Droppin' Wisdom on Your Ass

Making Cards Against Humanity

Our friends Lillie and Scott recently introduced us to Cards Against Humanity, a fun party game that requires little skill and a lot of perversion. We played a few rounds the other night at Guthrie's Tavern. It's the perfect spot to mix drinking with board games as God intended.

Joe and I decided that we needed a set of our very own. The game was funded through Kickstarter, which is cool, except now it's sold out and hard to get unless you want to pay at least twice as much to scalpers on Amazon. We are not those people. 

Guthrie's extensive board game collection

Luckily the game makers are so cool they've included instructions at the bottom of their website so you can make your own set. Seriously!

Joe enthusiastically took the reigns on the fairly easy diy project, printing and cutting the heavy card stock at Kinkos the same afternoon we discovered the instructions. We now have an awesome homemade set that set us back about $10. Just in time for our upcoming lakefront vacation with the family.

Our set of Cards Against Humanity. Every bit as good. 

Getting Laced

The best-cheapest-most-environmentally-friendly-personalized way to get new clothes is to first fancy up your old ones. Here's a great tutorial on how to make the perfect pair of cut offs shorts. It also shows you how to add a lace cutout to shorts with just a little hand sewing and some scissors. By the way, if you ever sew or tinker with sewing or want to tinker with sewing, buy a good pair of fabric scissors, and save them just for fabric. Never use them to cut through paper--it's a fast way to dull them to oblivion (paper is wood, after all). A good pair of fabric scissors just makes your work more enjoyable, which makes it feel less like work. Anyways, I love lace (obviously). So I made a pair of these lacey shorts. Here's how it went:



In the end, I really like how they turned out, though I wish I had made the cut offs just a little shorter in the first place. I may have to do it all over again so I can cut them to a more flattering length, but it was so easy that a redo doesn't really bother me.

Beating Myself Up

I should not have skipped two weeks of yoga. Last night's class kicked my ass. I also should not have agreed to go into work at the last minute this morning, considering that I have to work tonight as well. Today should have been a catching up sort of day of errand running and housework. But what can I say, I feel compelled to take work when it comes. With school approaching at the end of August, and having registered for most of my classes, I'm beginning to feel a crunch on my summer. There's so much left to do, and the clock is running down. I'll be cutting way back on work during the fall so as to knock out a hefty class load. Because, frankly, I'm losing momentum. Having pieced together partial and full-time semesters at three different schools, it has taken longer than I'd like to admit to get a simple bachelors degree. It's getting harder to remember why I started in the first place. But I know there was a reason--a good one--that I complicated my life to finish school, so that's what I'm going to do. I guess I'll just have to work and play hard while I still can.

Splurging

I shouldn't have. But I walked away and thought of nothing else for three days. It was meant to be.

Birthday Recounting

Pull up a chair while I recount the past week or so in which I have been unable/unwilling to update.

My birthday. An ungodly hot Thursday, the 28th of June. It began with multiple wakeup calls from my mother. She sweetly sang Happy Birthday to me, which would have been adorable at 10, but was downright infuriating at 6am when I finally answered the phone. I spent the first hour or so of my day fuming in bed as I tried to get back to sleep. I finally gave up and got moving.

Determined to get back on track, I went for a morning massage (gifted by my generous sister), followed by brunch with Joe, Monique and Becky at Nookies, an upscale eatery in Edgewater that I've been meaning to try. Lovely spot, good coffee, average chilaquiles. My favorite meal of the day with three of my favorite people. The stuff of birthday dreams.

Party Animals. 

After brunch, Becky dropped me off at work for a few hours. The twins had been talking about my birthday for weeks, but seemed unimpressed by the lowly birthday hats, sparkler candles and rice crispy treats I had provided. Look, dudes, if you want a swinging party, then you'd better contribute more than construction paper birthday cards with puff balls. Though they did add sparkly stickers. That was a nice touch.






After work, I went home to get ready for birthday drinks. I took my time getting dolled up (if not on your birthday, then when?). Joe said I looked beautiful. Then he made me take a few pictures of him. We headed to The Long Room, a dark and moody bar nearby that lets you bring your own food. We had packed an array of my favorite snacks to share: dolma, dubliner cheese, chocolate-covered bacon, homemade lemon-coconut bars. It was a lovely night of friends stopping by to celebrate and play a round of Cards Against Humanity.

Later at home, however, I found myself feeling a little...well...melancholy. I hate to be that guy, but I couldn't shake it, and I felt like a brat after all the sweetness my loved ones had showed me. I'd like to blame my sour mood on my rude awakening, but surely that can't be it. It's not that I resent getting older. After all, age is just a count of the number of times the earth has circled the sun since you were born. Few other astronomical occurrences get me down. Yet I felt decidedly weepy all day, despite the good times had by all. Is it all the expectations attached to such a day? What am I, seven years old again? My mom gets the birthday blues. She also manages to get Flag Day blues and Mexican Independence Day blues, so maybe that's a different story. But I did feel a little more sympathetic after my own inability to enjoy an otherwise perfect day. Whatever the reason, I sure hope this isn't the beginning of a new birthday tradition.

Briette is Still Doing Stuff.

I am still doing stuff. I swear. Stay tuned for an update, folks. It will blow your mind (probably not).