Presidio, Bachelorette, the Wedding and the Long Way Home

This is taking a long time to write it all down. Anyway the Presidio is enormous and beautiful. Just before the main highway it's an oasis of terra cotta stone in a beautiful Greco Roman style. An open air groinal vault reaches up into the sky on Corinthian pillars. Water is every where and so are swans and photo ops. A man playing a flute made the place sounded haunted in pure sweet sunshine and Sam and I loved it. It was like a break from my tendency to GO GO GO! She's brilliant for suggesting it.

An hour or so later we were off to the bachelorette and feeling fine, comfortable and serene. Almost like budhist monks except that I'm evil and Sam's mean. Heather's friends were acceptable, although they made fun of our accents. We made faces at them. But among them was one who is like me: Liz-art student. Instant bond. She had hair that was red streaked blonde and her shirt had a great art ref on it: This is Not a Spoon. Look it up.

We went for pizza. It was nowhere near as good as Lorenzo's on South Street but it was deep dish and salty as all hell. We ate like pizza queens. I felt bad for the waitresses though, because one got a slice with a lil bit too much cheese and got dubbed, 'The Cheese Stealer' for the rest of the time. And then we were off to the bachelorette. Sadly for the stripper we didn't have enough time to get loaded before he started the body shots game. Someone ask me for the pictures. I have no shame. But because of my booty, my ass is always showing. Damn you denim companies!

We drank and played penis pinyata. I'm worried about the groom now. And pin the cucumber on the stripper. lol. Entertaining as hell. Until 5:30 am when the Heather came down the stairs and woke us all up to scream, "WHY IS THERE WINE ALL OVER THE FLOOR?" I would have said, "Why isn't there wine all over the floor coz it's hot in here!" Anyway...

We went to the beach while everyone else got it together for the rehersal dinner. Liz and her boy Damien drove us there. Unlike the Jersey shore, the ocean was light blue and beautiful. We climbed down stairs carved out of the hill side to a dark sanded beach. It was cold but I hit the water. Unfortunately again unlike NJ you can't go out far or the currents will take you to Japan. I didn't want to leave. The sky was beautiful, the waves were coming in and the view was amazing as all hell. A huge melencholy hit me when I left the beack like when I leave all beaches.

We hit a graveyard to look for ghosts and didn't find any. Rehersal dinner was boring. And the night was the best part. I got to stay up half the night with Colin the groom. We're friends from the 'net and it was fun to play games (Sam beat us at everything then went to bed.) and talk to him.

And then it was the Wedding day... Beautiful wedding. Bad music until the 80's came back in style. I signed the guestbook under duress and danced. Sam took pictures and enjoyed the wine. Ha. And then I had to give a toast... Good God. Introduce the bride and groom and then this is what happens. Bad enough they're getting married... :P
My toast as I could remember it: "I'm here on behalf of the internet. Something something...(I was nervous!) and I can't believe my friend Heather from Ca, is marrying my friend Colin from MD and my friend Patrick from Canada are here to see it." Prolly a lil more um, eloquent.

Then we got lost on the way home. We saw the sign for San Jose 30 times and now we know the way but we never ever got there. It took an hour and a half to get to the hotel. We were screaming at one another and shaking and exhausted. We went over the Bay Bridge twice. We asked several people for directions and they laughed at us. So we couldn't do anything but rest and pray for morning.

But hell, we had a good time.

A Makeover World!

Are you ugly, tired, sick, poor, over worked, unappreciated, do kids make fun of you at school? Do people make fun of you at work? Are you missing teeth or hair or an eye? Is there something unique about your features that people point at and laugh? Well don't cry! Don't worry, or sit at home depressed because you are an individual. Makeovers are here!

Home Delivery, Life & Style, Maury, Jerry Springer, A Makeover Story, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and even shows based on fixing your mental health will dress you for success and make you look just like everybody else. Isn't that what you want? You want the right hair, the right clothes, the right makeup for right now. Everyone does. And everyone can get it from magazines to TV everyone is offering you a makeover.

But do makeovers really fix depression? Do they make your life better? Do they fix relationship problems, make kids at school like you or stop people from pointing and laughing at you? And more importantly, do you want so much emphasis placed on your outer appearance that something like changing your makeup will solve everything?

What happens the next day when you put your work uniform back on and wash the nice glossy paint off your face? Are you that better person the makeover made you look like? I would guess it's the hairstylist effect. You go to the hair dresser's and you get the best cut and style you've ever seen and no matter how much moose or gel or blow drying you do, you can never get that look back again. So now you still have the problems but now you also have this image in your mind of what you could look like if you were someone else. If only I were someone who didn't have kids getting in the way of my fashionable looks and need to buy $80 pants... I would be so happy!

Maybe some people were just misguided. They liked stripes with polka dots. They looked a little weird but they were their own person. Now, they're slick and beautiful in a socially acceptable way. The makeover bleached the originality out of them. Do they ever buy them new clothes with their stripes? Their boldness? Home Delivery seems to think every girl should be dressed in pink and every boy needs to be dressed in blue. A Makeover Story seems to think high heels are the only shoes a woman is allowed to wear. Who gave them the right to decide?

It's shallow. It's letting people perpetuate the belief that everything a person has is in how they dress and what they own. A child with one eye shouldn't have to get a fake eye so the other children will leave her alone. There's nothing wrong with her. There is however something wrong with those other children. They don't understand how hurtful they're being. Why not explain to them that they are being hurtful and give them a chance to know that little girl as a person? Or the women with no hair or skin diseases... they don't need to be changed! We need to change the way we look at them!

If someone is clean and dressed by their own personal standards, they should be encouraged to be themselves. They should not be pressed by friends and families to bow to fashion and be as pretty as everyone else... Everyone likes art, not everyone likes Picasso. It's the same with fashion and what we watch on TV and what activities we do or like, they're all different. So let's exalt the original! Wear neon like you did in the 80's! If you like it, it's you and it's fine.

Be you!

And don't get me started on how they treat people who aren't model thin...

Focus on the inside! And I know we all like to watch makeovers, so that's not going to stop, but maybe we could watch mental makeovers instead. Free your mind from conventional fashion and be as unconventionally beautiful as your personality and intelligence can make you.

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