A New Year. We’ll see how it goes…

So I’m not into making resolution(s) every time the calendar flips to January. I used to acknowledge the colloquial practice by vowing (to no one in particular) that I’d suddenly care more about my gums and floss daily, save a bunch of money to treat myself to an ambiguous vacation which would take place in the annoyingly distant future, or (a classic) acquire Mila Kunis’s smokin’ hot body by occasionally walking on my parent’s basement treadmill and spreading less butter on my morning toast. FAIL.

It’s fear of the inevitable failure that has driven me into a yearly hibernations of laziness, shame and unmotivated guilt. However, the realization every December that, in the past twelve months, absolutely nothing about my life has improved significantly… I’ve just wasted an entire year wading around in a boring stalemate with my emotions, finances, physique, social life, hygiene, living situation, wardrobe, and travel bug. Some aspects have even taken a downgrade (hello, living with the ‘rents…).

You’ll notice “romantic life” is appropriately not on the list of fails because that’s the one category which actually flourished this year. Thank the lord for Mr. Iceberg!

I can’t say that the entirety of 2011 was a total bust because that would be greatly untrue.  There were so many wonderful moments, and fortunately I don’t have to recap because WordPress provides a little historic timeline for me to which I can refer. Lovely.  Feel free to poke around (for 2011, I was particular funny in January and April).

Anyway, I really hope you all had a fabulous holiday season… You’re gonna need it to get you through the next 10 weeks of sheer winter torture.

Perhaps I’ll make a note to myself (NOT a resolution) that this year I should get back in the habit of blogging. Sounds easy enough… ?

Oh and I miss my little end-of-post photo collages, so here you go:

And Then It Was 2012

Hi again. I know it’s been a really long time, but I thought I’d just stop by to fill you in on the last few months.

The holidays are always busy, but this year I seemed to be running around a lot more than usual (which is probably good since I also ate like a hippo). The back-and-forth between Mr. Iceberg’s family and my own was pretty hectic, but well worth it. Gotta love family time.

I ate my face off on Thanksgiving at the McBlog’s, after a little Turkey Day 5K at the Mall of America with the Icebergs. Don’t be too impressed, we leisurely strolled around while window shopping.

Iceberg’s golden birthday was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so true to my party-planning ways, I threw him a surprise celebration that Saturday. One party-goer swears to have seen a glistening tear roll down the birthday boy’s cheek upon his arrival at the bar.  We ended up at The Seville strip club that night… typical.

December came with a ton of PTO purging. I haven’t had a full week of work since Thanksgiving, so January’s full schedule is really going to blow chunks.

Kitty threw a Christmas party one Friday. Another “success”. I was blacked out by 10:30, apparently a huge pain in the ass, ate some pizza, and went home.  At least I got to wear the stunning red puff-painted sweatshirt I bought for $10 at Ragstock.  I was the only one at the party wearing anything remotely ugly… no wonder I drank myself into a blackhole.

Christmas came and went. Santa brought me lots of goodies, including a new camera (no thanks to the assface who stole mine back in October).  And I was able to spend quality time with both mine own family and the Icebergs.

The best thing about this holiday season, however, has been the truly divine gift Mother Nature has bestowed upon us. NO SNOW.  Holy hell, by this time last year we were tunneling around in 3 feet of snow and I was ready to poke my eyes out with my ice scraper.

Not only has the precipitation not stuck around, but the temperatures have also been unnervingly mild. It was almost 50 degrees the other day, and today’s sunny 40 degrees allowed me to step out for lunch wearing just a denim jacket (shut up, it’s cute).

Plans for New Year’s Eve are a bigger hurdle than years past, and I have no idea why. Probably because we’re getting old and weak.  If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll fill you in on how that night goes and say ‘hello’ once we’ve jumped the fence into 2012… unless there’s an apocalypse of course…

Until then, happy holidays!! (there’s one more left, so this statement is still valid)

It’s Already October!?

Aight folks, so this is me… throwing you a bone.  I’ve missed our chats, too, so I thought I’d stop in to say “hello”.

I’m going to take a pass the recap for the past few weeks because it’s really just been a whirlwind.

Okay, okay fine. Let’s compromise:

Chicago was fan-freaking-tastic, Boo came up for a weekend, my other sister is like one minute away from giving birth to my niece, Halloween costume stress has arrived, ZP moved to Nebraska (*tear*), I saw Ziggy Marley at First Ave and got high off of secondhand smoke, all the leaves fell off the trees, and I’m officially (involuntarily) obsessed with The X Factor.

Dear lord, I live such an exciting life. It’s a good thing I have a ton of filing to do at work today. I love filing; it’s so therapeutic. When I get to file, I can really reflect on shiz.  GOO! Why do you think I’m sitting here talking to you at 10:30 on a Thursday morning? Because I am THAT excited to file? Pfft. Try again.

Anyway, Saturday is my “sister” Mal Pal’s wedding. I haven’t been to one of my sorority sister’s weddings in a while, so I’m really looking forward to seeing all the girls and singing that damn Sweetheart song to Mal. A song that’s humiliating and generally super annoying,  but it’s the thought that counts, right?

Tonight Mr. Iceberg is taking me out to see a Kevin Hart movie. I don’t actually know the title of it, but I think it’s like “Kevin Hart: _________”. He asked that I laugh even if I don’t think it’s funny. I told him that I’d laugh at dying puppies if he asked me too because that’s what we do when we’re in love.

Oh hey, does anyone else have any problems with finding dead bugs on their bedroom floor?  I rarely see lady bugs and wasps flying around, but in the past couple weeks I’ve discovered their decaying little carcasses littered around the room in which I sleep. It’s horrifying.  I guess I’ll be fine until I find one in bed with me. Yegh.

Speaking of things I’m not in the mood for, I’ve got to get back to work.

Who knows, maybe you’ll hear from me again soon…   XXOO!!!!

Chicago or Bust

Hello again!

So I’m heading off for a much-anticipated vacation, and thought I better check-in before I leave. To be safe. And stuff. … An hour long plane ride. Over 400 miles. Almost three whole days in the great Windy City.

This is just another fun/busy weekend in a line-up of many. A while back I got mad sick… flu or some joke virus, we’re not sure. It sucked. BIG TIME. I almost passed out at the Target minute clinic before the nurse lady told me to wait it out 14-16 DAYS while it worked its way through my system. Then I almost punched her. Fortunately, I didn’t have the energy for that, so I took my Codeine and nasal steroids and left.

After a week of feeling more or less suicidal, it was time for the Minnesota State Fair. Nothing like a big, sweaty gathering of the Midwest’s finest to really get your spirits going again!  Hirari, Fiss, and Paca came up from the corn field to join the group of us tackling the Great Get Together.  Cheese curds and beer were clearly involved, and so was that $55 sky rocket ride thing. A giant pickle roll… the haunted house… diarrhea… You know, the basics.

After I recovered from that (a week later), it was time to head down to Ames for the season’s first Iowa State football game.  With the game not starting until 6:00PM, we had plenty of time to enjoy the dreary rain and get completely shmammered.  Mr. Iceberg won the award for Most Drunk. I’m so proud.

Then last weekend happened. 9/10/11 was a double whammy. It started off at Sneaky Pete’s to watch the big Iowa vs. Iowa State game, which was AH-MAZING!  ISU pulled of a fat W in the third OT. I smile just thinking about it.  For convenience, a beautiful white Hummer limo was arranged to cart around our group of 10 after the football game, taking us to a liquor store, then to the Sailor wedding (thanks Beej).  After the ceremony, our Hummer took the long way to the St. Paul reception. Ballers.

That brings me to today (see how I skip over the week of work, laundry and shopping? WLS. Bor-ing.)

Iceberg and I are flying out at 7:30, which still gives me plenty of time to pretend I’m working. FML. The excitement is nearly unbearable!  So, SO excited to have a three-day long double date with Kraz and Evie Bear.

Maybe I’ll hit you up when we return!  Until then, have a fantastic weekend!

Things Better Kept in the Vault

I had an embarrassing moment the other day, when Mr. Iceberg joined my family for dinner at The Italian’s house. During dinner, we ended up reminiscing about a home movie we made ages ago (courtesy of the awkward years of the mid-90s).  As kids, my sisters and The Italian daughters produced our own “Grammys” show.

It was hideous. I played Madonna. The Italian girls were Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, and the Grammys MC. Even worse, my sister Lex played Steven Spielberg and Boo was Barbara Eden from I Dream of Genie. What the hell kind of Grammys was this?

Fortunately for everyone, the tape has gone missing. Unfortunately for me, Dad McBlog was now enthusiastically in the mood for humiliating me with my past.  When we returned home from dinner, out came the old home videos.

The thing about McBlog home videos is that my dad is a professional videographer, so everything we made ended up looking like a feature film. Forget grainy images of me running naked though a sprinkler at the age of 4… We’ve got master works of mortification in the form of school projects and one-on-one interviews. Hours upon hours of perfectly lighted, perfectly edited braces and bad haircuts.

In my first decade of life, I was actually a really cute kid. Busting out those videos would have been bearable, so of course we had to watch a winner from good ol’ 1999. My freshman year of high school. Woof.

The video, made for an English class project, was titled “Ghastly Suspects” and boooooy is it ghastly!  A murder mystery in which I portray both a grieving best friend and an (apparently) ethnically-confused Spanish/English/half-retarded maid. Eight minutes of sheer horror. Iceberg loved it (that or I’m on the verge of getting dumped).

Next time, I’m going to have to repair my image (and self-esteem) by showing Mr. Iceberg one from the cute years. Get ready for Summer Weekend ’89!

A Stinky Bus Is Always Involved

Okay, okay. I’m here. All that begging and pleading for more posts was starting to make me feel like a celebrity (and we all know there’s only room in this town for one celebrity, *ahem Miss Moon*).

Anyway, a handful of things to catch up on since it’s been, oh what’s that? Three weeks? Sheesh, you’d think I actually have a life!

1) Duluth. It was soooo much fun. Or as Mom McBlog would say, “a riot”. There was no actual rioting, but I didn’t get pretty hungover that Saturday.  Here are the highlights:

• We conveniently got a flat tire on I-35 near the beautiful town of Hinckley, Minnesota. I can safely say that the nicest people I’ve ever met work at Keith’s Towing & Repair. They’re also not money-hungry grease monkeys… just very honest and polite grease monkeys.
• Dragging Mr. Iceberg to the Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse. A notion I assumed to be true was validated quite substantially while we sweat our bums off on the North Shore that Friday: Iceberg does not enjoy sightseeing.
• Downing margaritas on a deck before experiencing Club Saratoga, the fully-nude strip club, right next door to a souvenir shop in Canal Park.
• Sitting in between the busy kitchen and the falling-down-drunk girl at Fitger’s microbrewery for lunch (the beer-battered fries though… mouthwatering).
• Wasting away a cold and gloomy Saturday afternoon at Adventure Zone, playing skeeball and mini golf. And we went antiquing.
• Whizzing down Spirit Mountain on the Alpine Coaster after touring Glensheen on our way out of town on Sunday.

Basically, we ate and drank and did touristy things. The three days went by too fast, but fortunately we have another fun getaway coming up when we head down to Chicago to visit Kraz and Evie Bear in September!

2) The next weekend, I was blessed to see all (most) of my favorite girls for Wolf’s bachelorette party. After catching up on girl talk and downing a fridge full of Jell-O shots, we loaded our 25 mini skirts on to the most terrifically nauseating party bus in the world.  This thing was a beast, I tell you.  Devoid of air conditioning, the thick air of a 95 degree day lingered above the booze-caked floor.  We could smell the full toilet before even getting on the bus, a stench that sure didn’t improve over the course of the night.

The best part, however, was of course our charming/coked-out, middle-aged bus driver Wendi.  It was like a million wrongs equaling a right. How could this night not be totally amazing with a ride as mind-blowing as this?

Well, it was amazing. There were a handful of wrong turns, mystery cocktails served in buckets, some rain, we party crashed a rave  at Dick’s Bar in Hudson, Wisconsin (complete with glowsticks, body paint and strobe lights) … and I think I flicked off a piece of popcorn later in the evening. Despite the odds we all got safely home at 4AM… after being pulled over by a state trooper… twice.

The next morning at IHOP, my body was still seriously coming to terms with the night’s festivities and I was forced to take my Bacon Temptation omelet home in a doggy bag.

As for this past weekend, I’d like to give a shout out to Mom McBlog, it was her birthday on Saturday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!  We had a great day, filled with family time (and a picnic, and a comedy show).

Then last night, I got to have a sleepover with my sista from another mista Hirari who’s back from a 2-year stint in J-Pan!  It was lovely to see you, my friend. I hope you had a safe drive back to Des Moines. Don’t move to Colorado before I see you again.

And here we are! In August already! State Fair, whaaaat?!

I’m going to have to let you go now because A) this was a lot of mumbo-jumbo all thrown at you at once and I know you need time to process. And B) my laptop is flaming hot on my lap (electronic menopause?). Like, it’s making me sweat. Sexy, I know.

L8ER fools!!

Xxoxoxoxooxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxooxoxooxoxooxoxox! (<— heat insanity)

Mini Vacation!

I know everyone wants to talk about weather, right? Wrong. So I’m just going to say this:

It’s blasted HOT! But I love every minute of it. I treasure every bead of sweat that trickles so sweetly down my skin.  This is what it’s about people. This is summer.  It’s that sticky, smelly, thigh-chaffing heat that really makes me feel alive. I could probably live without the record-breaking humidity, but if that’s what it takes to get us into the 80s and 90s around here, then bring it on! If you’re bitching about it, come talk to me next February, after you’ve just shoveled your car out from under 6ft of snow with your ice scraper. 

That's what I thought.

Anyway, to celebrate these sweltering dog days (which are actually about to end), the Iceberg and I are heading up to beautiful Duluth, MN for a long weekend vacation.

I haven’t been up to the North Shore in a number of years, so I’m really excited to refresh my memory.  The idea of venturing up to that part of the state in the middle of winter is darn near insane, but in the summertime… the North Shore is a special paradise of sorts.

The drive up I-35 is flat and compromised of farms and other fields. However, the calm green expanses are peaceful and, once you close in on Duluth, turn in to rolling hills of birch, pine and probably other brands of tree of which I am unaware.

We are planning on stopping at a townie cafe in Pine City for breakfast on the way up. Iceberg luvs his Eggs Benedicts.

After that, first view of Duluth is from the top of Spirit Mountain. A vista of historic buildings quietly resting on the harbor of the largest lake in the world sure isn’t a sight to sneeze at. The lift bridge is kinda fun, too.

Before checking into the inn, we’ll visit  Split Rock Lighthouse and Gooseberry Falls. What good little tourists we are.

The rest of time is left to wander around the town. Last time I was up I remember getting my caricature done in between lunch at Grandma’s and buying kettle corn from a cart in the street. It’s like an embryo of the Navy Pier (only with a townie strip club that I’m fairly interested in experiencing).

So that’s my coming weekend in a nutshell.  Maybe I’ll be back to let you know how it goes… maybe not.

Happy Wednesday!

Shout Out: Wit + Delight

I just wanted to make sure everyone is aware of how much I adore my talented friend, Kate.

Kate, not only do you have amazing taste and style, but you so generously allow us all to enjoy your inspiring spirit through your blog. So thanks for that. And thanks for the new tumblr page… I am adoringly addicted!

If you haven’t seen her stuff yet, check it out. But don’t compare it to the McBlog because that’s just plain not fair.

Xxoo!! Ally

Finally Recovered

Soo… I survived the long weekend last weekend (two weekends ago), and then had another, very pleasant one.

The four days of Independence Day weekend were basically a drunken whirlwind. We couldn’t have asked for better weather though.  The big day on lake was Sunday. We filled up our 18-passenger pontoon to capacity, then piled in coolers of alcohol and food, and topped ‘er off with a dozen or so obnoxious floaty toys.

When the eight hours of brownout madness ended, the whole gang decided to continue the party over at Maynard’s on the lake. Ugh. Twelve hours of drinking never ends well, but a decent number were still able to make it out for breakfast at the Original Pancake House the next morning.

And I’m truly shocked I managed to hang on to all of my belongings. My dignity may have been dinged up a bit. Oh well. Apparently I’ll have a chance for a re-do, seeing as Zeep has already begun planning another voyage. This time with TWO boats. FML.

Anyway, because the weather was so darn amazing, Mr. Iceberg and I decided to get more sun damage by spending Monday on the lake again. Not surprisingly, I fell asleep that night around 6PM.

This past weekend was a whole different story. I filled it up with responsible occasions such as dinner with the fam, a matinee movie, date night with Mr. Iceberg to dinner and a comedy show, and Sunday lunch with Crumb and Beej.  Despite the outdoors resembling a suffocating steam room, it was very lovely indeed (did I mention Crumb and Beej left lunch on Sunday to head over to the Home Depot? So domesticated, those married folk).

I should mention that my sister moved to Dayton, Ohio on Saturday. A fine example of the things you do for love. Good luck out there, B! I will miss you like crazy, but at least we’ll always have our movie quotes. Xxoo!

One final question: Why the F does my car’s A/C smell like a men’s hockey locker room? Who left the dirty sock in the vents? Woof.

Have a lovely week everyone!

Beddy-Bye

When was the last time you used that phrase? Love it.

Oh, hi. You again.  I’m just about to hit the hay, get some shut eye, catch forty winks. Whatevs. Tonight Mr. Iceberg asked me if I was high … I wonder what that means. Probably means that I’m a starvin’ Marvin and going loopy because of this new “Shape Up Challenge” nonsense we’ve got going on at work. Wanna know what the motivational prize is?

Feeling healthier.

SOLD! Sign me right up for those 1200 cals a day and 6 day per week workouts! FML.

The good news is, is that I’m in first place … with myself (it’s an individual challenge) with a whopping 6lbs lost this week.  Suck it Weight Watchers! Whaaaaat?

K, yeah. I do seem high. This is weird.

I might also just be on overload of excitement for this weekend. Independence Day!  Wahoo! I have tomorrow off work, so I am going to treat myself to a mani/pedi in the morning before meeting up with my stylist for lunch. Only kidding; I might just do the pedi. ; )

Though I do need to go shopping to find a really mind-blowingly awesome sundress/romper/nonsense to wear out on the lake on Sunday.  I’m one of 18 people aboard the S.S. pontoon ship, so a girl’s gotta stand out, right?

While I’m out, I should probably also pick up a couple jugs of SPF 100 for the Mister’s sensitive epidermis. Tender angle kisses. (He’s going to kill me for saying that). :-*

Anyway, that’s all I really had to say. If I don’t see you this weekend, I hope you have a very lovely holiday!! Yay for Red, White and Blue!