12 February 2005
Laura
The second time I met Laura, I didn’t recognize her. She was walking in the door of the Tap Room while I was walking out. I opened the door to leave, and there was this six foot blonde just standing there, dressed head to toe in gold lamé and looking surprised. I’d already run into her three times that night, this was the fourth. I smiled, held the door, and wondered at my luck.
The first time I met Laura I was a freshman at KU, living in the scholarship halls on campus. I was shy, nerdy and slightly socially retarded, and she lived in the girls’ hall across the street. In an ill-fated effort to get the scholarship nerds to mingle, our hall had their hall over for salisbury steak with green beans or something equally awful. We sat across from each other at a 10-foot-long institutional table and didn’t talk for 30 minutes. Five years later at the Tap Room door I didn’t remember any of this.
The third time I met Laura, we actually spoke. I’d been staking out the Tap Room since running into her there, and one night I got lucky. When she walked in the door, Molly turned to me and said “I see a blonde goddess.” I spent most of the rest of the night working up the courage to go up and say something. As it turned out, she did remember meeting me all those years ago. She confided that she thought I was cute, but snotty (she was half right). It was the end of the night and I was out of money, but I promised to buy her a drink the next time I ran into her.
I was trying to play it cool, but I couldn’t wait. I was leaving town for the weekend, so I convinced her to meet me out that Friday for the promised drink. Amidst the standard first-date awkwardness, I kept thinking to myself how unbelievable it was that somebody so impossibly tall and good-looking was equally intelligent and captivating.
I still wonder the same thing, every day. I can’t explain what she’s still doing hanging around with me, or why all the cheesy things I ever read or heard about love are true. A friend of mine said to me “isn’t it nice, when everything just clicks?” And it is.
Please state your full name for the record: Laura Yvonne Brunow
Occupation title(s) (both real and desired in-another-lifetime): Marketing Coordinator for an Architecture firm
You didn’t answer the second part, which was the most fun!
I am very self-conscious about those kinds of things. I love to surround myself with people who can exclaim “I am going to be a filmmaker” or painter, or actor, or writer or whatever, but personally I couldn’t exclaim anything like that without wondering while I said it if I actually had what it took. Chalk it up to youthful insecurity, financially insecure upbringing, unsupportive family, or maybe just my personality.
People think we spend all our time together, but there’s at least a good eight hours a day when I don’t see you. What do you do all day?
The press release that went out when I was hired described it as “in-house design of all marketing and communication materials.” I do different things every day. My favorite things to do here are:
- make leave behinds for when we interview for projects- I made a coloring book for an elementary school, hollowed out a secret compartment in an antique book for a historic library renovation, made fake basketball tickets for the Allen Fieldhouse interview, and so on.
- Put together award/publication submittals. Make pretty architecture look prettier, and make a cohesive presentation visually showing the concept behind the building.
- Get out of the office and photograph buildings. I only shoot on sunny days (or the building will look drab) so it is a great opportunity to get some much needed daytime sunlight on my skin.
What are your favorite movies?
French ones, not to be pretentious, but just because Jeunet and Kieslowski have gotten it SO right, SO often.
What are favorite books?
I have a really hard time starting books. Once I’m into it, I can’t get enough and I don’t want to do anything else but
read until I finish. It’s sort of the same way with movies, I have to be talked into them sometimes. That said, here are some of my favorite moments from books I have read recently:
Funniest: Sedaris’ description (me talk pretty) of his mother’s check reimbursing his cat’s cremation. Memo line: “pet burning.”
Most romantic: Marquez’s description (100 years) of the yellow butterflies that orbited around the mechanic’s son, and faded with him.
Best advice for life: I’m currently reading Word Freak, an account of the major players in the National Scrabble championship. One of the first things that the author learned about the game from the pros was not to complain about good luck or bad luck (since it all evens out in the end) but just to play as well as you can with what you have at any given moment.
What’s your favorite music?
Booty jams. I sort of wish that I was kidding. I’m sort of not. I like the mellow music too, but I love to shake my culo to some Outkast or Quintron.
What’s your favorite color?
The color of the sky at dusk. (also the color of the blue tights I bought at that discount store in Topeka… Less poetic.)
What makes you laugh?
Most recently? “Let’s just take it one step at a time.” -Chloe Jones. Also, The Office, Wilson’s bodily noises, the sounds and faces that Wilson makes when I poke him in the face. I should also point out that some of Wilson’s faces terrify me.
How did we meet?
Well, the powers-that-be in the realm of scholarship hall social events got to thinking how cute it would be if the nerdy guys and the nerdy girls flirted with each other. It didn’t pan out then, but five years later, here we are.
What’s the most embarrassing story you can think of about me?
Off the top of my head, probably the time that we were snuggling and you whispered sweetly “My Laura Yvette…” Even though my middle name is… Yvonne.
What’s your favorite board game and why?
Scrabble. Why not?
Why do you tickle me so much?
Fifty percent innate desire, fifty percent sheer pleasure.
Five words that sound great?
coin-operated, porcupine, nikon, kayak, perspective (are these going to be used as mad-libs?)