Tag Archives: creepy boyfriend obsession

That Little Voice in Your Ear

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For a short while, the recording that played when you called my company was of my voice. When our new phone system was installed, the woman who records the greetings company-wide was on vacation, so the IT department asked me to record the greeting.

Wait. Actually, they asked me to recommend someone with a good speaking voice to do it. And I was like, “Well, people have TOLD ME that I should be a voice actor. I wouldn’t want to, you know, toot my own horn or anything, but . . .” And they were like, “Oh, all right.” Embarrassing.

Naturally, during this time, I had extensive fantasies involving all of my exes finding out about this and then calling my workplace continuously, waiting anxiously for the part where I seductively said quality assurance. I later went on to do the voiceovers for two of our marketing videos, which I now assume they’ve favourited on YouTube and listen to quietly in the bathroom on their iPhones after dinner, the soothing words enterprise content management system the only thing keeping them from raising their hands to their nagging new girlfriends and wives some nights.

These are the kinds of thoughts that get me through repeated friend request rejections by them on Facebook.

Oh, Yeah, Remember When I Went to California?

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We’re going to visit Kamran’s family in Southern California for the second time starting tomorrow, and I thought maybe I should actually post some photos from our first trip now. This way, it seems like I’m not lazy but just, you know, holding out for the right time. Or something.

I’ve already made a few posts about California–what I expected to do, the one and only difference between L.A. and NYC, Laguna Beach, the lovely wedding we went to, and one-half of our trip to Disneyland–but here are the things I didn’t mention before:


The flight over the desert was pretty incredible. Growing up in Ohio, the colors were entirely new to me, and so was the lack of vegetation. Or vegetation that wasn’t brown, at least.


Kamran’s parents’ backyard happened to be a little oasis with palm trees, a fountain, roses, and bunnies, but driving for miles and miles and seeing nothing but dried-out brush and actual tumbleweeds and bare mountains was kind of awe-making for me; I couldn’t stop taking photos of lovely Saddleback Mountain especially. I absolutely loved the scenery but wonder how long a person can live there without noticing that everything around her is dying.

And seeing the landscape wasn’t the only first for me. It was my first time seeing what an absolute nerd my uber-cool boyfriend was in high school


and my first time being driven by him in a car, which he tried to make our last time by trying to kill us:


It was strange watching my usually-lovable gentleman friend for the past almost-five years become this lane-switching, aggressive-passing, going-with-the-speed-of-traffic maniac. (Just kidding, but seriously, I would’ve surely died my first time trying to merge onto the highway.)

It was my first time eating a giant beefy burrito at Albertaco’s, which Kamran claims all the locals call Alberto’s, but I think he was secretly just embarrassed by his evident illiteracy:


and my first time eating in a room full of people from California:


I had Wienerschnitzel for the first time


mousing over this photo may amuse no one but me


and learned what the big deal is about In-n-Out (the big deal is that it’s delicious, and I wouldn’t die if I had to eat that every day instead of Shake Shack, although obviously there will be a Shake Shack in L.A. in about .02 seconds):


We made Kamran’s friend’s wedding more about us than her,


Disneyland more about us than any kids,


and nights with Kamran’s friend Gary and his wife, Diana, into creepy family portrait time:


We walked around downtown San Juan Capistrano, which is like a little hippie village thrown into the middle of rich, Republican Orange County. We found an antique store that stretched a whole block, a movie theatre with maybe two screens, a pay-by-the-pound frozen yogurt shop that was evidently a new concept in California, and a new friend for Kamran just wandering the streets:


My friend Beth drove down from San Francisco, and we met our friend Bridgette,


who lives in the most stereotypically 1970s California neighborhood I can imagine,


for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, because I apparently have to eat there every time I leave the state. We sat on the water underneath portable heaters in the middle of August, and I couldn’t imagine liking weather more.

We left early one morning for Kamran’s old undergraduate stomping grounds, stopping at a shady convenience store with a wall that happened to be modeled after Kamran’s shirt:


We drove around Pasadena for a while:


and then stopped at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles for a lunch of Arnold Palmers:


chicken dripping with syrup:


and waffles soaked with both:


both chicken and syrup, I mean; not Arnold Palmers

Afterward, we went for a long walk around the Caltech campus, posing with Kamran’s old swimmin’ hole:


his old dorm hall:


and the room in the physics building that houses a copy of his undergraduate thesis:


This was the last time we would see the Caltech t-shirt he’d purchased in the gift shop an hour earlier.

We had a lunch at Pink’s:


which is known for its block-long lines full of celebrities (we saw no one remotely famous and were only in line for a few minutes for this cole-slaw-covered beauty):


We then spent the afternoon wandering around Santa Monica. Well, actually, we spent an hour in Santa Monica traffic and then had only enough time to walk to the Santa Monica Pier:



before meeting Kamran’s uncle for dinner at Joe’s, where we had delicious beef and a sighting of comedian Andy Kindler:


(this is not Andy Kindler)

We had lunches with Kamran’s family, where I got to try my first albaloo polow, or Persian sour cherry rice, and wildly saturated kebabs:


Kamran’s niece basically cried through the entire lunch, and Kamran’s dad had to entertain her, and I was reminded that I’m way more interested in food than children, but the kid sure is cute, snot and all:


I met so many of Kamran’s old friends (this particular meeting included fried ice cream!):


and had probably the best beach experience of my life, even when my bathing suit was coming off and Kamran was having to tell the children around us to shield their eyes:



But more than any of this, being in California was just feeling different. There’s so much about it that can’t be recorded in pictures, although you can bet I tried. It’s driving past the power station at night, where the sky’s filled with yellow light in the otherwise empty desert. It’s eating the foods from Kamran’s childhood that he didn’t even like back then but craves now. It’s trying to find a song we can agree on from his iPod full of punk music on the way home from houses of friends I’ve heard about for years. It’s the corner of Antonio and Banderas Streets and trying to remember my high school Spanish to translate the city names. It’s having perfect hair and skin every day and people giving up their parking space for you at the beach and all of the houses looking exactly the same but entirely different than any other houses anywhere else. I’m sure I felt the same way when I moved to New York, but the point is that it’s not New York.

Like a Dog, I Only Love You When You Feed Me

Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat
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Sometimes, I get upset that Kamran really can’t hang with me when it comes to guiltless gluttony. I have wild fantasies about consuming entire Ritter Sport bars in one sitting, of sitting down with a bag of Doritos (Cool Ranch, of course) and just going to town. Meanwhile, Kamran has wild fantasies about lightly-dressed raw greens and filling up on soup so he can just pee it out later and not gain anything. The times I love him least are when he’s denying my request for pizza for the 27th weekend in a row.

And the times I love him the most are when he comes home and asks, “Do you think we could get a reservation for Momofuku Ko tomorrow?” It’s easily his favourite meal we’ve ever had and also easily in my top two. It’s also one of the hardest restaurants to get into; its reservations system comes online at 10 a.m. every morning, and all of the spots are taken ten seconds later.

But I managed to snag one thanks to hundreds of website-refreshings Friday morning, and we went for an amazing 18-part lunch on Saturday. And then we went to the all-French-fry place again and got Vietnamese pineapple mayo topping:

More Food After Momofuku Ko

Then we went to 16 Handles, a frozen yogurt place where you fill you cup with any combination of–wait for it–16 flavors and then cover that with any of about 40 toppings and then pay by the pound. UH-MAZE-ING.

More Food After Momofuku Ko

There are totally two strawberry slices in there, which makes the mini Reese’s cups, crumbled regular-sized Reese’s cups, sprinkles, Cap’n Crunch, caramel sauce, cookie dough, and gummy bears totally fine.

Look how jealous that blurry guy behind us is. (Also, is that Ward Williams or what?)

Point is: if I ever loved Kamran, it was last weekend.

Haha, Remember When Sitcoms Starring Black People Used to Be on Primetime Television?

Filed under a taste for tv, creepy boyfriend obsession, living in new york is neat
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Remember the 80s sitcom “227” starring Jackée Harry as Sandra and Marla Gibbs as Mary? Well, Kamran and I both grew up watching it, and now he loves to say “Mary” in the way that Jackée used to on the show. Which is of course something more like MAAAAAAAAAAY-ree.

And every time he does it, it CRACKS ME UP. It’s never less funny to me.

So we were on our way to our so-so dinner at Flex Mussels the other night when we spotted this doorway and somehow thought it was so serendipitous:

Of course, as soon as we took it, we realized that there’s a 227 on basically every street in NYC. But still!

Katie Makes Passes at Boys and Girls Who Wear Glasses

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When I was in Ohio at the end of March, I woke up one morning at my best friend, Tracey’s, to find that one of my contacts had ripped. I think I almost willed it to happen, because as I’d been packing for my trip, I’d thought about the fact that I was on my last pair of contacts, hadn’t ordered more, didn’t plan to see my eye doctor while I was home, and wasn’t going to bring my glasses, either. So of course something bad had to happen.

I called up my eye doctor’s office and spoke to his receptionist, whom I’ve known since I started wearing glasses in 7th grade and whom the rest of my family has known even longer. “I’m home visiting from New York,” I said, “and I ripped one of my contacts. If I stop by later today, can I buy a replacement pair off of you?”

She paused for a moment, evidently checking my record. “Sorry, but we really can’t do that. You haven’t been to see the doctor since 2009.”

“I’m desperate here,” I said. “I don’t have another pair, and I didn’t even bring my glasses home. I’m going to be miserable. I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

“Schedule an appointment with the doctor!” she cheerily advised.

They gave me a replacement pair that day, and then Tracey took me in to see the doctor ridiculously early the next morning to have my prescription checked and buy a new batch of lenses. The doctor, as always, scolded me about the fact that I’d managed to stretch a six month supply of contacts into two years’ worth and told me that since it was the beginning of the month then, I just needed to remember to replace my lenses at the beginning of every month.

“Absolutely, doc!” I promised, secretly rolling my eyes.

On Saturday night, Kamran and I went out for a seven-course tasting menu that included NINE DRINKS. Even after not even coming close to finishing all of them, we nevertheless stumbled back to his apartment and literally crashed onto the bed sideways. At 4 a.m., I woke up and realized my contacts were still in. Being the good girl that I am, I down a bunch of water and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and take out my contacts. And promptly ripped one of them.

GRR!

I looked all around Kam’s apartment, but of course my new supply of contacts was at my own place, and there was no way I was delaying our Easter Indian buffet plans to go to Brooklyn. So with untamed hair and thick-framed glasses from 2003, I went with him to have some of the best Indian food ever. Except that I was totally miserable, because it was hot outside, and my blood was boiling from the spices, and my hair looked crazy, and my glasses kept slipping down my nose, and I feel half-retarded when I have to move my whole head to see anything to the left or right of me clearly.

So what I’m saying is: god bless all of you glasses-wearers. If you knew how great contacts were, you’d never put up with those things. But you look totally great in them, and I appreciate that you’re willing to sacrifice comfort to look awesome. Especially you, Kamran.

Another thing I’m saying is: I KNOW YOU MADE THIS HAPPEN TO FORCE ME TO CHANGE MY CONTACTS, EYE DOCTOR, AND I WILL FIND A WAY TO SPITE YOU.