Category Archives: everyone’s married but katie

Five Days and Fifty Photos from Ohio

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 29, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, everyone's married but katie, just pictures, no i really do love ohio
Tagged as , , ,

Remember how I went to Ohio on June 8th for my cousin Bethany’s graduation from vet school? No? Me neither. But here are some pictures that prove I was there or am at least really good at Photoshop!

My best friend, Tracey, was teaching a papercrafting class at the Columbus Museum of Art’s Craftacular Spectacular event, so we arrived early to take lewd pictures of her

in the “Don’t Eat the Art” exhibit

before giving in to our basest desires and dipping our hands into the rhinestone, glitter, and button bucket:

Apparently all of the students at the nearby Columbus College of Art and Design hated this sign when it went in outside the art museum (I believe it’s referred to as the “FART sign”), but I love it:

That night, we were supposed to go dancing at Skully’s as always, but I realized I’d only brought flip-flops and heels home. You can never have too many Chucks, so I was naturally pleased for an excuse to buy some new ones to leave at Tracey’s house. She was naturally pleased to be given an opportunity to step all over them with her own beer-drenched Chucks as we danced, because nothing looks so disgustingly new as new Chucks:

The next afternoon, I went to the HISTORIC Marcy Diner near my childhood home–which amazingly has a website that includes mention of the “pop” they sell–with my dad to eat $1 coney dogs. AND SOMEHOW DID NOT TAKE A SINGLE PICTURE OF THE EVENT. But you can bet it was a better hot-dog-eating experience than any I’ve had in fancypants New York City.

That night, I went to a big swanky vet school soiree with my cousin, Bethany, that Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee seemed to randomly happen upon, like he was taking a shortcut through the ballroom in the student union without realizing there was anything going on in there. Everyone was taking pictures with him, and I was all, “Wait, why?”, but this is for Bethany:

The next night, I went to dinner with Bethany and her family, and we spotted this gem in the Barnes & Noble parking lot:

Afterward, we went to her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine hooding ceremony. I guess this is a hooding:

I call it a choking.

She was simultaneously totally annoyed by all of the pictures I took and secretly thinking she was Wonder Woman:

Then we went to Applebee’s (!) for drinks (!), and Bethany’s brother paid for the whole shebang but not before complaining about Bethany’s $6.50 cocktail. I was confused until they informed me that $6.50 is actually expensive for a drink, and the $16 I’m now used to paying in NYC is offensive.

The next day, my dad and I skipped church (!) and went to Rooster’s for lunch instead of our usual Bob Evans. Adventurous! Then we came back to the house and watched my stepsister, Jenny, shave her girls’ 4-H pigs, which are being kept in my dad’s and stepmom’s back yard. Appaaaaaaaaaarently, 4-H judges think they look better when they’re hairless:

I think they’re the cutest things ever no matter what:

But especially when they’re being fed marshmallows:

Before I’d come home, a giant storm took out trees and power lines all over Ohio, and my family’s compound suffered some wild damage. Not only did a tree fall over onto the front porch, but the limb of another blew off onto the garage, revealing that it was hollow inside! And full of bees!:

That night, Tracey and I went to visit our longtime other best friend, Katie, her daughters Maria

and Evelyn (who looks like Toby from Labyrinth, Tracey decided this week),

and her husband-whom-I-introduced-her-to-because-I’m-the-best-matchmaker-ever-but-only-because-I-tried-to-date-him-first-and-he-totally-rejected-me-but-I-still-love-him, Nick:

After being served dinner by Katie, we all went to the backyard so I could take wildly adorable family pictures of them:

and then we watered Katie’s garden.

Well, Katie watered her garden.

The rest of us played in the water.

Well, some of us played in the water while some of us licked the water from the watering can:

Then we went back inside to enjoy the Cheesecake Factory desserts Tracey had brought (the only Cheesecake Factory I had on the entire trip!) and to watch Katie play with her new toy:

Until Tracey got too jealous and needed to see how much she remembered from her one quarter of string instrument training while getting her music education degree at OSU:

And that was it! Tracey and I spent the next day chowing on pizza and Graeter’s ice cream at the mall, and then she dropped me off at the airport so I could return to my babyless, pigless, expensive-drink world.

I Will Never Again Go to a Wedding Without a Cookie Bar

Posted by plumpdumpling on September 24, 2010 – 2:30 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, everyone's married but katie, travels
Tagged as , , ,

Our whole reason for going to California, despite what you may think, was not to remind me how ugly and dirty NYC is compared to the rest of the country. It was mostly for that, but it was also in part to see Kamran’s long-time friend Diana get married to her long-time boyfriend, Phil, who she already did freakily-adult things with like buy a house.

The ceremony was outdoors at the University Club of the University of California Irvine. There were little trellises and gazebos everywhere, Diana was possibly the most beautiful bride in history (oh, um, except for my best friend, Tracey, of course . . . oh, and my sister . . . any other loved ones I’m forgetting?), and her dad was about the cutest dad ever (I can say that since mine doesn’t read my blog):

All of my pictures of the ceremony itself have various members of Diana’s family blocking her and Phil because they were all so excited to take pictures of their own and kept popping out of their seats, but here’s a shot of them walking away as man and wife with Diana grabbing Phil’s butt:

And here’s a closeup of the lady in the background running to get out of their way that cracks me up:

Here’s Kamran and Diana inside the University Club library, and neither of them is drunk at this point, despite Kamran’s too-relaxed eyes:

When we got bored of making fun of Diana’s other guests and just wanted to get at our plated dinners, we went outside to take advantage of our dress-up clothes:

And then we made nice with a table full of strangers–one of whom, to my delight, took photos of her food to post on Facebook–while eating juicy steaks, sipping huge Long Island Iced Teas in honor of the land we’d left behind, and watching this video slideshow of the most embarrassing photos from Diana’s giant-glasses phase. As we left, we made a stop at the cookie bar and loaded up a sack for our drive back to Laguna.

But not before snapping a photo of this photo display of themselves in the lobby of the University Club, because I swear that picture on the top right looks like underwear.

I’m right, right?

Why Life is So Great Right Now

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 30, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, everyone's married but katie, living in new york sucks so hard, no i really do love ohio
Tagged as , , , ,

1) Last weekend, I was out all afternoon on the hottest day of the year, and Kamran texted me at one point to say that he thought the air conditioner had stopped working. I arrived at his apartment later with a couple of iced coffees just to make fun of him and his overactive imagination, but no, there was definitely warm air coming out of his vent. We spent the remainder of the night sitting perfectly still on the couch, afraid that moving would allow the sweat rivers dammed in our hair to unleash on our foreheads. It. Was. Miserable.

Way wore than the night we lost power in my apartment, because Kamran lives in a studio with windows on only one side of the room, so there’s no way to create a cross breeze unless you open the door. And I wouldn’t have been entirely opposed to propping the door if New Yorkers weren’t so infamously curious about other people’s habitats; you know every single person who walked by would’ve stopped dead to watch us gnawing on ice as we watched Manhunter.

I texted my best friend, Tracey, about it, and she suggested I fly to Ohio and enjoy her central air. I also considered going back to my own apartment, figuring that a single wall unit for all 900 square feet was better than nothing, but I didn’t want to leave Kamran alone with his take-home law school exams. We went to bed around midnight, but Kamran woke up at 2 a.m. feeling like he was having trouble breathing and thinking we’d need to go to a hotel, which made me EXCITED. But then he remembered a box fan hidden in the back of one of his closets and aimed it right at us so we could at least not die during the night.

Two days later–after his exams were all finished, of course–his landlord graciously had a guy come and install a brand new unit with a timer and remote control so we never have to leave the couch again.

2) You may think of me as some huge important chef thanks to my starring role in Julie & Julia and my wildly popular food blog, but the truth is that about the most I do is heat up some hotdogs for breakfast in Kamran’s convection oven. But his oven went out in March, and we kind of didn’t bother to do anything about it, which means I’ve been heating up my hotdogs in skillets.

Skillets.

But early this week, when the new air conditioner went in, the landlord also sent him a new microwave. A huge one, with a light underneath to illuminate the stovetop, and a vent on top to keep the apartment from smelling like pigparts.

3) Last night, I met Kamran to go shopping for toilet paper (romantic!), and as we were leaving Duane Reade (a pharmacy that got its start in NYC at the corner of Duane Street and Reade Street–clever!), I realized that it was my chance to buy my favourite generic lipgloss, which I’ve been without for several months now but have been too lazy to walk an extra block to the Duane Reade for because the CVS near his house is so much nicer. I forget sometimes that the littlest things can make such a huge difference to my happiness.

4) I’m in Ohio for the weekend for my stepsister’s wedding! This means I’m the only one of the five of us kids who isn’t married. Last time I was home, I told my grandmother that Kamran and I are going to California to visit his parents early next month, and she said, “Oooooh, are you going to pin him down while you’re there?” And I said, “Um, haven’t I done that already? We’ve been together almost four years now. The only thing we haven’t done is move in together.” She didn’t like that.


And you?

Ohio Weekend Photodump!

Posted by plumpdumpling on May 25, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, everyone's married but katie, no i really do love ohio, super furry animals
Tagged as , , ,


My second-cousin Keith got an elbow to the stomach from his new bride, Rachael. Their wedding photographer only seemed to be taking super-serious photos, so I felt self-righteous about this one.


But then Keith made the photographer let the groomsmen pose for this picture, and all was right with the world again.


My cousin, Bethany, and my sister, Joanie, were in attendance and looking as stunning/ridiculous as ever.


I attempted to teach my 85-year-old great-uncle to use the laptop I bought him while my best friend, Tracey explained the Internet to my great-aunt:

Tracey: You can use Google to search for anything!
Crazy Aunt Dorothy: Oh, we don’t want that.
Tracey: It’s just a website you go to if you want to look something up.
Crazy Aunt Dorothy: We don’t really need the Internet. Just take us to that Circleville Pumpkin Show website.
Tracey: Uhh . . .


Tracey took me to a movie at the indie theatre in Columbus, the Drexel, and the ceiling fan vent looked like giant-sized art to us. But maybe that’s because it was midnight and we were running on five hours of sleep.


Tracey’s cat is a wild animal. I go home to visit pets as much as people these days because I like her cats so much. Except when I wake up on her couch in the middle of the night to see one of them flying over my head with his claws outstretched as he jumps from armrest to armrest.

I also went to an 80s dance party, ate the Splenda cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory for the first time, visited my friend Katie and was forced to hold her six-day-old baby (Evelyn) but did not drop her, went to visit my cousin Ethan and his six-day-old baby (Kaydence) and used my newfound not-dropping-baby skills to also hold her, celebrated my sister’s birthday with our parents and her husband, and explained to my parents that the smoke monster in “Lost” makes the same sound that a taxicab’s meter does.

I really, really love going home.

As If eHarmony Hasn’t Been Made Fun of Enough

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 21, 2009 – 1:17 pm
Filed under a taste for tv, everyone's married but katie, good times at everyone else's expense, my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as , , ,

I know you’re supposed to be all happy for other couples when you’re in love, but yesterday, I found myself watching this commercial and thinking, “My greatest hope is that their relationship will end in a bitter, drag-out divorce”:

It’s the “I didn’t need the Internet back when I was into scoring random hos/hoes at bars, but my mom told me I need to keep it in my pants now” line that really makes me want to see him unhappy, I think.

Of course, I’ve always wanted to see these two fail miserably, but only because their painting o’ love is so sad. It includes a handprint, for God’s sake:

I swear I’m totally happy myself, though.