This past weekend, James Bond and I celebrated our two year anniversary by driving down to San Diego, getting up at 5:45am, and running a 15K race.

Well, actually, our real anniversary is on Tuesday and I’m the only one who ran the 15K race, but I did manage to convince him to a) come with me, b) wake up in the pitch black dark, c) run the 5K race that was happening that same morning, and d) do it all in the name of an “anniversary celebration.”

I WIN. Or, wait, maybe he wins because he’s the one doing the nice-y nice things for me while I’m the asshole who’s all, “LET’S DRIVE 120 MILES TO PAY SOMEONE TO TIME US WHILE WE RUN AROUND AT THE CRACK OF DAWN WITH A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WE DON’T EVEN KNOW. YEAH!!! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BABY!”

The race was fucking awesome though. I mean, the race itself wasn’t anything special, but I had this crazy out-of-body moment around mile 8 where I was all, “holy shit, LOOK WHAT MY BODY CAN DO” and it made me remember what Gretchen brilliantly dubbed the “Nicki Minaj moment,” which is basically any real life version of that line in Nicki Minaj’s song that goes “Yes I did, yes I did, somebody please tell him who the eff I is” that in my mind loosely translates to, “YOU BEST BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS CRAZY ASS THING. BAM!” Which is why you’ll see Gretchen and I occasionally yelling “NICKI MINAJ” at each other on Facebook and Twitter as a new go-to mantra for things we maybe don’t think we can do but are totally going to do anyway because bitch please.

So yeah, I ran 9.3 miles (NICKI MINAJ!!) and am now desperately in need of a Thai massage – even though I’m pretty sure getting a massage when I’m this sore could KILL ME DEAD. God, will you listen to me and my first world problems? “How soon is too soon to pay someone to rub my sore muscles after finishing my expensive and equally first world recreational activity?”

Yeah. THAT.

So, no massage for me. Instead, I got to come home from San Diego and have one of my biggest and most irrational fears realized, and honestly, I almost don’t want to tell you about it because there’s absolutely no way you can say that you’re not judging me and also that you’re not a liar in the same sentence and have both of those things be accurate. Seriously, even I judge me for this one.

Here’s the deal. I’m scared of alarm clocks. Actually, no, that’s not quite right. I’m not scared of alarm clocks, what I’m scared of is the possibility that something horribly annoying, like an alarm going off, will start and then just never stop. It’s why I hate when people say the same thing over and over again, like “Nicole, Nicole, Nicole, Nicole” if they’re trying to get my attention, or why I freak out when people repeatedly tap me on the shoulder or something, because WHAT IF IT NEVER STOPS? Think about it. What if your alarm went off in the morning and then it just NEVER STOPPED. EVER. EVERRRRR!!!

I’ve always known that this is an irrational fear, which is the only thing that’s kept it in check. I mean, of course the car alarm and the radio static and the blinking lights are going to stop, right? WRONG. Last night, James Bond put a pizza in the oven and set a timer on his iPhone for when to take it out. Then, just before the timer went off, the screen froze – we couldn’t click anywhere, couldn’t turn it off, couldn’t do anything – and then, of course, the timer went off. Loud, incessant, beeping, vibrating, with NO WAY TO TURN IT OFF. It just kept going off and going off and going off and I thought, “Oh my god, this is it. I’m going to have to listen to this sound FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE,” because that’s totally how I feel when repetitive noises get started. That’s where the fear comes from, the brain-eating belief that, no matter what, I’ll be subjected to whatever the thing is from now until the end of time forever and ever amen.

So there we were, trying to turn the phone off, trying to unfreeze it, plugging it into the wall, plugging it into the computer, pushing every button, smacking the screen, EVERYTHING, but it wouldn’t stop. Cue mild hysteria that ended with me burying the phone under a pillow to muffle the sound, closing the bedroom door, and hiding in the living room until it died or faded or gave up or did whatever the hell iPhone alarms do when they realize you’re not paying attention to them anymore because you’re LOSING YOUR MOTHER EFFING MIND OVER HERE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Damn it. Why am I telling you about this?! It’s bad enough that James Bond has had to put up with me and my quirky shenanigans for the past two years (HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BABY!), but now I’m voluntarily sharing it with everyone on the entire internet? SMOOTH, WOMAN.

Although, really, I don’t think the alarm clock thing is my point here. I think my point is that even though I’m out of my mind at least 96% of the time, James Bond still loves me and never even threatens to abandon me in a warehouse filled with blaring car alarms and smoke detectors, even though I’m sure that sometimes I totally deserve it.

That’s what love is, I think. Finding someone who looks at you when you’re at your craziest and says, “Fuck it, I’m in.”

(HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BABY!!)

When I was single, I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was easy, I was lazy (read: hungover), and cooking was clearly not worth interrupting my dedicated “roam aimlessly around the internet” time.

Looking back, I can best define my single years by three things: vodka, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and spontaneous decisions. It’s no surprise that the vodka and the spontaneity often went hand in hand, and that in light of the excess of the two I was often left with just enough energy to force myself to eat PB&J while sprawled across the floor.

It’s a strange and freeing process, thinking about the details of who you used to be, and as James Bond and I celebrate our year-and-a-half anniversary this month, I’m feeling a little bit of shock at how much has changed in such a short amount of time.

They say that you can’t look to your partner to make you happy, and I believe that’s true. They say that you need to be a whole person on your own in order to be part of a successful relationship, and I believe that that’s true, too. But what they don’t tell you – what nobody seems willing to tell you – is that it’s also okay to work this stuff out with someone else by your side. It’s okay to admit that you’re the best version of yourself because of the person that you love.

And yet, there still seems to be a stigma of weakness surrounding these beliefs. It’s like, at some point during the drive down Feminism Road, a few people got out and put up sign posts declaring that being a strong, kickass woman meant that you had to stand completely on your own.

And it’s not just the issue of relationships. Lately, I’ve begun to notice some polarizing and not-so-nice groups popping up around the internet with all sorts of definitive opinions on what it means to be a woman. Clusters of people who believe so strongly that you have to breastfeed, or that you have to take time to travel abroad, or that you have to ditch your 9-to-5 in favor of an entrepreneurial career path, otherwise you’re a giant failure.

Seriously? Fuck that.

I might breastfeed and I might not. I might spend a year backpacking through South America and I might not. I chose the entrepreneurial route, but I also see a huge number of benefits in sticking with the alternative. And yes, being a strong woman means being responsible for your own happiness, but no one ever tells you that it’s okay to admit to being happier because of someone else. It doesn’t make you weak or cliche, it doesn’t make you less of a fucking rockstar, and it doesn’t mean that you need your man to complete you in some intense, Jerry Maguire kind of way. It just means that you’re your best self as a result of the growth you’ve done alongside someone else, and that’s okay.

You certainly aren’t any less you because you’re part of a we.

Let’s take a poll. Do you think it’s racist to make declarative statements about a certain group of people even if the statement you’re making is a nice thing?

If your answer is yes, you should definitely stop reading this post because it’s racist as shit. If your answer is no, then OH MY GOD WHY ARE ASIAN BABIES SO MUCH CUTER THAN ALL THE OTHER BABIES?*

Whenever we see a baby like this out in public, I always tell James Bond that I’m going to put it in my purse. He thinks I’m kidding, but the truth is that at any given moment in my life I’m approximately 7 seconds away from going all Angelina Jolie on these super cute Asian babies, taking them home with me, and tattooing their birth coordinates all over my body.

(Don’t look at me like that. Of course I know that stealing other people’s babies on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica isn’t the same thing as adopting needy children from other countries. BUT STILL.)

Anyway, the other night when Drea was over I started a Pinterest board dedicated solely to pinning photos of cute Asian babies, an activity that has now replaced “sleep” and “water” and “real life three-dimensional friends” on my list of important things to do.

When I first showed Drea the big-glasses-small-Asian-child photo, I made her close her eyes. I’m all, “No seriously, close your eyes, I have to show you something SO AMAZING.” So she closes her eyes but then she’s like, “Dude, this is really weird. Don’t put anything near my face. What’s near my face?!” because I have the computer screen really close to her so that as soon as she opens her eyes it’s all CUTE ASIAN BABY, right fucking there, but I’m laughing so hard at being the kind of creepy motherfucker who makes her friend CLOSE HER EYES prior to being shown a close-up photo of someone else’s child from the internet that I’m basically wetting my pants. So she opens her eyes and looks from the photo of the baby to the tears streaming down my face to me crossing my legs so the pee won’t come out and then she starts laughing hysterically and we’re both collapsing on the couch in our almost-pee laughter tears and James Bond is looking at us and shaking his head like, “WHAT IS MY LIFE” and then we clicked over to the page that shows you all of the photos that have been added to Pinterest from the same website as the photo you’re looking at, but instead of finding a collection of photos that included our cute Asian baby photo, we found page after page of people who had all pinned THIS EXACT SAME PHOTO, which made me realize that, overall, the world is a very good place.

Except wait, actually, a little later that night we also found an online shop that sells “life-like baby replicas” and hey, guess what, on a scale from one to that super cute baby with the glasses, these dolls are like a negative eleventy billion.

SEE?!

Like, what the fuck? WHO’S BUYING THOSE? Especially because they’re priced at like two thousand dollars on Ebay.

TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.

FOR A SCARY FAKE BABY.

FROM FUCKING EBAY.

I mean, if people are seriously spending that much money on dolls from the internet, we’re all in the wrong business. Especially because they don’t have any cute Asian ones, which would clearly be worth so much more.

*Non-Asian mothers of the internet, please don’t yell at me. I’m not saying that your baby isn’t cute. I mean, I guess I might be saying that because not all babies are cute (WHAT? THEY’RE NOT), but yours probably is. It’s just not as cute as this baby. Or this baby. Unless, of course, the baby in either of those two photos actually is your child, in which case, CAN I PLEASE COME OVER AND FUCKING BABYSIT FOREVER?!?

If you’ve never had a Thai massage and are curious about how it feels, you can probably just hire someone on Craigslist to beat the shit out of you instead. It’s basically the same thing.

It all started when I wanted to do something nice for James Bond after our move. He handled so much of the heavy lifting, and I thought going to get massages together would be the perfect way to unwind. (Thai Massage Tip #1: do not expect to feel at all relaxed at any point during your massage.)

The place I picked had wonderful Yelp reviews and was right around the corner from our new apartment, so I made the appointment and off we went. When we got there, they brought us straight into our two little rooms, each filled wall-to-wall with a platform bed and separated from the other rooms by curtains. We were given a pair of very baggy pants and told to “take all things off, put on pants, and lay face in mattress.” So I did. (Thai Massage Tip #2: The pants will be way too big for you. Yes, you. No matter what. So you should probably keep your underwear on if you want to avoid showing a strange Thai lady your genitals.)

When my masseuse came in, she wasn’t fucking around. There was no soft and sensitive chit chat to make sure I was comfortable, warm enough, feeling good, etc. She just asked me if I like the massage strong and then climbed onto my body on her knees and started jumping around. What? Yeah. (Thai Massage Tip #3: Research the type of massage you’re getting before you go, so you’re not terribly freaked out when a woman you don’t know at all is crawling all over your body and digging her knees and elbows into your ass muscles.)

But here’s the thing about the hour-long massage: it worked. I was sore the next day, but overall it was the only massage I’ve ever gotten that did its job of seriously releasing tension for days and days afterward. Usually, I’m relaxed during the massage and it’s a nice, enjoyable experience, but I don’t feel any real benefit. With Thai Massage, you feel the benefit. The problem with feeling the benefit, though, is that you have to get through the part where some chick is walking on your back with her full weight and you can’t really breathe and you’re thinking, “If this goes on for more than 10 seconds, I’m going to black out,” and you’re having a full-on debate with yourself, thinking, “Just say something. Tell her it’s too much pressure. Ask for less pressure.” but the other part of you is all, “What the fuck, you’re such a baby. Just take it. Breathe through it. YOU’RE FINE. Just a little more. You can take it. You like it hard. Come on!” (Thai Massage Tip #4: You’re basically going to talk dirty to yourself in your head the whole time. That’s okay, it’s the only way to get through it.)

The final few minutes of the massage were the best though, if “best” means “most awkward ever,” because you’re sitting up and she’s doing all these weird stretching things to your arms and neck, but since you’re topless, sitting up also means that your boobs are flying everywhere because even though she tried to tie a tiny little towel around your chest it obviously didn’t stay tied because you don’t have the same ridiculously small Thai bone structure that the makers of these towels were envisioning when they decided to use them as cover ups when beating unsuspecting women into “relaxation.”

And yet, despite paying to flash someone my boobs during a massage in which I mostly thought I was going to die, I really did feel so much looser for the next week. Not “looser” in the slutty way where I showed my tits to a stranger, although come to think of it, I suppose that applies as well.

Oh, and Thai Massage Tip #5: If you’re going to pay someone $45 to beat the shit out of you while they stare at your nipples, make sure you choose a place with an adjoining restaurant so that you can take advantage of the punchcard that lets repeat experiences of naked suffering earn you some free Thai noodles.

The best part about moving to a new city with your boyfriend is that he takes on the responsibility of loading and unloading all of the really heavy shit and therefore winds up too exhausted to protest when you order this decal for the bathtub:

Right now, I’d like to say that the thing I’m most excited about is that my birthday is a week from today, but no, the thing I’m most excited about is Bathtub Decal Arrives In The Mail Day. And then after that, the thing I’m most excited about is having people over to our new apartment who will eventually have to use said bathroom so that I can yell loudly at them while they’re in there and demand that they tell me if they’re naked or not.*

(God, how excited are you to come over to my apartment!!)

We’ve been here for six days now, and the bad parts of moving (where you want to kill yourselves and each other and everyone on the roads and everyone at Target and basically just anyone ever) are behind us. We’ve unpacked all the things, assembled all the new furniture, and are now working on the fun part of actually decorating, which is really just a lot of James Bond being worried that I’m going to throw his things out and me assuring him that I won’t even though he’s basically a hoarder.

(This is where he insists that I clarify that a) he only hoards cool shit but b) he’s not even a real hoarder at all because he couldn’t qualify for that Hoarders show on A&E and if you don’t meet the criteria for the reality TV show that’s related to your particular issue, it *totally* doesn’t count.)

Ahem.

Anyway, here’s the weird thing about moving: The place is unfamiliar, and you’re not in a routine yet, so it’s basically like you’re on vacation, only it’s a vacation in which you’re surrounded by everything you owned in the old place as well as a bunch of Swedish shit from IKEA with labels you can’t pronounce because the Swedish apparently think it’s awesome to have no vowels and eleventy thousand combinations of “sjk” in every single one of their words.

So it feels like we live here, but not really. I mean, I know that this is “home,” but it’s not home yet, you know? We’re in the in-between. Tomorrow though, we’re fulfilling my decorating wet dream of painting the entire wall above my desk with chalkboard paint, and we’re also using a magnetic primer which means that in addition to now being adult enough to purchase primer, I’ll soon have an entire wall that’s not just a wall but also a fucking ninja-ass MAGNETIC CHALKBOARD.

A magnetic chalkboard wall and a bathtub decal that demands immediate nudity; if that’s not the recipe for home sweet home, I have no idea what is.

*NOT YOU, GRANDPA. THAT DECAL ISN’T FOR YOU.

Listen, I’m a low maintenance girl. I don’t need a lot of specific shit to be happy, and I only have two rules for the people in my life: no jail, and no hospital. That’s it. Do whatever you want, be whoever you are, just don’t wind up in jail and don’t wind up in the hospital. Unless you’re like giving birth or some shit, then by all means go to the hospital. Or, if you’re anything like some of the girls I went to high school with, just have your baby at home in an inflatable pool and post graphic pictures of your placenta on Facebook.

(Thanks for making that available to me, Mark Zuckerberg. Thanks a lot.)

Other than pushing a human being out of your vagina, though, there will be absolutely no hospital. And definitely no jail. Easy, right? YOU’D THINK. And yet, there I was yesterday, only a few slight degrees of separation away from both jail and the hospital. I also met Hugh Jackman, but that’s an entirely different story.

Wait, let’s back up for a second. Have you ever been to Bay to Breakers? If not, and if you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically an all-out crazy fest that happens in San Francisco every May under the guise of a 12K race. I mean, the 12K race actually does happen, but the serious runners are overshadowed by the thousands of costume-wearing drunk people who wander along the race route in a substance-induced parade. I don’t know how you go from one of the healthiest activities (running) to such a shitshow (THIS) during the same event, but yesterday was the 100th anniversary of said event so apparently people in this madhouse city are all about making it happen.

This was my second year at Bay to Breakers, but it was my first year doing it sober, and as a result my biggest piece of advice to you is that if you ever have the opportunity to soberly attend an event where people are a) completely naked, b) falling down drunk in the streets, c) dressed in full head-to-toe costume, or d) all of the above, take it. You have no idea the things you miss when you’re part of the drunken masses.

I mean, if Amber and I weren’t sober, how would we have managed to keep track of the number of naked old man penises we saw? (15) Also, while we’re on the subject, how is it possible that cops were stopping people to pour out their open beers, yet it was entirely fine for FULL GROWN MEN to wander the streets wearing nothing but a pink sparkly cowboy hat and furry boots? Isn’t it illegal to run around naked in public once you’re over the age of, like, 3? James Bond says it’s legal in San Francisco as long as you’re not obstructing traffic, but I’m not entirely sure his opinion counts since he drunkenly somersaulted over a fence yesterday and cut his effing face open. And also, do I even want to question why my boyfriend knows the rules about what naked adult men are allowed to do in public in the city of San Francisco?

Probably best to just leave that one alone.

Anyway, after he almost broke the “no hospital” rule by destroying his face, and after Amber almost broke the “no jail” rule by getting her car impounded for being parked too close to the parade route, I met Hugh Jackman. He was signing autographs outside a theatre a few blocks from my apartment, and apparently he’s been performing there for the past few weeks. To be honest, I have absolutely no idea what Hugh Jackman does in a solo show involving him and a seventeen piece orchestra, but I’m going to pretend it involves his delicious Australian accent, the Wolverine claws, some soothing classical music, and a lot of gyrating in the general direction of my apartment.

So, to recap: James Bond is missing a part of his nose and a lot of his forehead, it costs $400 to get your car out of the impound if you do it the same day, men can walk naked through the streets of San Francisco as long as they properly adhere to traffic signals, and all of this is probably just a preview of what I’ll witness in Vegas later this week.

Huzzah!

Here’s the thing about plans: they change.

At NYU, I thought I was going to major in Communications and then pursue a graduate degree, get a corporate job, and stay in New York City forever. Instead, I majored in Food Studies, graduated early, never went to grad school, started a blog, spent five years running a children’s summer day camp outside LA, quit, backpacked around the country until I was totally broke, and moved to San Francisco for a guy I don’t even talk to anymore.

Throughout those years, I spent an unbelievable amount of time planning for the future, and then an equally unbelievable amount of time feeling anxious about my plans. Would they work out? Was I doing enough to prepare? Would I be ready? Was I on the right path? Making plans and stressing about plans was basically my full-time job.

Looking back, it makes me laugh that every single long-term plan I made wound up changed or entirely scraped. Even more recently, when I moved to San Francisco, I thought I knew what kind of job I would interview for and what would unfold with the guy I was seeing, but now, a year and a half later, I realize that I never could have planned for what actually happened. I couldn’t have predicted that I’d wind up co-owning a corporation with my best friend and working from home, or that I’d be in the happiest relationship of my life with a guy I didn’t even know existed before I moved here.

And see, that’s the thing. We can’t make big elaborate plans for our lives, because it’s all just a product of one thing leading to another thing. The plans I stressed out about making two years ago, and then a year ago, and then even six months ago, none of them are reflective of what’s happening in my current life, which means it’s probably about time that I finally learned the lesson, huh? That plans always change, at least a little, no matter what, and that they often change more than a little and in ways you could absolutely never have predicted. So stop predicting.

There are lots of reasons why our plans change, of course, but the biggest has to do with the people we love. The plans we made on our own often need to be broken down and rebuilt once we’re taking someone else’s plans into consideration. And so, less than a year and a half after arriving in San Francisco, I’m getting ready to pack up and move down to Los Angeles at the end of May. James Bond is starting a PhD program at USC in the fall, so we’ll be settling into Southern California for at least the next four years -  a step I never could have planned for, but am so excited about now that it’s here.

Recently, I heard it said that good chess players always need to think five moves ahead, but that great chess players only need to think one move ahead, because they know it’s the right move. I have no idea what our life will be like in LA, and I don’t have a plan for it, but I know that moving there is the right move, and as for what comes next? My life has shown me that I’ll just have to wait and see.

So, James Bond and I moved in together this weekend!

As a result, I now have twice as much stuff, half as much storage space, and someone who is more or less obligated to deal with me at all times.

In exchange, I’ve replaced James Bond’s non-functioning wireless router with my totally functioning wireless router and have since learned that these devices are basically magic because they automatically carry your old network name over to your new place. Which is to say that James Bond is now stuck with a publicly visible network named “Horse Vagina,” something I think is obsessively hysterical and he thinks is probably the tip of the iceberg of what his life will be like now that I’m here 24/7.

OH WELL, OOPSIE, TOO LATE!!

I just drove 800 miles, by myself, in less than 24 hours. And hey, guess what, there’s definitely such a thing as too much alone time.

I thought driving 16oo miles to and from Washington for Thanksgiving was bad, but at least I had James Bond in the car with me for that. I mean, 1600 miles is a lot to drive no matter what, but driving with JB guarantees that, because we have drastically different in-car temperature preferences, we’ll spend the majority of the ride changing the temperature up and down and up and down and therefore will always have something to occupy our time.

Whenever we get in the car together, the temperature wheel starts in the center, directly between the blue cold air line and the red warm air line. Neutral. Switzerland. Within a few minutes, I’ll start to feel hot, and I’ll move the dial a little to the cold side. He’ll shiver, and move it to the warm side. He’ll start to feel bad for me, and so he’ll move it back to the cold side. I’ll start to feel bad for him, and I’ll move it back to the warm side. Then I’ll sit there, hot, thinking that I’m being very accommodating, until all of the sudden I switch it back and yell, “I’M SORRY, I JUST HAVE TO TURN THE AC ON FOR ONE SECOND BECAUSE I’M DYING,” and he shakes his head, tells me that he wore an extra layer in preparation, and sits on his hands. He’s quiet, but I’m pretty sure he’s thinking, “Careful there, Jamie is about to leave for Europe and if you freeze me to death there won’t be anyone left to listen to your absurdity.”

I turn the heat up a notch.

At the start of yesterday’s drive down to LA to pick up everything I had left in storage, I tried to psych myself up by thinking about how deliciously freezing I could be in the car all by myself. During the first hour, I was all, “This is awesome! It’s so chilly! I have so much good music! I have so much time to myself!” By the second hour, I was like, “You know, it’s pretty fucking dark. This would be more fun if it were a little less fucking dark.” By the third hour, I had maxed out on all the lovely self reflection I had planned on doing; apparently, I’m not as fascinated with myself as I thought I was. So, instead, I started thinking about all of this really disturbing and unnecessary stuff, like what would happen if all of the gas in my tank suddenly disappeared and I was stranded on the side of I-5 in that pitch black dark. I tried to decide if it would be smarter to stay by the car, or to stay in the car, or to walk away from the car, or to hide in the trunk. I then started worrying about how I’d escape from the trunk if someone stole the car while I was hiding in it.

By the fourth hour, terrified of my own trunk and totally sugar high from eating an enormous bag of mint M&Ms, I had resorted to comforting myself by talking out loud, even though all I kept saying was, “Why haven’t I passed a goddamn In N Out yet?!” Eventually, my hunger beat my desire to wait for an In N Out and I was finally forced to stop at a Wendy’s/gas station combo, where, by the way, they have an automated scale in the bathroom that you can put two quarters into and find out your exact weight. Because clearly, the time I’m most excited to weigh myself is in the bathroom of a fucking Wendy’s.

I got back on the road. By the fifth and sixth hours, I’m pretty sure I lost consciousness. I made it to the Motel 6, collapsed into bed, woke up, picked all my things up from storage, and started the long drive back to San Francisco.

I thought this second trip would be better. “It’s so nice and sunny!” I told myself. “And you picked everything up from storage! You’re so productive! You can do it!” (Does anything good ever follow a self-initiated pep talk of “you can do it?”) I started driving. After about four hours, I realized that I was more bored than I had ever been – a very dramatic statement that is, in fact, much less dramatic than how I actually felt at the time. I just couldn’t fathom driving another two and a half hours. “I’m never going to make it!” I wailed through the phone to my mother, but she didn’t care. She only wanted to discuss two things: whether or not I thought Cleveland fans would be mean to LeBron in tonight’s game, and the fact that my Aunt Barbara is thrilled that, after seeing the movie Burlesque, she has discovered “an amazing new young singer named Christina Aguilera.”

“Please,” my mother said proudly, “even I know who Christina Aguilera is. I can’t believe Barbara doesn’t know about the genie in the bottle.”

I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, but I’m almost positive that it has something to do with the fact that I’m probably as narcissistic as Tommy Hilfiger and therefore I need to get my own headshots taken.

It all started on Facebook. Jamie comes into the kitchen last night and she’s all, “Third Eye Blind is doing a random middle of the day concert in Union Square tomorrow!!” I look at her and I’m like, “I love Third Eye Blind!” and she’s all, “Same!” and I’m like, “Wait, Third Eye Blind is still together?” and she’s all, “Um, YES” and I’m like, “Huh” and she’s all, “And they’re giving away ten pairs of tickets on Facebook!” and I’m like, “Cool?”

And then she actually won.

We took the bus over there this afternoon, no idea what we were getting into, and then all of the sudden we learned that it’s not just a Third Eye Blind concert, it’s a collaborative event with Macy’s that’s being co-hosted by Tommy Hilfiger. Oh, and by the by, we were VIPs and would we like to come over here and wait in this line to meet the band? YES WE’D LIKE TO MEET THE BAND.

God, in another life I would have been a phenomenal groupie slut.

Waiting in line, we kept looking at each other and marveling at the overwhelming randomness of the day. “Remember when you won tickets to a Third Eye Blind concert on Facebook and now we’re waiting in a line on the third floor of Macy’s to meet them? What is our life?”

A little while later, the band came out to meet us and autograph CDs. You know who else came out? Tommy Hilfiger. And do you know what he did? He sat there, next to the band, and signed glossy 8 x 10 headshots. OF HIMSELF. Now listen, I get why certain people have headshots taken. If you’re an actor or a model or anything in this general category, it makes total sense. But Tommy Hilfiger? What the actual fuck is anyone going to do with an autographed headshot of Tommy Hilfiger?

Going through the line, Jamie and I were hysterical. Finally, we got up to the table where the five of them were sitting and we’re getting our CD signed and Jamie’s shaking hands with Stephan Jenkins and I’m telling him that this is the most random day of my life and he looks up at me and goes, “Everyday should be totally random” and I’m all, NEW LIFE MOTTO. Also, did you know that even while awkwardly wearing sunglasses inside, Stephan Jenkins is hot? Like, hot. Do you know who else was hot? The models standing around in Tommy Hilfiger clothes during the entire event that were silently all, “Look how pretty and all-American we are. Oh this football? We’re just going to toss it around in front of the cameras for a bit. Take a look at our blazers, we’re very sophisticated. We could be Yale students. Very rich Yale students named Brandon something something the third with little black books and not-so-quiet coke habits.”

Those kinds of models.

Apparently, the entire concert was to introduce some kind of partnership between Tommy (what’s up first name basis!) and Third Eye Blind. Some poverty initiative. I think? With models? Fuck, I’m a terrible listener when there are hot models and musicians around.

The concert was great though, except now Jamie and I each have an autographed copy of Ursa Major and an autographed photo of Tommy Hilfiger and really, we don’t need these things. Does anyone need these things? I don’t know, but I’m giving them away. Please tell me that someone out there wants to receive these two items in the mail. Or that two someones want to receive these two items in the mail, since Jamie and I are both giving our autographed shit away. I also have a few kaleidoscopes* laying around if you want those too. Well, the kaleidoscopes aren’t technically mine, but they’ve been laying around James Bond’s apartment for long enough that I’ve decided he doesn’t want them. Don’t worry, I checked the fine print of the blogosphere and it states that if you’re dating a blogger and you leave items unattended in your apartment for too long, they’ll be packed up with a Tommy Hilfiger headshot and given away on the internet. True story.

*Holy shit, I spelled kaleidoscopes right on the first try. I win at life.

[Prize winner update: Arielle! And Lynsey!]