Courtenay Brown

I called my mom on Saturday to ask her if her hairdresser, Bonnie, who is awesome and cheap and has a bunch of blue-hairs comprising most of her clientele, would be available to do some maintenance on my chlorined and rubber-banded mop of hair during the 3 days I'll be home for Thanksgiving. She said she'd check, and by the way might I change my return ticket to Saturday so she wouldn't have to go to the airport 5 times, only 3 (don't ask about the math), and she's on the horse so she can't talk long, and is anyone ever going to use that Delta credit and-- "Ma. I told you last week, I'm using it at Christmas." "Oh," she ...

Inspired by the undergrad sitting in front of me browsing Forever 21, Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, etc. online throughout the entire lecture this morning (does she know I'll be grading her midterm and paper?), I just did some online shopping of my own (at home, btw). K-Swiss has some cute new hoodies and sneakers, which obviously I need more of. Winter is coming, today it's only getting up to 75 degrees!! On Tuesday my mom called me: "SWEETIE! Guess where I am?!" I have no idea. "The DENVER AIRPORT! I have a layover en route to Wyoming!" Ma, you know that Boulder is like 45 minutes from ...

Today was my birthday! I turned 32, which is how old my mom was when I was born, which she reminded me via suspiciously not-Sal-like text message: "OMG you're half my age!!" Hmm. My day went like this: I had Environmental Policy class from 8 to 9:15 a.m. This is the class I T.A., I go to lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays and hold office hours by appointment. Office hours start tomorrow, today was my first signup day, and four whole students made appointments to see me! I was pleasantly floored. Then I went outside and hacked up two lungs, Boulder is burning, FYI. I called Felicia about the fires, she said to NOT TRAIN OUTSIDE, which made complete sense. However... ...

I have been in Maryland for four weeks now, and the time has been packed with family, socializing (my mom has soooo many friends), horses, and discussing the weather. And I've been doing some training, not as much as I did in Hawaii and San Diego, but enough not to feel like a total couch potato (plus it's too hot to sit on the couch here anyway). Hercules knows how to fuel properlyMy nutrition has been on the not-good side recently. I think it's due to stress, lack of sleep, and the weather, which I promise to ...

Last month, my Uncle called my Mom for an Opinion. Yesterday, my uncle's daughter Elizabeth stopped by my mom's for a snack and a visit en route to Long Island with her Boyfriend. She asked my mom which way to go, up 95 through Baltimore, or along the Eastern Shore. I had total deja vu. "WELL. bla bla bla eastern shore is prettier bla bla traffic bla bla but it will be dark soon bla bla." It was awesome. What was especially awesome was that Sal ended her opinion with the statement that if they left RIGHT NOW and took the eastern shore route, it would still be light when they passed Elizabeth's alma mater, St. Andrew's, which was the whole reason they ...

"When I want an opinion, I know who to call," said Tony as he was dialing the phone. My mom, his big sister, did indeed have an opinion. Tony and Betsy should fly into Philadelphia and then drive along the eastern shore instead of through Baltimore because even though Wilmington is a nightmare, overall that way is prettier, although every time she goes through Baltimore she notices that it's way faster, but through Baltimore on that particular Friday afternoon they would likely hit a lot of beach traffic. Then she asked if I was behaving myself, and I yelled "hi sal!" across the breakfast table to the speaker phone. In other news, I think I ate something. I don't know. Today ...

I flew back to San Diego from Colorado Springs yesterday. It felt like I was gone for ages, probably because the 12 days were absolutely packed with activity and fun... To recap: extra-long travel day, day at Mom's, day at SAIS/Reagan National Airport (speaking of which, today's Public Service Announcement: airlines can totally steal fares from another airline when you call to change an itinerary that you booked on Orbitz, even when you tell them you only want to change the flights you have on their airline, and then you can show up to the ...

oops I mean Conversation with Mom. Sal and her Tractor last summer It seems that parental stress always goes up during the holiday season, regardless of whether your kids have flown the coop and/or have their own kids. At least, this is what my highly scientific experiment of "does my own personal mom always freakout at the holidays" has revealed to me... Last week I called my mom the day after Thanksgiving, which was my own fault, because I already knew that she'd had 22 people over for turkey and food, so obviously calling during the aftermath was a ...

Excitement and high drama. Yesterday I was feeling kind of not-awesome, but I was at work, and I don't know, work doesn't usually make me feel awesome, so I was ready to just chalk it up to "rainy Tuesday in Seattle in November" blues. Except by 4 p.m., all I'd had the appetite for was a grapefruit, a small coffee, and a bar - normally this would not get me past 9 a.m.! Perhaps my feelings of not-awesome were legit. The evening went by fairly normally - I worked on stuff, Ben worked on stuff, we helped each other with stuff, I made him feel my forehead a billion times, we both decided that the only thing that was feverish was his ...

Word on the street (omg don't tell anyone, PROMISE) is that BEN and I went to a SHOW last night. Whoa. Can you even believe that?! WTF?! The band was Gossip, the venue was Showbox, the opener that we caught the end of and wish we'd caught more of was MEN, new project of JD Samson (from Le Tigre). And the night was awesome, if you ask me. Ben saw Gossip back in July and lamented that last night's set list was nearly identical, which is a somewhat inexplicable shame considering that they have been together for 10 years and must have some sort ...