As we know it and I feel fine

Thank god (or what/whoever…) for cameras, I wouldn’t remember anything from my life without them.

I suppose that’s not completely true but it feels like it sometimes. I’m back at work after weeks goofing off in California, Illinois, and Michigan and (as you may be able to tell) I’m having a hard time getting back into the "work groove." Fortunately, my laptop, which sits next to my desktop at work, plays all of the picutres I have saved on it as the screen saver. This way I get to remember all the good times and ignore the fact that the pants I am wearing are about an inch and a half too short.

The downside is that I realize how much of the past five years I don’t think about very often and am in danger of forgetting completly. I suppose it’s better than not realizing it and loosing the memory forever as the neurons coat themselves in braindust or whatever it is that makes us forget things as our neurons suffer from under/mis use.   Well that thought just cost you five seconds of your life, sorry about that.

You may wonder why this is in the ‘gotta get away’ category rather than the ‘life’ one. (Probably not, but it’s a half-decent segue…) Well, I’ve been annoyed today at the ridiculous cost of airfare and hotel rates for the month of December. Let’s remember that I just traveled all over the country around the "biggest travel time of the year," Thanksgiving. All flights cost two to three TIMES more than I just paid. I’m also going to (most likely)  cancel the awesome NYC shopping trip due to hotel rates! LAME.

I did manage to find a sweet deal in Vegas for New Year’s though. I am looking for more people to share the room with so if you’re interested send me an email. December 30th to Janurary 1st at the Stratosphere. It’s going to ROCK. But this brings me back to the lame airfares as the flight is DOUBLE the Hotel rates for a one-way flight from Vegas to DC (i’m flying into LA for Christmas…). But don’t let the airlines keep you out of Vegas, again, it’s going to be AWESOME!

I love my job.

(if you haven’t been, go to www.grassrootsdemocrats.com to find out why I love it sooooooo much)

I think one of the greatest things the Internet has done for Americans (who have the opportunity to work with it) is that they can take, what really feels like a permanent vacation and still get key things done at work. As people who have been reading this know, earlier this month I spent a week in California. I am now in the middle of an 11 day trip to Chi-town with a quick jaunt to Detroit; which we were supposed to leave for about an hour ago….oh well.

I think i’m posting just to share a couple of the pics we took on Michigan Ave. cuz I really don’t have much to say at the moment. We actually took this picture of ourselves, you can see the camera in my hands near the bottom of the picture. It’s our reflection in the giant bean in Millenium Park.

                  This one is where bean meets Earth.

As you can tell, Paul and I enjoy planing in traffic. I like the one on the left because of all the cars blending together, and i just look good in the one on the right. Well, if i’m going to get any pictures of our road trip before the sun goes down, I’ve got to get out of here.

Some people might think the next word would be Hallelujah, but for my own purposes, we will substitute the word "cell phone." It’s a great story though.

On saturday, my mom and her best friend from high school threw me the greatest 30th birthday party in the history of all 30th birthday parties. Those of you who missed it will be hearing about it for months to come and will most likely be sick to death of me talking about it before christmas. But, really, it will just serve you right for not crossing the country to par-tay with me in California.

It all started way back on my 21st birthday when my mom hired a magician for the party…needless to say, i haven’t let her forget it. So this year she was determined to outdo herself. In addition to about a liquor store amount of booze to make every drink imaginable, a keg of newcastle and multiple bottles of two-buck chuck from Trader Joe’s, there was a DJ, a jolly jump, and sumo wrestling. They made "how well do you REALLY know Erin?" word searches (you had clues about different things in my life [ie: first boyfriend, favorite drink etc.] and had to find the answer in the jumble), a slideshow of the first 30 years of my life and friends/fam etc.

Needles to say, I got wasted and have a few bruises. Oh, we also had a ‘pin the tail on the donkey type game, it was bush and we pinned a certain type of moustach on him….." ( :

This is me after loosing to the other sumo wrestler, it’s really hard to get back up…But i digress, the night was filled with drinking (see below), singing (those pictures are on linda’s camera and will be uploaded later), and general debauchary. A good time was had by all.

Even though we were all acting like we were back in college (or elementary school) there was one moment that really pointed out how old we were. Out of the 60+ people at the party, the picture on the right shows how many of us are still single… Not many of us left people!!!

So, this leads me to why my cell phone is broken, at the end of the night, some how, I couldn’t of had too much to drink, and it’s known far and wide that I am never clumbsy or anything, I spilled a beer all over my pants. The next morning I put them in the washing machine and washed my cell phone, making in cold and  broken. Which means that I have lost everyone’s phone number.

Please send all relevant contact information to: erin_hofteig@yahoo.com

So, in case no one has yet noticed; my blog, the categories i am using from this point on, and the titles of my posts are all lyrics from REM songs. If you can identify the correct song the title of my blog posts come from, you, my friend, will deserve a cookie. I can’t promise that I will be able to get it to you, but you will in fact deserve one. There really isn’t a good reason for this other than that when i decided to launch this thing I had ‘It’s the End of the World’ stuck in my head. Today’s title comes from my favorite REM song of all time, it even rivals the Beatles "I’m Only Sleeping" and a few others from the likes of the Chili Peppers and GnR for my favorite song of all time. But that’s not really why I chose it.

In less than one week I will turn 30. Everyone I know in the area who has already "done it" tells me it’s no big deal, that 31 is worse. Will they say that 32 is totally worse than 31 next year? Does that mean that it really is all downhill from here? Considering a recent WaPost article (sorry, couldn’t find the link)  said that life expectencay for women is rapidly increasing and for those born in the US within the last 30 years, (that’s me! - barely…) we could easily live up to the early 100’s.** If that’s true, I’ve got a good 20 years till I hit middle age.

That part sounds good but let’s consider this: People are also telling me that our 30’s are the new 20’s. Speaking as someone who is about to wrap that decade of my life, I’m not sure I can take another 10 years of that krap. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my 20’s but really, who would want to lose that much sleep, accumulate that much debt, or deal with that many bad boyfriends twice?

So, how does that in any way relate to the title of today’s post? Mostly because as I look at who I’ve become and how I see the world - while there are many similarities and I still believe that I can change the world - it really isn’t like years ago. I remember turning 20 and being at my friend Adriana’s house and thinking about what my 20’s were going to be like (I was married at 25 and had my first child at 28 - just to be clear, that was the plan, not reality…). As I face 30 and the following decade, I find I’m really not trying to guess what they will be like, not trying to assign deadlines to the things I want to happen. And that my friends is worth leaving the 20’s for.

Well, there is one deadline. I will work in the White House or one of the connected buildings by the age of 34 in 2009…

**(Granted this really doesn’t take into account the fact that many of us will be killed off by unsustainable use of chemicals/pesticides/global warming floods/earthquakes/hurricanes/tornados etc…not to be morbid)

So, since i’ve worked in the world of the Internet for the past four years at some level, i figured that it was time to launch my own blog. About time right? Well, it’s more that I don’t like actually doing the work it takes to keep a successful blog going; so while I do plan on updating this occasionally, I wouldn’t expect a daily type of thing.

For those of you I haven’t seen in a while, things are going really well. I’m going to be out of town for most of November and December (six states in seven weeks - OK, CA is on the list twice but i’m going there two different times…), I love traveling.

Of course many of you are as distracted as I am with the one year anniversary of the end of the Kerry campaign. I know of two happy hours (one for the PA crew and one for DC Kerry peeps) this week already and am sure more will pop up. Part of me is finally OK with the lost but I don’t think that rock in my stomach will ever truly go away when I think about how different the last political (and personal) year may have been if things had turned out differently. Se la vi right…

But anyway, that’s all I am going to write for now as I should actually do some work. Thanks Carina for starting your own blog and inspiring me to do the same.

Later