This past weekend was nice. I went to two barbecues on Sunday with Fariba. The second one was at the house of the guy who owns the pub where we all hang out. Who knew that pubs made that much money?;-) I spent all day Saturday at the Stanford Mall. Shopping until I dropped. What else is new? Well, I’ll tell you. These fabulous shoes, for one. And they were 60% off. Nothing beats that!

I have a semi-date on Saturday night. With a French guy! Could it be that I am switching from milchbrotchen to baguette? From hefeweizen to bordeaux? From erdapfel to pomme de terre? You get the idea.

We went to Berkeley yesterday for a friend’s birthday dinner party. His place was awesome. Lots of cool, old stuff. Lots of unexpected stuff. Like a polaroid of the toilet hanging on the wall above the toilet.

His girlfriend has all these wigs so all us girls couldn’t resist it and had to try them on. I actually looked ok as a redhead which was really surprising. I looked just ok with the blue wig. But I looked more than terrible in the platinum blond curly bob wig. That was definitely not the look for me.

Anyway, trying them on reminded me how fun wigs and dressing up can be. And with Halloween around the corner, maybe I’ll have to buy some wigs for myself.

Goldfish-Pepperidge Farm Baked Snack Crackers, 58oz Box

Pepperidge Farm, Misc., $29.95

I’m snacking on pretzel goldfish and I have found three (three!) trios of goldfish having a threesome. That just seems wrong.

I had dinner with an old friend last night. Everything is going well until I asked him about his live-in girlfriend. His response: “Uh, actually, we split up recently”. Ok, can you pass the bread please?

We then headed over to the pub for drinks and this girl was sitting at our table. I had met her and her boyfriend before. So I asked her where her boyfriend was. Her response: “He dumped me a couple of weeks ago”. You would think I would have learned the first time around.

Thursday night, I met up with my friend Jason and we went bar hopping. I don’t know all the cool places in the city anymore and Jason lives in Berkeley so we were pretty pathetic in our choices. We started out at the XYZ Bar, which was actually really nice despite the fact that it’s part of a hotel. I guess that a place can still be cool if it’s in a W hotel. We then headed over to Foreign Cinema, which is also pretty cool, but it was completely dead. We ended the night at Casanova Lounge, which used to be one of my usual hangouts in the city.

I have known Jason for years. A couple of years ago, we made a pact that if we were both single by a certain age (still TBD, we can’t seem to agree on the right age. I picked 50, he was thinking 40), that we will get married. We then decided to change our pact. We realized that all our friends are divorced and that it seems much hipper these days to be young and divorced than young and single. So we’re thinking of heading over to Vegas and getting married and then getting divorced shortly thereafter. What do you guys think?

We had the most excellent barbecue at Lisa’s house. The only drawback is that I ate too much and didn’t have the energy to work it off the next day. The night ended with a bunch of drunk people (except for me who happened to be the designated driver) setting off fireworks that Michael had bought. Lisa saved one especially for me. It was called Golden Showers.

I know what you are all thinking and, no, I’m not into that kind of stuff. Gross, I agree, but to each their own.

I am freezing! It’s about 50 degrees but it’s so humid that it feels like 10.

My hair is very short. I don’t think I’ve had it this short since high school. It will take some getting used to…

Par-tay

My sister threw a party for me last night. It was awesome! It was supposed to be a small get-together but there were 30+ people there. Some were her friends whom I met for the first time and there were also friends of mine whom I hadn’t seen in ages. There was a huge mix of people which is what made the party so much fun:
Mom and dad – yep, they were there but only for a short while since my dad was really tired and he had to catch a plane at 7:00 am today.
Marcio – I went to high school with his brother. My sister ran into him recently and invited him to the party.
Sandrine – Friend of my sister, she’s French and a vegetarian yogi chemical engineer. She brought her two dogs, Charlotte and Charlie. They were adorable.
Marli and Simone – they both work at another magazine at the same publishing company as my sister. Simone writes the sex advice column. How cool is that? Picture this: What do you do? I work for a magazine. Cool, doing what? I’m the sex editor.
Gerson – Simone’s husband.
Nino and Joe – Also friends of my sister. Joe is British so he speaks Portuguese with a cute accent.
Tia Marilda and Tio Brandao – My aunt Marilda is my sister’s friend and a fashion designer. She’s one of the coolest hippest aunts ever. Tio Brandao, her husband, works for an advertising agency and is equally hip and cool.
Giovanna and Boi – Giovanna went to school with my sister. I went to school with her sister, Graziella. Gi is finishing up college; she’s studying fashion design.
Marcelo – my sister’s friend. He’s an interior designer.
Sofia – one of my best friends and ex-roommate. She’s doing her doctorate in molecular biology.
Ana Lucia and her boyfriend – Sofia’s cousin and friend of my sister from school.
Deuke – My sister went to school with his sister.
Mariana and Antonio – my sis’s neighbors. Very cool.
Katrine – sister’s friend, also from France and a photographer.
Girl #1 – I can’t remember her name but she had the cutest northern Brazilian accent.
Girl #2 – Another one whose name I don’t remember.
Guy – Also can’t remember his name but he had a cute outfit on.
Luciana a.k.a. Lu – one of my best friends from high school. She just got back from France three weeks ago (she was there for 4 years). I hadn’t seen her in quite some time. She’s currently looking for a job as a book editor.
Cris and Luna – Cris is Lu’s sister and works at Abril, where my sister works. I think she and her husband are both graphic designers.
Paula a.k.a. Palu – I have known her since 3rd grade. She’s a fashion producer.
Graziella a.k.a. Gra – I have known Gra since 1st grade. She’s an actress.
Pati and Ed – Pati dated my brother several years ago. We liked her some much that we kept her as a part of the family even after they broke up.

The last group of people left around 4:00 am and we stayed up until 5:00 cleaning up. Needless to say, I’m very sleepy. Poor Mikha had to go to work this morning.

We woke up at 6:30 and were at the consulate at 8:00. The interview went very smoothly. The consul was from the East Bay so we mostly talked about California. He didn’t really ask me too many questions, the interview lasted less than 10 minutes. He told me to come back later to pick up my visa papers and wished me luck. He also appeared to be 5 years old.
We then went to Rio Sul and shopped till we dropped. I bought these awesome sandals (with 4” heels, I’ll probably break a leg), 2 earrings, 3 rings, 2 bracelets and a pair of sunglasses. I also bought a couple of small gifts for people at work. We then picked up my passport, headed to the airport and were back here by 6:00 pm.

Tomorrow morning, I’m getting a haircut. Layered. Scary!

O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo…
We arrived in Rio at 5:00 pm. I hadn’t been there in so long I forgot how beautiful it is (and I’m a Paulista so admitting that means a lot)!
We stayed at Le Meridien in Copacabana and had an awesome view from the bedroom. We were too tired so we ate at the hotel, at a restaurant called Le St. Honore. I had a salad with some Brie cheese. My mom had lamb and she said it wasn’t good. The little French chef came out to check on everything, wearing his chef hat and all. He was a cute (and seemed to be about 5 years old which is why I said he was little. He wasn’t really short) and gave us free desserts to compensate for the lamb. I had strawberry tart (or is it tarte?)

Saturday night, I went out with Sofia and her friend Elaine to a place called Armazem. It was nice but it took us a while to find a table. Going out at night reminded me of the reason why (for the most part) I’m not attracted to Brazilian men.

Tonight we went to visit my grandma and then stopped by my sister’s house.

As I was driving home to get ready for my date, I started thinking that even though I wasn’t into him, it would still suck if it turned out that he wasn’t into me either. See, Heidi and I were joking that the worst possible outcome of the date would be that he would reject me too (or first) and then I would be like “Wait, I didn’t even want to go out on this date to begin with!” I think there was even a Seinfeld episode that talked about this. And if there wasn’t, there should have been.

Anyway, nothing drastic like that happened but I think we just didn’t click. When we first met up, he went for my hands for what I thought was a handshake but it turns out he wanted to hold my hands while we walked (which is really odd for a first date, don’t you think?) I managed to pull it away by making it extremely necessary to point to the restaurant. I then stuffed my hands in my pockets so that we wouldn’t have to awkwardly walk while holding hands. Dinner was ok, just usual date conversation. I then found out that he’s seven years younger than me and he’s even younger than my little brother! (Although I have to confess, I have dated younger guys before). Towards the end, he started sneezing and his nose was all stuffy and that was pretty much it. So it could be that my fear became a reality after all.