A Day in the Life of Sara

Friday night, 8:30pm

Sara — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:34:35 +0000

Lights just went out on me at work. Literally – I am blind. I think this is a sign to go home. Haha

okcupid message

Sara — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:58:03 +0000

Jan 7, 2012 – 9:07pm
Hi Sara,

Unfortunately, I need to cancel our date. Before you assume that I’m flaking out, I will tell you that I’ve started having major medical issues, and I don’t think that trying to date right now is a good idea for me (and no fun for you). It’s not cancer or anything like that. But it’s a chronic issue that may keep me out of work for a little while too as I’m trying to figure out how to deal with it. I wish you well, and if/when I start feeling better, I’ll get back in touch. Take care!

I respond saying I’m really sorry to hear that he is sick and totally understand. I hope he feels better. This, mind you, is after he had already rescheduled a prior date. I assumed I’d never hear from him again.

But low and behold, only a week later, I receive this:

Jan 15, 2012 – 10:12pm
Hi Sara,

How are you? How was your weekend? If it’s okay with you, I’d like to open the door back up to communicating with you. That week before this last one was very tough for me. It’s not really a serious condition (it’s a stomach condition). But it felt much more serious that week. This week was much better thankfully. I’ve been eating extremely healthly (virtually no sugar, caffeince, alcohol, and also staying away from fats). But I don’t want to make it all about me. Right now, what I really need are my friendships. So, if you’re okay with that, maybe we can talk on the phone sometime this week? Cheers!

Really?

SOTU 2012

Sara — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:18:06 +0000

Okay, I’m home now. And somehow – this guy is still talking.

I’d just like to point out that watching the SOTU on a 40 inch flat screen Samsung is way more enjoyable that watching it on the TV as depicted in last year’s post. Much, much better. Boehner doesn’t look quite so tan as last year, but definitely has some blush on. Perhaps it’s the 1978 wood panel box TV I was watching on last year that’s making the difference here.

This is such bullsh*t. That’s really all I have to say about it this year. I’m totally over politics. As is probably indicated by me not even knowing this speech was tonight.
I learned the other day where the Vice Pres lives. Had no idea. Everyone knows the President lives in the White House, but did anyone know that the Vice Pres lives in the Naval Observatory over on Mass Ave? This girl here had no idea. Learn something new every day.
Is this really still happening? It’s 10pm.
I actually think, upon viewing on my flat screen, that the President’s greying hair has slowed down somewhat. You may recall that he had no grey whatsoever upon getting sworn in. And just like that, he was grey as hell. Very noticeable. One would think, 3 years later, that he’d be all grey by now. My entire body would probably be grey if I had to deal with this sh*t. But no, his greying has slowed down. Not too shabby.
Healthcare law! Relies on a reformed private market. Yes. Wow – he devoted literally 2 seconds to healthcare. Smart move.
Has Boehner smiled at all in the past hour? Don’t think so. Has he even clapped?
Noticing a lot more color in the audience this year. Must mean more women are elected officials. Nice work ladies.
This could actually be because of the flat screen.
Nancy Pelosi looks old. Man, she has clearly gone through the ringer the past couple of years. Wow.
Haven’t seen Hillary in a bit. Growing the hair out I see.
“I could have done so much better than him.” You know that’s what she’s thinking just looking at her face.
IS THIS EVER GOING TO END.

Okay, it’s over. 10:16pm. Glad I only caught the tail end of that one. Oy

Blog fail

Sara — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:10:58 +0000

Guys – I’ve failed you. For the past two years, I have live blogged the State of the Union address. And why not? There is so much material there to work with, it is impossible to miss.

Well, I have failed you. I’m sorry, but I actually had no idea it was tonight. That is either really really sad (probably), or awesome knowing I’ve got so much other stuff going on that I can’t live blog the SOTU. I am so, so sorry. But I’m out for a friend’s birthday right now – live blogging!

There may be some potential here. No sound at the bar I’m at, but I could just go on visuals. Stay tuned.

(I’m sure my friends are really happy I’m ignoring them right now to live blog).

happy new year!

Sara — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:53:10 +0000

Too late? Sorry. Been meaning to post.

A lot to update you all on. It’s 2012. I feel good about this upcoming year, and I’m not really quite sure why. I predict good things, although I’m not sure what those things will be. I think I am most excited about realizing that I need to just chill out and settle down with my life. Meaning first and foremost, I want to move out of this crazy apartment. Yes, it’s a great location, but it’s too loud for my liking at the moment and living on U Street is certainly not conducive to chilling out and settling down. Plus, living with roaches, ghosts, and the constant stench of smoke is not so enjoyable. Time to move up and out. May even buy a place, assuming I can get my finances together. Weighing the options.

What else is new? hmm. Both of my siblings got engaged. In fact, I have SEVEN (count them, SEVEN) weddings in 2012. 2012 is hereinafter deemed The Year of the Wedding. Good times. Congrats to friends Helen and Matt on their recent engagement this past weekend! So happy to be a part of it. Love you guys.

I’m back on okcupid. Figured I’d change things up a bit. Man, is this thing time consuming. So far, I’ve been on only one date. With a 42 year old. This was last Friday. Thursday, I went out with a 26 year old. I kid you not – why bother staying within my own decade? Both dates were good, although haven’t heard from the oldie yet. So maybe that one wasn’t so good afterall. Not really sure he was digging my obsession with Foursquare toward the end of the date. Long story.

What else. New Years Eve was fun. In fact, it was probably the weirdest night of my life. Had a great dinner with some friends, then went to a small (count 20-30 people) party in Capitol Hill. Around midnight, I stupidly thought I was safe to leave my purse on a table while I went to the bathroom. Came back from bathroom; purse gone. Sara freaks out. Friend knows who has it, confronts the guy (who oddly, did not leave the party once he got my bag). Guy punches friend, large fight ensues in which guy’s girlfriend bites friend and others. Guy jumps fence with my cash, but friends managed to get everything else back for me. Friend goes to hospital for tetanus shot from the bite on his chest. Pretty standard New Years Eve, I’d say. TBD if starting 2012 like this was a good omen or bad.

Going to Colorado to ski my ass off in a couple of weeks. Booyah

Broke from weddings, and buying ski gear.

Work is going just splendidly. Been at the new gig about 9 months and it’s starting to grow on me – everything is working out pretty much exactly as planned. Love.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. I’m so so so sorry I haven’t been posting. If anyone has some tips on how I can make more time for you all, please do advise. I am finding it hard to get in a good night’s sleep these days, let alone blogging in my spare time. 2012 – The Year of the Blog?

Toodles,
Sara

the cockroach diaries

Sara — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:35:56 +0000

Just found a dead baby cockroach in my measuring cup. This is the first roach sighting (in my apartment…I have definitely seen them in the halls…yep) since I had the lovelies crawling on me in bed at night a few months ago. I’ve had pest control come in, they sprayed the shit out of the place, and now it appears as though a baby has somehow made it into my apartment. This does not bode well for me. Mind you, I’ve been violently ill the past two days with a stomach bug, which I can’t seem to 100% attribute to anyone or thing. I haven’t had a stomach bug since I was a child. I hate to speculate, but …what if…it was from bacteria from a cockroach!? Those little pieces of shit are crawling around in my drawers. wahhhhhhhhhh will cry soon.

Time to resume the apartment search!

Stay tuned and happy holidays! (tried to remain PC here)

Sara

Acela ride

Sara — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:25:30 +0000

Please, someone tell me what is with the incessant throat clearers. Do you know what I’m talking about? Maybe I’m the only one who gets annoyed at these people – probably. But I just don’t get it. Why must you insist on clearing your throat in a very loud, annoying manner every one to two minutes? Do you really have that much sh*t in your throat that it requires a loud, obnoxious throat clear for everyone to hear? Oh! There’s another one. Think it’s time for me to put my earplugs back in. And I’m on the quiet car. I can only imagine what is going on in regular business class.

Happy thanksgiving!

holiday travel

Sara — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:21:58 +0000

I’m officially in vacation mode already, even though I’m not leaving for Thanksgiving until early Thursday morning. Office is relatively quiet, workload is light, and all is calm. Ha – I say that, as I just got called into a 6pm meeting.

Anyway, UBG is taking it to the streets and hitting up Chicago in a few weeks. I have never really done Chi-town, so I’m excited. To that regard, I just booked a hotel for the weekend, and received this note in response:

Well hello there Sara,

We’ve received your reservation and wanted to ask if you’d like anything special while you’re with us? Let us know, and we’ll be happy to provide whatever you want, whenever you want it. Give us a call, your wish is our command.

Really. Whatever I want, whenever I want???!! This sounds too good to be true. I’ll give them a call beforehand and ask them to have a few hot men lined up in the room surrounded by rose petals. That would work out nicely.

On a related front, congrats to my sis Jean and future brother-in-law Dave on their engagement. If you didn’t know, these two were the inspiration for this blog, and to that I am unendingly grateful. Without you, A Day in the Life of Sara would not be possible. Super happy for them, and also fairly impressed with my ring size guessing ability. Lot’s of weddings coming up in 2012. Tis the year of the wedding.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’ll be traveling in style on First Class via the Acela. Don’t even ask how I managed to finagle this deal, but I’m pumped. Since wi-fi is now available on Amtrak, maybe I’ll grace you with a blog post along the way. Similar to when I was riding on the Preferred Car in Spain. Those were the days.

Enjoy family, friends, food, and fun! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

Sara

dating update

Sara — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 03:21:30 +0000

Friends, I’m pleased to report the reason I have been so quiet about my whole dating situation recently. I have been seeing someone and it’s gotten pretty serious. I didn’t want to jinx anything so I neglected to mention him prior to this. But he’s great and I’m super happy and even think he might be ‘the one.’ So that’s that and I’ll have more to report later.

phhhhhhhhhhhhh just kidding. I wish! Just thought I’d get a rise out of you. My dating life has been so bloggable as of late that it’s completely unbloggable – meaning, it’s so bad and so absurd that I can’t even let the general blogosphere know about what’s been going on. And with that…I leave you with nothing. Maybe some day I’ll clue you in, but in the meantime perhaps I’ll go back to online dating to get some more stories for you all. Can’t hurt I suppose.

Regardless, we are getting into some prime cuddle weather here so hopefully I get a lead or two sometime soon.

Cheers,
Sara

Aging

Sara — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 03:00:37 +0000

You know you are getting old when you notice all you ever have on TV is the Food Channel.

But looking at the bright side, at least it’s no longer the Weather Channel. For some odd reason, when I was in college, I would just leave the Weather Channel on endlessly. Guess I’m not big on shows per say (or movies, now that we are on the topic). My sister and friends picked on me for years for the whole Weather Channel thing. No one has made fun of me for it in a while, so figured I’d bring it back into the ‘reasons to pick on Sara’ rotation. And there are many.

Have a good evening,
Sara

change in decision

Sara — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 02:03:53 +0000

Forgot to mention that I changed my mind. I’m now staying at my current apartment with the hopes that the bug situation has been resolved (I know it hasn’t). Pest control will be in bright and early tomorrow to let me know if it’s a lost cause OR that cockroaches will no longer crawl on me at night. Looking forward to seeing what they have to say, as I am still sleeping on the couch. Luckily, however, I’ve gotten used to the couch after being here a month, and now sleep very peacefully without a problem. It’s like sleeping on a cloud.

Also, I had cleaners come in the other day. My place is absolutely spotless. However, while cleaning the apartment and while I was at work, they decided it was okay to leave my precious baby (my bike) out in the hall while they cleaned the apartment for five hours. Strike 1. Strike 2 was when she called to tell me that she inadvertently locked my baby out of my apartment when they were done. That would be fine if she had figured out some way to rectify the situation, but instead she called me 10 minutes after she had left my place to let me know that my baby was locked out (as if it wasn’t a big deal). In the words of Larry David, “no good.” Luckily my neighbor was home and immediately housed her to protect her from the wrath of DC bike thieves. I just had a nightmare the other day about my bike being stolen. It wasn’t pretty.

The place is so spotless that I would actually like to have them back, even though she almost gave me a heart attack. So I wrote a (what I thought to be) nice email explaining why putting my bike in the hallway is not acceptable to do and if she could assure me she wouldn’t leave my pride and joy up for grabs again, I’d have her back. No response. Maybe the email wasn’t so nice after all.

Sara

decision time

Sara — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:05:57 +0000

Lost patience with the lack of any communication from my landlord so will be paying $2000+ in CoHi starting in November. Can’t wait to get the eff out of dodge. Texted DCG to let him know the result of my reaching out to landlord attempt. As expected, he said I am welcome to stay at his place because he doesn’t have any roaches. “Open invitation.” If I start seeing more babies running around the house, I might just do that.

FML

Sara — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:49:26 +0000

Update:

- Called landlord to see if she’d be willing to work with me on getting rid of the roaches via an exterminator, and to see if I could renege my notice to vacate if so. Left voicemail and she of course has yet to respond. She is going to drive me mad.
- $2000+ CoHi apartment is listed on craigslist now so will be gone within the day.
- Called exterminator yesterday who was optimistic that the problem can be addressed, despite the whole building not being treated simultaneously.
- $1800 low income housing unit was rented to someone else. Haven’t heard from the other unit in the building.
- Killed what I believe to be a baby cockroach this morning. Put evidence in plastic bag. I’m getting good at this “I’m going to eff my landlord” thing.
- Still waiting on landlord. Again, maybe this is another sign to GTFOH. That and the baby cockroach.

FML

housing consult

Sara — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 02:36:44 +0000

Just gave Drum Circle Guy the cheek when he went in for the kiss. Man I’m a bitch. He clearly would have stayed over in Roachville if I had let him. Or taken me to his place to avoid Roachville.

More updates as the night progresses…

Drum Circle Guy (DCG) recommends that I talk to my landlord to find out a plausible solution to this madness. I will not find another unit like this one for this price in this neighborhood.
DCG and I walked down the low-income housing street to see what’s going on at 9pm on a Tuesday. Burnt car still parked in front of the building, now with a ticket. Nice.
DCG tells me he would not live on that street, and he is a beefy big black guy. People are still milling outside the building next to the one I would move into. That is clearly the Section 8 housing.
As DCG was walking me home, I notice that the building management guy who has ignored my last 5 emails is outside my building. I ask him about the roach situation and what is being done to address it. He is clearly high or on something, can barely get out words. Mentions that pest control is coming on Friday and will treat the units who want to be treated. I have not seen an email about this. Conversation cut short because cops enter the building for some unknown reason.
Run into people who live below me – they have not seen roaches recently either, but their landlord is getting an exterminator in to treat their unit. They are not moving.
Friends now looking for open places for me to move to. Thanks, friends.

That’s the rundown. Stay tuned as the situation unfolds…

housing situation update

Sara — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:34:27 +0000

• Retracted deposit put down in Columbia Heights because realized the unit was too expensive at $2000+. Won’t be able to take vaca in South America as planned with that kind of rent.
• Gave notice at current apartment.
• Did research and people said the low-income housing building (mentioned in previous post) is fine to live in and they know of others who live there with no problems.
• Told owner of more expensive apartment in that complex ($1900) that I want to move in. He seemed to want me.
• Since bugs crawled on me in bed two weeks ago, I’ve been sleeping on couch with all lights on. Not the most comfortable or restful sleeping situation. Woke up this morning with incredibly painful left shoulder. Last week, lower back pain. Average amount of sleep per night – 5 hours. Barely functional. Work product suffering.
• In attempt to get sleep and because family was in town anyway, stayed with sister (Jean) all weekend. Sad that I was looking forward to sleeping on an air mattress for three nights, but amazing not having to worry about bugs crawling on me.
• Put out roach bait in kitchen and near bed prior to staycation at Jean’s.
• Lament at not having boyfriend in this critical time, in which I could stay at his place. Where is he when I need him?
• Current landlord ignored my notice to vacate (and phone calls) for five days before deciding to respond last night, saying that 11/5 move-out date is fine.
• Brought parents who were visiting to the Meridian Hill drum circle. On the way there, we walked down the low-income housing unit street to check out the neighborhood. Notice burnt out car in front of apartment. People smoking weed on the side of my building. Run into the girl renting the other unit in the same building for $1800. She probably thinks I’m stalking her. She tells me she’s still mulling over applications too. I must appear delirious to these people.
• I haven’t seen a roach in almost two weeks, since the last one decided to visit me in bed. Did I overreact too soon? Maybe I should see if they are gone for good. Will ask around and see if anyone else has seen any.
• Still no word from management about pest control cause they suck. Would my landlord let me stay now after I already gave notice to vacate?
• Called yesterday and $2000+ CoHi apartment is still available if I want it. I love having options.
• Decided to look into roommate situation to save money. Met with gay guy who lives in a CoHi townhouse. He neglected to mention that he smokes in the house, “but only downstairs.” Said he’s not willing to negotiate that. Seriously? He took me upstairs to the guest bedroom in which I noticed a black leather sex bed hanging from the ceiling. Not sure my mother would approve of that. He also has a tanning bed in the office for one of his former lovers. Decide again, as I always do upon looking for housing, that a roommate situation is not going to work for me. At least I only wasted time meeting with one person before coming to this decision again.
• Pick up boric acid and caulking agent at Ace Hardware in the event I decide to stay in Roachville.
• Low-income housing guy ($1900 apartment) says he’s still mulling over applications after it seemed as though he wanted me last week.
• Meeting with a guy I met at drum circle tonight to hopefully get advice on what to do. He’s apparently in the rental/housing business and has advice. He really just wants to get into my pants, but at this point maybe I’ll take him up on the offer. This is the same guy whose phone call I ignored about a month ago, not knowing he was watching me ignore the call. Forgot to blog about that.
• CoHi $2000+ apartment just called. Says the unit is still available. I have a good feeling about the place, maybe I should just go for it. Asked him to see if rent is negotiable at all; he will get back to me tomorrow. Even though I will be living off Ramen Noodles, at least I won’t have cockroaches crawling on me while I sleep.
• When did the DC housing market become so insane?