what happens in vegas...

with the arrival of friend heloise from phoenix, ann and dabney finally got the excuse they were looking for to paint the town gold lamé.

ann and dabney will skip all the not-so-interesting parts of their time with heloise, i.e. shopping for the house, blah, gambling and winning $100, blah, blah, bbq with six adhd children, blah, blah, blah, and they will get to the good stuff.

the real fun of the visit started on sunday night at the olympic gardens, a skin bar (ahem, a "topless cabaret") on las vegas boulevard. floor one is girls. floor two is boys. since the boys stop dancing at 1:30am, they headed up first and were greeted by a cadre of glossy, hairless, tanned and toned male bodies. oh, the gyrating asses!



the women seated at the front of the stage (and there was more than one bridal party in the house) made the scene pretty festive with their screaming and laughing. those treated to a lap dance sounded more like they were on a roller coaster than in a bar. ann, dabney and heloise chose what they hoped was an inconspicuous booth off to the side. but every minute or so, a guy would come around, sit down real close and whisper with their sweetest fabio-like accent "how would you like a lap dance to get your party started?" they had names like "dr. dino" and "andy erotic"; all wore g-strings.



heloise swears they touched her nipple.



at 1:30am, they headed down to check out the near-naked ladies. this time they sat front and center. but much to their dismay, it was a totally different scene. there was no joy. there was no merriment. just a lot of drunk and despondent guys trying to play it cool while getting their faces slapped around between two breasts. despite the boobs, all three women were bored.

retail overload

ann and dabney have spent the past three days checking out every furniture store in las vegas. as a result, their brains are absolutely fried. so, no post today, unless you want to hear all about how the robin's egg blue towels just don't match the soap dish they bought for the bathroom.

more soon...

beige vegas baby!

ann and dabney will be posting from the desert this week, where their latest unpaid project is decorating the interior of a suburban monstrosity in the outskirts of las vegas. finding the house, even in broad daylight, is a nightmare. ann and dabney have never seen so many identical two-story, beige-colored, terracotta-tiled houses in their collective lifetimes.



this is the actual house they are working on.


or is it this one?


or maybe it's this one...


no, they're pretty sure it's the first one.

on a happier note, ann and dabney flew jetblue for the first time to get out to vegas, and were very pleased. plus, ann let it slip to one of the attendants that her cousin works for the airline, and they were treated like royalty for the six-hour flight. this included free cocktails. FREE COCKTAILS.

best of all, the interior of the plane wasn't beige.

shuffle camouflage

ann couldn't wait for her latest online loot to arrive -- camouflage for her ipod shuffle in the form of wrigley's gum. hopefully, she won't get it mixed up with the real thing. though, the flavor is about the same after the first two minutes.



if you want one for yourself, you can find it here at decalgirl.com

on a related note, ann has a theory about shuffle mode. she firmly believes that shuffle has its good days and bad days. when the shuffle gods are pleased, her ipod will rock out picking just the right tunes for the mood. some days though, it's so off, it jumps from one obscure track to random b-side blah. does anyone else experience this phenomenon?

circle of thieves

since ann and dabney consider monday to be part of the weekend (along with thursday), last night they went to see thievery corporation at the roxy with friend ashbloem. ann and dabney realized it's been quite awhile since they went to see live music. in fact, if it weren't for ashbloem, ann and dabney would rarely leave their dark little tivo-powered hovel of an apartment these days, let alone the south end. (their idea of a great night is a bottle of gin and a rousing game of euchre with friends.) ann and dabney have a theory that ashbloem is slowly yet strategically coaxing them to other parts of the city at night. starting with the other side of the south end, then moving to chinatown... soon they are going to find themselves at the other end of the earth, otherwise known as cambridge.

so ann and dabney were impressed with thievery corporation, with its electronica meets reggae meets world music vibe. and throughout the show, they were hypnotized by the funkadelic computer graphics on the big screen. you can get a sense of it from their album cover.



don't be surprised if superette features new products with a concentric circle theme. it seems like a logical variation on dabney's love of all things polka-dotted.

party, pinata, puja

let it be known that carmen is a very kooky girl, and her 30th birthday on saturday was no exception to this general rule. the highlights of the party, in ann and dabney's opinion, were an interpretive dance (set to the tune of pat benatar's invincible) and a pinata. here's the woman of the hour, mid-move.



it took some swift kicks and a homemade cricket mallet for carmen to bust open the pinata. while everyone else was scrounging around for candy, ann made a beeline for the pinata shell.



just behind ashbloem you can almost see carmen's multi-tiered shrine to self, featuring real honest-to-god glamour shots (apparently everyone that grows up in texas gets them).

in a weekend of contrasts, ann and dabney also attended a puja* on sunday. dabney's friend brinda just bought a place in eggleston square, and couldn't have been more excited to move in this month. her dad performed the ceremony, then brinda and her mom passed around yummy food.



the puja was decidely more solemn than the rest of the weekend, but you can bet if there had been anything resembling a pinata there, it would have been on ann's head.

* a puja is an indian ceremony performed as a house blessing

anndhd

dabney finally came up with a name for ann's particular brand of crazy. after six years of living with her seemingly unrelated personality quirks, dabney now believes that ann has a roaring case of adhd. not the occasional "where did my car keys go" flare ups, but the persistant variety that keeps her constantly toe-tapping, puttering around the house, totally intolerant of clutter, and utterly incapable of doing basic math in her head.

dabney tried to get ann to pose for a photo for this entry, but this is all she could get after an hour of trying.

go or no go on the logo?

ann and dabney would like to get your opinion, you silent lurker you. what do you think of this logo? what does it say to you? please email us directly at superette@verizon.net (because we don't want one person's opinion to influence the next). your honesty is greatly appreciated.

oompa loompa tv

one day, the greens on ann and dabney's television decided to quit. so for months now, they have been watching orange-tinted people eating blue tomatoes and driving pink cars -- what has come to be known as oompa loompa vision in their household. to be quite honest, ann & dabney stopped noticing the effect, that is until the trailer for tim burton's upcoming version of willy wonka premiered, and then it all came screaming back to them. the double oompa loompa effect is now just too much to take.

out of kilter quilters

dabney and friend julie took a moment this past weekend to wander into the smith art museum. it being commencement weekend, they were holding the annual senior show for studio art majors. hung at the end of a long hallway in the gallery space was the most amazing quilt by a certain melinda something- hyphen-something. it totally fits in with ann & dabney's obsession with traditional technologies that are revisited and reclaimed to make untraditional design.

dabney is now dying to throw a picture of ann into the rasterbator and then make a quilt out of it.



speaking of quilts, a new exhibit is opening at the museum of fine arts in boston in early june. dabney has been waiting for years to see the incredible pieces of modern art that are the quilts of gee's bend. every time she goes to a new city, dabney quickly checks to see if the collection is anywhere nearby. so she was very happy to see them in the mfa preview this month, and promptly signed up for the quilter's roundtable on june 1st.

illumination

dabney made it through her 10th college reunion his past weekend. after a few anxious moments (when she realized the few people she knew best either weren't coming or would be agonizingly late) dabney settled in nicely and went on to have a pretty nice weekend. it was great to spend time with julie, and to reconnect with aimee, brooke and francesca after many years.

here's dabney's view of ivy day ceremonies, which consisted of a large tree to the immediate right of her and the entire class of 1955 smack dab in front. see the stage? no, neither could she.



but dabney's all-time favorite smith tradition has always been illumination night, the evening before graduation when the entire campus is lit up with japanese lanterns. at sundown, tons of people come out to walk around and listen to the jazz bands and student a cappella groups sprinkled about campus. it's a beautiful scene, one that's hard to do justice to with a point and shoot camera.



back in boston, dabney has spent the past couple of days googling her fellow classmates to shed more light on what they're up to these days. for example, she already learned that francesca is a member of sacremento's drinking liberally club, which gives like-minded, left-leaning individuals a place to talk politics while sharing a pitcher of beer each week. cheers to her own liberal wingnut corner. it was too hard to find mention of brooke, as she has the exact same name as a certain olympic gold medal swimmer.

reunited, and it feels so... good?

in addition to recovering from jet lag this week, dabney is also mentally preparing for her 10-year college reunion. mostly this involves silently rehearsing the inevitable spiel about what she does for a living. northeastern women's colleges, as with many institutions of higher ed out there, didn't escape that pesky tendency to produce many a career- and family-minded, high energy, dare we say type-a personality*. as superette chronicles, this is a sharp contrast to ann & dabney's recent meandering path. it's not that dabney is insecure about her current life direction. in fact, the past three+ years have been the happiest of her life.

what's really the problem is that the question of "what do you do" is really a quick and easy proxy for "who are you?" and that's a much harder question to answer in two minutes while standing next to a registration table with a glass of wine in one hand and a name tag in another. oh to be able to smile and say "teacher" or "stay-at-home mom" and be off the hook. dabney has come to realize that there is just no way to say with a straight face that since leaving her job at a university research center a year ago, she re-taught herself to sew and silkscreen, and will soon enter the fabulous, and no doubt highly lucrative, world of alternative craft fairs taking root across the country. and, that this is part of a larger, largely conscious, plan for ann and dabney to cobble together a life of various work and activities that make them happy.

on a very related front, ann recently started another blog venture titled "class notes for the rest of us"- an online newsletter for those who are bored with seeing photos of classmates' wedding parties, enlarging broods and re-printed job offer letters in their alumnae magazine. let's just say that the inaugural posting featured a photo of a wellesley alum bending over with her bare ass hanging naked in the wind.

* many of these over-achievers are ann & dabney's good friends, whom we love and thank publicly here for carrying the mantle for the rest of us.

philippines redux

in honor of ann & dabney's recent trip to the philippines, they decided to re-post an email sent this time last year, also from the philippines. for those that weren't privy (or should we say burdened) by these email updates last year, ann & dabney sent them periodically from the road during a six-month trip around the pacific rim. this time, they included photos to complete the experience.

It was so nice to be greeted at the airport by familar faces - our special tour guides "Tessie" and "Be," a.k.a. Ann's mom and aunt.



We thought we would have a relaxing two weeks in their care, but Tessie had us on a strict schedule - all planned in advance (for us a real treat = a break from constant decision-making). Manila meant family - lots o' family - grandmother (Nanay), Nana Rosa, Aunte Heling, Nana Osong, Uncle Boy, Aunt Esther, cousins Christine, Hazel and Diane. And that doesn't include friends of family (a very fine line in Filipino tradition).

The Philippines-- having been occupied by China, Japan, Spain, and America at points throughout its history-- reflects all of the above, but most resembles the basilicas and churches of Spain.



More than once, Dabney thought it looked like St. Augustine, Florida (for those of you who have been there). We spent some time re-stocking our supplies, sightseeing around Manila and a day trip to Corriegdor, site of WWII battles and General MacArthur's stomping grounds, and a lot of Pinoy pride. After five years of living together, Dabney finally was able to fully indulge in Ann's culinary traditions - we found a vegetarian restaurant that served "chicken" adobo, etc... Dabney was in heaven and finally understand what all the drooling was about. Beside eating, we wandered around markets, had some clothes made, and bought $2 "Swatches."

After a few days in Manila, we took a boat to the island of Mindoro and the small town of Puerto Gallera. Our first day was spent on a cart attached to a water buffalo going down trails and through streams in the middle of nowhere.



The ride was rough and hilarious. We know our words will never do justice to the sight of 5 women laughing and screaming as the cart rolled over boulders and nearly tipped over repeatedly. The final destination (a spring and some waterfalls) made the bruised bums worth the rough ride.

Our accomodations in Puerto Gallera were bungalows made of woven rattan, thatched straw roofs with open slats for air circulation, a fan and a mosquito net. We had three adjoining rooms separated by walls the thickness of a peso bill. We learned a lot about Tessie during this trip - the main thing being her fear of foot-long lizards which are called ti-coks (a Tagalog word which sounds a lot like the actual sound they make). For fear of the ti-coks, Tessie made us all sleep with the lights on to keep them away. The first night this worked fine. The second night it rained and we woke in the middle of the night to thousands of winged termites beating against our mozzie net. It was a swarm of biblical proportions. From the sounds next door, we learned that a hungry ti-cok had jumped on the top of Tessie and Be's net for a late night feast and stubbornly refused to leave. Never mind the bugs - the screaming and laughing next door made it hard to sleep that night. The next morning we found thousands of termite wings covering our floors like snow drifts.

We then went to Bohol in a section of the Philippines called the Visayas. There we visited the famous "chocolate hills" which looked like hundreds of mammoth chocolate kisses dotting the landscape. We also spent some time on one of the most amazing beaches we've ever seen.



Our last night in Bohol was May fiesta and was spent driving around visiting the families of Tessie and Be's friends from Kennett, MO. Per Filipino custom, we were required to sit down to meals at each household.



After our third full dinner of crab, shrimp, lumpia (eggrolls), pancit (noodles), lechon (roast pig), leche flan (creme caramel) we were finally driven home exhausted and thirteen pounds heavier. Whoever told us we'd lose weight on this trip has never been to the Philippines.

As you can imagine, we were so sad to say goodbye to Ann's mom and aunt. We can't believe we are already half way through our trip. In honor of our mid-way point, we decided to list out all the modes of transporation we have taken since leaving Boston. Here they are:

Plane
Bus
Catamaran
Mini-bus
Van
Car
Junk boat
Hydrofoil
Riverboat
Speedboat
Ferry
Water Buffalo
Tuk Tuk
Sidecar (Filipino pedal taxi)
Calesa (horse-drawn carriage)
Taxi
Jeepney
Train
Shinkansen (Bullet train)
Cyclo
Sailboat
Horse
Dinghy
Songthaew (Thai motorized boat)
Long-tail boat

Next installment: Australia, including the rainforest, Ann's "chundering" into the South Pacific, the Great Barrier Reef, and much much more!!!

need dental work, will travel

tivo welcomed ann and dabney home from their trip to manila and hong kong with an episode of 60 minutes featuring a story on medical tourism. an increasing number of americans are traveling abroad in search of cheaper medical care.

coincidently, ann & dabney had just spent a portion of their trip as dental tourists. below are the results of dabney's bargain laser teeth whitening.

before


after

4 to a page, please

strangely, ann and dabney have an obsession with visa stamps and their distribution in their passports.

this fixation began last year after standing in line behind a woman in a bangkok hotel whose passport was over an inch thick. she was obviously one of those world travelers who require several addendum pages to accommodate all her stamps. ann and dabney peered over her shoulder in admiration. ever since, their goal has been to fill their passports. in pursuit of this lofty goal, they experiment with a number of techniques to subtly influence stamp placement, even going so far as to dog-ear or bend back pages before handing it over to customs officials, so it "naturally" falls open to a fresh page.

on the left is an example of ideal stamp distribution, in a & d's opinion. on the right, what not to do.