Hey look, my vanity is up 10%

You won't see me around here anymore. I'm posting at maggiefranz.com. Update your Google Readers, twins. And Marion.

Vegas

I went to Vegas with SLC friends for Memorial Day. I took one picture. So that's exactly how successful my new year's resolutions have been.

The last day was probably the best. Once we figured out we didn't belong on the strip (don't you like my cardigan?), we kept it real and went to a dollar theater with free refills on popcorn.

Deciding on dinner was almost better than the movie. I kept a list of our restrictions that grew by the minute by one or more of us:

+No Mexican
+No Asian (the entire continent and all of its influences)
+No chains
+Nothing on the Strip
+No burgers
+Good salad
+No breakfast
+No F words
+No Italian
+Nothing too fast
+Sit down
+Nothing recommended by a local (too hard to find)
+No tapas
But really anywhere is fine.

Every list of restrictions will be concluded with that caveat. I said it at least three times. We ended up eating at Settebellos, which is delicious, and where the only other location can conveniently be found in Salt Lake City, and has probably been enjoyed by all of us within the last few months. But it was the right thing to do.

Porta-Nap

I just got back from Vegas—more on that later—but because I took the Red Eye home last night, I justified finally buying one of these (mine says Las Vegas on the back. Swanky.):

I shamelessly took this self portrait in the walkway for a visual because I have no idea what to call it. And I don't think anyone else does either. It's the only justifiable reason for every American not owning one. That and they are only sold at airports and for a small fortune. Fortunately I bought mine at a shop called Everything $10 (I love a no-nonsense store), and was able to communicate via sign language what I was searching for. As it turns out, the universal sign for "I'm choking" and "I want to travel in comfort" are remarkably similar. And equally as effective. I walked out of the store ten dollars poorer, equipped with a no-hands pillow that's like wearing a bed at all times. My connecting flight was delayed twice, and our gate changed once. No problem!

Head tilt. 

I'm already asleep.

I got home an hour ago and I'm still wearing it. Little do you know, I've taken a nap three times in the duration of this post. I considered wearing it to bed tonight, but I feel wrong about that in the same way I feel wrong about mini hot dogs wrapped in bacon. So I'll just save it for travel and longish lines at the grocery store.

Hat Tip

Bethany is one of those friends who any time she opens her mouth, you can be certain some amount of gold is going to tumble out. I'm sharing the comment she left on my blog post below because it would be rude if I kept it from the world.

Bethany'sBazodi said...

My rape-dar is extra sensitive to the many would-be pervs out there too. always think the cart boy is following me to the car after a late night jaunt to the supermarket. Also, if it's dark outside, I drive over speed bumps really fast in order to scrape off any perverts that are holding on to the undercarriage of my car.

Rape-Dar

I don't for one minute trust a man who stops to tie his shoe on an empty sidewalk. I'm looking at you, Brown Suit on my lunch break. I know you didn't end up attacking me, but we both know you thought about it.

Right?

Shin Splints Are for Life?

The herpes of exercise.

Why aren't there awkward, outdated PSAs, warning us to wear preventative tape while we run? Pardon me while my new life partner and I write our congressman a letter.

E-ster

Hope everyone's Easter is at least as cozy as this:

Why does it ever have to be more complicated than that? That ROI is looking pretty good too.

Afternoon Cocktail

My mid-work-day walk had me find a really random, really old cemetery tucked in a park near my building. Don't mind if I do. The experience was obviously noteworthy.

What it wasn't: good for my allergies.
What it was: good for my mortality.

I feel so congested. I feel so alive.

Spotted

This afternoon I was at a stoplight next to one of those buses that transports prisoners. I noticed that like any typical bus, it had an emergency exit; and I had to think, Should that be there? Morally sliced.

Said Better

My brother Gentzy has some pretty decent ideas every now and then. This one (pulled from an email) might be his crowning jewel:

Also, I have a suggestion for solving our country’s economic woes and the terrestrial woes of the entire country of Japan: let’s give them South Dakota. It’s not near any major fault lines, it’s far from the ocean and its tsunamis, it has business-friendly tax codes, and there is plenty of space.  If we give it to the Japanese, they will have that state humming in 4-6 years.  And, TADOW, they don’t sink in the ocean and we are back on top as the unquestionable world superpower.


He would call this South Tokyota. I think I would call it Nintendo Dakota. But we both agree it's the new San Fran and the street style would be out of this world. 

While we're on the subject of soft plagiarism, my friend Mary said this regarding bucket lists, and I couldn't agree more:

i am not ambitious enough to compile a list of 100 items

unless i googled bucket lists

And I know for a fact that she's done this. I just thought I'd share.

Tangled

I watched this tonight. And it was great.

The best part? When it started, and we all began floating away to that Pixar world, Rebekah whispered "I feel safe." And I think she spoke for all of us. (In my mind it was a whisper.)

The worst part? Spoiler alert: he cuts off her hair and it turns brown and spiky. I might not hate this so much (hang on a minute brunette sisters), if that very thing didn't happen to me about four months ago. Except trade heroic prince with heterosexual hair stylist (I don't trust those and neither should any of you), and trade fairytale for rat tail, and you get a movie that just hits a little too close to home.

It was still awesome though. Even if it did borrow a little heavy from Chasing Liberty, Portrait of Dorian Gray, and the Elizabeth Smart trial.

RECOMMEND

NYCarnal (Picture Heavy)

I can’t quite assign reason to my lust-love for New York City. Every time I go, it uses, abuses, and overfeeds me. And the last two times, I’ve spent a bus ride home feeling like I need to buy DC a string of pearls. But so help me, I just can’t stop thinking about her. 


Top Three Picks This Trip:


3. Pretending like I didn’t want to pretend to be engaged to Grant at Tiffany’s.
2. Central parking.
1. And my favorite: running for doughnuts. Probably because it happened twice. We sprint-ran to the infamous “Doughnut Plant,” which turned out sub- to well-below par (according to my friends anyway, little do they know I stopped even tasting sugar somewhere around 2 pm). Turns out it didn’t close for another hour and despite our best flirting*, they wouldn't give us any more of their crappy doughnuts for free. I would still say it was worth the journey though. During one particularly moving stretch of our jaunt, a large Latino man yelled out his affinity for running white girls at us, then cheered, "run white girls, run!" Touched.


*"Flirting" read: Rebekah speaking in terms of economics and ROI, and me pressing my cheek onto his window front, making “smush face” until the sweaty worker waved us both away like fleas.

Related notes: Happy birthday Kat. Thanks for making this happen Melissa. Rebekah: you get me.

Georgetown

DC can bug me. Like in traffic or when GW med students discredit my Sleep Cycle app (I'm looking at you Friday night dinner party). But more often than not, I can't help but love it. Especially today when I ran through the little slice of colonial heaven, Georgetown. I stopped for a second when I saw this line for Georgetown Cupcakes.

Jane hates cupcakes so I sent her a picture of it. Part because I miss her, and part to make her feel more alone in the world. While I was wrapping up the text, I look up to see this blonde little angel running toward me, beaming from ear to ear, and looking me right in the eye. He never broke stride, opened his arms, and gave my legs a giant hug. Your guess is as good as mine. His mom was trying to restrain him and I noticed she was deaf. My ASL is a little rusty, and I couldn't immediately recall how to say "I would rather cling to the legs of a sweaty stranger than be chained to a backpack leash too," so instead I just clutched at my heart and smiled at her and probably let the hug go on for too long. I took this picture of  him after he turned away and before he escaped from the leash again to go eat those rocks in the corner.

I didn't stop thinking about Georgetown all day. Saturday shoppers, overeaters, and aggressively affectionate toddlers? I think I'm falling in love with you. And I can't be certain, but I have a feeling it's got something to do with the cupcakes.

*Photos 3-5 just go in the category of other cool stuff I saw on my run. But all photos are included under the label: ways to make a Saturday run as long as if you had walked it.

Sleep Cycle for iPhone

I frighten myself with the deals I would make in the morning to score more minutes of sleep. But a few months ago, I got this awesome app on my phone that not only tracks my REM cycles during the night, but pulls me comfortably out of sleep within 20 minutes of the time I am supposed to wake up by alerting me before I start taking that delicious dive back into deep unconscious bliss, below the realms of dreaming. I call it my Narnia. But the best part of the app is that once your sleep cycle has completed, it gives you stats on what you did that night and how long you slept. It's the beginning stages of this app, so the line chart is pretty basic without much detail. But I have faith it won't be long before it's telling me exactly what I was doing during those peaks and valleys of my dreams.

Last night's cycle:

People who owe me thank yous/apologies from last night's dream: Kari for saving our lives. Who then became Johnny, who was suspiciously chummy with our captors. So probably both of you.

You want this app.

Altruism

Why not. A little bit of optimism for your Thursday:

From Mitchell Hoffman, based on Holocaust data:

I find that (1) Richer countries had many more rescuers than poorer ones, and (2) Within countries, richer people were more likely to be rescuers than poorer people. The individual-level effect of income on being a rescuer remains significant after controlling for ease of rescue variables, such as the number of rooms in one's home, suggesting that the correlation of income and rescue is not solely driven by richer people having more resources for rescue. Given that richer people might be thought to have more to lose by rescuing, the evidence is consistent with the view that altruism increases in income.

Found here. Don't read the comments though. It's like looking up the real story of J.M. Barrie after watching Finding Neverland. I'd rather take both at Johnny Depp face value.

I Dribble All the Time

This tiny bib video my dad took on his phone went viral in my family last week, and my sister challenged me to find all the ways my grandma Franz is like a baby. I normally don't take challenges that seem so obvious because they make me suspicious. And especially not from my sister since the human airplane incident of '93 when she tied all my limbs together and told me I would be a hilarious person if I let her lift my body into the air with her feet. I wormed myself over to her, flew up in the air, and fell to the ground like a helpless log. But so help me, I can't resist her.

1.Tiny. My grandma is the smallest person I know. My brother Gentzy (see post below) has a theory of displacement, claiming that she's been granted such a long life from the universe for taking up so little of it.
2. Dribble
3. Bib
4. Adorable
5. Easily distracted by technological devices

Why do you set me up for failure?

*It's too bad the last 10 seconds of this video got cut off. She says, "This young, vibrant teenager says hello to old Maggie." She's so cute I want throw myself out a window. Oh, there it is.

Get a Room

Normally I refrain from any kind of public announcement of affection or appreciation, not because I don't like it, but because I'm not good at it. But I'm not one to let a tribute post found here go un-noted either (that was a tribute, right?). Torn into a million pieces.

My older brother Gentzy drove with me out to Washington, D.C. to help me move a couple of weeks ago. It had its ups and downs.

Up: Choosing to jog from site to site downtown in matching running tights that made me hate ourselves at first, but then finally appreciate it when a security guard started to reprimand Gentzy for going into the men's restroom. I'm just glad that in the instance where we are same-sex twins, my femininity outweighed the alternative. More than likely a close draw. But I'll take what I can get. (Don't you give this one to the tights.)
Down: See first phrase of "Up," or: Spending any amount of time in the possessed house I'm sitting for while the family is on vacation. It smells like garlic, and spirits of an undetermined evil nature live in its walls, but I try not to think about it. And sleep with the lights on.

But he drove everywhere (parallel parking like a surgeon), navigated the car during a snow storm, and watched an obscene amount of Mad Men with me. And sometimes all three of those things at once. And if it's any indication of how dependent I was/am on him for that stuff, it took me all of 30 minutes of driving on my own before I ran into a parked car.

Gentzy, you're no Don Draper, but you're at least the third funniest Franz I know. Thanks for helping me move, girl.

*This white-trash picture of us hiking in San Fran last year is about the only documentation I have that we even know each other. Let's work on that.