This is 30

Another year, another compilation. And I know it's been forever, and I'd like to make this one all about me and the flattering things you've said to/about me since my last birthday--

me:  i can feel the vitamins coursing through me!
Éamonn:  "KATTTIIEEEE SMAAASSSHHHH"
(for some reason you're the Hulk in my fantasy)

Sal: I read this in your voice

-- but then I thought, in the grand, kinda-annual tradition, let's shine the spotlight your way.

Mary: Can I note that David just came up on my "People to follow" on Twitter because we're both following The Real Adam West

me:  well, i was on o2 three times last night
so i suspect it will be a quiet weekend
Kaz:  I was trying to figure out the superhero terminology
and then went oh, periodic table

Anthony: if you can live in one city in westoros where would you live

(im a dork just answer the question)

Cat: haha someone just called that their toilet is bubbling

it's really hard to not laugh at that
Cat: i would run out and call ghost busters

Éamonn:  with that thing I can be all like PEW PEW PEW DEMONS!

Bre:  oh, I forgot to tell you he showed me his nunchucks

Éamonn: who knows though, we all make some poor judgement calls when we're younger

If I did all the shit I wanted to do when i was a kid, I'd be driving the Ninja Turtle Van right now

Cat: so oceanport has hired hot garbagemen

Bre: haha, totes and now I have to have coffee with her!

maybe I should say drinks

and just get super drunk

me: hahahah or you can go for coffee and you can just spike yours

Bre:  haha I like that too

she'll be all "I'm a doctor" and I'll be all "I'm drunk"

Ryan: i think i have that disease where you're a lottery winner who hasn't won the lottery yet

Éamonn:  I made an excel graph: number of monitors versus number of eyes

one of the lines was surprisingly flat

Bre: his mom was a potter
Katie: as in beatrix?

Cat: so i was going thru my texts trying to delete them
as i have well over a thousand
and it's slowing my phone down
and i was so drunk i kept hitting RESEND instead of delete!!!!
OMG
HORRORS

Ryan: it's amazing how many results i get for a gchat search of "whiskey slurpee"

David: it's never a good sign when you're watching keeping up with the kardashians, and you're like "I feel you khloe"

Bre: My entire family just broke into "irish rover" on the trolly back from the wedding. The other family was horrified.
Bre: then my mom starting singing the Boston College fight song with my cousin

Ryan: i always wanted to say in confession that i honored another god over my god but i never had the balls

Cat: haha and it'd be wonderful aside from i always feel really dumb around sal  

Cat: he once told me i needed to learn to listen to context clues in stories

Éamonn: Yea, I went 100% magic
but I miss some of the neat little effects you get from the melee combat
I married a guy and traveled with him as a companion and I eventually had to send him home because I kept accidently hitting him with lightening and slitting his throat with my conjured sword
Éamonn: I told Nathan not to read too much into that

Bre:  I think I may need to quit the online dating scene. Today I realized I was messaging a homeless, schizophrenic drug addict who I mistook for a sensitive writer.

Katie: i'm hungry

i want to be sitting at home in my corner eating something involving cheese

Cat: you realize you just described yourself as a mouse right?

Cat: sometimes, when i'm bored, i think up ways to torture people

Maggie: clouds ain't nothing but bitches and hoes, man

me:  ooooooooh SNAP 
Éamonn:  (I haven't arrived at a point yet)

Did you read?

Matt:  so how did you discover the article about Dave and Beth?

me:  actually i was looking for articles for the blog and saw the caption "i just remember being really, really happy"

and clicked on it

and hence the discovery

Matt:  because evidently you found it before they even knew it was up

me:  hahahahaha

wow

well i read a lot of news

Matt:  didn't know you were such a Wash. Post fan

i like trashy news like NY Post

me:  hahahah i mean, it's my job

so i read the nyt, wsj, wp

and then for fun, the la times

and of course CQ and all the hill rags

Matt:  http://ww​w.youtube​.com/watc​h?v=P7VgN​QbZdaw   

Matt:  take that, nerd!

AOL is the post-Singled Out Jenny McCarthy of the tech world

Yesterday I was at a meeting on innovation (what kind and for whom shall remain nameless), for which a former executive of AOL was a featured speaker.

And in like, a non-ironic sense.

With this one fact we have all of the critical differences between my generation and the one before me when it comes to anything related to the internet and technology.

When businessmen-of-a-certain-age hear former executive of AOL, they think of AOL's soaring success as a new business.  They think of how they were the revolutionary force, getting the average middle-income home up and online.

When someone my age hears AOL and innovation together, they snicker.

Let's be honest: if you know someone who still uses an .aol email address, you know one other thing about that person, and that's that they don't actually "use" their .aol email address.  "Here's my email," they say to you, anxiously peering over their glasses at the paper as they scribble it down. "DSmthdoglvr2834209380@aol.com....or was that DSmthdoglvr283420988?  I'll check at home and let you know."

But they never do, because they've forgotten their password.  And once that hurdle has been cleared, there's too much spam in their inbox and they hurry offline to avoid AOL's featured web performance of Nickleback, the AOL of rock/pop bands.

I remember reading an interview with Andrew Breitbart in GQ, who was talking about what it's like to have ADD and be on the computer:

I've got maybe four or five instant messenger conversations going on at the same time. I've got about five or six tabs in Firefox going. I'm probably talking on my cell phone while I'm monitoring my Fantasy baseball team, knowing the pitch count of the Milwaukee Brewers/Cincinnati Reds game.

Once again, generational differences.  I am 29 years old.  I may not have clinical ADD, but to paraphrase the Bloggess, I'm easily distracted and I have an internet connection, and that's basically the same thing.  Right now I'm writing this post, while watching a documentary on North Korean gymnastics, while on gchat, while researching the connection between "More than a Feeling," the Pixies and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."  I can't tell you how many tabs I have open in Firefox because then I'd have to shift over and I don't feel like doing that, but be assured that it's way more than five.  I don't even have my music on, because I can hear David's from the next room. And all this is completely normal.  

"But Katie," you may say.  "That's your leisure time.  Andrew Breitbart has a site thousands of people read a day, whereas your work day consists of trying to pretend that your legendary research skills are something more than the ability to access Google. And let's not pretend that anyone besides the four of us read this site."  

Well, touche, readers, I say.  But if I may expand on that thought (and I will), I'd like to point out that Andrew Breitbart is a total asshat.  But also, what he points to as ADD looks to someone my age as normal bordering on focused.

What amazes me is how quickly we are approaching the point where executives will be people who were raised on the internet.  The little tricks that my generation has used throughout our interactions with our parents, teachers and bosses since we were 14 (the computer ate my homework) just isn't going to cut it.  Things move fast.  Mark Zuckerberg no longer stands for innovation.  Facebook is the old.  Google isn't even the new.   

But remember when we all had AOL accounts?  I think back now to how eager I was to sign up for my screen name, and how  many of those free month discs we went through in my home.  Hell, most of my good friendships to this day were probably solidified through endless hours of aim conversations.   I still use that same AOL screenname as my sign-in and tag for most of my internet interactions.  But what if I had the same reaction to AOL when I was 14 as I did to Facebook at 21, or Twitter today?  I'd be a pretty isolated, sad case.  So maybe I should just hop on board and accept the inevitable.

Or maybe not.

The worst thing I could think of

Cat: ok so i have to tell you something that might make your head explode

and it will be hard...but you did not hear it!

esp from me!

Katie: oh no

tell me that buffy is still streaming on netflix

i can't even look now

Cat: oh i have no idea

why would i care if you heard that from me lol?

Katie: i don't know

it was the worst thing that i could think of

now anything else won't be as bad

If you don't want pasta just say so

Katie: okay

either one works

if you can pick up some mozzarella cheese, we could do some quick pasta tonight for dinner

use some of that ricotta

David: ...

FINE

Katie: what????

David: another blob thing of mozzarella works?

Katie: hahaha yes

if you don't want to that's fine!!!

i'm just trying to feed my man!!

David: eyes her suspiciously

Katie: what???

Sent at 11:48 AM on Wednesday

David: is too full of the milk of human kindness. At least according to his new wife...

David: my new status should reveal to you my thoughts

Katie: what?????

what does that mean???

David: google the quote

Katie: i am not trying to lady macbeth you!!!

if you don't want pasta just say so!!!

For the record, I'm under 30.

Yep, that's the new home oxygen tank.  Complete with 25 feet of tubing for your home oxygen comfort!


Cat: i'm about to go to walgreens and get you some slippers, a house coat and some cigs
oh can you start using motorized carts at stores now!??!

with your tank strapped on to the back!?!?

can i if you wont!?!?

beep beep!

(that's my motorized shopping cart)

Me: omg maybe i can get handicapped parking??

Cat: a handicapped designated driver.

you are the best friend ever!

When they said 'sit down,' I threw up

I recognize either the irony or the obviousness of posting something like this on my birthday, but in my defense I've been gathering it together for quite some time now.  

Maggie: oh my gosh, katie, sometimes i just wish i could be back in college, suuuuuch easy access to everyone i loved

Maggie: and I never had to wear pants

Bre: i hate being a grown up

Me: what's up, buttercup?

Bre: just looking at your status

and am reminded of times when maggie didn't have to wear pants

Left to right: Bre, Amanda, Maggie and me. Brown's Philosophy of Life class.

Jose: cause [college] was paradise, a perfect haven for us 
Jose: you could do anything and everything was alright. there was an unspoken code, a way of life 
Jose: it was an ancient time, a gentleman's game played by monsters

I hearby present to you: 

We Are Not Grownups Yet, An Annual Reinforcement Of What We Already Knew

How it works: Everyone's been whining about how they hate being an adult, blah blah blah.  In what on television would be called a "cop-out montage," I hereby present an annual review of proof that we are still as immature as the day we met:

You're Welcome.

Danish: the very start of the video

Danish: where his fat little knuckles mimic the sun

Danish: that is my fav part

--------------

Danish: hahah, they are fat yet little though, no? he has a gravity to him not unlike Tony Soprano

Please don't bother trying to find her, she's not there

A Gchat Campaign, in Several Parts

Me: i think we should start a campaign to get Bre to go as strawberry shortcake for halloween
Éamonn: I'll support this campaign.