Yeah, yeah – I know it. I’ve heard it all already – I’ve not updated "AubreySays" as much as I should have – hell, I haven’t updated THIS site as much as I should. Trust me, I’m getting back to it slowly but surely, so many more posts will be coming in the upcoming days. There’s just this little thing called "work" (coupled by "messy homes", "houseguest" and "high maintenance puppies") that seems to perpetually be getting in my way. GRR.
However, you’ll be happy to know (well, I’m assuming you will – most of you don’t really care) that I *DID* update AubreySays with some great food recommendations – more to come, I promise – but in the meantime, ENJOY.

(CLICK THE PICTURE TO ENLARGE)

If you spent New Years Eve with me, you are NOT who I am referring to. Otherwise, if you think you may fall into this camp and you’re a betting man, I’d suggest you put your money on "That’s Me."

– Do not honk your horn unless it’s a safety warning. (You hear that, every driver or Union or Van Ness at any hour of the day, especially 2am?)

Living across the country from those nearest and dearest to you has its challenges. My friend laments because no longer can (or, should I say, kindly will) he call to wake me up at 7am most mornings. Keeping in touch with my parents is similarly difficult; I talk to my Mom on the way to work and it’s only because she’s somewhat of a night owl that I don’t feel too guilty calling before MY bedtime. (Yes, that’s right, I go to bed before my Mom does most nights, even with the 3 hour time delay. Pathetic, I know.) But beyond the conversations it’s the assimilation that I miss, the last-minute Sunday dinners at my friend Todd’s house or our girl’s card night with Lels, Dana and Beth. I miss MDR (My Darling Roommate for those of you newer to the site) endlessly playing poker and eating dry, uncooked spinach with Rotisserie chicken and garbanzo beans on top, and I even miss my over-commitments, rushing late to a Junior League meeting while simultaneously threatening to quit it once and for all. And, as illogical as it may be, I miss being a part of my friends’ lives who never even lived in Atlanta, feel an unjustified sense of being left out as they play trivia or eat bad East Coast sushi or even hit the beach bars. I left the South willingly, excited about the new life ahead of me and not at all disillusioned what a difference 4000 miles would make. And yet it’s not the mere miles, nor the time difference, that makes me the saddest – it’s the inclusion. I miss just simply being a part of it all.

Don’t get me wrong, I love San Francisco. I love being able to walk Lila Belle down by the water and then through the foliage of Ft. Mason. I adore that my Mom and I traversed the city far more on foot, cab and bus than we did by car. And being able to show my old friends a fabulous sushi dinner while trying to explain what a “cougar” was delighted me to no extent. And these visits continue: my dear friends from Australia are already here for a few weeks, I’m heading to Tahoe to play with some of my old ATL (now Chicago) crew, and one of my closest gal pals from Atlanta will be here not just for the Google Sales Conference but for the following weekend as well. My friends, they haven’t forgotten me, and I love that I get to see them so often. And yet this small twinge of jealousy, likened to not being invited to the most popular girl’s party back in 6th grade, still remains. While I know that I can’t have my cake and eat it too, I wish there was a way to keep my South as I learn my San Francisco.

Busy.
Busy busy busy busy busy.

(That, and Christmas and time off and Tahoe and skiing and gambling and even a "Welcome 2006" cake.)

And of course certifiably insane landlords, legal disputes, additional theft and "to-do" lists that are seemingly never-ending.

Updates are coming, I promise…new templates, new writings, new posts on AubreySays.com, and of course new pics.

Which, while you’re mentioning it, here’s a few…more (and captions) to come.

“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”
– John F. Kennedy

uuI’ve been using Typepad to manage this site for over two years, and I find myself with very little complaints. Their customer service is fantastic, their answers aren’t canned responses but actual solutions to my problems, and the folks at Six Apart are great in keeping the features fresh and functional. I’m a happy user, to say the least. I had used Movable Type on a standalone for a while since my old company was kind enough to let me keep my site hosted there (read: FREE!) years after I’d moved to another job, but a server went kaput and, thankful that I had backed up most of my files, I again returned to Typepad. I had forgotten, though, how fabulous their photo albums are.

Yes, I love me some Flickr (Note to Google: If you don’t get Picasa to work on a Mac or allow for album sharing, you’re gonna lose the market entirely to our friends down the road) but I have to admit there’s something about keeping the aubreysabala.com URL intact for my pics that appeals to the not-so-secret not-so-inner nerd in me. And so in this season of perpetual down time (it’s a miracle, really, but I’m not complaining) I found some time on my hands yesterday to update my photo albums, publish them all (going back years now!) and keep them all fresh and updated in one place. HALLELUJAH! And so it is with joy that I look back and reminisce on the good times – remember the coconut bra incident? And Memorial Days of years past? And Aruba? And, oh my dear Lord, I had just about forgotten the Ghetto Fab Birthday Party. Um, apparently I was braver at age 25.

Regardless, amuse yourself. Take a look around and feel free to laugh at my expense – it’s the season of giving, and this holiday I’m giving myself up for endless ridicule.

Apparently us creative types are apt to be bringing in the New Year with a bang. (And most other days, at that.)

I’m afraid of the dark.

No, not the dark when the lights are out, the normal usage of ‘dark’; instead, I’m somewhat afraid of the reality that is around us that is anything but trite, happy flowers and easy chick lit. I’ve always attributed my preference for ‘easy’ reads to the fact that I’m often on a plane and hate to be depressed, yet in reflecting upon my choices for most media, I think it’s a bit more pervasive than just that. I choose books with lovely, pink covers, ones that touch upon topics like being single in your twenties or pregnant in your thirties; every now and again I’ll tackle something a little bit more serious, but 9 times out of 10, it’s NOT on Oprah’s book list; it may even be too trite to make Kelly Ripa’s.

It’s the same with movies. I’ve never seen "Saving Private Ryan" or even "Million Dollar Baby"; blood and guts and violence and, well, reality just aren’t my bag. I prefer "Serendipity" or "Say Anything" or hell, I’ll admit it, anything that stars Reese Witherspoon instead. It doesn’t say a lot for my avoidance of the real issues, I know, and yet I still harbor my own predilection and let’s face it, I’m not apt to change any time soon.

Yet this morning, while taking the train in from the city, I found myself reading the only book in my library that I hadn’t yet started, "A Million Little Pieces" and after just three pages I had to stop. It was far too intense; the reality of a drug addict’s first days in blunt, blemished language turned my stomach. This reality was just TOO REAL, and reading it was painful.

And yet, knowing this about myself, I made myself continue. And it’s hard…this book is testing every desire I have to put it down and banish it from my life – it’s that graphic. I hate that someone has gone through this, hate that it’s representative of a side of life I’ve never seen (one I hope I will never see) and the brash truth of James Frey’s writing is an abrasive change from the innocuous literary fluff that I’m so used to. I need it, though, I need to see this and feel this and experience this. One can’t live in a bubble forever.

If I had to list out some of my (many) talents, sleeping would certainly be in the top 10, if not top 5. That shouldn’t detract from the adeptness of the other talents (and note that I’m using that word both very literally and figuratively, depending upon which I’m referencing), its just the I’m especially good at all things relating to sleep: falling, staying, returning to, anywhere and everywhere. Insomnia is a foreign concept to me, something I’ve experienced only a handful of times, and as any good sleeper will attest, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy nor a jackass ex-boyfriend. Really, it was the worst.

Beyond sleeping, I also find myself in the camp of talented dreamers. Even as a little girl, my dreams were always very vivid, and while I wouldn’t go so far to describe them as lucid, they are always at the very least affective. This combination, being able to and being good at sleeping, as well as having overly realistic, often very emotional, dreams means that while I sleep A LOT, I’m not always that well-rested. As was the case last evening.

As many other puppy owners will attest, weekends no longer hold the same significance once your schedule is invariably dictated by someone else, that very same someone who has four paws and drools a lot. Lila Belle is no exception; while she doesn’t inherently understand the small joy of turning the clock back each October, nor does she grasp the concept of weekends. To her, every day is a Monday, every day one should awaken in the 5-o’clock hour, and if one is awake, one must PLAY. So yes, most weekends I begin my day when many of my friends are coming home from the bars (or at least heading to SOME bed.) While they’re enjoying their version of post-coital bliss, I’m trudging up Sacramento towards Lafayette Park with all the other dog owners who “enjoy” our bleary-eyed staggers up a hill far to steep for 6am. This weekend, though, due to circumstances that made Friday night (and subsequently Saturday morning) atypical, coupled with a gross rainy day, I opted instead to teach Lila who is boss and literally sleep until 4pm. Amazingly, save for a few minutes of tug-of-war and chewing on one of her many bones, she acquiesced and bequeathed upon me many hours of uninterrupted sleep. I figured I’d try the experiment yesterday as well; while not as successful (5am came early, there was much more playing involved) she still let me snooze until 2pm. Her reward was a huge mid-afternoon “who cares if it’s raining” walk and a well-rested Aubrey.

That’ll teach me to mess with a schedule, however unsavory it may be on the weekends.

Lila, apparently overly well-rested, wanted nothing to do with the 10:00 bedtime that we’re used to. Nor 11, nor midnight. And when she finally did grant me some sleep, it clearly wasn’t very deep since the smallest sound would send her into a barking tizzy. For those of us who live at the corner of 2 busy streets, a “small” sound is an anomoly usually digressed to cacophanous roars of sirens and blaring horns.

When I finally DID fall asleep, the dreams began. Clearly having watched too many episodes of “Alias” back-to-back then followed by a few “Sex and the City”s, my dreams were a seemingly incoherent mix of trite romance, foreign espionage, and a 50’s themed play where my old college lacrosse crush, now graying, joined forces with a notorious asshole from High School to tell me I had to portray the slut character though they, nor Michael Vartan, would smooch me. Dodging their insults, I was trying to find my costume amongst a mishmash of unorganized knicknacks I really should have thrown away years ago and still meet up with the hunky protagonist, one of two lovely lads, their persona switching back and forth so I wasn’t really ever sure who I was looking for, just that I needed to let them know in earnest that I was only playing a trollop, not that I actually was one. It doesn’t take an expert to interpret this one (my experience as a layman dream interpreter with years of subject matter could easily attribut this to real-life events) but that notwithstanding, it didn’t make the experience that less traumatic. Mondays are hard enough without tossing and turning in a stress-related jumble, trying with all your will to defend your relative virtue to those whose opinions are just starting to matter.

And so I’m on my way to work, bleary eyed and on my second cup of coffee, makeup-free and thoroughly unsettled. I’ve got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, and am trying, somewhat unconvincingly, to tell myself it’s just the aftermath of a nonsensical dream.