A Spring Break Surprise!

It's spring time. Yipee!

I shaved my legs recently... which is quite a feat... these puppies are LONG.

So, I decided to throw on this cute yellow swingy skirt and some heels to wear to work this morning.

I just got back from lunch. And, it is massively, knock-out-the-power-and-lights windy, in the 9-0-9.

And... well... there's a 95% chance I flashed someone (or maybe a lot of someones) while I was getting something for lunch!

Oops!

But, I am pretty sure it was little less sexy than this pose!

My Celebrity Playlist

Ok, so I am not famous to most people… I get that… or any… I get that. But, this is MY blog… so hopefully all of you at least know me.

In reference to the blog posted on April 3rd… Here are MY musical confessions. In my IPOD:

I DO have Milli Vanilli. "Blame it on the Rain"... 'cause the rain don't mind, and the rain don't care'... What tremendously clever lyrics. Who could knock that song?!? And, the guilt-prone part of me REALLY doesn't want someone to die in vain for a career cut short when the record-player skipped and ended his life in one foul swoop! – I always wondered why the real singers never tried to make it big… a scandalous start like that should have made them an instant draw.

I DO have so many “tween” songs, my roommate and I drummed up enough for a CD for her 4th grade class without even having to buy any new music. Some of these songs are from Win a Date with Tad Hamilton (which I own!), John Tucker Must Die (which I hope to someday own), and Ice Princess (which Cori owns for sure… anything British or Princess-esque, she’s purchased!), Cheyenne Kimball “Holding On”, B*witched “I Will Be There”, and MANY Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore songs.

I DO have Britney Spears “I’m Not a Girl, Not yet a Woman”. I HEART that song. And, I am not even ashamed of it. ‘I used to think, I had the answers to everything, but now I know…’ I even know ALL the words. Plus, it reminds me of one of my dearest friends, Jody Lyman.

I DO have (AND LOVE) Kid Rock, despite the fact that he married Pam Anderson. Maybe he was drunk or stoned… and by maybe, I mean, he probably is 97% of the time. But, “Cowboy” is a RAD song! By the way, I saw them in concert. It’s true. There were cage dancers, who NEVER stopped dancing, even when the band stopped playing, there is a 98% chance they were drunk or stoned.

I DO have various Boy band compilations… really bad ones, BoyZone “I swear”, LFO “Summer Girls”, Paperboy “Ditty” and Bone Thugz N’ Harmony “Ghetto Cowboy”… I AM a little ashamed of most of these, although a few are good to run to.

I DO have songs by Ben Affleck’s exes, Gwenyth Paltrow (what, just because no one saw whatever movie it was that she sang in, doesn’t mean she isn’t good!) and J. Lo ‘… don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got, I am still Jenny from the block…’

I DO have SEVERAL songs from Aqua, namely “Barbie Girl.” – these ARE great running songs. And, it also reminds me of all the women who hang out at Fashion Islands with their 2 pound dogs inside their Prada doggy-purses.

And

I DO have K-Fed’s rap album.

Ok, I am totally lying about the K-FED album, but now that I take that back, don’t my other selections seem less frightening?!?

A Few MINOR Details

Ok, so I spent the entire weekend being the task-master to bridezilla. What can I say, it's my most recently developed talent. I've been to enough weddings you think I'd be an expert. WRONG AGAIN!

So, my friend Jess got married in Santa Barbara, where we grew up (sorry to keep shell-shocking those of you who still believe I grew up in Utah - still not the case). We've known each other since we were 11 and when we were in college we were roommates for a couple years. I was going to drive up there Saturday morning. But, then I got a call from her saying she didn't want to sleep in the hotel alone. So off I went to rescue my childhood friend. We stayed up talking until 1 AM about how jacked up most of or college roommates were (2 of them were from Canada and only ate cabbage - oddly, they weren't especially thin; 1 read romance novels in the bathroom for HOURS and had terrible nose hairs; another was a phlebotomist and left her crazy blood samples all over the house; ZERO of them were "normal"). We ended the night totally in awe of how we made it through those years without committing homicide.

The view was amazing, you could see the beach and all of downtown Santa Barbara. You could also see (and hear) about 2 dozen kids and adults in the pool area directly behind the wedding seating. As the bride was walking down the aisle we saw two things (1) bride and (2) heavy-set lady wrestling with toddler with her bathing suit nicely tucked into her... full monty, while "Nothing's going to stop us now" was playing.

My first screw up was this: I was in charge of getting the people on the end of the aisles to throw the rose petals into the aisle way during the recessional. But, this lady started throwing them at Jess on the way down the aisle, so I joined her, the consequence of this was the evil eye from Bridezilla. Oops. Clearly the recessional would be when they leave... whatever, I never volunteered for this.

The second screw up was the best mishap. It was neither my fault, nor was it minor. But, it was FUNNY. They had a slideshow. It was lovely: bride with mullet, sans teeth, bad prom dress transition to groom in boy scouts, playing with boat, in a rock band with long creepy hair and then to "Kelly and Rolland together" and "Congratulations Kelly and Rolland"... except who is "Kelly"? My friend's name is Jessica. OOPS! I was totally waiting for a Jerry Springer moment… fortunately or unfortunately there was no Kelly.

All-in- all I learned 3 very important things:
(1) Always check your slideshow to make sure all names are correct, and
(2) If you sign R.S.V.P. to a wedding, show up! Bridezilla will not miss you, per se, but she will be mad at the schmakeroos she paid for you to be "self-centered";
(3) Do not wear cute shoes is you are the task-master. Cute shoes are not comfortable. They just aren't. And, the task-master position, while earning little to no respect, requires frequent bouts of running.

Let's dish. What are the biggest wedding bloopers any of you ever witnessed?

Singled Out!

Today is Good Friday... but, apparently it's only good if you’re a Catholic!

Controller: We are closing the office at 3:00 PM today, for Good Friday.
Ali: Alright, that's nice.
Joe: You have to stay here, you're Mormon. But, the rest of us get to leave early, we have to drag a cross through the town, and that takes a while."
Ali: What?!?

I am pretty sure that's discrimination. But, just in case I am wrong, I hope no one minds that I will be pondering the Catechisms of life through a Catholic vantage point, but only for about half a day.

"You don't HAVE to bring a date, but I wouldn't want you to feel awkward..."

I feel manipulated by this statement!

I am the only white female in this office of mine. And, throw "Hard Core Mormon" (the guys can never just say that I am a Mormon they always have to throw in "Hard Core") into the mix, and that ups the ante on peculiar. None of my paycheck is siphoned off to support would-be children, which is a rarity in Construction. I don't currently, nor have I ever, had an affair with someone else's significant other. The list goes on and on of things that people in this office might find odd about me. If I was going to "feel awkward", it would have happened LONG before next weekend.

So, this morning the other Director just came into my office and asked me about this Awards Benefit that I am being forced to attend (against my will and better judgment)! I have to go. It would be a bad career move for me to dog out. So, I agreed to attend. But, why do I have to bring a date?!? There's no sense in BOTH of us feeling "awkward."

Plus, I don't know anyone that owns a tux, or anyone who owes me enough favors to actually rent one AND attend a really boring function where EVERYONE will be drunk (before they even show up to the event)!

To date, I have never asked out a guy... with maybe one exception, I asked a friend of mine (that had a girlfriend, who I also was friends with) to go to my work Christmas Party, because it was a Casino Night and he was from Vegas and taught me how to gamble (pre-Prophet prohibition, not that I ever threw down any substantial money or anything - but I did win $1,200 once, courtesy of some drunk old geezer who picked me to be his "good luck charm". And, he let me keep it!)

I am just not that girl that could ask out a guy... that's where I would feel "Awkward".

Let it be said, that the last time I brought a guy to a work function (I didn't ask him, he asked me if he could accompany me), they teased him relentlessly about being Mormon, hanging out with me and serving a mission, then they made him the "designated driver" after dinner. What the??? - I wish I was kidding!

Ever since my All-State date got married and my baby brother moved out-of-state, I have been strapped for dates to obligatory functions. Sad, but true!

Nonetheless, I am holding my ground and going solo... just because I don't want to be manipulated by a guy who is color-blind!

Either that, or I might hire a date!

But, one thing is for sure. Screw giving Mr. Colorblind purple pens and passing them off as blue. I just had the receptionist order a box of pink ones... I'll show him awkward!

Let's Hear it...

So, apparently, not by choice, but more by force, I am a jack-of-all-trades at my office. As such, they have me do all sorts of stupid menial tasks which often make me want to respond with:

(1) "Would you like fries with that?"
or
(2) "It's a good thing I went to college so I could know how to do this!"

One of the more recent tasks the President of the company (Joe) asked me to do was figure out "what's wrong with my Ipod? I need you to fix it!"

Turns out I am brilliant! I plugged it in for an hour or so and whoa... it magically started working. I toyed with it long enough to realize that one of the 100 or so songs my 47-year-old, Hispanic boss, father of 3, grandfather of 3 (or 4 - I am still not sure about the last one) has in his Ipod is "Stars Go Blind" by Paris Hilton.

This fact, of course, humored me. And, I irreverently teased the man relentlessly for this. And, then I started thinking. There are a lot of songs in my Ipod that may seem deplorable selections to some, but not to me!

But, before I share these choice selections with all of you, I really want to hear the choice(s) you came up with from your own music selections. I truly believe that you can tell a lot about a person by figuring out what they might want to closet (or maybe should want to closet) by way of musical selection. So, let's hear it... and I'll tell you what that says about you!

Happy Birthday Dr. Phil!

Today is my dad's birthday. He's 64... great scotts... Sizzler has been giving him a discount for nearly a decade! Although, I sure hope he hasn't started eating there!

So, I thought I would share something about him that I just found out this year... But, first I will preface it with something I have known FOREVER. My dad love sports. I am not just talking manly sports, I am talking anything that appears on ESPN 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6... you catch my drift?!? Billiards, sure... that's a sport. Bowling... yep! The Daytona 500, what's not to love about watching ALL 500 laps, even if it takes all day. Horse races are totally a sport. World's strongest man, what's un-sporty about moving an elephant with one hand? Absolutely nothing, in fact... and here's the kicker Ping Pong! Literally the man can watch ping pong and be totally enthralled. How people can break a sweat in ping pong is so totally beyond me. But, they can, and they do! Unfortunately, I have seen it in the very own living room of my youth on ESPN 4,328. And, Phil... he has always watched. But, I never knew that he could play!

I vaguely remember him brutally beating me on our rickety old ping pong table... but, I also remember being pretty much non-existent at the other end of the table... ping pong (along with the recorder, ballet, drill team, tennis... the list is LONG) was never really my thing.

However, as it turns out... my dad is a wicked table tennis player! I found this out from a recently returned missionary who just got back from the Fort Worth Mission. Turns out he served in my parents ward, turns out my dad is the Ward Mission Leader, turns out my dad slaughtered said-RM in ping pong. When I heard the story (from the pulpit, mind you... I still don't get how ping pong made it's way into a testimony... but that's another story... for another day), I instantly called my mom and asked her if my uncle, the other Brinkerhoff in the ward, played ping pong (he's wildly competitive). She said 'no, but your dad is REALLY good at it'.

Who knew!?!



Here's to you dad... you ridiculously good Ping Pong player. Happy birthday... sleep it off... you deserve it!