Category Archives: friends who blog

Old-Timey Tuesday: A little older, a little kookier

Posted on January 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

January 3, 2004, Atlanta, Georgia/January 4, 2013, New York, New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although slightly belated, this post had to happen once I came across the picture on the left earlier tonight. That was taken at Abby‘s 21st birthday shindig at her parents’ house lo those many years ago. At right, we have a picture taken roughly three weeks ago up in New York at Abby’s 30th birthday bash. What a difference nine years makes, huh? (A camera flash that doesn’t wash us out helps too.)

BONUS: Check out what Abby instagrammed in honor of our 25 years together:

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Posted in friends, friends who blog, grown-up stuff, nerdery, nostalgia, occasions, Old-Timey Tuesday

Old-Timey Tuesday: Shootin’ the Hooch

Posted on August 21, 2012 | Leave a comment

Atlanta, Georgia, July 2002

Floating down the Chattahoochee River, also known as “shooting the ‘Hooch,” is a beloved summer pastime here in Atlanta. Basically, you round up some buddies, rent a massive raft, take a cooler full of beer along and drift down the river for a couple hours. (Canoes are an acceptable alternative for smaller outings.) On sunny, not-too-hot weekends the river is slammed with ‘Hooch shooters, kayakers and even some fishermen (who surely must land the occasional three-eyed fish).

This was taken the summer after my freshman year of college — ten years ago now — which was one of those rare summers when many, if not most, people from high school were back home for the break. Here we are attempting to deflate the raft at the end of our journey. (I’m in the middle back with the old-man fishing hat on.) Ah, to be a summering college student again…

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Posted in Atlanta, friends who blog, nostalgia, Old-Timey Tuesday, things southern

(non) nerd alert!

Posted on May 30, 2012 | 7 Comments

As anybody who kills time on the internet surely knows, the trailer for the movie version of “Les Miserables” hit the web today. If I had a dollar for every giddy post I saw about it in my Facebook feed, I could have covered our delicious Chick-fil-A dinners tonight, plus milkshakes. (Hey, it’s something.) I dutifully watched it at my desk, and, well… here’s the thing. I have a confession to make:

I have never seen “Les Miserables.”

Yes, I was a music major in college; yes, I was a borderline theater nerd in high school (full-on choir nerd, for sure); yes, I consider myself a lover of musicals. And yet! Somehow I managed to completely miss “Les Miz.” I’m pretty sure this disqualifies me from being a true musical theater nerd. (My hetero lifemate, Abby, is perhaps the most committed of this kind. Anywhere she encounters satellite radio — rental cars, her mom’s car — she turns it to the Broadway station and doesn’t give anyone a choice about it. Thus I have yet to experience the joy of Pearl Jam Radio.)

There are, of course, such inescapable tunes as “On My Own,” (most memorably performed by Joey Potter), “Stars” and “Bring Him Home.” I’ve heard them, but I couldn’t even sing you one of them in its entirety. I think my older sister knows the show, which has me puzzled as to how I missed it when so much of what she was into trickled down to me. My theory is that I was stuck on “Cats” and the golden age of Disney Classics for the better part of my childhood.

All of this is to say that, while I will happily pick apart the vocal abilities of any and all actors involved, I don’t have any stake in or point of reference for the casting decisions, which I gather are and will continue to be a topic of hot debate. I may or may not go see the film; I’m indifferent. If we were talking about a movie remake of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” though, I’d be all over it.

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Posted in friends who blog, music, nerdery, pop culture

Last weekend, briefly, in photos

Posted on April 6, 2012 | 3 Comments

I’m a bit behind here (and in life in general), but last weekend was so delightful that I couldn’t go too long without sharing some photos. Here’s the rundown:

After work last Friday I packed up an overnight bag and headed to the mountains to celebrate with the high school gang the first of my best friends turning 30. There was a homemade photobooth, personalized cocktail napkins and delicious carrot cake the first night; day two entailed famous local barbecue, party games aplenty and another mini birthday fete. Sunday I was up with the sun to get back to town for church, and we closed out the weekend at another non-birthday shindig that afternoon — Otto tagged along for a playdate. Enjoy!

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Posted in excellent munchables, friends, friends who blog, HUZZAH, nerdery, pets, things southern

Old-Timey Tuesday: Ich liebe es

Posted on March 13, 2012 | 1 Comment

Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, October 2003
All this singing in German I’ve been doing lately has me seriously nostalgic for the days of study abroad. Well, that and my friend Amanda’s (pictured above) awesome blog chronicling her second round of adventures in Germany.

I also recently discovered that one of the ASO cellists did his master’s degree in Freiburg, so I introduced myself during intermission of our concert on Saturday and we compared notes on what was around in 1993 (him) vs. 2003 (me). One of his favorite haunts was a Brauhaus across from Martinstor (Martin’s Gate), which is also known as as McDonaldstor because someone decided to build a McDonald’s restaurant into the medieval city gate. All of that made me think of this photo, which was taken at that very McDonald’s.

At this point we had been in Germany for just about two months and had learned to brave the hordes of Big Mac-begeistert Freiburgers and hit up McDonald’s when we were craving cheap American treats like milkshakes or fried apple pies, because the Germans just couldn’t get them right. This was one of those nights.

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Posted in friends who blog, nostalgia, Old-Timey Tuesday, things German, travel

… and one to grow on!

Posted on January 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

(This photo brought to you by The Limited Too.)

Happy birthday to my hetero lifemate!

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Posted in friends who blog, nerdery, nostalgia, style

Old-Timey Tuesday: Ski Buddies

Posted on January 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

Vail, Colorado, March 1990

You’ve seen her on here many times before, but tomorrow is my original other half’s birthday — the big 2-9! — so please enjoy this classic spring break photo of us in her honor. We were clearly the most stylish kids on the slopes that year.

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Posted in friends who blog, nerdery, nostalgia, Old-Timey Tuesday, travel, wearables

Old-Timey Tuesday: Thanksgiving in Scotland

Posted on November 22, 2011 | 5 Comments

St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, November 26-30, 2003

My friend Krista went to college all four years at St. Andrews in Scotland, so the year that I was abroad in Germany, I made plans to hop up to the U.K. to visit her for Thanksgiving. At some point in the summer or fall, five of our other best friends from home decided they’d come to Scotland for Thanksgiving as well. Thanksgiving is HUGE in Scotland! Or not at all, but it was a great excuse for a trip. Today’s Old-Timey Tuesday is a brief photo essay of that visit…

Above, the invitation. Krista also mailed each of us a travel packet with a detailed calendar, packing tips, directions, a treasure map and a bus schedule. The cover page read thusly:

An American Thanksgiving in Scotland!

Starring:
Josephine as the paranoid traveler
Lindsay as her able traveling companion
Mary Jacob as the one emerging from the bubble
Abby as the usual world traveler
George as the only boy per usual
Kathleen as the German
and
Krista as the hostess

Here’s the gang from home (minus Josephine, who was under the weather) drinking enormous White Russians at Ma Bells the day before Thanksgiving. Apparently we had just missed Prince William there — doh!

The next day, Krista started turkey prep.

Which George took over later when it was time to carve it. (I seem to remember we cooked it with the bag of giblets or whatever still inside… oops.)

As you can see, we were cooking for a crowd. I think we ended up with more than 20 people in this tiny flat. In fact, if you wanted to get from one side of the room to the other, you had to crawl under the table. We decorated the paper tablecloth with classic American hand-turkeys; George and Tammy gave theirs a kilt.

Here’s the whole Atlanta contingent after dinner (wreckage in the foreground). On the far right is another high school classmate who went to St. Andrews for college who was among the ginormous group Krista and her flatmates hosted.

Another thing we did with the paper tablecloth was play MASH. Here, MJ explains the game to Ali the Scotsman. From the looks of it, MJ was going to marry her college boyfriend in a dookie-colored wedding dress, live in a mansion, have three kids, drive a BMW and be a lunch lady. I also found the piece of tablecloth that my round was on: I was predicted to marry Rodney (a guy from high school choir) in a white dress, honeymoon in Italy, live in an apartment in Greenwich, Conn., have two kids, drive a Winnebago and be a famous person. None of these things have come to pass.

The day after Thanksgiving, we all packed up and headed to Edinburgh for a few days — everybody was departing at different times, so it was easier to be near the airport. Here we are waiting for the train in St. Andrews.

When we got to Edinburgh, we did some sightseeing. It was quite windy out.

We stayed in the lovely Castle Rock Hostel there and were assigned a dorm where the beds were named after kinds of underwear:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We kicked around Edinburgh for a day or two and then said our goodbyes after our ridiculously fun holiday together. It was the first and only time I’d been away from my family on Thanksgiving; I still remember calling Grandma and Grandpa’s house from the phone in Krista’s cramped kitchen and being passed around to all the relatives on the other end of the line. I certainly missed being in East Tennessee, but subbing in my best friends and a charming Scottish setting for the usual (and beloved) routine was the best possible alternative.

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Posted in family, friends who blog, holidays, nostalgia, Old-Timey Tuesday, travel

Pictures of Halloweens past

Posted on October 31, 2011 | 4 Comments

Happy Halloween! Normally this isn’t an old-timey day, but there are just too many funny old pictures to not do this when I have the excuse. I did a quick browse of some of dad’s photo boxes at my parents’ house on Friday and pulled some of these shots; the others I had in my own archive. This is by no means a complete history — that would have required a lot more digging. Here we go!

We begin in 1985. That paper plate I’m holding up is in fact a mask (homemade), and we have a famous family video of me with it singing “Who’s behind that false face?” — only it comes out more like falsh fashe. A true classic.

Same year, headed out for treats.

Probably the same year? High school folks, note that Pressly is the building in the background, which means Grandpa is parked somewhere on Love Patio. (Come to think of it, if this is 1985 still, it predates Broyles by a few years.) Everybody, note how ridiculously cute I am.

I think this is 1986. That menacing pumpkin face seems to be an old standby through the years… way to mix things up, dad.

This must be 1987, and I can only assume that this was somebody else’s really intense ballet recital tutu.

Aaand let’s skip right ahead to the mid-’90s! Couldn’t easily find photos of the interim, but I can tell you that it involved many a black cat costume. This is Halloween of 1996 (eighth grade), and I was obviously not prepared for it. In fact, I think all three of us worked out of our closets on this one. I’m a devil, in (borrowed) red sweatpants, a polo and devil horns purchased at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. After we were done going door-to-door that evening, we hopped over to a carnival at Mary Elizabeth’s church; I took off my horns and told people I was dressed as a chili pepper.

Four years later — my senior year of high school — Abby, Tricia and I went for the devil thing again, with a bit of vampire and eurotrash mixed in. Krista was a flamenco dancer. We didn’t so much trick-or-treat as drive around to a friends’ houses and hang out. (During the day at school I dressed as Wayne.)

For Halloween 2003 I was in Germany, where Halloween was juuuust starting to be a thing locals paid attention to. A bunch of kids from my study abroad program went over to this giant international student dorm that had a giant warehouse of a club for its Halloween party. Without my dress-up clothes handy, I fell back on the ol’ construction-paper-and-bobby-pins devil horns. Amanda was a Magic 8-ball, auf Deutsch.

Last but not least, we come to 2004, which was the last time I dressed up for Halloween before this weekend. Maybe I unconsciously took a break because I thought this getup would be hard to top. I’m wearing a totally legit dirndl I bought in a secondhand shop in Freiburg with a funny dirndl shirt purchased in Munich and an apron my mom whipped up and mailed to me. Like any good beer maid, I’ve got pretzels and a Maßkrug at the ready. Also pictured: my roommates Napoleon Dynamite, ’80s Girl, and Jenna Bush. Here’s a bonus pic of me and Tyler, my friend who studied in Freiburg with me and also went the traditional-German-garb route, because we make such a cute pair of Bavarians:

And with that, I’ll wrap up this walk down memory lane. As soon as I have photos from this weekend’s festivities, I’ll post a few and tell you all about it.

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Posted in family, friends who blog, holidays, nerdery, nostalgia

Old-Timey Tuesday: high school musical

Posted on September 28, 2011 | 3 Comments

Kellett Theatre green room, Atlanta, Georgia, Fall 2000

While I’m on the topic of Oktoberfest, I thought I’d pull out this beaut from my senior year of high school, since my buddies and I are all wearing dirndl-ish things. Ah, the joys of rental costumes! Actually, as I recall, we were always quite excited for costume-delivery day — except for the time we did The Sound of Music; nuns’ habits are not so thrilling. These were our getups for Brigadoon. This is totally what people in magical disappearing Scottish villages wore, right?

So, the skirt-and-dirndly-vest combos were amusing and all, but the best part was that we got to wear wigs, because the four of us had hair that was deemed too short for, I dunno, 19th-century Scotland. Clearly, wigs were a necessity. We actually named them all, though at the moment I can only remember that mine was called Swiss Miss, for obvious reasons, and Abby’s (far right) was Fancy Free, a name always accompanied by a lusty whinny. We decided that Tricia’s (the side braid situation) was totally ’80s, and Katharine’s (left) was just green.

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Posted in friends who blog, nerdery, Old-Timey Tuesday, style, Whaa?