My Own Planet

Trente
In less than two weeks, I will turn 30. In Provence, no less, in keeping with my French birthday tradition. While I suspect excitement about the trip is part of it (how prescient I was when I decided to make this an official tradition 10 years ago), I am actually really looking forward to being 30. Thirties are solidly grown-up territory, and we've already established that being a grown-up is awesome. Plus, despairing about one's age seems to me a completely fruitless activity. I mean, what can you do about it, really, other than make some changes to your life going forward? On the whole, I am quite happy with my life (my commute notwithstanding), and therefore there will be no caterwauling about entering a new decade.

At 23, I was not so happy with my life (unemployment will do that to you), and so I made a list of 30 things I wanted to do by the time I turned 30. This was not so much a checklist as it was a general idea of where I wanted my life to be when I was 30. The idea was: "This is who I think I want to be; when I get there, let's see if this is who I actually am or even want to be anymore." I named the document "March 31, 2010" and squirreled it away in some obscure subfolder on my computer, willing myself not to look at it until the date on the calendar matched up with the date on the document.

And for nearly 7 years, I did not look at it. But now, for the purposes of this blog post, I'm going to cheat. It's close enough to my birthday--the fact that I got birthday stuff in the mail today from both my parents and Dave's is a testament to that fact. Besides, it's not like I'm going to go out and accomplish any of the goals I didn't get to in the next two weeks. That's not what this list was even about, anyway. So let's get to it.

1. Have a job that I love. Done! I could live without the commute, and I still dream of one day working at a magazine that people have actually heard of (though I realize my unwillingness to live in New York makes this somewhat unlikely), but I pretty much have the job that I went to school to have. That is awesome.
2. Start my own magazine. I was way too ambitious for my own good at 23. I never did start my own magazine, but I did work on two magazine launches. And I started the Saved by the Bell blog. That’s gotta count for something.
3. Be on the way to creating my multimedia empire. Waaaayyyy too ambitious for my own good.
4. Make a documentary. I made a two-minute video for my magazine’s web site a few years ago, and it nearly killed me. Plus, it was kind of bad. I’m not sure “documentarian” is my true calling.
5. Have a dog. I still love dogs, but I realized somewhere along the way that having a dog in the city means picking up poop. I am not cool with that. Someday if I live in the country, I may have a dog.
6. Own or have owned a convertible. The way this is worded makes me think I somehow knew my love of convertibles would be fleeting. Not too long after I wrote this, I bought my first car, which was not a convertible. (I couldn’t even afford a moon roof.) My goal now is to drive that car until it stops running. Or maybe get a Vespa—as far as somewhat-impractical modes of transportation go, they’re way cooler than convertibles.
7. Have had at least one very serious relationship. Done. Still doing.
8. Be as close with my best friends from college as I am now. Also done. We may not talk as much as we used to, and we may be at different places in our lives, but I know I can always turn to them for anything.
9. Have local friends who are as close and special to me as my college friends. If by “local,” you mean Birmingham (which I did at the time), then I accomplished this. If you mean D.C. (which I do now), I am well on my way to accomplishing it, thanks in large part to roller derby. Oh, and I guess it also helps that I now live in the same city as a couple of my college girlfriends.
10. Not be stressing out about marriage and kids. I think I was worried that when I turned 30, I would suddenly turn into a desperate woman who became fixated on getting married and having kids. I should’ve given myself more credit. If I have any stress about this at all, it comes from the fact that it’s now a tangible possibility, and that is kind of scary.
11. Have visited all 50 states. I’ve still got 8 to go. Truth be told, I didn’t make much progress on this goal, because I was more focused on…
12. Have visited almost all continents (Antarctica worth bonus points!). I’m not sure what I considered “almost all” at the time. I’ve been to four out of seven; I’m happy with a simple majority. (No bonus points, though. Honestly, Antarctica isn’t high on my travel list anyway—it’s cold and expensive to get to, which are two pretty big strikes in my book.)
13. Get at least one freelance story published. Done. Though again, none of them have been in magazines people have ever heard of.
14. Have gone to graduate school for something other than journalism. The further I got away from school, the less I wanted to go back. I think I was searching for that community atmosphere I cherished at college, and once I found that elsewhere, I realized that the “school” part of school wasn’t that much fun.
15. Have my students loans almost if not all the way paid off. Yeah, I don’t know how I thought I was going to do this and go to grad school. I do have one loan nearly paid off, but the other is still looming pretty large. However, this is the only debt I have, so I’m pretty happy about that.
16. Have a home that I absolutely love. I’m sure when I wrote this, I envisioned myself owning a house, but that hasn’t happened yet. Which is fine. I still love the home I live in…most of the time.
17. Be happy with my weight. Yes. Well, there’s this one pair of pants that I bought on clearance at Anthropologie, even though they were a little tight ($10 pants at Anthropologie! You do not pass that up! Ever!), and I would like to be able to wear them someday. But on the whole, I am happy with my body. Roller derby deserves some credit for this as well.
18. Go on a real road trip. Done. It was the first Excellent Adventure, and it spawned many more Excellent Adventures to follow.
19. Live in a place where I can have my piano. Hmm…I guess there’s probably room for the piano somewhere in my current house, but I’d rather wait until I own a place before I go to the trouble of moving it from Kentucky.
20. Become better at playing the piano. I think this was pretty dependent on accomplishing goal #19.
21. Not settle for anything less than the perfect bathtub. Ha! I don’t even have a bathtub now (only a shower). And I don’t really mind. I think this was less about taking baths (although at the time I wrote this, I did have the perfect bathtub and was really into taking baths), and more about never living in another generic cookie-cutter apartment like my first one in Birmingham. Which I haven’t.
22. Sing at a jazz club. It’s not a jazz club, but I had a chance to sing at the airport, and I chickened out. Too bad—I could’ve killed with my rendition of “I’ve Got a Crush on You.”
23. Not puke, possibly achieving world record for longest time without puking. An unfortunate New Year’s Eve wiped out this goal less than a year after I made it. But I have not puked since then. And now, inspired by How I Met Your Mother, I can use the tagline “Vomit Free Since ’03.”
24. Become better at confronting people. Nah, I still pretty much suck at this. But roller derby is helping me be a little bit more aggressive. (Thank God I discovered derby before I turned 30, huh?)
25. Not be living paycheck to paycheck. I’m not sure if I can consider this goal fully accomplished, but I’m definitely better about managing my money than I was at 23.
26. Know how to take care of my car. Not really. I should probably take a class on this. Most of what I’ve learned about car care has been gleaned through (usually not positive) experience. I still mostly feel like an idiot when talking to mechanics.
27. Be able to clearly identify what I consider my greatest achievement. What?! I’m not sure why I put this on the list. Nor can I actually identify my greatest achievement.
28. Not have changed in any fundamental way on the inside. This is another head-scratcher. In what fundamental way (presumably for the worse) did I imagine myself changing? Whatever it was, it did not come to fruition.
29. Be able to find this list. Yay! (I was really having trouble coming up with things toward the end of the list, as I recall.)
30. Have achieved at least one of these goals (other than finding this list). Not counting these last two, I have accomplished 12 of my goals (I’m counting the continents and paycheck-to-paycheck as good enough), which is pretty awesome. And the ones I accomplished are the substantial ones, like maintaining good relationships, having a great home and job, and being better at managing my money. (Plus, I haven’t changed in any fundamental way on the inside! Whatever that means.) There will be plenty of time to visit more states, refine my piano skills and sing in jazz clubs in my thirties.

You didn't think I forgot about the Golden Globes, did you?
Actually, you probably did, given what a lax blogger I have become. And yeah, I know I'm a day late and a dollar short, but you know what? So were the Globes this year. (Well, not a day late, technically. They were on the same day they always are, but you know what I mean.) The mere fact that they added a host is an indication of this precipitous quality drop. Sure, if you must have a host, I suppose Ricky Gervais isn't a bad one to get (though I would have pushed for the inclusion of Karl Pilkington as co-host, personally), but the point is that the Golden Globes don't need a host. They're supposed to be entertaining enough on their own. Ricky Gervais was way funnier last year when he brought his beer onstage and told Kate Winslet, "I told you you'd win an Oscar if you did a Nazi movie." Am I right?

Around here, we won't be bucking tradition quite so flagrantly. So without further ado, here are this year's highlights and lowlights:

-Apparently a few of the guests (ahem, Mariah Carey and Christina Hendricks) misread the invitation. "Golden Globes" is the name of the event, ladies, not the dress code.

-It would be really awesome if I had someone to follow me around and hold an umbrella over my head while I gave interviews and posed for pictures (because I do that so much). It would be even more awesome if that person were Joshua Jackson.

-Julia Roberts clearly had already started hitting the champagne in the limo. Or perhaps in the makeup chair. Or possibly even with her cereal.

-Taylor Lautner is quite a well-spoken young man. That sentence officially makes me old.

-Courteney Cox's plastic surgery seems to have gotten...better. Is that even possible?

-I have no idea who Jennifer Morrison is (IMDB tells me she's on House. Thanks, IMDB!), but I am sort of in love with her dress. It reminds me a little bit of the Carrie Bradshaw dust bunny dress that I fell in love with a few years ago. I saw a tiny glimpse of it on the pre-show split-screen (during which I thought she might be January Jones, yet knew she was not January Jones, having already seen January Jones in her funereal ensemble), and then didn't see her again all night and was driven crazy until I could look up the red carpet pictures the next morning.

-Anna Kendrick's dress, on the other hand, gave the illusion that she had been stuffed into a very sparkly gift bag.

-Ahhhh! The Neil Patrick Harris Conundrum strikes again! Although at least this year he lost to a guy who once shilled for Campbell's Soup, so his odds seem to be improving.

-Let me just say that I can certainly appreciate a good beard on the right man. However, neither George Clooney nor Jon Hamm is the right man for a beard. Is it too much to ask that these two remain clean-shaven and dapper at all times? This was almost as disappointing as the ill-conceived host addition. Oh, Golden Globes.

Top 10 Years of the Decade
First things first: I must confess that I totally stole this idea from Dave. When he told me that he was planning to do a list of his top 10 years of the decade, I laughed and said, "But aren't there only 10 to choose from?" He looked at me pointedly until I finally got the point--that it's all about ranking the years from best to worst. Once I figured that out, I was sold. So here we go:

10. 2007 As I've mentioned here before, 2007 was pretty much the worst year ever. It seemed like there was hardly a month that wasn't marked by the death of a friend, family member, friend of a family member, or family member of a friend. Plus, my house was invaded by mice, Dave and I broke up, I took on new responsibilities that made my once-perfect job suddenly hellacious, and I developed a case of chronic hives. The lone bright spot was that I finally got to realize my dream of going to Thailand--but since I didn't get there until October, I spent most of the year desperately yearning to go to Thailand. Let's hope the next decade doesn't have a year like this in store for me (although I wouldn't argue with another trip to Thailand).

9. 2002 Ah, the year when I wanted to do nothing but watch Reality Bites in an endless loop, so accurately did it mirror my life. While most of my friends transitioned easily from college to awesome jobs or internships, I spent most of the year trying to get someone--anyone!--to hire me. After a few dozen false starts, I finally hit the jackpot and landed interviews for 11 different internships at Southern Progress in Birmingham. Unfortunately, the folks at SPC weren't so enthusiastic about hiring me for an actual job, and I ended the year unemployed and under even more stress (and pressure from my parents) than when I began it. Reality bites, indeed.

8. 2003 The first couple months of 2003 were merely a continuation of the pain of 2002, during which I found myself desperately seeking my first real post-college job. That pain was dulled by March; unfortunately, by the end of the year, said job had gone from a promising springboard to a dead-end nightmare. On the plus side, I got a new car--but only after my old car put me through some pretty harrowing paces, including a complete breakdown at a stoplight in a not-so-nice part of town. This was also the year that Bri and I founded the Saved by the Bell Blog--because we were so bored at work that we needed something to occupy our time. All in all, 2003 was a pretty tumultuous roller coaster of a year.

7. 2005 Compared to the fairly treacherous years preceding it on this countdown, 2005 wasn't so bad. Except that I was starting to see the cracks in my second job (most notably, a tortuously manipulative co-worker who made the porn-watching boss from my previous job look like a saint) and spent pretty much the entire year nursing an agonizing crush on a friend who lived three states away. (Though December marked our first official date, so the year did end on a good note.)

6. 2008 Another year of ups and downs, although they were, on the whole, much milder than the ones I experienced in 2003. I spent the first half of the year trying to numb the pain of my break-up with expensive shoes and exciting trips, which probably wasn't as great an idea as I thought it was at the time. I reluctantly took on a new role at work, and the transition proved to be a little rough. By the end of the year, though, everything had pretty much smoothed out (perhaps aided by copious pub-quiz beers).

5. 2001 When you kick off a year by appearing on a game show, how bad can the rest of it possibly be? For me, 2001 will always be encapsulated in a few banner events: appearing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, taking two of my favorite classes at college (Jacqui Banaszynski's Intermediate Writing and Scott Fosdick's Critical Reviewing), and September 11. Eh, two out of three ain't bad.

4. 2009 As the song goes: "Roller derby saved my soul." All right, I guess that's a bit dramatic, but it's no secret that my new hobby has seriously impacted my life. I've learned to love team sports (though I'm still pretty sure this is the only one I'll ever really want to play), learned to be more assertive both on and off the track, and, most important, have met a ton of amazing people I probably wouldn't have known otherwise. This year has had its difficult moments, to be sure (namely, being forced to take a pay cut at work and moving into a group house after several years of living alone), but both of these actually ended up being positive changes. Add that to the derby and some awesome trips (Spain/Portugal and Iceland/Norway), and you've got a pretty good year indeed.

3. 2000 I might have rung in the millennium lamely (dinner with friends at Applebee's, then hanging out with my parents), but the first year of the decade was anything but boring. In February, I set out for my semester in London, where I promptly fell in love with both the city and one of my professors, then conquered western Europe, one sketchy hostel at a time. My three-month tenure abroad wasn't entirely blemish-free--there was the misguided all-night clubbing adventure, as well as the misguided overnight bus to Ireland adventure--but hey, even those make great stories now. I came home to the worst summer job I've ever had, but it was merely a brief interlude between my European shenanigans and some truly memorable Team 243 moments in our cute new apartment back in Columbia.

2. 2006 At the beginning of 2006, I consulted a Magic 8-Ball to see if it would be a good year, and it told me (repeatedly) that it would not. Well, it was wrong. 2006 was a great year, mostly because it was a year of exciting new things: new job, new relationship, new city. And while it was sad to leave some of the old things behind (mostly the old friendships--I was pretty much over the old job and the old city by that point), I desperately needed that fresh start.

1. 2004 When I first started thinking about creating this list, I never imagined that I'd put 2004 in the top spot. In fact, I figured it would fall somewhere near the bottom. It was, after all, the year in which I experienced one of the most traumatic events in my life to date: losing my job. And yet, as Hilary Swank foretold, that traumatic event ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. Nearly everything I love about my life now--my career, my relationship, even roller derby--can in some way be traced back to that pivotal moment. Plus, 2004 was the year that Bri and I went on our first Excellent Adventure, totally unaware that our mutual wanderlust would land us on three more continents together by the time the decade was over. Yes, there have been happier years than 2004, but no other year this decade has been quite so influential on my life as a whole.

Nice try, but no
Crate and Barrel has a series of ads in the Metro right now that feature a shot of an opened Crate and Barrel gift (a cappuccino maker, shiny plates, throw pillows) next to a person reacting ecstatically (screaming with joy, kissing one's spouse, embracing one's child) to said gift. And I'm sorry, but no. Crate and Barrel is a perfectly fine store if you need, say, some white dishes or a gray sofa. In fact, pretty much the whole premise of the store is that it's a place to stock up on the basics--otherwise they probably would've called it something less utilitarian than "Crate and Barrel." It is not, however, the kind of place where you can buy a gift that would inspire such an exuberant reaction. I refuse to believe that anyone could summon that much excitement about throw pillows, and I say that as a person who really likes throw pillows.

So what kind of gifts do inspire such an ecstatic reaction? Try the water bottle Holly gave me the other night, which she had custom-printed with my roller derby name and my team logo. I actually screamed with glee and hugged her after I pulled it out of the box. Take that, Crate and Barrel.

Chillin' with the Obamas
In the last year or so, the Obamas and I have developed quite the after-hours friendship. By "after hours," I mean roughly the hours between midnight and 7:30 a.m., during which I am alseep. (As are the Obamas, it appears, given that the lights at the White House were off when I drove by at midnight the other night.)

Ever since I was given the task of packing up their family photos, the Obamas have continued to reach out to me in my dreams. A few months back, Barack attended a birthday party for my sister at the community swimming pool in our hometown (my subconscious apparently forgot that my sister's birthday falls in the swimming-unfriendly month of February), and last night, I was hanging out with both Barack and Michelle prior to some sort of press conference/town hall meeting event. We were having a lovely chat about health-care reform when Barack was called away for his appearance. "I want to continue this conversation," he told me as he got up from the couch where I was wedged between him and Michelle. "Give me a call next week." At this point, it suddenly dawned on me that I'd been chatting with the leader of the free world, and therefore probably couldn't just dial his direct line. Of course, by the time I tried to communicate this to him, he was already gone, so Michelle invited me to join them for a dinner party the following week at their house in McLean. (Apparently the dream-Obamas think the White House is way too ostentatious for a family residence, so they actually live in a nice little black-shuttered white Colonial in northern Virginia.)

I can only hope that the "Obama dinner party" episode is next in line in this little show my subconscious is putting on, because that's going to be a fun one. Plus, I didn't get the chance last night to invite Michelle and the girls to one of my roller-derby bouts.*

*This is an actual goal of mine, but sadly, I am not as tight with the Obamas in real life. The closest I've come was while passing out flyers at a Georgetown movie theater where Malia happened to be seeing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. My league-mate, Raptor, tried to get a flyer in the hands of her Secret Service agent when she came out of the theater, but he turned her down flat. Back to the drawing board.

These boots were made for walkin'
Much like my ongoing search for the perfect lip gloss, I am also on a never-ending quest for the perfect knee-high black boot. The last time I undertook this endeavor was in college; the trial lasted at least a year or two (during which I compensated by borrowing Diana's size-too-small, heel-too-high boots, which my feet did not appreciate) before I finally happened upon a pair of pleather Esprit riding boots, which I purchased online for around $40. Scarred by this tribulation, I proceeded to wear those boots for eight more years, which is probably about six or seven years longer than one should be able to wear a pair of $40 pleather boots. It wasn't until last winter, when I noticed they were literally coming apart at the seams, that I had to admit defeat and prepare to start the search over again.

Fortunately, online shopping has evolved tremendously in the years since I bought my last boots, so I could undertake the expedition entirely from the comfort of my office. I initially had my heart set on another pair of Frye boots, but as much as I tried to justify the $350 price tag with cost-per-wear calculations, I just couldn't do it. (Side note: The whole cost-per-wear theory always reminds me of one of my favorite British TV shows, "She's Gotta Have It," which was entirely about shopping. They did a whole show once on the cost-per-wear theory, which involved the host going into high-end stores like Karen Millen and buying expensive items and having the following exchange with the sales clerks: "Cost for this leather jacket?" "£250." "Cost per wear?" "2p!" As if.)

Anyway, with the Frye boots out of the running, I decided to go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and look for the cheapest boots I could find and make do with them for a year or two while saving up for the Fryes. I found a pair of faux-suede over the knee boots for $70, which the reviews assured me looked way more expensive than they were. And yeah, from a distance maybe they did, but they felt cheap as hell. It was time to have a serious talking-to with myself. "Self," I said, "you are almost 30. It's time to stop wearing fake-leather boots." And so the fake boots went back.

Finally, I decided it was time for a compromise. I definitely wanted real leather or suede boots, but there were plenty of options out there that did not cost $350. I managed to zero in on two pairs of $170 Nine West boots, one of which was very similar to the pair I had just chucked, and one that had an interesting button detail on the side. I ordered them both, and last night staged a boot fashion show to determine which pair I should keep. After much pacing around the basement to determine which pair was more comfortable, plus a lengthy consultation with my roommate Kelly on the various pros and cons of each pair, the tide had pretty much tipped in favor of the button ones. But just to be sure, I logged onto Endless.com one more time to re-read the reviews for each boot--and discovered that the button boots had been marked down by 50 percent! Thanks to Endless.com's 14-day price match guarantee, that meant a 50-percent refund for me, bringing the cost of my new boots down to $85. ("Cost per wear?" "44 cents!")

And so, another boot search has ended happily. Plus, I now have eight more years to save up for those Fryes.

Ouch.
When you play roller derby, you expect that you'll rack up your fair share of injuries along the way: the everyday bumps and bruises, maybe a fractured collarbone, broken ankle or busted lip here or there. When you're being slammed into repeatedly by 50 other girls on an almost-daily basis, it kind of comes with the territory. But in my 9 months of playing this sport, I've encountered a whole new set of injuries, one that only affects a very small subset of the derby population, by which I mean me. I call these "the moronic injuries of a klutzy rollergirl." So far they include:

-Snapping myself in the eyeball with the elastic band of the helmet panty.

-Getting a metal splinter embedded into my thumb when attempting to reattach a toe stop.

-And, just last night, spraining my thumb while getting up from a fall.

I've been fortunate enough not to have sustained any injuries so far that necessitate ambulances or doctor's visits (and I hope this good fortune will continue, at least until Obama gets this whole health-care mess sorted out), but I'm guessing that the injuries detailed above might hurt worse than the big ones, thanks to the double blow to my pride. Plus, you can't get painkillers for sprained thumbs.