bridesmaids! vegas! birthdays! california! bedbugs! phones! oh my!

you guys! i know. this is pitiful. i have no excuse, except for the fact that a lot of very Blog-Worthy things have been happening, but i am extraordinarily bad at taking photos off my camera in a timely fashion, so i kept going "oh! i should wait until i have photos to blog about that!" but then not having photos, and then something NEW would happen before i'd had a chance to blog about the first thing, and then i wouldn't have photos for EITHER event, so i'd be like "gosh i should really download those photos and blog about those things, except that i'm too busy DOING NEW THINGS CRAP" vicious cycle blah blah you really do not care, i know.

so. here's the deal. i had my bridesmaid dress party. i celebrated a friend's 30th birthday. i went to vegas for a different joint 30th birthday celebration. i won kim's blog giveaway for the calphalon pans (!!!!).* i came back and got a Sinus Infection of Death. i flew to california the next day to spend 5 days with my sister, who lives in San Francisco. i visited my friend carrie (of 16 years!) while there and got to hang out with her awesome daughter. chris flew out to join us. we all attended Bay to Breakers as the volcanic ash cloud. i lost my phone. we stayed at a hotel with bedbugs. my sinus infection did not go away. we flew home on tuesday; i came to work on wednesday to learn that a huge portion of our company had been sold off. so: i'm back to not knowing where i stand job-wise, i STILL have a sinus infection, i look diseased from the 1283762834 bedbug bites that are covering my arms and hands, i have no cell phone, my work phone crapped out this morning so i never heard my alarm or the 4 phonecalls my friend made to find out where the hell i was so i showed up at work at noon today, and OH MY GOODNESS i am ready for a slow weekend.

*i still have not even had a chance to take them out of their packaging, much less USE THEM. it's been a ridiculous few weeks.

so! yes! hello!

incidentally, are you aware of how sucky bedbugs are? i mean, i was aware CONCEPTUALLY that they sucked, but wow. i ignored the increasing number of welts turning up on my hands and arms for the first 2 days, because chris didn't have any, and hello, how could *just i* be getting bitten? then i googled some info about bedbugs, and learned that not everyone reacts to them. huh. fascinating. turns out chris is one of those people - we did find wee little bites dotting his hands and arms as well, once we looked more closely. and not surprisingly to anyone, i am someone who reacts VERY POORLY to the bites, and swear to god, it looks like i contracted smallpox or something. and jesus h, they itch like MAD. once we realized what was happening we asked to change rooms for our last night there, but the damage had already been done. when i got home tuesday night, i went to toss the entire contents of my luggage directly into the wash to be safe... and found a LIVE BEDBUG amongst my clothes. which is approximately when i lost my shit, called the hotel, announced i had a LIVE BEDBUG in my possession that i had acquired AT THEIR HOTEL and would MAIL IT TO THEM if they did not refund my money.

(unfortunately, the only person there at that hour was Stoney McStonerFace, the night guard, who is the one we talked to when asking to change rooms. he had waves of pot smoke literally wafting out of his room, and clearly did not understand the concept of bedbugs in his state, as he kept asking to "see the bugs" in our room. so when i called the next night, he was not too much help then either. however, the manager i talked to the next morning was very contrite and apologetic and had already refunded half of my money before even getting in touch with me.)

to sum up: san francisco is apparently full of dirty hippies and they give you bedbugs.

haha! just kidding! but, you know, not really. stupid hippies.