Irina and I doing leg presses. Everyone looked so silly doing it, I was laughing the entire time.

I can’t remember what this trick is called, but it  makes me think of Houdini and it hurt a lot! You pretty much drop from standing or squatting and hang from your ankles. I have bruises around both my calves from it. Gonna put it on the list to tricks to avoid.

Full flag – you sit on the trapeze, wrap your arms around the ropes, grip the bar and then push up while bringing your legs over and behind the bar.

Getting there is difficult, but once I was in position I felt pretty secure – though I don’t really understand the physics and why I just didn’t fall off backward. It gave me some nice bruises and today, after class and dancing last night, my arms and legs are super sore!

I guess this is the outfit to wear when I want to get hit on a lot. Poor guys – I show up to dance, not meet people.

The dudes are trying to win the Band of Buds contest…

Two shots for every beer!
Though I drank water all night like a good DD/party animal

Love that these dudes love to dance – probably more that J and I do!

You can go vote for Crew D at http://www.bandofbuds.com/crew/crewd
Go for it, they are super fun! And J and I will get drinks for life if they win

]]> http://sillygrrl.com/2010/09/02/dance-party-wednesday/feed/ 3 http://sillygrrl.com/2010/09/01/pawleys-island-the-silly/ http://sillygrrl.com/2010/09/01/pawleys-island-the-silly/#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:48:36 +0000 sillygrrl http://sillygrrl.com/?p=3308

If you’ve been reading long enough you’ve probably figured out that my family is really into playing games. While we were in SC, my cousin’s fiancée, Sarah, taught us to play Quelf. Now, on the box it says the game is for players 12 and older, but really it works much better as a drinking game.

Played choose a game piece, roll the die, land on a colored square and then draw a card corresponding with that color. sounds pretty generic right? Then we started reading the cards…

The red cards are Scatter Brainz – you choose between two suggestions like “Ways to attach a chicken to your forehead” or “Ways to get your leg out of a spring-loaded bear trap” and then take turns naming things that apply. (duck tape, staple gun, genetic modification…light saber, time machine) The first person to get stuck for an answer drinks.

The green cards are Quizzle, which are a bunch of lsilly questions, except when you get one wrong and have to do something ridiculous as punishment.

Then come the dreaded yellow, blue and purple cards, which immediately yank you out of your comfort zone and have you singing, dancing and hailing Chinese cheese buscuits.

The yellow cards are Stuntz. “You have until your next turn to use whatever you can find to make a snorkle” cue my aunt taking off for the kitchen and them coming back a couple minutes later with a flyswatter taped to her head, which she had to wear for the rest of the game. She was also unfortunately forced to smell my sister’s foot.

My sister dropped at least 5 ice cubes down her pants and kept them there until she rolled a six.

The blue cards are Roolz, such as “You may not band your arms or legs when it is not your turn” or “Anytime anyone stands up, everyone else must stand as well”…last person drinks of course My brother ended up sitting under the table for a while and I had to refer to myself in the third person for the entirety of the game. And if you break your rule and someone catches you…drink!

The purple cards are Showbiz. Talk like a preacher for the rest of the game, write a haiku about your armpit, or perhaps you should stick your finger up your nose and yodel…

Sometimes the cards a classified, so you read them to yourself and then do what is says while everyone tries to figure out what’s going on. My cousin drew a card which told him to excuse himself, take the card to the bathroom, and stay in there until someone came and got him. Lucky for him we figured it out not too long after. Sarah drew a card which told her to set it on the table, flip the timer and then go and hide. When the timer ran out we read the card and then took off running down the stairs to find her. She was a good hider – all the way out on the beach in the middle of the night!

The best part of the game is watching people reading their chosen card. Their facial expressions usually go from WTF? to laughter and then OMG…

As a board game connoisseur I recommend this game 100 percent. With or without the drinking it’s hilarious and a guarantee of a good time. Go forth and Quelf!

My mom has a talent for packing car food, so we stopped only to pee and get gas, making the trip about 14 hours. We did luck out at one rest stop and find soft pretzels that were surprisingly good.

Around 6pm we stopped at a Holiday Inn just outside of Winston-Salem. My mom, forever getting free stuff, used her points card to get us a room on the executive floor (fancy!), goodie bags with popcorn, muffins, and apples, and free coffee, tea and cookies. We had dinner at Applebee’s and then watched Juno in the hotel room. The second the movie was finished and the lights were out my mom was wide awake and wanted to use her coupon for a free glass of wine at the hotel bar. We convinced her to stay in bed and then, remembering a joke I’d heard on Jimmy Fallon about Tempurpedic beds and the infamous glass of wine, I sent my self and consequently my mom and sister into a fit of giggles.

The next day, after waking up at 7:45 to run outside in the sweltering heat, we were back on the road. Five more hours in the car, picked my bro up from the airport, swung by Sonic and we rolled up to the house at about 5pm. My aunt, uncle and cousins we already there, so we did the usual running of the house, checking out bedrooms and yelling Marco! Polo! to located each other.

For our first dinner in SC we all pitched in to make spaghetti.

The next few nights were filled with completely silly games of drunken Jenga and Quelf (which will get its own post as it is my new favorite game).

Days were spent floating in the pool, which we almost always had to ourselves.

And working on my tan sunburn.

There is a running joke that all my family does on vacation is read. I think between the five of us we brought about 15 books and I finished two of mine, so I suppose it’s true

When asked to pack his toys for vacation, my 2.5-year-old cousin brought his coocoo (motorcycle) helmet and gloves. I love that he looks like a little bobble head wearing it.

On one of the days a couple dudes showed up to paint the trim on part of the house. One of them brought his macaw, Maximus, who hung out on his perch and chattered away while they worked.

My aunt and uncle always bring their margarita maker on vacation. We also drank a whole lot of schnoculator (a Tito’s vodka, blue raspberry, lemonade, limeade, Redbull concoction), crack juice (some combination of crystal light and flavored vodka)

Aand…lots and lots of jello and pudding shots.

Which are perfect to eat in the morning while doing yoga

There was also a little bit of shopping, checking out a sea turtle nests, singing the ‘Bed Intruder’ song (Run and tell that!), multiple plastic blow-up monkies, leftover steak stealing, late-night pool volley ball, really loud yet tiny frogs, ghost crab catching, beach wogging, “hair”plane flying, and rat rooming the rat room.

They are definitely where I get my silly from – love my family

We’ve been vacationing in South Carolina since I was 13. In the beginning we would rent a condo in Litchefield and now, for the past 5 or 6 years, we’ve been renting houses in Litchfield, Pawley’s Island, and once in Georgetown (a house we called The Bates Motel on a property we deemed DeBordon’t). All three locations are about 30 minutes south of Myrtle Beach away from all the crowds and touristy attractions, so it’s always quiet and relaxing.

This year we rented The Marlin…

The 11 of us, plus two kids, fit perfectly in this six bedroom, six and a half bath house right on the beach.

Every morning we’d wake up, eat breakfast and park our butts in a line on the white sandy beach. We’d then spend the day reading, playing in the ocean, walking out to the point which ends (at low tide) in a sandbar that sticks out into the ocean, then back to the house for lunch, a dip in the pool and more basking in the sun on the beach.

From the front of the house you could see the second row of houses lined along an alligator filled marsh.

The entire house was paneled in blond wood (yikes!) with a huge island in the kitchen and table that fit all of us. We have a few traditions during vacay – we eat at T-Bone’s Saloon & Steakhouse on the first night and have a fancy dinner at a Japanese steakhouse another night. The rest of the time we cook pasta, tacos or order in pizza, so we’re always thrilled when we can fit the whole group at one table.

Next to the kitchen/dining area was the living room with a wall of doors at the back of the house facing the ocean. I think every one of us passed out for a nap on those couches, as my dad is demonstrating in the pic above, they were perfectly cushy to sink right in to.

The bedrooms were all sort of shabby chic – two on the top floor with the kitchen/living area and four on the floor below along with a smaller living room. My sister and I shared a bedroom from the first time in 10 years – I called dibs on the full size bed immediately

Downstairs there was a boardwalk out onto the beach, which we shared with the house next door.

And my favorite part of renting a house – we have the beach all to ourselves!

There were a few people in the houses on either side of us and then two empty lots beside them, so it was nice and quiet (aside from us of course ).

Up next… The Fam

]]> http://sillygrrl.com/2010/08/30/pawleys-island-the-house/feed/ 7 http://sillygrrl.com/2010/08/28/last-day-of-vacay/ http://sillygrrl.com/2010/08/28/last-day-of-vacay/#comments Sun, 29 Aug 2010 01:29:08 +0000 sillygrrl http://sillygrrl.com/?p=3276

[ my sis, bro and me on the beach after dinner last night ]

So tired, sandy, sweaty and 12 shades of pink and red.
We leave tomorrow morning – can’t wait to get home to my little pup and my big comfy bed.

Been too busy hanging on the beach and staring at this beautiful view to blog. I’m in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina – where I’ve spent many many summers since I was 13. The whole family (ok not the whole family…all 40 of us would be insane) – aunts, uncles, cousins and even a pair of adorable kids – are here baking in the sun and making each other laugh until we pee and or cry.

And if you fancy breaking in to my house while I’m gone – beware…it’s being guarded by these two…

See ya’ll in a week!

We’re wearing the same exact outfit…

A trip that could have taken just over an hour took us two and a half because of a little excursion through classic car hell to the bank and then a stop at Taco Bell that was so not right off the highway. I hadn’t eaten there in probably two years and it was still as delicious as I remember.

When we finally showed up at the venue it was like a scene out of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure – bikers everywhere and us feeling super out of place. It felt a little more Sons of Anarchy once we got inside and got comfortable, but for a while there I was preparing to win over the crowd with my table dancing skills.

The Sleeping played and even though it didn’t look like their kind of crowd at all, people seemed into the show because well, they’re awesome.

Post performance we hung out at the bar, getting hit on (as usual) by an awkward drunk guy who tried to buy us drinks, asked me what color my eyes are, and then petted my messenger bag. The bartender called us over to try whipped cream vodka and Vernors – not too bad!

Once the dudes were packed up we hung out outside in this huge patio area. There were a whole lot of drink tickets being passed around and I, of course, was a party animal with my water.

Doug demonstrated multiple times that he can balance a full drink on his head and do a little dance. He thought he got winked at, but Jess shot him down saying, “Was it a wink or a lazy eye?”

The dudes were hilarious and excellent shit-talkers. It pretty much went like this…

INSIDE OUTSIDE, INSIDE OUTSIDE, YOU LOOK LIKE A LESBIAN, I WISH I WAS WEARING PANTS, DRINK DRINK DRINK, SUCK MY BALLS, ARE YOU A REDHEAD? YES, NECKLACE LEGS, NICE BEARD, THOSE DUDES ARE STARING AT YOU, DUDEYOUGUYSROCKED, JIMMY JOHNS – OH I REMEMBER YOU!, WHERE’S YOUR ROBOT, PLEASE DON’T LET THAT BE ME IN 15 YEARS, YOU GUYS MATCH, SUIT + WHITE COWBOY HAT, FUCK YOUR MOTHER, HOTTEST GIRL IN THE BAR, ARE YOU A REDHEAD? NO, NICE BLACK EYE, WE HAVE THE SAME OUTFIT BUT SHE LOOKS LIKE A STRIPPER, DRINK DRANK DRUNK, CAN I GET YOUR NUMBER, IS THAT METALLICA?!, HOW OLD DO I LOOK, SERIAL KILLER, LITTLE ANGELFUCK, GUYS WE GOTTA GO, 5 MORE MINUTES, WHO HAS DRINK TICKETS, THEY’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY.

Around 2:30 the dudes drunkenly piled into the van (where their sober driver was already waiting) and we hopped back on the highway, letting the Descendents carry us home.

]]> http://sillygrrl.com/2010/08/19/was-it-a-wink-or-a-lazy-eye/feed/ 2 http://sillygrrl.com/2010/08/16/movie-date-eat-pray-love/ http://sillygrrl.com/2010/08/16/movie-date-eat-pray-love/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:13:17 +0000 sillygrrl http://sillygrrl.com/?p=3246 My mom and I went on a little date last night to see Eat Pray Love. We stopped at Kohls on the way to the theater an as usual I found something I neeeeded!

It’s always nerve wracking, when you love a book so much (I read it twice), to see it made into a movie. I wanted all my favorite parts included and intact, and in my opinion, the director did a great job making sure the movie lived up to the book. I loved that there were parts taken verbatim from the text -  I was anticipating the words coming out of the actor’s mouths, thinking “Say it! Say it!”

It seemed there was a lot of back story leading up to her traveling, whereas in the book it’s just immediately in your face, sobbing on the bathroom floor, crazy conversations with God, which made her taking off around the world more believable and understandable. I found a few parts to be slow moving – I knew what Gilbert was thinking, but I’m not sure how it would come across to someone who hasn’t read the book.

Wayan and Ketut were perfectly cast and I wish there had been more of them in the movie. I wanted to step into the screen and hang out in Wayan’s shop all day. James Franco as David didn’t thrill me – maybe that’s exactly what he was like in real life, but I pictured someone different when I read the book.

I know not everyone was a fan of Eat Pray Love, but if nothing else, the scenery and food are beautiful, and of course, Julia Roberts is impossibly charming.

Throughout the movie I kept thinking “I’m doing it – I’m on my journey.”  I may not be flying around the world, stuffing my face with pizza and meditating all day, but I’m having my own adventure right here at home and figuring out where I want to be in life. I’m doing something a little crazy, taking every chance to get out with my friends, meeting new people and taking all the time I need to just be alone. It  made me feel good that I’m taking care of myself and hopeful for what I could manifest with all this positive energy.