Monday, February 23, 2009

25 Random Things About Me

In the spirit of keeping current:

1) I actually didn't know that this list was a "Facebook phenomenon" or an "internet phenomenon" and mistook it for spam when it first showed up in my Myspace account.

2) I don't have a Facebook, which I'm sure frustrates people.

3) I get very irritated when people over-use the word "seriously" (example: 5 times in one sentence) and am angry at "Grey's Anatomy" for making it a colloquialism.

4) I wish that Hillary Clinton had been Obama's VP, but have settled for Secretary of State begrudgingly.

5) I went on a date with a homeless guy once. I was 18. He was that "college hippie" sort of guy who was honestly well groomed and cute and didn't appear homeless--but he didn't have a job, or a home, and he had dropped out of all of his classes--I found this out towards the end of the date. I still question how he was able to pay for the movie we saw (hint: I bet it's drug-related), and I did make out with him in a park. It was actually a good make out sesh. Trev, if you're out there, I hope you found a home and I would've called you back but you didn't have a cell phone so that sort of made calling you impossible.

6) I was drinking PBR before it was hipster-y to do so. Yes that sounds pretentious, but it's true. When I was a freshman in college it was all I or anyone else could afford because we didn't want to drink Keystone or Natural Light. So PBR became the drink of choice. And it still is.

7) I like house parties, but I feel really really really freaking old at them these days because I can buy beer legally. Moscow might not be the best place for that sort of thing.

8) I don't eat red meat at all if I can help it. Excluding pepperoni on pizzas, I try to stick to chicken and turkey.

9) I love coloring and coloring books.

10) I'm very body-conscious, especially when it's weight-related, and I was secretly stoked as all hell that I went from almost 180lbs. to 156 in a year without even realizing it (a pick-me-up at the doctor's office is not what you generally expect to happen, right?).

11) I miss Alli Ockinga very much.

12) I am afraid of wolves.

13) I'm addicted to caffeine, and that's probably a literal fact.

14) I sometimes wish my life was more like a comic book.

15) I have had many an inappropriate crush on my straight male friends. You know who you are. You know I was looking. You probably were stoked. But thanks for not kicking my ass when you caught me checking you out! ;)

16) I love weddings because there's booze and cake and people being awkward.

17) I have never actually seen all of "Schindler's List" because I was like 10 when I watched it with my folks and covered my eyes half the time.

18) I sprained my tail bone when I was little and had to sit on a pillow all the time for like 2 weeks. My cousins made fun of me and told me that I "broke my ass" which wasn't true; I sprained it.

19) I can be a little selfish when it comes to doing something that I want to do, but I compromise most of the time. Mostly.

20) The amount of Sega Genesis I played as a child is staggering.

21) I always say that I'm going to read more, and then I never do because I think that books are disgustingly over-priced when they first hit the shelves.

22) I love to vacuum.

23) I wear hats all the time because I hate my hair.

24) I wish I lived closer to all of my friends, and I really don't think that have many in Moscow at this present time other than Kim and Kendall and Brian and Gabby and my crew from work (whom I only see at work). I have a ton of acquaintances, sure, but no one in the friend zone very much.

25) I want to go to Australia but I'm worried that I'd never leave.

Transition to Seattle Trip #1

Before I get into this past weekend and going to Seattle . . . Can we take a moment and talk about the 2009 Academy Awards, please? Wow. What an elegant, classy, and amazing event it was. Not boring at all--No, seriously!

I could probably gush for pages about Hugh Jackman being the host and dancing and singing and being drop-dead-gorgeous and the perfect human . . . But I won't. Instead I want to take a moment and acknowledge the five (FIVE!) moments in the Oscars this year that made me tear up and cry a little. They were, in order:

1) Penelope Cruz's acceptance speech--Minority empowerment go on with your bad self!
2) Dustin Lance Black (the adorkable kid who wrote the screenplay for "Milk")'s acceptance speech--WOW!
3)Heath Ledger's family does his acceptance speech--Those damned Aussies made me get all choked up!
4)The "death montage" of people in the industry that passed away--I miss you, Sydney Pollack and Paul Newman!
5)Sean Penn's acceptance speech--HELL YEAH!

So there they were; the moments that made me weep like a nine-year-old girl. Of course there were a ton of awesome moments, too. Most of them involved Hugh Jackman being fantastic and doing songs, including a song that was a tribute to musicals(!) with Beyonce. Also declaring his awesome by shouting "I AM WOLVERINE!" at the end of his opening number. I mean wow. Then there was the way that the Big 4 actors/actresses categories were done: Five previous winners from each category, all amazing men and women, complimenting every single one of the individuals nominated in speeches that they wrote themselves, and then the announcement of the winner. Said winner then got to go on stage and be embraced by their colleagues and by this tribunal, really, of amazing talent.

It was rad.

On Friday we left at about noon to head out to Seattle and stay with our friend Amy in Bothell. We made great time thanks to the fantastic weather (it was great all weekend, actually) and to my new car's awesome gas mileage in general. Got into Seattle/Bothell at about 6pm and had dinner at this fun little diner-type restaurant and we walked around the Alderwood Mall, then headed home and crashed.

The next day we woke up, got ready, embraced a breakfast of Starbucks and headed out to start apartment hunting! Our list started out with 7 locations that we narrowed down to 3 and 1/2 (we actually couldn't find the one in Fremont but we LOVED the neighborhood, so we gave Kim the mission of trying to find it next time/looking at other places in the area), and they were all great little apartments that were totally in our price range and in clean, good neighborhoods only like 20 minutes out of the city.

The big one that all of us are hoping for is the Wedgwood Estates. I'm not going to post a link because I want to keep it on the DL lest lurkers try to steal the opportunity to rent from them, but to sum it up it's an amazing series of cottage-style apartments in a residential neighborhood that's just above Fremont/Wallingford and about 15 mins. from the Woodland Park Zoo (I know right?) and another 10 minutes from the UW campus in case any or all of us decide to go back to school to get our graduate degrees or a second undergrad. They allow pets, have off-street parking, and they're just freaking adorable little red brick houses in general. Fingers crossed that this all works out!

We're heading back to the area in 2 weeks to conduct the second search. In the mean time we'll be looking for more properties and selling some furniture online to make this all happen. If anyone knows of 2 bedroom places for under $1,000 in the Seattle area (we're not picky about the town or neighborhood, honestly, we just don't want ot live in south Seattle if possible) PLEASE comment or drop me a line! I'd really appreciate it.


"Lipstick on my brain,
Thunder in the sky,
The shades are drawn
But don't ask me why.
And with the ghost riders on the go, I think you know . . .
. . . It goes something like this:"

Thursday, February 12, 2009

My Life Right Now: A Series of Sticky Notes

Another week of working makes me think that I really, really miss school.

A few days ago I was sitting in the apartment cleaning house, as it were, when suddenly I realized that a lot of my days off have been reduced to a To-Do list written on sticky notes. Then, suddenly, I just got this feeling all over that I really do miss school. It was instant and sudden and I knew what it was right away. There was no ambivalence to the feeling--It just was what it was. I think that I might be a traitor to underage kids everywhere, as well as college students, but damn it I miss school. I guess that I miss having something to do every day, really. A set of tasks and to-do's that aren't generated by me so much as generated by an overarching purpose. 

And I know that right now I have an overarching purpose: To save money and move to Seattle so that I can begin my career. But who knew 3 months would go by so slowly? Who knew I'd actually miss school not for what it brought to me (knowledge, education and the like) but because it was just something to do other than work? I don't know, man.

Alli's been teaching classes in Korea and recently realized that Koreans regard she and our friend Ellen as mythological creatures because of how they appear physically. Dragons, unicorns, and Eastern WA girls . . . The trifecta of mythology, really. You can of course read about her travels in her Blogabond account, which can be found on the left hand side of this page over in the "Blogs That I Read" section.
Tomorrow night we're going to go see our friend Kim's newest venture in acting, a romantic comedy called "Having a Great Time, Wish You Were Her." Kim's extremely generous parents bought our tickets and dinner, and I'm so stoked to see it! It's got a great cast made up of people that I know and apparently there's lots of awkward over-the-bra touching moments. And you know how I love me some second base.

Albums that I need to buy at the moment (which will be a running list until I buy them all):
-Lily Allen "It's Not Me, It's You"
-The Black Ghosts "[self-titled]"
-Andrew Bird "[self-titled]"

Have a great weekend, universe.


"Forget about guns, and forget ammunition,
I'm killing 'em all on my own little mission.
Now I'm not a saint, and I'm not a sinner
But everything's cool as long as I'm getting thinner."

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Ups, Downs, and Setbacks.

So hey, I got published in Diversity!

Crazy, huh? Who knew? Not me. And why? Because they didn't ever write me an e-mail (despite my having sent two) to say whether or not they were going to publish the article. Odd, really, but then again it feels as though they're just starting up (or starting anew) with their publishing schedule. This issue of the newsletter did seem more put together and professional looking, though. A lot cleaner in the design though the fact that it still uses fonts from two different families is killing me (if you've never seen the film Helvetica then go see it right now and you'll never look at fonts the same way again, ever).

So that was definitely the highlight of my week thus far. The other was seeing two good friends taking part in The Vagina Monologues last night. I've never been to a real showing; only a documentary about the monologues themselves that really doesn't capture the energy, the humor, and the intensity of the monologues. Props to my friends for having the courage to get up there and do short pieces about a)a woman having her first real orgasm in the middle of her life and b)being a lesbian dominatrix. Good on you, girls!

A minor setback in the moving movement came today when I had to put $100 unexpectedly on a credit card, meaning that $2,000 I had saved for moving goes back down a bit. Boo. Those finance charges are a real killer, I'll tell ya something . . .

. . . Tomorrow night we're hosting a Grammy Awards party at our apartment! Bring the booze and the chips, we'll bring the giant television and some of Josh's award-winning bean dip (not actually award-winning, but it should be and it would be if we'd ever heard of a bean dip contest in our region). I'm rooting for Death Cab for Cutie, Adelle, and M.I.A. to all get their dues this year (especially everyone's favorite Sri Lankan hip hop artist--she's too great for words). You can see the full list of 2009 Grammy Award noms here.

This week I'll be working on the second article for Diversity (since apparently they'll just publish me no questions asked--and they're awesome for that!) and working on a Valentine's Day gift. And for those who've been to my Myspace page this week, no I'm not clinically depressed and no things aren't going bad for me, I just feel a little gray lately. But thank you all for being so caring and kind.


"It's 4 by 3, 3 by 3, 
Buy-one-song-get-one-free.
Maybe me:
A bootleg CD 
Or color TV 
Or DVD."

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Reflective hang over.

Going to a drag show with your significant other is sort of like being the only long term couple in a speed-dating event. If you're not there to hook up, it's weird and you end up noticing things about human nature that make you feel icky to be a person, and also icky that you may have done those same things when you were single. Am i getting to old for the extreme bar/club scene? Maybe.

On the plus side, last night at some dude's before party I ran into an old instructor of mine who taught a class on documentary films. I really enjoyed the class and her approach to teaching it. It's cool to speak to University faculty like they're, you know, people and not just academics. It's even cooler to sit down and have a beer with them. So this getting older in the extreme club/bar scene does have the thinnest silver linings.

Alli made it safely to Korea, by the way. I expect she's experiencing 48 hours of culture shock at present, and when she gets her travel blog up and running I'll be sure to link/update about it regularly.


"We do the same thing every night;
I swear I've heard this song before.
A swimmer who has seen a shark--
I'd really be more wary of the water."