my own favorite things.

because lauren asked, i am posting my own favorite things. i do not watch oprah, but i have heard of her favorite things, mostly (and i'm not ashamed to admit this) from that one episode of '30 rock' when liz thinks she's meets the big o on a flight back from chicago. classic.

#1 fanny's earrings in 'bright star'
i have been looking for earrings similar to the pair fanny brawne wears in the movie 'bright star' ever since i saw it a few weeks ago. if you haven't yet seen this movie, see it. it's incredible and gorgeous. and her earrings are deliriously simple, but ever so pretty. delicate semi-precious pendants. i want them. just like veruca salt. i can't find a picture of the earrings, so here's a lovely still from the film.


#2 friday night lights
not really a thing, i know but i do love it. call me crazy, but i truly enjoy this tv show. it's not just that 'explosions in the sky' provides a large chunk of the music-although hearing 'welcome ghosts' or 'your hand in mine' is NEVER a bad thing-it's also that it's entertaining, realistic, funny and quite charming. and it boasts one of the best casts i've ever seen in one show. no joke. and if that weren't enough, there's always riggins to get the blood flowing. to quote the infallible bethany lowe, "ohhhh, riggins'. right on baby, right on.


#3 north face denali jacket
don't judge me for finally acting like the dirty hippie you all know i am. i LOVE this jacket. yes i look like a backpacker, yes it's not exactly the most flattering item of clothing, yes it's quasi uni-sex and why yes, it is super warm and soft and comfy. that's my story and i'm sticking to it.


#4 melissa tall riding boots by frye
i find these boots kind of sexy. i know they're maybe a little odd, what with the laces and all, but you have to admit they ooze class. now, having said all that i will never buy them in my lifetime and not just because they cost $398. i suffer from a rare condition called 'i have giant man eating calves' and so boots in general are just not a possibility for me. sad face. i can, however, continue to look at them longingly. sigh.


#5 the monster of florence by douglas preston and mario spezi
this book is fascinating on a number of levels, most of them kind of disturbing. it tells the story of a serial killer in and around the city of florence in the 1960's, 70's and 80's. all together there were 16 victims, all of them young couples, killed while having sex in their cars in the tuscan countyside. i couldn't believe i had never heard anything about this case, which was huge news all over italy and most of europe, due not only to the horrific nature of the crimes, but also because the police never came up with a believable suspect. two men were convicted of being the monster and sentenced to prison, but no one, not even the italian police, believe they actually committed the crimes. wtf? it's a fascinating look at the justice systems, corruption, mass hysteria and grief. incredible.


#6 songs for christmas by sufjan stevens
i know its barely november, but this s one of my favorite christmas albums and i really didn't get into it until this year. i don't love every song, but there are a few that i really, really adore. check out 'holy, holy, holy' or 'come thou fount of every blessing'. beautiful.


#7 antonia's line
yes, yes, i know, i know. an avant-garde dutch film with touches of comedic visual surrealism, dominated by a voice-over narration and containing very little dialogue about a household full of oddball, mismatched people presided over by a feminist single mother in the years following WWII. typical ali. as they say on the netflix page,"earthy, sexy and romantic, the film is a joyous, multi-generational celebration of simple pleasures, lust for life and enduring passions." um, yes please.


#8 ribbon
i love ribbon. all kinds, all colors, all patterns. i carry it around with me, tie it onto my bags, keep it in my pockets. basically it just makes me happy, 'nuff said.

just real quick.

just real quick, a few little things about my new job:

1. it's in a donated home located downtown built in 1912. the kitchen is partially original. from 1912. seriously.
2. when i walk from the house to the offices, not only is it a glorious promenade in the san diego sun, but i get to walk by the most amazing victorian and craftsman era homes in the entire city. some of them look like castles, but they're just single family homes. who exactly lives in these houses, i would like to know.
3. it kind of smells like old person.
4. i can leave early and come in late. gotta love non-profits.
5. none of our computers are connected to both the internet AND a printer. it's one or the other. gotta love non-profits.
6. it's located across the street from a real-life, honest-to-goodness brothel. yep.


not the exact homes i walk by, but these are pretty close by.

hired.

i got a new job last week (a quasi real job nonetheless).
yes, i have been officially hired.
let the rejoicing commence.

my friend.

recently i've made a new friend. we met at the gym and his name is charles. charles was in the army for 22 years and 11 months, fought in vietnam, was wounded while there and received the purple heart for his efforts. after he got out of the military, he attended university of hawaii where he got a masters degree in public health and then continued on at san diego state and got a ph.d psychology. i'm also fairly certain he could kick my trash handily if it ever came to fisticuffs between us. have i mentioned charles is 75-years-old? charles is 75-years-old. he finally retired to rancho bernardo about 10 years ago. for those of you not familiar with southern california geography, rancho bernardo is the town located directly next to mine and is known throughout san diego as that place full of old people and buick towncars. it's also where the gym is located and so i spend most nights hanging out with charles and all the other AARP members. so far charles is the only friend i've made since returning home to poway. my mother is very worried that i will never get married. he's very nice and so adorable and i just like the way he calls me 'gracious young lady', since previously in provo i believe i was referred to by some as that 'decrepit old spinster'. but my self-esteem has been restored by charles and his rather charming elliptical machine chit-chat...

me as a gracious young lady.

apparently this is what google image considers to be a 'gracious young lady'. no joke, this was the first image that popped up on the search. seriously?

me as a decrepit old spinster.

perhaps one of the best images of a spinster ever. i hope to be like her one day. dress and all.

when there's something weird in the neighborhood, who you gonna call? ali!

so, this past sunday morning our house was burgled. there's been a bit of a breaking-and-entering rash in our neighborhood as of late, with two other homes being broken into and myriad of cars being vandalized (mine included, more on this later). i know, many of you who know poway may find this difficult to believe, seeing as this is poway-i have a pet theory that it might actually be the poway police department burgling these homes because they're looking for something to do, but i have yet to pitch that one to them. anyway, for the last many sundays my family has all bundled into the car and sped out of the garage at 11:05 to make our 11:00 sacrament meeting. we're like clockwork, we never vary the pattern. so we figure our fierce-some burglars had been 'scoping out' (official terminology) our house for a few weeks and therefore knew we all were out of the place by 11:10 every sunday. except this past sunday. talk about bad luck for the seedy under belly of poway.

this sunday i decided to bite the bullet and go to the big singles ward over in del mar. i'd managed to avoid attending this entire summer, but the 2nd counselor in my home ward has been eying me lately and not because he wants a date, but because he's contemplating giving me a calling. yikes. so, like any mature LDS adult, i decided to skip out on him and head to another ward. so at 11:05 my family leaves in the big black SUV, with the tinted windows, and i stay behind, watching 'notorious' on TCM. the del mar ward doesn't start until 1:00 so i have over an hour to kill before i have to leave. and somewhere in the time between 11:05 and 12:25 when i personally left the house, we were burgled. but here's the kicker, i had no idea it had even happened. and i was at home when it took place. that's how good i am. i can scare burglars off WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING IT. anarchist nations should contract out their police enforcing to me. i could do it all single handedly. what we figure happened is this: the criminal masterminds came in through the side garage door, which is usually locked, but sometimes we forget (c'mon, we live in poway for crying out loud) and after proceeding through the laundry room, stopped off in alex's room which is the closet to both the laundry room and the garage. we know this because alex's ghetto-fabulous laptop (the one with the broken screen held together by, no joke, duct tape), charger and ipod were all MIA when the warcup family finally returned home at around 2:15 that afternoon. but why only go into alex's room? even 14-year-old sarah has better loot than alex. and my nice laptop was sitting out on the sofa, in plain sight in the living room. my parents room is down on the far end of the house and, let's be honest, if you're gonna hit a house, you hit the parents room. that's where the goods are. even i know that. so then what stopped them then from proceeding to go through the rest of the house? three words: alison marie warcup. i scared the off them, by very courageously either a) walking out of the bathroom to wash my hands, singing disney show-tunes or b) made enough noise in my bedroom at the end of the hall by loudly listening to disney showtunes. yeah, who's bad-ass now thieves? me. of course, not hearing a blessed thing or even realizing there were other people in the house might be a bit of a blemish on my burgeoning crime fighting career record, but i still think this is a really good start. and now i can finally put my superhero name to good use. topaz the magnificent is so totally on the job.

OMG.

i have a major crush on stephen dillane. it started when i saw him playing thomas jefferson in the 'john adams' miniseries (which was excellent, by the way) which kind of creeped me out at first because, i mean...he's thomas jefferson...wrote the declaration of independence, kept slaves, had some serious issues with women, but looked so yummy with that strawberry blond hair. more recently i saw him in a movie called 'welcome to sarajevo' and i remembered how delicious he actually was. i'm strangely aroused by you dillane.


here's one of him looking very colonial.


not so colonial, but i'm not complaining.

where's odysseus when you need him?

as all of you-ok, that may be somewhat presumptive...as most of you know, i have been attempting to obtain greek citizenship for myself and my family for as long as i can remember. it's been a process, in fact in the early days of this blog i had a bit of running date counter, informing me of how long this ordeal was taking. i stopped with the date counting thing because it go depressing. it got depressing because there was this funny little thing that happened in 1914 called world war I and then this other little thing called world war II a few decades later and then, almost immediately after that little WWII thing ended there was this other scuffle called the greek cvil war, all of which was compounded by the fact that when my great-grandfather spiros landed in ellis island in 1914 at the age of 17, the us government didn't require anything besides a warm body and story to allow you access into the country. no paperwork. not a blessed thing. and of course out of the three dokos brothers to come to america, my great-grandfather was the only one to never go back to greece again. not even for a visit. so no passport, no birth certificate, nada. this presents a bit of a bump on the road to citizenship; that birth certificate from greece is kind of a big sticking point to the greek government and it was the one thing I COULD NEVER FIND. most likely because if it ever existed, it was destroyed many moons ago in some conflict in which greece was involved. really just take your pick as to which conflict, they all work equally as well.


who wouldn't wait for him? honestly.

needless to say i was frustrated, so a few months ago i got tired of being all penelope and decided i was going to take matters into my own hands, kick out those pesky lay-about suiters and find that elusive piece of paper myself. here i send out a big thanks to athena133 on the ancestry.com discussion boards and brother orton in my home ward here in poway for having served his mission in greece (tough luck, old boy...seriously) and therefore being totally literate in the language and also totally willing to help. long story short i finally got that blasted piece of paper from one mr. costas bitzis, mayor of koutsopodi himself. praise be. of course now i have the pleasure of trying to get a hold of the greek consulate in LA so i can begin the charming and, i'm sure, stream-lined process of actually getting citizenship-it's gonna be a joy and pleasure. i can feel it. but in typical mediterranean fashion every time i call the embassy, no one answers. i call at 10:30 in the morning. nothing. i call at 2:15 in the afternoon. nothing. i call at 11:45. nothing. i've got money, i'm more than willing to bribe away, if only someone would give me the chance to become truly and deeply greek and allow me buy my way into this glorious and historic culture. that cunning odysseus would be so proud.