She might be a really nice HO!

New favorite thing of the moment: Of Monsters and Men's Little Talks. Of Monsters and Men is a band fresh out of Iceland with an all-around folk/indie inspired sound. However the music is more than just a few acoustic guitars, OMaM mixes in accordions, bass, piano, and drums to create a large than life yet simple and pleasant sound. Throw in a pair of rough and harmonic vocals and it's become something akin to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes or Beirut. Still in their infant beginnings, Of Monsters and Men already has a strong cult-like following in Philadelphia and I am closely and patiently awaiting their arrival on American soil (unless I can somehow make it to Iceland in the very near future).

A live recording of Little Talks. I think my grandmother had a couch like that.

Even more exciting than some cool music is the release of Jeffrey Eugenides new book, The Marriage Plot. I've been a huge fan of Eugenides work since I read The Virgin Suicides one afternoon while busing around France. The was something so invoking and relatable to me about oppressive mothers and five sisters who strangely committed suicide within the course of a year. While I don't have five sisters and my days of an oppressive mother are long gone I still find something curious and intriguing about the style and the unsatisfying ending. Eugenides sophomore novel Middlesex was also a story that I strongly enjoyed. It took me a little more than a month to read the book during my hour break at Borders a few times a week, but in the end I did and even though I am bothered by Oprah's need to put her sticker on books I can appreciate why she did it with this one. A journey through time, the story tells the experiences of a young girl from a Greek family growing up in Michigan. Unknown to her, she carries a mutated gene from generations of inbreeding that makes her a biological hermaphrodite and in the end forces her to decide upon which sex she truly identifies with. It is a beautiful story about the challenges of growing up in an immigrant family and assimilating with American culture during some of the most trying times in American history.

The Marriage Plot looks to be as exciting and engaging as The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex and I am hoping to get my hands on a copy of it sometime this weekend while I'm in Vermont. I also need to get my own copy of Middlesex and replace the one I had of The Virgin Suicides. So much to do this weekend. 

Today is National Read A Book Day.

September 6th marks National Read a Book Day and I for one am certainly doing so. I fell asleep reading a book last night and somehow the underwear gnomes must have turned my light off for me, thank you gnomes. I am bring a book to work because it can be slow and tonight after my Shakespeare class and some wonderful Yoga X and cleaning my apartment before my parents come I will be back to reading for school and for fun. I love books. Books and reading have done more for me than some people have. It is because of books and reading that I am where I am at right now. So in honor of National Read a Book Day find a book, any book, and take some time to read. It can be anywhere, just let yourself go in the story.

Yanti Parazi

It's not true, but maybe if you say it real fast it might be. This weekend is the weekend of all weekends: the last weekend of summer and Irene. It's true, summer is over and I am sad to see it go. I have spent many a lovely day on the beach or with friends and many a night out drinking at the bars. Lucky for be I jumped back on the exercise train early enough that I have not only avoided a beer gut (gross),  but I have also lost some weight (go me!) I am looking forward to fall though. I recently received an email from school notifying me that I have somehow achieved enough credits to have senior status and that I must remember to fill out my intent to graduate form as soon as possible. Let's be real though, I WILL forget.This weekend is also the weekend that hurricane Irene is supposed to ravage the east coast. My mother has already contacted me about leaving Philadelphia and I have already politely declined invitations from relatives to journey further into the state to get away from the storm. If I didn't have to work and the fact that there is an entire state in front of mine to protect me from the watery typhoon I would have gladly accepted. I like LC every now and again. Lucky for me Mary Ann and Lance will be visiting in a few weeks and we can hang out in the LCs then.

I really find it funny that the National Weather Service named a hurricane Irene in the first place. Irene is Greek for peace. I know this because Ms. Knapp's middle name was Irene and during "Ms. Knapp tells a fact" time she told us about how she used to hate her middle name until she learned that it was Greek and meant peace. Kind of like how I used to hate my middle name. I'm not a cookie people! Anyways I'm not worried about weather, because after all it's just weather. It comes and it goes and if there's any damage left in it's wake you clean it up and move on. I'm just worried about parking my car too close to a tree or the power going out for too long and spoiling all of the food that I don't have in in my fridge. If I'm lucky work will be closed and school will be canceled on Monday. I can only wish.

Looks ειρηνικό from space, right?

I had an excellent girls night last night. I went over to a friend's house with Marg and we had dinner and watched a movie and just got caught up on our lives since we had last seen each other. All three of us have been friends since freshman year when we lived in the hotel together and even though there have been times when we have been less close or completely separated by distance, we still try to carve out some time to spend together and be a part of each other's lives.

We watched Something Borrowed last night. It was cute movie about going for it and not letting people get in the way of doing what is right and what you want. It also about making up for missed opportunities. The best part was John Krasinski though. Everyone else love Colin Egglesfield and he Tommy Hilfiger looks and Connecticut waspy-ness, but since I've always been partial to Jim I had to side with John. Overall I liked the movie (I'm a sucker for romantic crap like that), but I am on the fence about reading the book, hopefully it was better than the movie.

Now since it is the weekend and I never get around to blogging after a night of work and drinking, I will leave you with this little gem:

Awesome, I know. Until Monday my fellow school chums. 

Still awake. Now what?

Rant of the day: Air conditioning makes my nose stuffy and then I have to breathe through my mouth when I go to sleep. I hate air conditioning. As someone who already sleeps with her mouth open it would be nice for me to be able to breathe in through my nostrils so that I'm not choking on the drool that is making my way out of my mouth. Okay rant over.

Classy Sidney.

It's 3am right now and I can't sleep. When I came back from Vermont last month I was falling asleep early and waking up early. Slowly I started going to bed later and later and sleeping in more and more. Funnily one of my friends was staying up late and now he's going to bed much earlier than me and getting good sleep. Some thing's not right here. I decided to use my awake time to watch The Social Network. I will say that it was a good movie, but I'm partial to just about anything Aaron Sorkin. The format was not the way I expected and the clips from the trailers I had seen completely misled me about the characters. I enjoyed the way the movie used the depositions to tell the story of the origin of facebook and the people involved in its creation. The actors also did an exceptional job as well. I was particularly pleased by Andrew Garfield. His character had a sad story line and Garfield did an excellent job as the wounded friend. Now in the real world I love Jesse Eienberg. He and Christopher Mintz-Plasse are my new Michael Cera. They have aged nicely into awkward, but still cool personalities while Cera has become more and more whiny. In this movie though, Eisenberg was on my most hated list. I hate to think how accurate this movie was about Mark Zuckerberg because he was portrayed as a complete asshole. I really enjoyed the end of the movie with Eisenberg's character refreshing a Rooney Mara's character's facebook page in the hopes that she would accept his friend request. 

"You're not an asshole Mark, but you're trying so hard to be."

Since I still can't sleep I decided to clean out some boxes of junk and put my book shelves in order. I have two full bookshelves, a shelf on my wall, and a night stand full of books and I have more stacked on the floor. I honestly don't know what to do with them all. I hesitate to buy another bookshelf mostly because I don't know where I would put it. Instead I'm keeping the stacks by the lawn chair in the living room. It looks sort of "white trash chic." I have most definitely created a very nice collection of books for myself this summer and one day when I have a house with built in bookcases I will have a space for all of them. Until then I'm making do with laminet shelving and milk crates. 

They let me go early! I won 'Most Cooperative Inmate' four months running

Right now I am on the road. I'm probably in New York, but at the rate that I get up in the mornings there's still a strong chance that I'm only in Vermont still. Plus if I stopped to visit my mother in Berlin then yeah, I'm still in Vermont. It's been a good trip so far, here's hoping I make it home without a ticket or a flat tire.

I got my new license yesterday. Since I won't be home in September when my license expires and I needed to update my pictured, I ventured into the DMV. The DMV in Vermont may be small, but it is still the same as anywhere else: a big joke. I had to wait in line to get a ticket to wait in another line. I did meet a nice guy while I was waiting for my turn. He lives in a small town and works in the woods. If I had been home for the summer I would have considered asking for his number, but I'm also trying to move away from that type of guy no matter how nice and charming there are. I'm not going to settle for just good looks and a good body. I want more and I will wait impatiently until I meet that person. But anyways I now have a grownup license! Woot!

I look the same, but now I'm horizontal! Haha.

Yesterday at the book store I found the greatest thing ever. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the children's book Pat the Bunny. It's a cute peach colored book about a bunny and textures that the child can feel while they read the book. At the book store I saw a parody of it called, Pat the Zombie. As a lover of all things zombie, instantly I was thrilled and sent a picture of the book to my friend who is writing a zombie survival guide. (Yonni my 22nd birthday is in almost a month and I would love a first draft :) JK take your time and don't rush your art). If anyone finds any other cool zombie things please send them to me.

It needs brains! Zombie bunny brains!

By the time you've finished this I have hopefully made it to I-87 and am cruising my way on down to the Thruway. What an evil evil road the Thruway is. Almost as bad as the expressway in rush hour. Goodbye empty Vermont highway, hello six lane traffic. It's been fun but Philadelphia needs me.

True fact: This is what a Vermont interstate highway looks like and there are only two of them. 

P.S. Please think good thoughts for my Hebrew Friend. He hasn't been feeling very well lately.

Hey that last guy was at least a six.

I haven't written in a few days because A: I'm on vacation, B: I didn't want to and C: I'm on vacation. The problem with not writing though is that I have all of these awesome things happening to/around me that I end up having too much to say and so my posts become super long (and a little boring) and I forget half the stuff that I wanted to write about in the first place. So I've decided to write now instead of waiting until I get home tomorrow night. I'm in Vermont right now for those of you aren't Cynthia! or Yon or missed the fact that I typed vacation twice in a sentence (see above). I have so much energy from all of the thoughts zooming through my head right now I keep getting distracted by the episodes of M*A*S*H that I'm watching right now and all of the cool stuff that I keep finding on the internet (because there is so much cool stuff out there besides the porn), it's hard to focus and put this all down.

Alright I'll just start. Today I bought more books. I had the car in Burlington while my mom was at an appointment and since it was raining I did the obvious thing, go to Barnes and Noble. I have purchased so many books this summer I could open up my own bookstore, hey there is a space available in Wynnewood so you never know. Actually I do know, I don't like to share my books with most people, a trait I've inherited from Lance. So I went in and it seriously is the book Mecca of Vermont. There has never been a better Barnes and Noble than the one in South Burlington. It is the best corporate bookstore around. Two stories of book bliss. While I was there I purchased the second Flappers book, I have an unabashed addiction to YA literature, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, my Hebrew Friend has been telling everyone to read this book and since Lance doesn't lend his books to anyone I had to buy my own, and a copy of One Day. I've been seeing this book everywhere and when I went to see The Help with my mom the trailer for One Day played and the movie looks amazing so I'm hoping that the book is as well.

I also went to the Good Will today too. I've become obsessed with finding thrifty things to decorate my apartment with. I started at the car show flea market this weekend looking for empty frames to paint and hang on my wall. I saw the idea of hanging empty frames at art pieces in an article on Hello Giggles and now I have to do it to my own walls. I painted three that I found at the car show white and then I found three more at the Good Will for .99 cents each. I was excited and I think I'm going to paint these one a couple of different colors and hang them on the purple wall in my living room. I'm only in the apartment for nine more months but I think that's still plenty of time to make the apartment cool and pretty. I've also become obsessed with spray painting things. I have a couple of lamps that need to be painted when I get back to the city and them I'm going over to IKEA to get cheap lampshades and a small area rug if I can find one.

I'm also taking home the extra power drill in the garage. I have to hang up the frames and and some shelves to hold up all of the new books that I've bought recently. I picked up a few Faulkner's at the library book sale this weekend for the price of: on the house (that was for you Kyle). Since my book shelves are completely filled I have to put them somewhere else. I love old books so the ones that don't fit in the cases and shelves I am going to use as part of the decor I have going on: mumbly jumbly.

The best thing about this weekend was the visit to the Matterhorn. The greatest little ski bar at the base of Mountain Mansfield. It was first opened by my Latin teacher Ms. Knapp back in the 80s and has since changed hands many times, but it is now a super cool bar where you can get the greatest sushi. I always get the soft shell crab roll, it has the legs and claws sticking out of the ends of the roll. I also went with the spicy tuna martini this time too. It's segments of raw tuna and seaweed tossed in a spicy Thai sauce, topped with caviar and served in a martini glass. So yummy! And of course to accompany this I also had one of Jesse mai tais. 

A delicious drink that smells like coconut rum. 

My sushi. There is next to no real lighting and my phone doesn't have a flash :(

Check back tomorrow. I'll be in transit but there will be a post sometime tomorrow afternoon. 

All dads like what their sons get them.

Last night I had dinner out with a friend and I can't believe how much I've missed just having a nice dinner with good company. Too often I'm just at the bar with friends and it's too loud to actually spend any quality time, and someone always leaves too early, and of course someone always drinks too much. It just gets old too after a while and it becomes more like people drinking in the same place than friends spending any real time together. Having dinner with my friend tonight was nice. We went out which I haven't done in a while and got to catch up and be together. I prefer doing dinner at home because I like to be in charge of the food I'm eating and I like cooking with other people and it's infinitely cheaper to cook at home for me. But the point of all this is that I need spend less time at the bars and more time in with friends.

 "All this over a book? I have cousins who shot each other, and they got over it."

I watched Peep World when I got home form dinner. It was an interesting and funny movie about a son who wrote a thinly veiled tell-all about his family and has gone off to make a ton of money and a movie about his family's dirty secrets. The movie takes place the day of his father's 70th birthday and how the family reacts about coming together for the first time since the publication of the book, Peep World. It's fantastic and completely true for everyone, we all have dysfunctional families, some more than others. The casting was prefect for this movie too. It starred Ben Schwartz as the youngest brother who wrote the book depicting his siblings, played by Michael C. Hall, Sarah Silverman, and Rainn Wilson, in bad lights. The acting by these people was phenomenal and very different from the roles that you usually see them in. The supporting cast of Judy Greer, Kate Mara, and Taraji P. Henson was also outstanding. And nothing is better than Lewis Black as the narrator. 

A walk by definition has no destination. Even a cat knows that.

Second round.

I'm in an office right now doing absolutely nothing and I'm unsupervised and if I were doing this four or five years ago this would have been a very bad thing. For example (and mind you I still do this) whenever I am in one of my parents' offices I tend to find things to amuse myself even if it means disturbing their papers. I can definitely say that one has a better collection of junk than the other. Anyways instead of being my usual moderately destructive self, and because I already know where everything is in here, I am blogging, which is way more productive than anything that I would be doing anywhere else. Run ons ;)

Friday a successfully busy morning/day for me. I started in Jersey and now I'm in Philadelphia. Along the way I have handed in my portfolio for my nonfiction shorts class, sorted a ridiculous amount of text books and watched leftover clips from old Chelsea Lately shows. Okay maybe it hasn't been entirely too busy, but I do have a busy night of work ahead of me. Hopefully. I feel extremely proud of myself for completing my portfolio on time and was particularly impressed at my own personal effort to actually make multiple drafts of a piece before handing the portfolio in. It was a little tricky for me this time to get everything organized and together because it had to be handed in one long single word document. Usually each piece gets printed out and I can sort through it all and make sure that I have everything. This time I had to keep scrolling up and down the document and do a lot of cutting a pasting. The portfolio ended up being 35 pages so I had to be extra careful about sorting and layout. I also became particularly paranoid about not saving enough and probably messed up the word program with all my command+s-ing. Either way I am proud that I finished it. My writing has greatly evolved because of it and I owe a lot to my Hebrew Friend for pushing me and making me write properly and for an audience. He's very good at pushing me to make a piece that  much better and if I ever get something published he is definitely getting at least a footnote.

This weekend I read the first two books of The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I only really decided to start reading them because two of my friends are excited about the movie coming out and talk about it all of the time and I wanted to be able to participate instead of blankly sitting there listening to them talk. I first heard about these books when I was a freshman in college. I used to follow a Twilight podcast that was more of a book club than a fan site. After the podcast people finished the Twilight books they moved on to The Hunger Games books and of course I was still aboard the romantic vampire train and stopped listening to the podcast and forgot all about The Hunger Games. Three years later I could kick myself because these books are awesome. I read the first one on Thursday at the beach and then purchased the second one on Friday and finished it at work on Saturday. The bookstore near me in currently out of the third one so right now I am debating on whether or I want to drive to find it after work so that I can take it to the beach tomorrow.

I seriously need this book, now!

This is kind of a weird scheduling week for me because I have two days off from work instead of my usual one. Last week a friend said that they wanted to go to the beach this week so I took tomorrow off of work to go. I love the place that I go because I have a yearly pass so I don't have to pay for parking and pay a separate admission fee to lie in the sand for a couple of hours. The place where I go is also a state park so the land is protected and natural. There aren't any beach combers tearing apart the beach and rebuilding it all of the time. It's really cool that way because nature controls it which means that each time I go it's a little bit different looking. I've also found that as much as I love being alone on the beach I also like to have someone there to go swimming with and to talk to just to break up the monotony. It's get too to have someone to ride down with and inexpensive too. All you really need is to stop at a store a pick up some cheap eats for the beach and that's it. Besides gas in the car that I already have and the $4 toll coming back, thank you EZ Pass for making me not worry about routing around foI'm in an office right now doing absolutely nothing and I'm unsupervised and if I were doing this four or five years ago this would have been a very bad thing. For example (and mind you I still do this) whenever I am in one of my parents' offices I tend to find things to amuse myself even if it means disturbing their papers. I can definitely say that one has a better collection of junk than the other. Anyways instead of being my usual moderately destructive self, and because I already know where everything is in here, I am blogging, which is way more productive than anything that I would be doing anywhere else. Run ons ;)

Friday a successfully busy morning/day for me. I started in Jersey and now I'm in Philadelphia. Along the way I have handed in my portfolio for my nonfiction shorts class, sorted a ridiculous amount of text books and watched leftover clips from old Chelsea Lately shows. Okay maybe it hasn't been entirely too busy, but I do have a busy night of work ahead of me. Hopefully. I feel extremely proud of myself for completing my portfolio on time and was particularly impressed at my own personal effort to actually make multiple drafts of a piece before handing the portfolio in. It was a little tricky for me this time to get everything organized and together because it had to be handed in one long single word document. Usually each piece gets printed out and I can sort through it all and make sure that I have everything. This time I had to keep scrolling up and down the document and do a lot of cutting a pasting. The portfolio ended up being 35 pages so I had to be extra careful about sorting and layout. I also became particularly paranoid about not saving enough and probably messed up the word program with all my command+s-ing. Either way I am proud that I finished it. My writing has greatly evolved because of it and I owe a lot to my Hebrew Friend for pushing me and making me write properly and for an audience. He's very good at pushing me to make a piece that  much better and if I ever get something published he is definitely getting at least a footnote.

This weekend I read the first two books of The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I only really decided to start reading them because two of my friends are excited about the movie coming out and talk about it all of the time and I wanted to be able to participate instead of blankly sitting there listening to them talk. I first heard about these books when I was a freshman in college. I used to follow a Twilight podcast that was more of a book club than a fan site. After the podcast people finished the Twilight books they moved on to The Hunger Games books and of course I was still aboard the romantic vampire train and stopped listening to the podcast and forgot all about The Hunger Games. Three years later I could kick myself because these books are awesome. I read the first one on Thursday at the beach and then purchased the second one on Friday and finished it at work on Saturday. The bookstore near me in currently out of the third one so right now I am debating on whether or I want to drive to find it after work so that I can take it to the beach tomorrow.

I seriously need this book, now!

I love the beach.

So anyways to end this, I have a friend who is going through a rough patch right now and as frustrating and annoying it is to be around them when they are acting this way, I love my friend and I want them to be happy. It's just very frustrating because there isn't a whole lot I can do for them right now because they have a lot going on in the inside that they need to sort out first. The best I can do is just listen and be supportive as best as I can. Really though I just want to do what I do when Max crashes into something a little hard: pick them up, squeeze them tight and watch the adult equivalent of Thomas the Tank Engine episodes. Too bad I'm only a five foot girl with the inability to lift anyone other than Max.

PS. The title is a wonderful line from my favorite dog Wilfred.
r change, it literally costs less than $10 dollars to go to the beach with me :)

Is it really because I let you call me Barry?

Today is Friday which means that I have double work. Yesterday I did double work but in opposite order and then went to class and now I feel completely dead on the inside. Of course it didn't help that there was a giant lightning/thunder storm that started just as I was about to fall asleep, but right now I could really use a nap. I also think I strained my wrist at work this week, because right now it feels really sore anytime I bend it in any direction. I'm hoping it's just overused and not seriously damaged. I want to get out of tray service for the night, but I don't want to have to miss a whole bunch of work. I am also not going out tonight. I am putting my foot down right now and saying no. I have too much homework to catch up on and I am so tired that I just want to sleep.

So I finally caught up with my friend Karrie. She goes home every summer and so I don't see her very much. We try to call each other when we can, but for the last couple of weeks we were playing a very bad game of phone tag. It was literally to the point where I had to start passing messages to her through our friend Merrie just so I could maintain some sort of communication. Of Merrie, who was supposed to stay in the city for the summer, is now back in Baltimore and there is a good chance that Karrie will be back before Merrie is. My Hebrew Friend is currently in the Holy Land right now and hopefully taking the nice candid shots of Israel that I wanted him to take for me. He asked if I wanted something from Israel, but I just want to see what the desert country is really like. Almost all of my knowledge about Israel is ancient and comes from the religion classes that I take at school. My Hebrew Friend is straight up Israeli so he knows what it's really like and when he comes back I'm going to make him go through all of the pictures and explain everything to me. I had him go over currency and Hebrew before he left and now we're going to have more once I get those pictures. I'm hoping that Liz Bloch-Smith does another course to the Holy Lands next year so I can actually set foot in Israel and get a step closer to completing my minor. Next Thursday night/Friday morning Cynthia! and I are going to trek out to Newark to pick up our Hebrew Friend from the airport. I love random rambles through New Jersey. I used to do them all the time with friends at weird hours of the night.

Last night I watched Never Let Me Go with Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, and Carrey Mulligan. It's about a dystopian society in England where clones are grown and raised as organ donors for their Originals. The clones are raised in schools all over the countryside and not told about what they are until they are much older. They are also kept away from society and people have certain prejudices about whether or not the clones are real humans and have souls. The movie focuses on a group of friends: Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, beginning as young children and following them until they begin their donations and eventual completion (death). The film is about young love and the pure human emotions or joy, love, and jealousy that every young person goes through. Even though I was familiar with the plot I couldn't help but cry throughout most of the movie because it was just too sad to know that those poor children would never have a full life, condemned to die as their organs are slowly harvested from them. Of course the crying could have also been from the PMS I'm currently raging against.

Now you can write our story so much faster.

I think you're about to be asleep right now. You should be asleep right now because it's late and you've written that you intend to get up early tomorrow to stake out something you won't have to do for another three months. But I saw that california king beds were trending on twitter for some reason and it made me think of you and your problematic bed, which is really quite uncomfortable, and then I remembered that Sleepys is having a mattress sale and now that you are in a position to save a little (even if you don't think you really are, you are) and should buy a new mattress sooner than later. Before you know it you're going to be caught up in school and teaching and that will take a stressful toll on your body and you will regret not having a fine mattress to sleep on. So save up or tell your dad you need money for car repairs.

I watched The Garden of Eden tonight. It was really lovely. Mena Suvari did an excellent job portraying Catherine and her destructiveness. The devil. The Garden of Eden is one of those stories like (500) Days of Summer. It is a love story, but at the same time it really is. In this one you know right away that there isn't going to be a happy ending or a simple one. One of Catherine's first lines is her saying that she is a destructive person who is going to do something really terrible one of these days. There's also a subplot about a young David in Africa with his father during their hunt for an elephant. Young David leads the group on a hunt for elephant ivory, but then comes to regret his actions after he understands the poachers' intent. This ties in as a story that David writes during his honeymoon and the couple's interactions with Marita.

I went to Ikea today to get the part that I needed for my shelves. I can't go to stores like Ikea. There's too many well-priced things that I want to buy. I ended up walking out with not only my shelving part, but also new curtains for my bedroom and a new lampshade for the small lamp on my bureau. I want to go back and get more things that I really don't need for my apartment. I am thinking about getting an area rug for my living room so that might be something for me to think about for later on. I'm hoping I'll just move out of my apartment before it comes to that. 

Trying to find the in-betweens, fall back in love eventually.

I'm watching Paper Heart right now. It is a documentary style movie about Charlyne Yi trying to find out about love and whether or not it exists. It's move about love and not about Charlene trying to find love, that part just sort of happens on it's own. Thank you Michael Cera. But anyways, there's a really great interview that she does with an older divorced man about love and true love and finding your soul mate. It's a very  touching moment coming from someone who was left in a marriage and has decided not to get married again because he is afraid of hurt. Check it out, it's a nice movie for those of us that are slightly defective in the love department. Morning Glory arrives in the mail tomorrow. I'm a big Rachel McAdams fan so I'll let you know how it is.

I made turkey balls for dinner tonight. Sounds gross, but they're really just meat balls made from ground turkey. I wanted to go for a leaner meat and I've never had ground turkey before so I thought I would try something new. I really like the ground turkey alternative to red meat. When I was making the balls I kept expecting the raw beef smell, so while I was rolling the balls I thought there was something wrong with the meat. There wasn't and they turned out really good. I made them the way I normally make regular meat balls, I just didn't make them the Aunt Val way. I don't have the patience or resources to go through all of that. I would rather just visit her on meat ball night.

I thought I might do some work tonight, but since I'm not doing anything for the next two days I'm going to just get up early and power through as much as I can and then finish the rest up on Thursday afternoon. If I really can't get to sleep in a little while I'll start my portfolio for Seminar and now that I think about it I really want to write the first draft of the first part so I'll probably just do that later and sleep in tomorrow morning. Meh.

Okay people, by the way I am NOT a clepto. I just happen to collect books the way some people collect pennies. I've just got very refined collecting skills and maybe one day I will share my experiences with the Stowe Free Library. 

When I look out my window I see my friend's apartment building.

Soooo....I wasn't going to write and then I was going to write and then I wasn't and then the Captain said to Alfonso, "Alfonso tell me a story so Alfonso began: "It was a dark and stormy night and the Captain said to Alfonso, 'Alfonso tell me a story,' so Alfonso began," you get the point. So I decided just to write. I also have a boatload of energy because I'm eating way too late (I usually like to have my last big meal before 8pm but I got distracted) and I also took some old Robitussin that I found on top of my fridge and I'm not sure it its the AWAKE kind or the kind that makes you drowsy so I'm now trying to wear myself down and channel some of the energy.

Today started out bad and got exponentially worse in a very short time and other than a nice phone chat with Yonni (he passed his Praxis! Virtual high five bro!) and some potentially good news from my school boss, it wasn't until 5pm that things started to turn around. But hey we all have those days, hopefully yours don't include getting a boot on your car or locking your keys and your school books inside the car and then having to haul yourself across town to find keys to get yourself into your apartment and then into your locked car. Mine did! But thanks to Kat, Anna, and John who let me vent extensively to them, and to my advisor who gave me the number to AAA and didn't mind that I spent the entire class talking about registration instead of reading, and to Chris who was totally adorable to me for some reason. Boy you are going to be such a hottie in two years, it's a shame you're only nineteen now. And really once I got back into my apartment and chatted with my dad I really calmed down and didn't care about the day. In fact after I got de-booted, I went to Old Navy and picked up another work shirt (thank you small fat kids) and took a really long walk around Lower Merion. Thank god I walked because with this cold I came home with a giant trail of snot running down my face because I didn't have any tissues and I didn't want to wipe my nose on the sleeve of my good fleece. Gross, but I really like my clothes. My mom really pulled me through the day very unexpectedly when she sent me a text telling me to read the biography for Cathy Lamb on Amazon. Her books look lame and kind of like the stuff Samantha is into, but her bio is great. I swear I'm the East Coast version of this woman  minus twenty years. I've also become the Iron Chef of leftovers. Tonight it was just chicken, spinach, a leftover tomato, and leftover pasta. Totally tasty, but as I now look at the cooked spinach I am reminded of a friend who won't eat spinach because of a bad experience he had with it and the thought is making me vomit a little inside my mouth. Yuck.

OOOOoooo! New song of the day! I know I'm bad, but I swear I better about other things like boys and shoes, but maybe not majors since I did change that. But anyways here it is: The Naked and Famous - Young Blood.

Almost there.

I'm so close I can almost taste it. I have almost everything packed, I just have to go downstairs and fold my laundry and repack everything and then I will be set. Today was a monster of a day. I have been up since 4am on Wednesday and have been moving nonstop ever since. I briefly fell asleep this morning around 7am and woke up at 7am crying because I convinced myself that I had overslept my 10am midterm. It took me several minutes to realize that I still had two hours before I had to leave for school. I had to rush from my midterm to work because I thankfully switched shifts with The Ballerina. I had to get there early but I was able to leave at 8pm and have since then cleaned, folded, packed and showered and am almost ready for the rest of my family to get here. They're not expected until sometime around 2am or 3am so until they get here I'll just be up doing a little work and watching movies. Not the most exciting Thursday night I've ever had.

I'm thinking that I might not write so much while I'm in the Keys, but instead do a photo blog. Instead of lengthy posts I'll just show pictures of the day and have only a caption or two. I have family and friends that read this so posting daily photos will be much easier than having to call everyone all the time. Pictures are more fun to look at anyways than read some of the stuff than I write.

Book of the Day: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. A story about a hermaphrodite growing up in Detroit during the 1960s and the history of how their family carried the mutated gene through the generations.

Song of the Day: Pyro by Kings of Leon. Not their best technically but still sounds good and has been getting a lot of air play.

Shoe of the Day: Green corduroy slip on Keds. 

Day Two.

Today has been another really great day, no I really mean it. I had the best sleep I've had in a while and got up without any problems at an early hour. It was great. My one class was a little slow, but that's how it always is with him. Afterwards I came home and did a little reading for American Lit. and watched some Weeds. I ended up falling asleep for a little while because it was so comfy in my room. I need to get a deep tissue massage, I'm super sore in my upper back and I don't want to exhaust the Advil. I got a workout in and I'm going to make dinner, the goodness of 2011 is finally kicking in for me.

Tomorrow I was supposed to get up for BOMF but since my group can't go until they have their orientation it has been put off until next week. I had the option if going Friday, but there is no way I can do two 4am to 11:30pm days in a row. It gets to be too much and I end up falling asleep and forgetting to go into work and then I get a call and freak and run every red light to get to work. I just don't want to have to do that again.

Next week I'm going to see if I can make it over to CharChar's and see the Little Ball of Laugh. I haven't seen them in months and I want to go to Bredenbecks and get some chocolate schnecken. Bredenbecks makes the best chocolate schnecken in Philadelphia and it's right down the street from CharChar's home. They may even have some pre-Valentine's Day items that would be really cute. I really like walking around Chestnut Hill. Samantha was stupid for not going there.

Valetine's day is next Monday. I really like that holiday, I used to hate it a be really bitter about it when I wasn't with anyone, but now I really love it because it's not about having a boyfriend it's about love. I love ton of people and I like having a fun holiday about love. I love my friends, my family, and it's Marg's 21st which makes it even more friend because I can get her a bottle of rose and a red box of chocolates. I may even get two, I'm a big fan of the red heart Russell Stover chocolate boxes and getting fun cards for my friends. Love that holiday. 

Sunday morning couldn't get away from it.

Bad call on deciding to work for Willa Cather today instead of taking the day off to do homework and clean up the apartment. I even tried to get up early today to get as much as I could done, but I couldn't get myself up in time to do anything. I had to go to work and try to not relive the worst day of work imaginable  in the history of all working days that was Saturday. Holy FUCK Saturday sucked. But now it's over, moving on. Work today was fine, pretty tough on the ankles. It's like I'm pregnant or five hundred pounds overweight after four nights of work. Not pregnant by the way Mom.

At work I've been reading The Rum Diaries by Hunter S. Thompson. I've read some of his other books and articles, but this one is new to me. It was also the only Hunter S. Thompson novel at work. Sad. The Rum Diaries is beat journalism meets gonzo journalism with rum, sex, and sun tans. Set in Costa Rica, I only have fifty pages to go I'll let you know how it is once I finish it on Thursday.

After work I drove straight to Andi's to get food because I was starved. I don't really give a crap about football, but I did get one of the Parsons Twins to make pigs in a blanket so it was still a win for me. I left early. Too many smelly guys does not juxtapose nicely with Sidney's nose. I had my hour of football fun and then I had to leave to do homework and laundry and avoid doing homework and laundry by writing blog posts and watching Weeds. Tonight's the last night of no sleep. Hebrew Boy said he's working better by getting better sleep; I need to get my act together and get to bed at reasonable hours because service starts this week. 

AWAKE, AWAKE, AWAKE!!!

Oh holy sweet bananas I can't get to sleep! And I've tried everything I can think of. I even texted My Hebrew Friend to see if he could come up with anything and he definitely tried his best. His suggestions were all over the place ranging from reading, writing, tea and sex. I don't own any boring books. Everything I read I like and would have just stayed up to finish the book no matter how late it got, defeating the purpose of trying to go to sleep. Tea, I tried. It sort of work, but the sleepies sort of fizzled out and I'm back to being wide awake. Sex. Well sex is out of the question. Whenever I have sex I am always left wide awake and I want to punch my partner in the face five minutes after we are done because he is sound asleep and I am nowhere near it. The only time I ever got a guy to go as long as I wanted was when we were both completely stoned and I nagged him into almost sobriety. I've been living like a repressed nun lately and I'm ready to burst but I told Yonni I would let him know when I wanted to have sex with him and I haven't yet. Yonni this isn't me saying I want to have sex yet, I'll let you know when. So that leaves me with writing, which is what I am doing now. It's not really working, but since My Hebrew Friend needs to be alseep right now even if he isn't, so I can't leave call him. I think I'm just anxious about the snow that we're supposed to get. I don't have any homework due for my class tomorrow and I don't have to go into Borders or other work so I really don't have anything to worry about. Wednesday I think I'm going to beg My Hebrew Friend to come watch The Princess Bride with me. I may even bribe him with butter pecan ice cream since he doesn't like chocolate. Who doesn't like chocolate ice cream? Gosh! And who only watched The Princess Bride only once? Double gosh!!

Have fun storming the castle!

The Secret Garden: Literary and Cinematic Gold

I'm not writing. I don't want to write. Writing is stupid. I feel like I'm in eight grade and my mother is standing over my shoulder making sure I'm getting my homework done. I don't like writing. Yet tonight, I write.

I was watching The Secret Garden the other day when I was visiting my aunt's house and I have come to the conclusion that children's stories today are really quite terrible. They have no imagination or creativity and they gloss over the realities of life. The Secret Garden was written in 1909 and dealt with sickness, death, and abandonment great detail. The words chosen for the story are not dumbed down for a slow reader and they story is not fluffed up with silly qualifiers about mediocrity and love or everyone. The Secret Garden was a hauntingly real story that many children could relate to at the time, and while the childhood tragedies on the 19th and 20th have changed and have all but disappeared, many of them are still the same hardships that children face everyday including death, abandonment, and relocation.

The movie done in 1993 was very true to the book, but even the modern film omitted some of the harder to understand aspects of the book. Maybe death by cholera is not as cinematicly appealing as a great earthquake, but it certainly is much harder n a child to understand a deadly sickness in a far away land. I do still think that this movie is well done and I find that I am seeing new things that were not as clear to me when I was five. The scene where Mary's mother abandons her infant daughter in the jungle is much more clear.

The Secret Garden was not the first of it's kind. Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland were also classic children's stories dealing with adult issue and written for what would now be considered an eight grade reading level. Total fail on childhood literacy right there and overprotective parents.

Tonight I also have the hiccoughs.