Kamran’s coming back tonight.

Donut Hole Babies

plumpdumpling — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 17:00:22 +0000

I spotted this picture on a Tumblr the other day, and it made me sad, because when one of my friends had a baby, I sent her this same pacifier as a gift:

I thought it was hilarious and pretty much made me the coolest fake auntie ever, but I’ve never seen it in the many times I’ve visited her since, and I’ve especially never seen it actually in the baby’s mouth. Her other kid does use the ice cream cone lamp my best friend, Tracey, and I got her. But still.

I should probably have kids just to buy them cool stuff. And I should especially have them with Kamran, because then they’d turn out looking like little donut holes:

Katiett Photobombs

plumpdumpling — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:00:45 +0000

Always one to enjoy a good joke at my own expense, I was looking through old photos recently and decided that the picture from this post really needed to be made fun of some more.

I immediately thought of photobombs and this picture in particular, which has to be one of the best things to ever appear on the Internet:

Naturally, I make a great addition to it:

I sent the picture to my most Photoshop-talented co-worker, Anthony, who first went for the awful:

but then decided to insert me into some iconic photos:

If you have any editing skillz, use this and e-mail your worst to me at plumpdumpling@unapologeticallymundane.com!

Not Even My Mom Ever Looked This Middle-Aged

plumpdumpling — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 21:30:01 +0000

Yesterday afternoon, I looked like this:

Like a baby bunny, right? A baby bunny who has to turn her head to the left or right to see you out of the two little holes she’s made in the curtain of curls that hangs down to her nose and refuses to be swept aside or pinned back.

Annoying.

So, last night, I went to see my stylist, whom I only started going to because she works at the same place where Felicity got her hair cut. And also because she charges $20 when I’m pretty sure you can’t get a haircut elsewhere here for less than four times that much. Or maybe ten times that much. I’m sure a real woman of the city like Jill could tell you.

Anyway, she lopped a little off as requested and then asked if she should blowdry it. I thought that meant use a blowdryer on it simply to keep me from catching a cold, but it actually meant blowdry it straight like probably every other woman who walks in there requests.

And you know what? It actually felt kind of nice not to have to worry about which curl was sticking up where and which curl had wrapped itself around which other curl to give me the appearance of a DNA model kit. But it felt awful to

LOOK LIKE THE MIDDLE-AGEST, MIDWESTERNEST WOMAN EVER!

I asked Kamran if he was going to knock boots with me before bed, and he said it’d be too much like gettin’ busy with his mom.

80s Costume

plumpdumpling — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:45:33 +0000

So far, my “80s costume” has been referred to three times today, starting with Kamran making fun of me at 8:30 a.m., leading to my friend Jack stopping mid-conversation and asking me why I’m dressed like this at 11 a.m., and culminating in my friend Nik questioning during lunch, “Has anyone made fun of Katie’s outfit yet today? Okay, good.”

I blame the fact that Pandora keeps playing “Safety Dance” for me:

I know people were trying to bring back the 90s recently, but seriously, give me a fake Members Only jacket or give me death.

From Hero to Zero

plumpdumpling — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:00:53 +0000

Today, with a little guidance from my dear friend/bitter archrival Jeff, I added this superhot navigation bar to the right side of my blog that shows a sampling (but not the entirety of, which is hilarious) my other blogs. Another incarnation of the bar had been hanging out at the top of my blog, and I hated it so much, so fixing it basically means I don’t have to ever do anything else worthwhile in my life, and I can still feel like a pretty accomplished person.

However, shortly thereafter, I got an e-mail from a woman at NYCTrip.com, a company that sells NYC sightseeing vacation packages. She contacted me yesterday about participating in and blogging about their Ground Zero and Statue of Liberty Walking Tour, which includes a trip inside the Statue itself. I haven’t been to Liberty Island in probably six years and have never been up inside the Lady, so I was pumped to write back and enthusiastically accept.

The woman responded to my acceptance with something along the lines of, “If anyone will do this tour justice textually and photographically, it is you and your brilliant, brilliant blog.” Something like that, I swear.

But then she also added, “Oh, by the way! On your website, your email is listed with a typo as plumpdumpling@unapoligeticallymundane.com.”

That’s right. I spelled my own name wrong. Not so accomplished, are we now, English major?

Unapologetically Mundane » narcissism

Suffer for Fashion

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