11 things I learned during my 56-hour* "vacation" in Maryland

*This is an exact number people, we're talking time spent on land in the state of Maryland. It should have been 54 but American Eagle Airlines (which does NOT provide you with free polos and jeans contrary to my hopes and dreams), Logan Airport, The City of Boston and Tropical Storm Ernesto can suck my balls for the extra two. THANKS.

1. I hate flying. No two ways about it people. Flying death tubes aren't for me. I discovered this at about 10 AM on Friday morning as the 50-seater I was on rocked back and forth like two fat kids on a see-saw and I sat gripping the arms of my seat, quite sure that any moment we were gonna drop out of the sky and I was gonna die before ever meeting and seducing Michael Vartan. I know that the life of the rich and famous requires a great deal of red eyes and hops across the pond so it's something I'm gonna have to work on. Luckily when you get to the rich and famous level you get things like first class and valium.

2. I'm a very neurotic traveler. If they say be there two hours ahead, I'm gonna be there two hours ahead. If someone tells me a horror story about a cab being late, I'm gonna set up a cab for half an hour before I need to leave. If I'm connecting to a different flight and my first flight is delayed, I'm gonna call the other airline every 30 minutes to make sure I'm still gonna make my flight. This may seem like an obnoxiously sucky way of living, but the amount of weight I lose in worrying alone makes up for the chocolate croissant and pumpkin spice latte I inhale en route.

3. I love Malls. I know, malls are trashy and tres tres un-chic, but they are SO convienent! All the stores! Right there! In an enclosed air contitioned space! And a food court! I love SoHo and whatever funky boutiques I come across in my city dwelling but deep down inside, my favorite place to shop will always be Montgomery Mall (though Columbia Mall is also v. nice).

4. I am an excellent listener. Particularly when my mother is telling me that if I tell the waiter at the chinese resturant that it is her birthday she will have me killed and mounted and not feel bad about it. At all.

5. When given the choice between hooking up with a kid that I kinda knew in high school and talking to Lizzie, watching Mean Girls and falling asleep at a "reasonable hour," I'll take the latter...


WHERE DID THE REST OF THIS ENTRY GO?! I'm fairly certain one of the blogger gods ate it for brunch with a mimosa or two. Weirdness. Anyway, sorry I've killed too many brain cells to remember the other 6 things... I bet they were super important and had something to do with the fact that I love my Mom, my friends, my magic green celery dress and champange straight from the bottle.

my head is a box...

I am a writer. Occasionally by profession, sometimes by action, mostly for recreation, I am a writer. I can't predict if writing is going to have anything to do with whatever I end up doing when I become a grown up but I am a writer. As a very great man, Toby Ziegler once said, I don't need paper. Its true. I spend my entire day writing stories and blog entries and just crafting sentances that will someday come out of my mouth and awe the people around me, "So well-spoken," they'll say. Most of the time when I'm staring off into space as you talk to me its because I'm crafting a story of you. Taking the pieces of you I like and making them a better reality which will sit lodged in my brain for a few days until I either a)forget about it or b)write it down (which is super rare--because things rarely sound as good on paper as they do in my head).

So in the past week I had been crafting a sentance. It was a run-on to be quite certain--but run-ons are how I am. I crafted it with a person in mind. I saw his face, blurry in my memory but quite vivid in the reaction I wanted. I cradled this sentace for about 4 days, hoping the situation would arise when I would get a chance to present it to this person.

Fast forward to last night. We start celebratory drinking at 6:30. On an empty stomach. I find that margaritas are quite delicious. Then comes a small dinner, more drinks, a play (which I totally fell asleep during because I'm an asshole- shh, don't tell), more drinks and a stumble out into the street where I pronounce to those listening on this island that I am quite shitfaced.

Then he enters. And I stop thinking. Because that's what boys and alcohol do to me. They make my brain stop. And all of a sudden I'm saying it. My precious baby of a sentace. Its falling out like drool without the appropriate facial gestures or pauses for emphasis.

And he doesn't even react. Well, he does. But not how I want. He laughs at me, doesn't really hear it, brushes it off, argues with the factuality of it (!!!). He acts as though he hasn't heard one of the most well written sentances that are meant to tell him how it is.

Then hugs me, kisses my cheek and walks away.

This is not how I wrote it ending. Which is why you should never drink and write.


**has anyone seen the new dell commercial with the kid and he's picking out the stuff for his computer and there's the song (which is where the blog title comes from)...who sings that and what's it called?? I love it.

Its good to be back.

So, last week on orders from a doctor, I gave up drinking. Completely. Cold turkey. For a whole week and 2 days. When I annonced that this was happening there were a few nay-sayers who were saying...well, they were saying nay. They didn't think that this pint-sized-genetically-disposed-to-alcoholism-girl-who-likes-to-celebrate had it in her to lay off the sauce for a few days. I figured we should solve things like they do it on Nantucket: throw some money at the problem. And so a fifty dollar bet was made, people were thrown in puddles and I took my last sip of Corona in the wee hours of last Friday morning.

Unlike many people who don't drink, I didn't take this as a week where I should stay home and re-evaluate my life, I still wanted to be social. What I didn't take into account is that on Nantucket you're either drunk or you're at home. There isn't so much a crew that's like, "Hey lets drink Fanta and go bowling!" mostly because there is no bowling on this rock out in the ocean. And so I found myself a Sober McSoberson in a see of Drunky McDrunkards. While this made me pretty miserable for most of the week I did learn some things.

1- Drunk people always assume that you are either a)not listening when you ramble at them or b)too drunk to remember anything they say for more than 15 seconds. People will say aaaaaaaaaanything when they are drinking. And most drunk people forget that you are sober and just view you as another convientent sieve for them to throw all their problems in. You will learn many things when you are sober.

2- Drunk people make shitty backseat drivers. I apologize to anyone I ever yelled at when they were driving my drunk ass home because it's really obnoxious to be told you're going to slow. And that you stop too long at stop signs. Designated Drivers are good people. Shower them with love and affection or just sing to the radio real loud like a normal drunkard.

3- The song Sexy Back will make me dance like I am drunk even if I have not had a drink in 6 days. Even if I'm in a car. And driving on cobblestones.

4- Theme parties are really dumb and kind of lame unless you are totally shitfaced.

5- Bartenders give you ridiculous looks when you order straight diet coke. Particularly if they remember you as, "the girl that did 6 shots that one night and then threatened to do a cartwheel on the dance floor."

I am now back to my regularly scheduled program of drinking my brain cells off. Though I think that week did me good, its nice to remember exactly what you did for a full nine days.

please

Will someone please, please buy me this shirt.

Anything with a Saved By The Bell tie-in is really the way to go.

It could happen to you

Everything in your life can be going peachy keen sometimes. Maybe there are a few bumps in your road a few missed exits on your life map, but you can lay awake at night and think, "Yes, being in my twenties is kind of awesome."

Then it happens. It can be anything, a magazine ad, an off-hand comment, a story you hear, a text message... something.

And you realize that even though you can hold your own at the bar, can pay an electricity bill, cashed in your V card, owe money to the goverment, and not even have a curfew... you realize that you are the exact same person you were when you hated yourself the most.

You are the same person now you were in high school. Despite your new found confidence and ability to stand on your own two feet, you are still the acne-ridden, chubby, awkward girl who wanted nothing more than to sleep for the next 10 years.

People might say they grow. And maybe they do. But at some point all the self-loathing and the fear and the pit of your stomach disgust at the face staring back at you in the mirror could come back.

Then what do you do?

there is something wrong with this...

"So how many times had you seen him before that night?"
"Uh. Twice."
"Right, and that added up to..."
"Like 2 hours."
"Do you know his middle name?"
"No."
"Do you know his last name?"
"Uhhhh...no."
"And so you hooked up with him?"
"...he gave me a ride."

Stupid insticts

I love cats. I think cats are the queens of the animal kingdom. I think dogs are obnoxious and slobbery and just lame. I am re-thinking all this love...

Today, Belinda and I got home from my first training sesh at the ice rink as I get ready for the Olympics and I got myself a Hershey bar and turned on the TV preping myself for some unwind time when I stepped on something that I assumed was a stuffed animal...

...until I looked at it.

See, what Belinda forgot to tell me when she let me move in is her outdoor kitties are very much intouch with their lion-like instints.

It was a dead...something. Rodent sized. With its innards all on the floor. Are you disgusted yet?! Well, I. STEPPED. In. It.

Thankfully I have a habit of walking on my toes so it just hit my big toe, but the big toe on my right foot will never be the same, people.

So once my brain took the 45 seconds to process what I was actually looking at I screamed for like, an hour and ran upstairs and into Belinda's room still screaming. Thankfully she was really calm about it and was like, "Oh yea, happens all the time." Although she did tell me that Kiwi does normally eat all the innards and just leave the fur as a present for her...

I take it back. Cats are stupid. But at least they're smarter than dogs.

yo quiro

After a 3 night drinking binge and no chance for hangover recovery. My newest favorite person in the world up-ed her total fucking awesomeness by bringing me taco bell from the mainland.

Ooooh. Delicious taco bell crap. All that dog meat and my hangover is totally cured.

Jamie is my most favorite.

the puddle part deux

This is it, ladies and gents. This is my puddle. Be in awe of its hugeness. It may have given me a flesh eating bacteria-- not many puddles can say that. Thankfully if there's no rain for more than 5 days it dries up and just becomes part of the road instead of something that belongs on a map.

A Ship's horn just blew. I love living on Nantucket.

Update-a-licious (101 in 1001)

I still have almost two whole years to complete this thing but I figured I'd give an update on the ones I've completed in the last few months.

1. Finish reading Long Walk to Freedom <--It's amazing what 12 hours on a bus can do for reading your 600 page book. It's increadibly, everyone should read it...

9. Graduate from college <---June 1, baby. I'm a college graduate. Uh-oh actual world!

19. Go to Chicago <---Spring Break! Sooooo awesome, I cannot wait to live there

36. Help Cougar throw that yard sale we’ve been talking about for years. <---It was kinda a bust but we made a decent amount of beer money and cleared out a lot of room

45. Visit Nantucket and hang out with people my own age who aren’t related to me <--that's what this summer is all about

54. Live somewhere other than New York or Maryland/D.C. <---what's up Nantucket?!

No booze 'til we cruise...

A lot of my friends have been being all weird about coming to visit me on Nantucket. Wanting to do it but not sure if its worth the time/money/gas to see me on my new island home. Think no more! I have discovered the why (to come visit)--well, one of the many whys (like: Duh, its me, of course you want to visit) but I think this is the one that'll tip the scales in my favor.

Drinking on the ferry.

I cannot speak for the fast boat (as I've never taken it, it could end up in Narnia for all I know) but on the slow boat you can buy booze and drink it on your two and a half hour journey to paradise. This was a novelty I had never experienced until this year, but now that I'm 21 I've embraced it, like my drunk ass family before me. Here's the thing 1 beer+ fatigue from traveling + boat swaying = decent buzz. Particularly if you don't eat anything. Imagine the possibilities with two beers! Hello boat dance party! The selection is sparce (mostly frat beer and cheap wine) but they have Sam Adams Summer Ale since Ch-ello! We're in Massachusettes! The birthplace of democracy and delicious beer! And its not anymore expensive than an NYC bar but its better! Because you're on the Ocean! Well, technically the Sound but its water and all water eventually leads to the ocean.

So Okay! Seriously!! Come visit! Not only can we drink together, you can arrive drunk! Awesome.

PS- Yes, I wrote this drunk while on the ferry and yes, I took that picture of my half-empty beer and yes, I'm sure the people around me started to judge the second the flash went off. The sooner everyone recognizes I'm a mild alcoholic the better for humanity

PPS- A big shout out to the Boston Culinary Group for hanging out, particularly the foreign gentleman working behind the counter of The Nantucket, who was maybe trying to give me my beer and bagel for free but I was too stupid/tired to pick up on it.

Stop the time machine...

My little cousin Courtney, who is not-so-little anymore is in the process of having a slumber party to celebrate her 10th birthday. She only has two friends over, which is a totally respectable amount...

However.

I now understand why eventually my mother refused to ever let there be another slumber party again. Little girls are loud. And walls anywhere besides a top secret military bunker are not thick enough to keep out the giggles and the screams and the TV. And this is only two kids. I used to have slumber parties with up to 5 friends!!!

Sorry Mom and Dad. My bad.

I'm not so much liking this getting older thing. I was in the car today and I could not remember what being 10 was like. I had no memory of 10, no real idea of what that year held for me until Courtney's little friend came up to me and asked if I liked sea food.

Boom.

All of a sudden I remembered 10. It blends into 9 and 11 a little bit but it's all there. The uncertainty about boys (gross or cute?), body image (the training bra debacle) and what was "cool." I also remember that it was still okay to play pretend, and with barbies and occasionally just run around the backyard screaming. That's pretty much the last year of that. Once you hit 11, it stops being uncertainty and becomes self conciousness. At 11 you may want to play dress up but know that you can only do it by yourself or maybe with your best friend for fear of looking like "a baby."

The Horror.

10 is awesome. The space between 10 and 16 is bleak. 13 is okay, but really-- that six years sucks. Hard. And from what I've experenced, except for the alcohol and making out, its pretty much all down hill from there anyway.


Happy Birthday Courtney. Don't grow up too fast.

Crossing the pond with The Beatles

I don't quite know why, but it seems that nothing really blog-worthy has happened since I've been on Nantucket. Yes I have a new job, new house, new roommate, new almost-friends (we don't know each other well enough for me to call them friends but they will be), I've seen celebrities, I've gotten drunk, I've flirted, danced, lied, made bad choices, made good choices, spent money, spent more money, talked to Tierra like a bajillion times on the phone, been home sick, considered spending the rest of my life here, and just kind of hung out. I've yet to go to the beach (maybe today), but I'm still dealing with the last dredges of poison ivy so I'm not too distraught about that.

Seriously?! Its weird, everything is fine and okay but...I keep expecting something to happen. I keep comparing this summer to Theatre on the Hill 2004 and my trip to Cape Town, which is kind of stupid because while those events had a lot in common (many people in a small confined space who had to forge relationships with the help of much alcohol and who had very little actual work to do), this summer I'm working full time (today is my first day off in 7 days...gross) only living with one person I'm not related to and since she doesn't have the same running-rampant alcoholic gene I do we've only gone out once. And we had a great time. So I shouldn't complain. And I've only been here a week and I have like 10 weeks left. So I really should just give fate a litte time to work itself out.

Anyway, the one thing that I kept thinking about that was almost blog-worthy in its total randomness is the title of the blog. On my walk to work there is a "puddle", in quotes because the thing is pond-sized. It should be on a map, there should be fishes living in it. It comes when there has been a day or more of rain because the people creating the drainage system for the island took a big old bong hit before they did this little patch of road. If its sunny for a few days it dries up, but this is Nantucket, so the weather is as reliable as a crack whore so, it's pretty much always there. And completely unavoidable on my journey to work.

So, normally I try to look just pathetic and dim enough to get someone to drive me over the puddle, but occasionally my timing is totally off, forcing me to find my own way over. So I take off my shoes and pull up the legs of my jeans and grumble my way over. But EVERY time this has happened, a Beatles song (twice Let it Be, once Dig a Pony) has been playing on my ipod.

You can't spell, "I've really lost the will to live" without I-V-Y

It is not going away. Everyone said it would go away but they lied. They are liars. I am still covered in this nonsense and I'm wondering if it's due to the wonder drugs that are running merrily through my system and effing everything up. If that wasn't bad enough, it seems to be spreading. It was on my forearms but now its on my upper arms (and getting bigger) as well as on on.my.FACE! Well, luckily its the underside of my chin way over next to my right ear. But still?! SO. GROSS. and totally ruining everything about my new adventure in Nantucket (which is totally awesome, btw). I know its pretty ridiculous to be bitching about this, especially because I AM on Nantucket and not a poor, starving child in Somalia. But this really, really sucks and makes me a)totally terrified to be outdoors and b)desperatly miss New York City where we didn't have silly things like plants to fuck everything up. According to About.com it could take as many as 20 days for the Iv to have its way with me. So far, its been 10, and that's counting the days before I saw it so it may actually just have been 7. Faaaaantastic.

I'm gonna go clean my grandma's house because I do not want to go out in public, because I hate everything.

The Ivy Update

TWO THINGS:
1- this is a tmi post. On many levels. Just a heads up. Don't say I didn't warn you, foo'
2- if you had a hand in my chromosome I would appreciate it if you would stop reading right. Now. For all of our sanities. Thanks.

So, according to my mother, who is the foremost expert on poison ivy I could find without getting out of my chair, the ditty about The Iv (as I now call it, which sounds like the Hiv, but is way less traumatic and uh, not permanent) is "three days coming, three days with it, three days going," according to my astute college graduate calculations, that's nine days. Saying that I got it the day of my party, I have until the 12th or 13th with this crap, and as it stands now, it looks like it plans to be around for a bit longer than that. Anywhoodle, this time frame totally overlapped all my time in Maryland.

Enter A Boy. He is not The Boy. He just happens to be around a lot while I'm in Maryland and he's a decent enough human being for being raised in this god-forsaken hell hole of a town. We met socially on many occasions in high school and now that we've all grown up a little bit, things have shifted slightly into new territory. Sort of. When things look like they're about to start shifting, other things get in the way. Namely Annie. Who is neither sweet, nor nice and is also kind of a bone head. But she's my friend and I love her, when she's not ruining everything for me. So! Annie is in NYC. I am here. Boy is here. Things are gonna be delicious, no? No.

Because I look like Jeff Goldblume in The Fly. Not a joke people. I sat on my bed with my siblings and I was like, "can this happen?" and they both try to break it to me nicely, "hell no Rachel, you are disgusting."

Having zero self esteem on a normal day, it has managed to dip into negative double digits with this predicament. So I made up a believable but totally lame stall tactic, which will turn into me blowing him off and feeling really bad about it.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, I got cockblocked by Mother Nature.

irony is an ugly, dirty whore

I graduated from college on June 1. On June 2, I was no longer a resident of the city of New York (well, Brooklyn, but whatever). On June 3 I celebrated my return to country-bumpkin Maryland life with a quaint, little, backyard graduation party. The party was delightful. A good 90% of my favorite people were around to help me eat delicious food and shower me with wonderful presents. I looked adorable. My hair was as straight and non-poofy as one can expect from Maryland humidity. Today is June 6. Every appendage (meaning both arms and legs and (very possibly) neck) I have is covered in poison ivy. I haven't had poison ivy since I was ten when I got it on my eyes (not pleasant, btw) at summer sleep-away camp. I am itchy, cracked out on benadryll and wondering if I made the biggest mistake ever when I left my nice, warm concrete jungle.

grumpy face.

So.

I hate packing.

I don't hate moving. Moving is exciting. Moving means new adventures. If there was a way to move with out packing than I would move a whole bunch more. My first few years in NYC I was bouncing around so much that I lived with just the bare essentials (which are not as bare as you might think...because I am insanely materialistic. No judging. Its hereditary). Then I moved to Brooklyn. And I got a huuuuuge closet. And I got comfortable. So here I sit, 18 months later, surrounded by garbage bags and boxes and piles of random shit I haven't seen in months but can not bring myself to get rid of. I'm close to done, but the closer I get to done the more I realize that there is no earthly way this is all going to fit in the back of a Mazzda Pick Up and a Chevy Impala. And there is the lingering fear that I won't sell my futon. Which means that I will also have to get a 600 pound futon mattress home as well. I'm freaking out. Freak.ing.out. It's 12:25 AM on Tuesday. I have to be out of the apartment by 10:00 AM on Friday. This seems like so much time but I'm working full time, going to tea, spending the night in a mansion, graduating, attempting to survive a meal with both my parents (ps. I wouldn't be in Tavern on Dean on Thursday afternoon if you don't want to deal with that hot fetus of mess) and uh...oh, going to my post office box. And buying my first piece of Hunter clothing (now that I don't go there, I'll wear their colors).

It also does.not.help that there is approximatly 100% humidity in Brooklyn with a whacked out pollen count. And where's my allergy medicine? Maryland. Because who gets allergies in the concrete jungle? Yea. I hate everything right now.

In happier news, I had a wonderful last weekend, full of all the right amounts of drinking and sailors and kisses and tears and smiles and self actualization and reality checks and true friends (occasionally via telephone) who I am far too lucky to have. I'm sorry I took absolutly no pictures. Boo, I suck sometimes. Luckily I have enough memories (and old pictures) to last forever.

And can we please discuss how Fraiser is the worst.show.ever!?

I win! I win I win I win!

I would like to take this moment to discuss how awesome I am.

At 6:05 this morning, as the sun rose over the condo monstrosity across the street, I finished* my last college paper ever (at this point, people, I have a fat kid's chance in gym class of making it to grad school).

I was going to take a picture of the sunrise but I smelled pretty badly of stupid and could not manage to get my camera to function. So here's a Brooklyn sunset. Just as pretty, only on the opposite side of the apartment.

*finished means that I could not possibly come up with another word to type so I saved it, now in the next few hours I have to make sure I did all those fancy things like write in complete sentances and use periods and stuff.

I think its appropriate to pull an all nighter for the final big paper, if for no other reason than it reaffirms my choice to be D-O-N-E with school all together.

Anyway, so I'm feeling that a little acceptance speech is in order.

First and foremost I'd like to thank the various forms of liquid caffine that prevented me from having to inject it directly into my eyeballs to stay awake after only getting 4 hours of sleep Sunday night. I'd also like to thank that bag of Microwave Kettle Corn for hanging out and being crazy delicious, even 4 hours after being popped. The West Wing season 2 dvds need to be recognized for their abilitly to lull me into a condusive writing mode. My Nantucket shirt, for giving me the drive I needed to finish this nonsense up so the summer can begin. Natalie for the coffee, and Mel for the I Can't Believe its not Butter for my toast (though as of this writing neither one actually knows that they helped the cause, thanks anyway girls!). Hallie, Tierra, Rachel, Waseem and Aimee for the cheerleading and the emotional support, particulary Hallie for still being around at 4 AM and Aimee for getting me totally excited about our upcoming "Sex and the City: Chicago Style" existance. My blogging boss needs a huge thanks for not yelling at me as I haven't done work in two weeks, Myspace for being the best distraction tool ever and Limewire for letting me download that episode Grey's Anatomy that I got to watch when I was done as my "reward" for finishing.

At this point I'm too wound up to sleep. I'm gonna do some editing, start packing (!!!) and get ready to turn this sucker in.

I can't believe its over. I've spent the past two weeks telling grown-ups that the reason I've waited until the last possible second to write this piece of horse poop is because I'm feeling, "slightly nostalgic and sad about it being my last paper." And while that was total bs when it was coming out of my mouth, it's actually kinda true. Though I bitch and moan about it, I love writing and I love having to write. Its so hard for me to write without being faced with an imenent deadline.

Anyway, lets graduate and see how things go.

OH! And while I have your attention! You HAVE to go to this site here: Help Meredith Choose and buy lots and lots of adorable stuff. Do it. NOW!

dude

Anyone else freaking the fuck out about the Grey's Anatomy finale tonight?

Okay, cool. Its not just me.

Oh man, Shonda Rhimes...I am soooo your bitch.

fat

I doubled my caloric intake today...

...with 5 cookies.

Stupid Girl Scouts. You are so delicious.

its coming.

"I want you to be our baby-sitter forever!"

As A and I went to go pick up her sister, J, at her school we were talking about the keychain on my keys for their house. A told me to put my name on the keys. I told her that I'm gonna have to return them to her Mom at some point.

"Why?"
"Well, I'm not gonna be your babysitter for very much longer."

She looked at me confused for a minute. As if she hadn't been paying attention at the dinner table as her mother and I discussed how things were winding up for me (and let's be honest, she's 6, she probably wasn't listening. She asked where I was going and I told her I was going to Nantucket for the summer but didn't tell her that I wans't going to come back.

This keeps happening! It keeps being the first good bye, the last dinner, flurries of cell phone calls with promises that we're gonna see each other, "soon. Really Soon." I'm working as hard as I can to keep these lazy promises, knowing that I just will not be able to fit everyone and everything in. Between trying to sublet my stupid room (which, every time I talk to Mel about, one of us ends up choked up. How do you fall in perfect friendship with a roommate you haven't even had for a year?) and trying to write my impossible thesis and do all the rest of my homework, attempting to answer every single random question my parents can come up with about graduation, Nantucket, Chicago and whatever else they feel like grilling me about, working three jobs, and going back and forth between Maryland every other week I just can't figure out how I'm gonna sqeeze in last drinks with everyone (especially because I'm not really drinking this month).

How is it possible that I only have 30 days left?

Well, my hair is doing this delicious wavy thing, its fabulous-D's bithday fiesta which should be full of people who made these 4 years so awesome, and A gave me her left over Oreos, which are still in my bag.

double oh five and a half

There's a man in a tux wandering around my reception area (yes, my, if I'm sitting here for the day, I own it). He's been sitting and standing and just kind of hanging out for at least half an hour.

Mildly attractive and deliciously tall, I wondered if this was perhaps the fates sending me a sign. What if this man was my knight in shining armor?! He was going to whisk me away in his Aston Martin to his manse in the Hamptons and we were gonna live happily ever after...

Knowing that this might be my only shot to not die alone I find some courage in my almost empty bag of chex mix to talk to him. I took a minute to prepare what I was going to say so the risk of sounding like a total asshole would be significantly lowered.

"So, do you always come to work dressed like that?" (Okay, its not very clever, but when delivered with the appropriate amount of flirt, I think is not bad)

"I...uh...they...I was told because they don't know whats going on...I don't know."

...

He sits back down and I put my head in my hands cursing the gods for taunting me like that. He would have zero grasp on the English language...

they just wanna...

So, its been said many times (a few by me) that, "only good girls keep diaries-- bad girls are too busy having fun." While, I do agree with this statement, I think an appropriate corollary would be, "girls who have a lot of crap to do before they graduate in 30 days would rather drink beers than keep a diary." However, I feel like my adoring public has probably been religiously checking this space since my last update and has had a little part of their soul die every time they haven't seen a new update, particularly because my last post was so effin' disgusting. However, I have a brand new blog to document all my fun medical hypochondriatical disgustingness. So, you win.

Anyway, it seems as though my life isn't going to settle down until after I get to Nantucket which happens in mid-June so I figured I'd give a brief recap of all the shennanigans that went down over my spring break.

I desperatly wanted to make this a photo blog but some people have been a little slow about posting their photos on the internets. Its okay, they're all still good people, particularly when I forget they have actual grown up jobs and can't be talking about debauchery on their grown-up jobs servers. I suck. Anyway.

Eventually there will be a spring break photo montage. Right now, After a 2-time zone, 7-city, 12-day, 13-bar break, I leave you with this:

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scratchy scratch

I am itchy.

Really, really, (really) itchy.

I was told with my new medication that I would get dry skin and chapped lips. I was like, "eh. whatevs. gimme the drugs." I was blessed with increadibly smooth skin (thanks Italian genome!) and so have never had to be one of those every-morning mosturizers. Now?! Every 6 hours or so. Or I peel. People, I cannot even begin to discuss how absolutly disgusted I am by my body at this point. And its not just my legs, its my arms, stomach and the part in my hair and my face. I've been experimenting with the various kinds of lotion I already own, but its looking like I'm gonna have to take it up a notch. Does anyone have a really amazing moisturizer?! Preferably one with Alpha Hydroxy Acid, which are a must.

And while we're talking about my disgusting body (because thats a fun topic), my lips. Gross. Gee-ross. I can not be without my Burts Bees for more than 5 minutes or I start to twitch. Egh.

How much are you enjoying reading this blog?!

I'm also itchy. Because in two days I'll finally be home. I'm getting my 48 hour homesickness itch. I've never gotten homesick for Maryland, but everytime I know I'm about to get home I start to miss it, even though 2 or 3 days after I get back there I immediatly want to be back in the city.

Easter Break is shaping up to be increadibly awesome. At some point I'm gonna have to break it to my Mom that she isn't actually going to see me until Saturday or Sunday. There's gonna be a lot of traveling, mostly on completely foreign public transportation but it's going to lead me to my friends--all of whom I have not seen in far too long!

Okay after a delicious 2 hour nap (a thing I don't get nearly enough of anymore), I'm going to class.

Where's my Lifetime movie of the week?

So this past weekend was shaping up to go down in the history books as la-ame. In fact, it was looking so lame that they wouldn't probably give it a footnote in the history books. So, Saturday night I'm sitting watching Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind wondering if I would look as cute as Kate Winslet if I dyed my hair blue (then realizing it would take a face transplant for me to come anywhere near looking as cute as Kate Winslet) and then crying because I'm going to die alone without even a cat to eat my eyeballs because who doesn't go out on Saturday night?!...when Teeny calls. We chat it up and then she invites me to a Mets game on Sunday. Well sure! Anything to break the suckiness of the weekend-- they serve beer at baseball stadiums, and I had never actually been to a major-league game. Even though it was just supposed to be some sort of scrimmage (what do they call those in baseball?) I was stoked.

Long story short: There was no game. It was just watching the Mets have batting practice. The boys we came with were so embarrassed they just got us real liquored up so we wouldn't be hella pissed when we realized we got dragged to Flushing to watch the 3rd string 2nd baseman hit a ball over the fence and have it not count for anything. Yea, so 4 beers, 3 hours of direct sunlight and a few handfuls of peanuts later, we're feeling awesome.

I get ready to pour my drunk ass on the 7 train and sleep all the way into Manhattan. These boys- Phil and Adam along with their sidekick Teeny have other plans and literally throw me into Adam's 'Lanche (the gayest SUV around) and start driving back to Conneticut and the all-boys prep school that the three of them are employeed by.

That's right everyone. I was imbibed with really expensive baseball stadium Budweiser (and two Bud Lights, because aparently I think water is delicious), kidnapped, and taken across state lines, on a Sunday, at 4 in the afternoon.

We promptly got lost in Queens which of course meant we had to stop for those awesome 24 oz kegs of Heiniken which (fyi: family) we will be serving at my graduation party. Those and Rolling Rock mini-ponies (what can I say?! I'm all about packaging).

Once we got to Conneticut, I aparently (I don't remember much):
-Thought it would be cool to let Phil give me a tattoo, which, 2 days and a lot of scrubbing later, still hasn't come off. So I'm working with a poorly drawn moon and stars on my left fore-arm. I did manage to keep my wits about me enough to NOT let him color in my other tattoo.
-Thought it would be funny to scream really loud about how incapacitated we were as Teeny and I walked across campus with the 14 and 15 year old boys staring at their crew coach and the crazy girl attempt to walk in a straight line.
-I tripped over a lawn chair and fell flat on my face (who keeps a chair right infront of a door?!) while walking in Teeny's door, cutting up my hands, right foot and left leg. Did Christine comfort me as I lay on her floor possibly bleeding internally?! Nope, she definatly went to the bathroom. Thanks Christine.
-Fell again. This time into Christine's vaccuum. Turning it on, and leaving it on because I can't figure out how to turn it off.
-Changed the outgoing message on my voicemail...to something along the lines of "My phone doesn't work! Call me here! [insert Christine trying to say her phone number and laughing so hard you can't understand her]"
-Thought it would be an awesome idea to go swimming in the crew-lake.
-Convinced another co-worker of Christine's that I was a complete stranger that they had picked up at the "game" and brought back.
-At the resturant where we ate I managed to drop every piece of silverware. Twice.
-When the fruity drink Adam had ordered for Phil arrived, I took it upon myself to stick my finger into the whipped cream on top and take a dollop for myself before he had even tasted it.

Once we got home from the resturant I became the most anti-social kidnapping victim ever, making everyone shut up so I could watch my stories. Then I became the obnoxious kidnapping victim announcing to Christine that she would be waking up at 5 to drive me to the Metro North station so I could catch the 5:30 train and be in the city in time for my first class.

I made it. By 8 PM last night I was essentially useless, working on about 3 hours of sleep plus a bit of PTSD from the whole ordeal.

So I got home to my UPS package. And it was just a letter. From the company that makes the drug I'm taking. Talk about an effin' Let.Down.

I also find it humerous that those friends of mine who are privilaged enough to be linked from this blog find it necessary to up the ante with their content, while I'm totally statisfied writing this junk.

So lame.

So. It's Friday night and because of some poor planning I am not out enjoying New York City but rather sitting in my pajamas watching Titanic.

You could not judge me any more than I judge myself.

Right now I'm thinking of it as a temporary set-back. It's not even 11, the night is young. I haven't brushed my teeth and Six Feet Under comes on in 7 minutes, the night could turn around at any minute.

Anyway, if I wasn't lame enough at this point, the story gets better. So I am in the middle of a Harriet the Spy level of mystery. Today I arrived home to find a UPS slip saying that they had apparently tried to deliver something to me today.

At first I thought it was for my roommate, for our names are quite similar and those UPS fellas aren't really known for the expert penmanship. But nope, they got all the letters right and in the right order. And so now I'm trying to figure out who the fuck is sending me packages care of UPS.

My birthday? Is in October. There are no major gift giving holidays in the recent past or coming up (Easter, if you ask Cougar, is not a gift giving holiday). I haven't been shopping in real life or on ebay since before Ash Wednesday...I think (--as I go check my recent ebay history and make sure I haven't been sleep-shopping-- which can happen when you go through withdrawl).

Most people in my family who have the heart to send me a care package would do so a)to my post office box and b)via USPS, because UPS sucks.

According to handy UPS internets tracking the package originated in MI, which after a long fight between my roommate and I, we established is Michigan (though, if we're wrong I'd appreciate being told). I don't know anyone in Michigan--I don't think...which means its probably some sort of catalogue.

Seriously?! This is gonna be killing me until Monday when (hopefully) it'll be delivered before I have to leave for class at 9:15. And the fact that I'm so excited pretty much makes me want to kill myself.

My heart is in my shoes.

It's time for the Friday Fabulous Five! things that have made this week totally kickin.

1- My new job There is nothing like seeing your name in print. Even when that print is on a screen. And as Cougar said last night, "bloggers are the writers of the future." Which is funny because bloggers are actually the writers of the present and my Mom is just a little slow when it comes to technology. Also, my mother now has access to this blog (as does my dad and various other members of my extended family) so - Hey Guys! That thing I wrote?! before?! A joke. So...just forget it.

2- FLIP FLOP SEASON!!! When I was in high school I wore flip flops pretty much year around, because I drove everywhere. Now that I walk everywhere I can only wear the 'flops (as Teeny so elegantly puts it) once it hits 60 degrees. Then once it hits 70 I can start wearing skirts. These rules are increadibly arbitrary, especially because just because the high is 60 doesn't mean that at 10 pm when I'm walking home it won't be closer to 40 as it was a few weeks ago when we had the Statan Island adventure. But the past few days have been perfect flip flop weather which means Summer is coming...and with summer comes all sorts of other fun things like graduation, Nantucket, and the need to lose 8 lbs before I even look at a bathing suit (...oh wait...), which brings us to:

3- The abundance of free food at the offices I've temped in this week. Since I do day-to-day temping I've worked in a lot of different places and they've started to rank themselves in my head. The major critera for ranking offices is how much free food I can eat there/walk away with. Both offices this week have been amazing with the free soda (fountain diet coke! in an office! brilliant...), and baked goods and chocolate and sandwiches and fruit. Oh man. The one way to make a happy temp is to feed her.

4- My graduation pictures which aren't so much fabulous as hilariously tragic. I haven't sat for a photographer since the summer before my senior year of high school. I forgot how, to the hating-his-life photographer, you aren't so much a person as one of those wooden dolls that painters use to understand the human shape. All that "turn left" "chin up" "tilt your head" "no tilt it the other way" "too much" "now put your chin down" "do a crazy dance" "make love not war" "NOW SMILE" at which point it isn't so much a smile as a grimace with tears streaming down your face because you had to go ahead and dislocate your shoulder to get the pose this guy was invisioning. I'm gonna garantee that the best pictures are gonna be the ones where I'm in the gown (which, ew...that village bicycle gown must be so gross) where I'm holding the diploma and the morter board and my elbows are at a 90 degree angle from my body and I look like some one just gave me a swift kick in the rear.

5- The 105% I got on my Cultural Anthroplogy midterm, solidifying the fact that the way to have a kickin' senior year is to take a whole bunch of 101 classes. It's actually an interesting class and I'm pleasently suprised, especially because I mainly took the class because I was hoping I would have a professor like Jerimiah Laskey on Saved By the Bell: The College Years. And even though I don't, it's stil a cool class.

Happy Weekend.

I'm gonna die.

So as I've discussed before. I am, on occasion, a raging hypochondriac. This is probably due to the fact that I've spent most of my life not getting sick. I get the occasional flu and I did have a fun week or two of chicken pox, but for the most part I was an increadibly healthy kid juxstaposed to my brother who was a regular at various ERs in the DC and outlying suburban areas due to raging asthma and allergy problems.

The fact that he got all the attention what with his habit of stopping breathing and everything as a child, paired with my obsession with medical dramas staring attractive emotionally broken doctors, I developed the habit of thinking that most things that seem to be wrong with me are probably life threatening. However, since I don't like doctors or copays I normally just suffer in silence, lying awake at night knowing that the leg cramp is obviously necretitis and my significant other is at some point or another going to put me in a coma then rip out half my thigh muscle.

Since I am not normally sick, I don't go to the doctor and I very rarely use prescription drugs. Enter my brand new prescription. I don't have a serious problem (its definatly not life threatening) however this medication has some crazy-serious side effects. My doctor has spent about 4 hours over the past month lecturing me about the fact that there is a very real possibility that if I do something wrong when on these meds I could very well die. Immediatly. Without warning.

Great.

So I started this morning. They said to take it with a meal which, I don't actually eat meals so-- already doing great. I swallowed the pill with a large glass of water and some oatmeal and waited. Then wondered what I was waiting for. Obviously, nothing was going to happen. I wasn't going to start hallucinating or anything (unfortunatly). After feeling slightly retarded for a few minutes I started waiting for all of the wonderful side effects of this drug.

Bad idea.

On the platform waiting for the subway, I was positive I was going to die due to my stomache and mild sweating. This is after one.dose. I had a stomache for most of the morning and in a wild panic I bought myself lunch (something I never do- I eat fruit and chex mix for lunch) and the stomache returned. At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna die while crossing Broadway infront of the Cosi.

Right now I'm nursing myself back to health with M&M's and Sprite. I feel okay. Although I have a strange feeling that a great deal of this blog will now be dedicated to my medical concerns.

Sorry.

101 in 1001

Many a Genius Blogger before me has done this. So I'm just following (with some following behind me). I started this on June 10, 2005. I have 1001 days to finish these 101 things. Check my progress every now and then! I'll be done around March 18, 2008

1. Finish reading Long Walk to Freedom June 27, 2006
2. Join a union (not super picky at this point which one)
3. Have a healthy romantic relationship that lasts a substantial amount of time (at least a month)
4. Have photographs published July 17, 2005 I should have been more specific regarding whether they were pictures of me or pictures I took, but we're on a deadline here.
5. Get a mac December 25, 2006. Thanks Mom!
6. Live in an apartment for more than 12 months September 2005. 46 Underhill. Good times.
7. Go to Vegas
8. Go to at least 2 more foreign countries (repeats don’t count) Half finished, February 2007
9. Graduate from college June 1, 2006
10. See a dermatologist Feb 27, 2006 Best choice I ever made.
11. Go to a Yankee game
12. Go to at least three concerts
13. Sing kareoke in a bar November 11, 2006
14. Get my second tattoo
15. Finish reading all of Margaret Atwood’s books. She needs to stop writing books if this is ever gonna get done!
16. Dance on a bar October 1, 2006. Thanks Rose and Crown for that delightful send off!
17. Start paying my school loans
18. Go to LA
19. Go to Chicago April 21, 2006
20. Learn to cook at least one decent grown up meal I make a mean Chicken Parm, with penne and wild greens.
21. Host a dinner party
22. Stand up to a guy and tell him how it is (I did this once, but I think I need practice)
23. Do another show at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre
24. Find a new agent
25. Buy a black blazer
26. Get new head shots March 26, 2007
27. Go see a taping of "The Daily Show"
28. Get another piercing
29. Learn to hem my own pants
30. See myself in a feature film (not necessarily on a big screen because just because I’m in it doesn’t mean I’ll drop $10 to see it)
31. Get the zipper on my green bag fixed
32. Fill my ipod October 28, 2006
33. Buy a real bed January 13, 2007
34. Go to a WNBA game
35. Do more community service work
36. Help Cougar throw that yard sale we’ve been talking about for years. May 20, 2006
37. Go white water rafting again
38. Lose 15 pounds (and keep it off)
39. Learn to make a classy cocktail
40. Have that photo-picnic in the park I’ve been wanting for years
41. Stand on a Broadway stage
42. Clean out my mom’s attic
43. Buy a bookshelf
44. Organize all my photographs
45. Visit Nantucket and hang out with people my own age who aren’t related to me Summer 2006.
46. Get digital Webshots pictures printed
47. See myself on TV again (and try not to look like a dimwit with poor posture)
48. Re-master my right split, attempt to master my left split
49. Take another trapeze class November 2006. I *heart* circus class.
50. Drive across the country
51. Go to South Africa again
52. Do at least one dance audition with confidence
53. Get an internship at a theatre company
54. Live somewhere other than New York or Maryland/D.C. Nantucket, 2006.
55. Go to the Village Halloween parade This is half done. I walked through it and realized that wow! Crazy Pants! and walked out again.
56. Use that gift certificate for free dinner for 4 for that Italian restaurant in Bethesda
57. Get highlights
58. Get a hair cut I can manage and don’t hate.
59. Get a bikini wax
60. See way, way, way more theatre including "Ave. Q", and "Lion King"
61. Find a really great hat that looks great on me that I can rock any time
62. Send away something I’ve written
63. Learn to play poker
64. Either get a new remote or a new TV and figure out how to hook up my dvd player and my cable box
65. Wear my gorgeous green dress a whole bunch of times Maggie's wedding, New Years, Granny's 75th Bday, Dad's 50th bday. Mom's 50th bday Love it!
66. Tone my arm muscles
67. Watch all of Roman Holiday without falling asleep
68. Whiten my teeth
69. Go to Prospect Park while I still live in Brooklyn
70. Learn what all the abbreviations in baseball mean
71. Become a decent New York City tour guide
72. Go to the dive bar down the street from my apartment, Soda March 24, 2006
73. Start playing soccer again (even if it’s only pick-up games) April 1, 2007
74. Do something wonderful for my parents (both of them. But separately)
75. Get rid of all the gift cards that are hanging out in my wallet (by spending them) Febuary 2007
76. Have at least one non-miserable Valentine’s Day Febuary 14, 2007
77. Wear that kinda crazy beaded shirt with the fairy on it out at least once
78. Donate Blood
79. Join a gym
80. Take swing/ballroom dance classes
81. Bet on the ponies
82. Have an incredibly fabulous 21st birthday thanks to all of my friends. It was a month long celebration of Awesomeness.
83. Have someone teach me the finer points of football Football season 2006-2007
84. Go to Gillette Castle, we went when I was little but I don’t have a visual memory of it.
85. Buy a beautiful and expensive piece of jewelry that I am in love with
86. Climb the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty and the Sears tower (read: get over my fear of heights)
87. Live in a bedroom that I have painted
88. Be scandalous in a bar
89. Continue to be scandalous on New Year’s Eve
90. Get a subscription to a grown-up magazine (read: not Cosmo) October 2006, Dad got me a subscription to the New Yorker
91. Get back in touch with my pen-pal Jessie
92. Make enough money to survive doing only what I love (read: not temping/waitressing/working retail at least for like a month or so)
93. See every Oscar Best Movie nominee in a year (before the awards show)
94. Flit off to some place tropical for a weekend November 16, 2005
95. Take enough dance classes to warrant buying new shoes
96. Buy a stereo (or just any kind of cd player that isn’t also my laptop or my dvd player)
97. Find a print of the Dali painting I saw at the Elsa Schiaparelli exhibit December 25, 2006
98. Have more male friends who aren’t gay
99. Take an improv class or join an improv group UCB-style. And Cornbread. Ahhh-may-zing.
100. Buy one pair of really awesome jeans that look amazing, are the right length and I can breathe in (the last one isn’t a deal breaker)
101. Get my pink shoes fixed

Bald Women are the Coolest!

Meet Sars. She runs Television Without Pity. She is hilarious and wears cool shoes. She is really great at pretending like she recognizes you at a party even though you know she totally doesn't.

Sars is good peoples. Every year she does this contest where people donate money to awesome donorschoose.org projects and then win free shit. It's the tops!

This year she has sworn she is going to shave her head if people donate enough money. I only know Sars on a stalker-stalkee basis. But I promise that if you donate money I'll do everything in my power to make sure to get a picture for you because a bald, white woman is not something you see everyday. Plus, admit it, you totally need to do more charity work.

Read this then go donate, like, twenty bones. It'll be good for you.

You can't sing, get off my televison.

So. I don't know to what extent I've discussed this on this blog, but I have a mild affinity for television. I like that it keeps me in the know, and it puts me to bed at night, wakes me up in the morning and generally just gives me that warm and cozy feeling.

When I was in high school I had, what has recently been diagnosed as, a Television Addiction. This is astounding for several reasons.
1- I was in school full time, danced at least 30 hours a week, played soccer, had 2-3 jobs at all times and basically had zero free time.
2- My parents were evil and forced us to give up TV for lent. Every year. This is child endangerment and I can't believe we never bothered to report them, I think we were too busy throwing hissy fits
3- (in that vein) my mother abhored television (she's gotten over that, thank goodness) and refused to get anything beyond basic cable, plus we had an awful signal so at any given time we could count on having about 5 channels that were actually watchable. One of these was always PAX. "God's" gift to TV. PAX always came in clear. That's what happens when you live in crazy-religious Western Maryland.

So, I had a deep and committed relationship with my VCR. Seriously. I was constantly recording prime time TV, so I'd get home at 11. Watch a late night talk show, then as much of what I had recorded without falling asleep. Then I'd get up an extra half hour early to watch whatever I'd missed.

Are you judging me yet?!

This crazy behavior has pretty much subsided since the advent of reality television which, for the most part, I absolutly can not stand. My required viewing programs have filtered off the air. Now I pretty much only need to watch on Sunday night and Tuesday because I. Loooove. House.

I know. You're still judging.

Yes, the writing is formulaic and increadibly repetitive and not nearly as good in the second season as it was in the first season and the secondary characters get tiresome and the stars get really tiresome and they need to not only fire their costume designer but black list her, run her out of town, cut off an appendage or two and probably land her on a deserted island where she can never get her hands on anything that is even remotely close to a woman's tailored vest because WOW is she doing Jennifer Morrison (and whatever-Cuddy's-real-name-is)a huuuuge disservice by making them look absolutly ridiculous and not fashion conscious at all even though they're young, and gorgeous.

Also, I have a massive wish-he-was-my-doctor crush on Hugh Laurie that can only be topped by George Clooney as Dr. Doug Ross, the best thing to ever happen to pediatric medicine ever. I also have a long standing relationship with Robert Sean Leonard (who is totally wasted on this show, btw) steming from his adorable puppy dog turn as Claudio in the Kenneth Braunagh-Emma Thompson Much Ado about Nothing and the only-in-new-york fact that he took/takes voice lessons at the same studio as I do/did.

So. To get back to the point of this blog (because at some point before the last ice age, this blog has a point) since House is the only show on during the week that I really want to see and I had to miss most of the beginning of the 2nd season due to my good-for-nothing-ficton class and so in this, my final semester of college, when choosing which credit-fillers I was going to take I decided that I would forgo any classes on Tuesday that ended after 7, noting the fact that they weren't really offering anything that good anyway, so I would get to enjoy House without having to bribe my roommate to record it.

You would think that Fox would commend this time of devotion and try to keep its viewers in that key 18-49 demographic happy.

You would be wrong.

Instead of variating their programming like a normal TV empire, Fox has decided that the only thing they have going for them is American -fucking- Idol. I hate this show. I kinda hated it in the beginning but watched it because I really liked Kelly Clarkson. I kinda hated the second season but watched the finale and then threw things when Clay won (what-fucking-ever America). Since then I have avoided it, like the plauge. I don't know who won the third season or what season they're on for that matter. Mostly I hate that the people aren't talented and that Fox thinks its okay to put delusional crazies who can't sing on TV every night for a whole week.

Don't pretend like you don't watch it. Someone watches it or else Rupert Murchoch would put down the crack pipe, get out of his bathtub full of money and put actual television back on. Seriously. House has been on exactly 5 times since the semester started, and it won't be on again until next week. While this does mean I get to watch Scrubs(which is also totally awesome and NBC should really put it on a night not against a medical drama), its not what I want.

There was a point to this blog at some point, but it's been lost in my blind hatred for anyone who watches American Idol, that totally includes people in my immediate family.

America. I blame you. Now I'm judging.

Instead of actually reading...

I found this on 50 Books, a blog I've been stalking in recent months. She's great, read her stuff. Anyway she had a link to this article about the 30 books you should read before you die*:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

*- I bolded all books I've read (I'm totally counting ones that I only read part of...because I have a habit of dropping books, particularly ones I'm reading for school, with only 15 or so pages to go).

I'm pretty impressed with how much of this list I've conquered, particularly because I find myself reading mostly crap. However, I think that this is a fault of the list more than a dazzling biblophilic feat of mine. A huge number of these books are very contemporary and so, while excellent reads, are probably not going to resonate through the ages like their older counterparts. While I think The Time Traveler's Wife is a wonderful book that should be read by all who really want to believe in desperate, miserable, wonderful, forever Love-with-a-capitol-L-and-a-sigh-at-the-end I don't think it is a more important book than many others I've read (including Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight and Kite Runner both of which I think should be read by everyone).

This list was manufactured by a group of Librarians, which is kind of interesting from a sociological point of view (and by "kind of" I mean "not really" unless you're a big, fat dork like me). When I think of librarians I always think of Mrs. Makela who was the librarian at my elementary school until third grade. She wore sensible black shoes and glasses that hung from a string around her neck. She always wrote in this beautiful style of calligraphy. She was married, I think, and was wonderful and nice and grandmotherly. I know that there are librarians who aren't moments away from cashing those crucial social security checks but I haven't met them (except I totally just got why Time Travelers is on the list, like 80% of it takes place in a library, doi). I guess this is the difference between having Librarians make a list and having English professors make a list.

I am a big book geek. Eventually I'll make my own list.

heads or tails?

So. I'm having an increadibly ridiculous, spoiled girl problem. And I'm pretty embarrased to be sharing it but really I can not make up my damned mind...this is something I'm gonna have to work on in the future... but for now, you guys can help me make up my mind, because that's what I pay you for.

So. I'm trying to figure out what to do with my first post-college summer. I already know that whenever I'm done with what I choose to do, I'm moving to Chicago where I'll...I don't know, be bad at making choices in colder weather. So here's my dilema. With my summer I can either:

a)move to Nantucket, and live with my aunt and adorable cousins while working various jobs waiting on rude, rich people and possibly meet a prep-tastic, totally loaded man who will make me his trophy wife. I'll be no less than 10 minutes from the Ocean at any point during the day. My bills will be minimial, I'll probably have to pay a little rent and throw in some beans for groceries but any time I'm feeling really poor I can take the 15 minute bike ride to Granny's house and just eat all her food. Plus, my aunt has really great cable, I never get to see my cousins and I'll get to spend all sorts of time outside, getting tan, meeting new people and having a new, fun experience in a place that I only know in terms of Family Vacation (ie never been to a bar or out with people my own age).

OR

b)I can house sit for my grandmother while she's in Nantucket. I'll have a five-bedroom house all to myself and won't have to pay for anything except groceries. I'll probably get a job with some sort of office, answering phones and spending too much time on Myspace. I'll have a car sometimes, the rest I'll have to rely on public transportation which, in Montgomery County, is shady at best. My grandmother will require me to do ridiculous tasks while she's gone and will probably yell at me when she gets back because I've moved something or thrown something away that she wanted to keep forever (this will probably be a bottle of flat club soda--Granny is crazy). There is the potential for some next-door-neighbor ass. I'll be an hour drive from Parkville/Baltimore, a 20 minute subway ride from DC, and 30 minutes from Middletown, meaning, that except for my NYC friends (and possibly Tierra) I'll be closer and easier to hang out with than I've been since Summer 2004.

This choice may seem so easy...but its not. It really boils down to, do I take my chances with meeting new, cool people on Nantucket, while getting to live somewhere for three months that most people only dream about, while spending time with some of my favorite members of my family, without having to stress about transportation or bills and give my friends the opportunity to come up and visit me to troll the beachs looking for fione life guards and drink beers in the Chicken Box?

Or do I go to a place I have only a passing knowledge of, completely learn a brand new bus system (knowing how much I hate taking buses), mow my granny's lawn, sleep in a big, scary house all by myself, and work in a job that will make me want to claw my brains out but get to spend my last few months before I move half way across the country with my parents, cousins (new baby 2nd cousin), and some of my most favorite people in the whole world?

Okay. Someone else make this choice. It is toooo hard.

Andie v. the three 6 mafia

So. I, like every other sad sack with an Oscar pool to lose (thanks, Crash), tuned in on Sunday night to watch Hollywood's best and brightest be really effin' boring and, for the most part, poorly dressed. After about 20 minutes I had to look away from that fugly-ass set because I was afraid it was going to burn my corneas with its uglyness and so I abandoned the TV. I checked in every few minutes to make sure that I was in fact, crashing (heh) and burning (heh x2) in the pool (final concensus: 13 out of 24. wow) and to see who was giving their acceptance speech while very obviously high as a kite. I managed to catch the tail end of the Crash-nominated song. I was so completely enthralled (read: staring as one does at a particularly heinous car accident) by the totally ridiculous high-school-dance-team-captain choreographed interpretive dance that I completely missed the singer (who I wasn't that impressed with anyway).

Cut to ten minutes ago when reading The Manolo's blog I discovered that the singer was a Bird York who, when feeling less avian, goes by the name Kathleen York. aka. Andie Wyatt aka Toby's ex-wife and baby mamma on The West Wing.

I knew she had had a four-line part in the movie as the cop who isn't a)a racist, b)a rapist, or c)black or hispanic, making her the best written, least obnoxious person in the whole movie. I also was probably the only one in the theatre who got really excited when she came on screen, because I'm that big a dork.

Good luck on that singing career, Kath-leen (sorry, cupcake, Bird is a really ridiculous name) although I think the world would be a better place if you dropped it and made an appearance in the last eight episodes of TWW.

Why I'm never gonna win my Oscar pool.

Well, first of all, because instead of picking I am obviously writing a blog. Duh. But besides that...I am super stressed about this, my very first (I know...craziness) Oscar pool. I completely blame the stress on genetics because I am wicked competitive and not winning this will be, for about 5 minutes, the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of the universe. So there's that, and the fact that I was a bad movie-goer in 2005. I saw nothing...If I had more free time and fifty bucks to kill I would totally spend Saturday seeing all these movies (correction: I have seen Crash, Brokeback, Syriana, and Memoirs of a Geisha but that is, embarrasingly, it).

Other reasons:
I'm just too fair! I want everyone to win something. Seriously, I'm like "well, I give this one to The Squid and the Whale because its only nominated for one, and then I'll give Good Night, and Good Luck one of those boring technical ones to even it out" No! This is not how the Academy thinks! Life is not fair. Life is about winning and winning big. I *know* that most years, a single movie sweeps like, seven awards...But can I really risk everything on the gay cowboys? I'm just not comfortable doing that.

And then there's the dumb luck part, see also: Techincal mumbo jumbo. For things like "sound mixing" I find myself blindly choosing, which gives me about a 20% chance and I have horrid luck so, that 20% is probably not gonna cut it.

I spent like twenty minutes researching the best way to pick winners and they give all sorts of fun statistical things that make the numbers geek inside me have a little mathgasm. But those are the easy ones. I want a statistical answer for who I should pick for "short film--live action" becase I haven't heard of ANY of these.

I now have 40 minutes to make my choices and now that I have lost all of your respect, I'm gonna go research the film The Moon and the Son: An Imagnined Conversation. Because its gonna make me lucky!

Where no girl has gone before.

So. I got myself a little sauced on Mardi Gras. I chalk it up to the fact that this is the year of 21, so all alcohol-based holidays must be celebrated, "just for the story" (this, by the way, is the reasoning behind a good 98% of my decisions). Anyway, while I was imbibing my roommates and I discussed the upcoming Lenten period and what we were gonna give up. I told them my watery-caffeine idea and they dubbed it "laaaame."

"Fine!" I exclaimed (seriously...I exclaimed it, I was working my way through my second hurricane at this point). "I'm gonna give up shopping." A hush fell over the crowd and I realized what I had just said.

The table laughed. The kid who had known me for, like, seven minutes laughed. Obviously this was a pipe dream on my part. After that outburst of crazy the subject was dropped. I stumbled home at like 2:30 and sifting through the piles of clothes on my floor in a desperate search for some "effin' jammies" I realized that I do have a lot of clothing and if I ever did laundry I would probably figure that out. So yesterday morning I decided I had to, at least, try to give up shopping, especially because the money, it does not quite grow on those trees that grow in Brooklyn.

And of course, lets get specific. We're talking clothes and general junk shopping. I still have to buy food and sometimes the occasional gift (birthdays wait for no resurrection of Christ) and I'm gonna do it like a true Episcopalian (aka fake Catholic) and give myself the opportunity to cheat on Sundays because I do know that I need shoes and possibly a sweater to go with my Easter dress which is a whole other can of bananas because its black, which is making my Granny even more batshit crazy than she is normally, even though its 40's-tastic and beautiful, because apparently you can not celebrate the rebirth (by eating your birth weight in candy and baby sheep) while wearing black. It is, apparently, not what Jesus would friggin' do.

Thanks Dad.

Dad: So what are you doing for lent this year?
Rachel: I'm gonna limit myself to one diet coke and try to drink at least two liters of water a day.
Dad: I know a guy who died from drinking too much water.

Awesome. Thats my dad! Full of knowledge! After I had already had two liters of water and started my third we had this conversation. My dad knew none of the specifics of the dead man, just that he drank too much water. So I googled "death by over-hydration" (lies. I think I put in, "what happens when you drink to much water?") and that whole 8 glasses a day thing is aparently a bunch of hooey. Don't you love that I get all of my scientific information from a site that has "-a gogo" in the title? Aparently, drinking water hurts you. Nay. It is deadly. What do I do? Keep researching AND drinking, until I've consumed about three-quarters of my third liter. Then I go get Hot Chocolate, because I have to have my 4:00 Swiss Miss break or I've lived my day in vain.

Then the hypochondia starts kicking in. Now I'm dealing with a massive stomache (because I'm dying) and (of course) I have to pee because Wow! does 2.75 liters of water really flow through the system!

The thing that pisses me off the most? Besides the fact that I could drop dead at any minute from something as stupid as drinking too much water? I have to rethink my Lentent-whatever. I thought I was so clever and now...I'm just an idiot who needs to pee.

cowboy fridays.

Best thing I've heard all day.

A woman (model?) greets man in fashion industry, "You're looking very Brokeback Mountain today."

Come on now part 2: Electric Bugaloo

Oh MAN, Sasha!

So. I'm a figure skating dork, and a gymnastics dork. Its something that I've been afflicted with since I was a kid, who desperatly wanted to be a gymnast and a figure skater but was too poor with not enough flexability and who really liked food.

They're the only two sports I care about when it comes to Olympics and this year I didn't even bother to watch the women's skating because I hate Sasha Cohen in that completely irrational Almost-Stole-The-Gold-From-Michelle-Kwan (who is my hero and I love and totally want to go get white wine and Italian food with) kind of way. But she was on Project Runway and she was our best shot. So I was kinda stoked. I thought maybe she could pull it off.




Aparently not.

(ed note: I totally abandonned this blog as I answered the sweet siren song of free food, but I do have more to say on this completely useless topic...)

Okay. I feel bad for the girl. I really do because to have that much talent and artistry and have no ability to perform under pressure must totally suck. I can understand why she didn't rehearse when she was supposed to that whole, psych the other people out to calm myself down kind of thing, but it obviously did not work. So, even though she is not Michelle Kwan and on the basis of that alone I kind of still have to hate her, I also feel crazy amounts of pity. ALSO!? How is it possible that she fell twice and still got the silver?! I don't quite understand this new judging system (mostly because I just don't have enough time to care) but I feel the need to call shennanigans on a system that lets someone crash and burn twice and still medal. Also, peace out mini-Hughes. I guess genetics just weren't enough.

come on now...

Does anyone buy into those eharmony.com commercials?

For some reason there has been an influx of them on my TV screen and instead of focusing my attention on boring things like the paper due in six hours and the turkey bacon burning in the pan (...again) I have actually tried to watch them and look at these couples. My first assumption is that they're actors and pretty heinous ones at that. It really doesn't take that much to act/pretend like you love someone. The least you can do is make eye contact (something none of these winners' acting teachers ever bothered to tell them).

So if they aren't actors which I sometimes think (due to their heinous line readings) then Yikes! These people have long, miserable lives ahead of them with this person who they think the love but (as anyone with eyes and a TV can see) obviously don't.

And also, in every single couple there is one ugly person. Occasionally the inner monologue of the attractive one comes out and I hear, "Ohmigod! Why is my fake soul mate so ugly?! Damn you eharmony and your personality profile! Why do I love someone so attrocious?!"

Bad TV is my friend when I don't have a job

So I went into Express on Friday because I hadn't been in there in a while and I was in a "I should buy something for me because who else will" kind of mood and I saw this:



There is only ONE person in the whole entire world who can get away with wearing a crochet vest. And that is Leslie Burke from "Saved By the Bell: The College Years" (who isn't photographed on the internet anywhere) and she could only do it because it was the early 90's and she was supposed to be WASP-y.

In my desperate search for a picture of Leslie Burke (who has a real name but doesn't have enough cred for me to use it and for anyone to know who she is) I stumbled upon the imdb site for the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (and by stumbled upon I mean I put it in the search box because this morning in my semi-comatose state I ended up watching the first episode and laughing (on the inside, it was pretty early)) because there was a point in my life where I loved that show at about the same level I love the Housewives at (its not quite the weekly event as Grey's but its still to be celebrated). Any-WAY while noodling around seeing if anyone but Amy Jo Johnson had managed to parlay that pile of Japanese Recycled Poop into any sort of career and aparently the answer is a resounding "No!" and then I found out that the Yellow Ranger (and how fucked up is it that they made the Asian chick the Yellow Ranger?) died in 2001. Sad because I'm sure that in her obit it pretty much said, "The Asian chick who was on Power Rangers for one season died today."

In other news. Greys Anatomy (which is good tv, in case there was some confusion). I'm not gonna go into too much detail but the whole thing with George and Meredith?! Why nine times out of ten I don't tell people how I actually feel because no good is going to come from that pile of sex-mess. Also, while some of my friends are dirty Merediths and others are poor Georges, I think I've figured out that I'm a pre-doer Izzie. I would love to be a post-doer Izzie, but thats gonna take some time, mostly because I didn't have a bomb scare to jump start it. Also, I love Shonda Rhimes's post in the Writer's Blog to all the internet crazies who thought that maybe HotKyle hadn't died. It basically says "Stop being so weird and crazy, he's totally dead.

Just like the Yellow Ranger.

And the crochet vest.

All Better

My Valentine's Day ended up being just fine. I got to my post office box and encountered the best V-day present of all time.



Though Amazon said I wouldn't get them until the 20th, the sly devils made sure they were in the box to let me know that even if I die alone at least I can look at pretty people on my TV. Which I did. Until 2 AM that night. Lame? Totally. But it is such good TV and even though I knew all the twists and turns that were gonna happen, I still got all riled up. That last scene where Addison shakes Meredith's hand? Awesome. I love me some Addison. The major flaw in the OD of Grey's I've had in the past two days? Ellen Pompeo's voice, which is slightly grating most of the time, but after 6 solid hours (no judging) makes you want to punch her in the vocal chords. Also, George's hair is awful. Thank goodness they got that poor boy a stylist.

Other things that entertained me post V-day:
Today, on the 14th day of the month of February, Saint Valentine came forth from the heveans and proclaimed unto the people of the earth, that Sex is really really good and people should have more of it. So the people had sex, and it was good, and there was more of it.

My brother. Who sometimes is funnier than me. Actually, most of the time. But we work best as a team.

I got the new Margaret Atwood book and I've only read the first chapter because I've had school reading (Ew.) but that was enough to ispire me to re-write the beginning of my not-so-great American novel (tm Courtney).

According to imdb (which is obviously the best place to get news) Paris Hilton has been approached to play Mother Teresa in some sort of biopic. Uhhhh....what?! Friggin seriously?!




Ninja, Please.

The obligatory "I'm gonna die alone" Day post.

The only good things about Valentine's Day? An excuse to pink-ify my wardrobe for the day, My mom sending me an awesome tee-shirt (which is a relatively new tradition but totally my favorite, last year the shirt had a map of the Czech Republic and said Czech Yourself...awesome), and Febuary 15th when Duane Reade puts all the candy on sale and I get a bag of Conversation Hearts for 50 cents (I know they taste like chalk, but they taste like delicious chalk so shut up).

Other than that, It really just makes me sad. It shouldn't because it really should be a celebration of everyone I love: Family, Friends, Hot Celebrities but I celebrate these people everyday. I shower these people with love and affection all the time, so when Febuary 14th rolls around I just am forced to realize the hole in my life that has been created by Hallmark. Had I not been told to share this day with the one, I wouldn't even notice he wasn't here.

And so far today I've seen three flower deliveries come in and its my job to say, "Hey you have a delivery from someone who loves you. Lucky you. Go die." or something to that affect. They get happy, I get depressed because I have never had flowers sent to me. Ever. Except once for my 16th birthday by my godmother. Thanks Annie.

And I KNOW this makes me totally lame in that whole fish-bicycle mindset that I say I ascribe to but, its true. I'm sad that I'm all alone and while I joke about it a lot, my greatest fear is that I will always be all alone. I mean, duh, I will always have my friends and family and celebrity-imaginary boyfriends, but I know that that isn't quite enough to live a completely fufilled life. How can you possibly live a whole life without having at least one.great.love.?

Courtney discussed the idea of potential being the best part of single life. The fact that any time you walk into a new room, new situation, new moment you could meet that person who compliments you so perfectly. However, I feel that I've walked into so many new rooms and met so many new faces, that there couldn't possibly be anymore that are any different from the ones I've already met. But Courtney's glass is always half full to my half empty.

And sometimes I meet people who I think could possibly be that one, even for a little while and 99% of the time they want nothing to do with me, so once again I reaffirm the idea that some people are just meant to be alone forever and what if that includes me?

That stupid fucking John Mayer song came on my ipod this morning on the train and I know it makes me a loser, but I totally love it.

So tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here

...Seriously.

My remembory

So. It seems that I have a problem. No wait. I have several problems. Actually it goes beyond several. I'm fairly certain the the number of problems I have actually out-numbers the number of things that are normal and healthy with me. Chew on that poorly-constructed sentance for awhile.

There is something seriously (seriously) wrong with my memory.

Things I can remember:
The outfit I was wearing on any sort of memorable or important day. More often than not I can remember outfits that I was wearing on less than important days too. My great grandmothers funeral? A crushed velvet purple turtle neck sweater, a black velvet knee length skirt, black tights, and black mary-janes. And? Silver bendy clips. The day before my first day of Summer stock? My Abercrombie jeans, and a pink J.Crew Polo and pink Reef flipflops. This is a family trait that I share with my mother's family. We all have this talent to an extent but I go above and beyond anyone with it, I can very often remember what other people were wearing on dates of importance.

Random, obscur quotes from television shows. There's a shtick my brother and I do about a nutterbutter that makes my mom pee herself with laughter, she didn't know until Christmas break that it's from an episode of Friends circa 1996.

Factoids about random celebrities. I dominate at the Kevin Bacon game. Dom.in.ate. While watching a movie someone can ask, "Hey, who's that guy?" and nine times out of ten, I'll know his name, what you saw him in and some random piece of trivia about his life.

New York City Metro System. I've lived here for less than four years and spent one of them walking every where and yet can get anywhere in any of the 5 boroughs (with the exception of Statan Island and far away parts of Brooklyn and Queens).

So okay? I have a great memory. No. Not at all. Today I deposited my paychecks. Plural because I can not remember to go pick them up every week until I have four dollars in my checking account and realize that I have a month of back paychecks. This is not a joke. The week before I went home for Christmas I went to pick up, what I assumed was, a single paycheck. I had seven. Se-ven checks waiting for me. The people at my agency think I'm mildly retarded I have no doubt because I come and they're like, "yea, heres a check from September stupid face." So I deposit them and I get my lunch and I'm walking along and I stop in the middle of 5th ave. Did I finish my transaction at the ATM (yes, I deposit checks at the ATM, I'm really lazy)? Did I just leave with the "what would you like to do now with your money?" screen still flashing? Did the next person come up behind me and go, "Score! That dumb girl just left me all seven dollars in her bank account!"?

I, seriously, could not remember. I assume (read: pray) that there are precautions in place at Citibank to protect the nimrods like myself. Then I call my mother to say Hi because I'm a good daughter. And I get her on the phone knowing I have a question to ask her. Knowing that there is a post-it note on my laptop with a question, circled, to ask her. I'm on the phone with her for ten minutes and I can't remember it. Then I hang up and it immediatly comes to me. So I have to call her back and she judges me...harshly.

I will go through half my day then wonder if I remembered to turn off my flat iron.

I forget that I'm lactose intolerant and wonder why I'm doubled over with stomach cramps after a cup of Chocolate Milk.

I always forget to lock the door to my apartment, which gives my roommate heart palpitations.

I don't know why my brain works like this. I'm assuming that it's because I've stuffed it with so much crap knowledge its just decided to make room by trashing the other stuff.

Our Nationwide Nightmare is Over!

I found Reece's hearts! For those of you who live under concrete, the fine people at Hershey's now make Reece's Cups in various shapes for various holidays. If I am talking at you for long enough you will hear me sing the praises of these oversized kitchy chocolates because of the chocolate to peanut butter ratio that is so vastly increased in these seasonal pieces of heaven.

So, normally I stock up around the beginning of every retail heavy holiday (sadly there are no Labor day reece's cups) but for some reason I dropped the ball in mid-january when all the St. Valentine's Day stuff started hitting the shelves (I blame on the deep deep post-holiday-not-in-south-africa depression I had for most of the month of January, it was clouding my judgement, as was the artic temperature) so in the past few weeks I've started nosing around CVS and Duane Reade and there were NO heart shaped Reece's Cups. Obviously I was distraught, so I put a call into Teeny because retailers in Conneticut are much more civilized and would never run out of such a precious necessity. They had some, she stocked up for my up coming visit, but my ID was running rampant and was channeling Veruca Salt. I wanted those bitches, NOW. So today, with 4 hours of nothing to do and being stood up by Isabel I wandered into Walgreens...a pharmacy I don't normally go to only because I hate the voice of their commercials. And there they were! Individual and Packages. I've already eaten 2. They tasted like heaven. They are in a tie in the running for being my Valentine.

The other is obviously the Season 1 DVD of Grey's Anatomy which should be hitting a post office box near me on the 15th or 16th if Amazon keeps it's promise. I could not be more excited, especially after last nights episode which I almost didn't watch, but I wasn't gonna let a pesky college assignment stand in the way of a suffering Dr. McDreamy. Or a crying Bailey. Oh, god. Crying Bailey=Sobbing like a two year old Rachel.

In other news, I bought my very last school notebook, and yes, I cried a little. Its the end of an era people! I'm really picky about my notebooks and I was really upset when Target let me down and didn't have the one I wanted (5 subject five-star minibook, college ruled with a blue cover if you're playing along at home) but I got a purple 3 subject Target brand one which is pretty and shiny so distracts me from the fact that my last semester of college is starting without the right notebook and any clue about the rest of my life.

I also got an adorable skirt for Free People, A new hot pink comforter and a plane ticket to/from Chicago to help keep me from getting to depressed.

P.S. you can buy that sweet shirt at the top from Glarkware in the TWoP section. And you should because its Hawt.

Stay tuned for my review of the Diet Cherry Vanilla Coke that I bought this afternoon. If it doesn't put me in a diabetic coma.