It's the colors you have, no need to be sad. It really ain't that bad.

Honestly is there anything more cooler than Mill Murray not giving a fuck while steals a bike with a pair of bolt cutters? I really don't think so. Mill Murray just oozes je ne sais quois and a suaveness that only Mr. Murray seems capable of pulling off. I mean really how many of us can just hijack a bicycle and just walk away with the bike of our shoulder, not even caring if we were to get caught with it. It really is just such a baller picture. I almost wish that I could feel cool enough to do something like that or just not give a fuck to walk away with a bike. Unfortunately I have a stress issue when it comes to police authority and recently found two gray hairs on my head.

At 22 it feels a little early to be growing gray hair, but with a father who began shedding his hair line at 24 and a mother who has been dyeing to hide her own hair issues at an even younger age it's not exactly a surprise. Add in all of the compounded stress of the last four years and logically I should be nearly white on top by now. Graduation should be a time of joy a celebration, I remember watching my cousin finish her course load a few years ago and walk across the stage at her own December graduation. She was excited and energetic and proud of the work she had put in over the years. I don't feel any of that. I don't even want to go pick up my cap and gown from the bookstore. Fortunately I'm not alone. My friend Andi has yet to pick up her own cap and gown and my dear friend Slolly just wants to go home now and not look back. We have no desire to sit under the big white tent next to City Ave and listen for our names to be called out. I just want to go home and go to sleep for the next few weeks.

I had a language teacher in high school who stressed the importance of being more than just a drone who was defined by what they did for work. I remember sitting in a hotel common area in Greece with her and a few other people talking about life and getting better acquainted. I had one of the local stray dogs in my lap (completely unaware of the risks of ticks at the time) and I remember listening to my teacher tell us that too many people are defined by the jobs they do and not by the things they enjoy to do. I remember having a hard time separating the differences between the two ideas. Last week marked the third anniversary of my language teacher's passing and with graduation looming only weeks away I am starting to understand more of what she meant and how I've change since having her as a teacher. In college I put myself in situations I never would have imagined for myself and met all sorts of different people. When I left high school, I left with a bad taste in my mouth and with very few people I felt connected to. When I leave Philadelphia next month I will be leaving behind a whole slew of people from different backgrounds that I never would have had the pleasure of knowing if I hadn't come to college, including my best friend.

I'm moving home when I graduate with no job perspectives and no real life goal other than to just adjust to a new lifestyle and acclimate back into small town life. This time though I'm not leaving with a bad taste in my mouth or on bad terms with people as I had back in 2008. I'm ready to leave the city and return home because I'm not the same person I was when I left.

I need to get better at my vacation days.

Tibby died! And now I know why Anna wouldn't tell me what happened when she read the book earlier in the summer. I was so not expecting a sister to die that I spent the first half of my day reading in bed and crying because there would no longer be anymore Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants because one of the sisters had died, and in Greece! I feel in love with these books when I was in high school. They tell a beautiful story about four close friends and their summers during high school, college, and then the summer before their 30th birthdays. I always felt that the movies were really stupid and offered no really validity of what the books were about, so you really have to read the books to understand what I'm talking about. Each of the four girls had extremely different and vibrant personalities with their own problems on love and life issues. Despite all of their differences they still managed to stay close and best friends. And while I am still shocked that Ann Brashares offed Tibby, I will agree that if she had to do it it's best that it was Tibby. It's not like she could kill Carmen or Bee or Lena. Especially not Lena because then she and Kostos would never have had a chance to be together. That is officially my favorite literature romance ever, but after Anne and Gilbert and Elizabeth and Darcy. Kostos and Lena had to wait ten years for everything in their life to work out and to realize that they were meant to be together. Sigh.

I've been reading a lot lately. I go in spurts. Usually my peak is during school breaks and vacation and my lows are during the school year when I am too consumed with other things to read that I usually put off anyways. This past week I've read five books, not an all time high but still respectable. Books are not the only thing that I've been reading this week. One of my best friends sent me the world's greatest facebook message that I will always treasure, at least while I have a facebook account (my friend I will cherish for always). If I get my friend's permission, I will share it with you all because it's really part of a much larger story that is both incredibly funny and incredibly creepy. 

Now as promised it you follow me on twitter, here is a sample of a short story that I wrote for one of my creative writing classes. As always please feel free to contact me with any thoughts or criticisms about the piece, I need all of the help I can get.

An excerpt from Sauce Story:

Late at night after work, and dinner with his family, after all of the dirty dishes were cleaned and put away my father would get out his largest stockpot and all of the ingredients to make his marinara sauce. It was a recipe brought over from Naples that became lost in translation as each generation made it to their own taste.  My father would start by dicing onions and letting them slowly sauté in the olive oil that he would pour from the large canister kept under the Catering Kitchen table. Before my mother would shoo me up to bed I would spy my father sorting the various cans of diced tomatoes that he would later use and pull out the necessary spices. Salt, pepper, garlic, onion, basil, and oregano would all be lined up ready to be used later to taste.

I was in middle school before my mother relented and allowed me to stay up past my regular bedtime. I was watching television when I heard the clanking of the pot being brought out onto the stove and cans of diced and crushed tomatoes stacked together on the butcher blocker countertop. I sauntered out to see what was going on, barely able to hide my eagerness at being able to stay up to watch the wondrous process that had been handed down through our family’s generations. My father noticed me and told me to stir the onion, browning in the bottom of the pot. I had to be careful not to burn the onion and ruin the sauce. When it was time, he helped me add the tomatoes and taught me how to add spices to taste. He showed me when it was the best time to add something new and that a cup of water to the mixture could correct most taste mistakes. With everything slowly simmering away over low heat my father sent me to bed while he read a book in the living room until it was time to take the sauce off of the flame and let it sit.

If you want the full version of the story just send me an email, unless you're my Hebrew Friend and you've already read it a hundred times.

Well if you're uncomfortable you should take off your pants.

Last night while I was driving home I came across a deer standing in the middle of the road. I've seen a lot of deer in the park an they are a more than common occurrence  in Vermont, but this one was standing in the middle of the road in the commercial park across from where my apartment. I saw it in time to stop and it stood still looking at me for a minute and then became confused, circled about and ran off across a parking lot. Luckily for the deer another car wasn't coming along because the deer easily could have slammed into another car while it turned about getting oriented. A few minutes earlier a fox ran past my car while I was sitting at a red light. It was a total zoo on the streets of Philadelphia last night.

This morning I had my first Wimba meeting for my nonfiction class. I can finally say that I have complete empathy for the graduate students that bitch about it in the office. Wimba is a pain and everything we did easily could have been accomplished over Skype or a conference call. It was kind of fun getting up at 6:30am and having a workshop about a concise literary essay that I had recently written. I have to rework parts of it and then let my writing partner look it over and work on it with me. My professor was very encouraging about having a writing partner since I can't get into see her because of summer hours. Good thing Yonni knows what he's doing. The piece is for my final portfolio, but it's something that I want to polish and consider submitting to a literary magazine such as Brevity once it's finished. I also have to send a copy to my dad since it's about him. I just need Thursday to be over so I can finally commit myself to my writing. I've also opened up my log book again. I had a four year plan to fill it up and I probably would have finished it last year if I had actually written in it on a regular basis. The book was a graduation gift from a close friend and the format is designed after the log books that Ms. Knapp has us keep while in Greece. If she hadn't passed away I think I would have sent it to her after it was filled.

I also found out this morning that Samantha experienced death up close recently. She and I are no stranger to death, she especially during her middle years of high school, but nothing quite like this. I would have thought that of the two of us to see it happen, she would not have been the first. I still have a wholesome milk and cookies Amish attitude of my  sister because of the more sheltered life she led and her extremely boring life choices that she's made up until these past few months. It's funny the places that life takes you and it's curious that only a few days ago I wrote about death and drowning in my journal for class after reading CLE in Brevity.

I'm going to Jersey tomorrow, weather be damned. I also have my history final Thursday night so this may very well be the last post before my Hebrew Friend returns from the Holy Land (unless something super exciting comes up). 

Two of two.

MATT AND KIM ARE COMING BACK TO PHILADELPHIA AND I AM GOING TO GO SEE THEM!!! Matt and Kim are playing at The Troc at the end of May and my friend Jon and I are going even if I have to drag him there. He's the only other person that I know that loves them almost as much as me so he's coming. You can't go to their shows alone, it's just not fun.

So this one was supposed to go up a while ago and then again last night as a complimentary piece to the first one but then I never got around to it.

I'm watching Julie & Julia right now (for the third time) and I have to admit that I kind of forgot how amazing this movie is. I absolutely hate Julie Powell for being a giant cheating whore in real life, but I really love what she did with her cooking blog. I also adore Julia Child ever since I used to watch her cooking show on PBS with my Dad. When I was little that's all we did, watch Julia Child and The Frugal Gourmet while Samantha napped.

Anyways I love this movie because of the dual stories that it portrays. In one you're watching a woman come from nothing and become a world-wide phenomenon. She has the most amazing marriage and life and her journey through the food world is simple inspirational. She also shares an extreme love of Valentine's day with me. I love the dinner that she hold where everyone wears large red hearts on their chests and when her husband Paul stands up to say beautiful words about her, she flutters her red heart for him. So romantic. She also sends out cute Valentine's postcards of Paul and her to all their friends. 

"You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing, I mean nothing. You can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. That's such a comfort."

The other story follows a woman who literally has to her rock bottom in her life before she can pick herself up and be satisfied with her life, all while cooking a year's worth of Julia Child recipes. She is not the best character, but she is a human one with flaws that we all have and she is relatable to most people. I did love her apartment ad if she could make it work in her tiny tiny kitchen I can do it in mine. 

"You can never have too much butter."

The thing I love most about this movie is the relationships that the characters have with each other. For me the most relatable is Julie and her mother. The conversation about Julie's blog in the beginning and the talk about regimins and AA and Julie's mother takes something and goes in a totally opposite direction and misses the point; I can't tell you how many times I have conversations like that with my own mother. It's a wonder I still bother to tell her about the goings-on in my life. I deeply, deeply adore Julia and Paul's marriage. It is so filled with love and care. They perfectly compliment each other. It is really rare to see that sort of love and happiness and outside of this movie the only other marriage that comes close is Lance and Mary Ann. I really love/hate the Powell's marriage as well. The fact that Eric stuck through the Julie/Julia Project and Julie's infidelity is really cool. I love that when they fight, he fights back and stands up for themselves. Too many people are willing to be walked all over because they are too afraid to mess things up. People also put others up on pedestals and people can't handle it. We all do it and when we finally crack we don't always stand up for ourselves. Props to Eric for reminding Julie that he wasn't a saint. I love Chris Messina's portrayal of Eric. He is the man I want. Dark hair and nicely shaped and an excellent sense of humor. Lobster killer qu-est que c'est! He also has a cool job as an editor at an archaeological magazine. I need to meet someone like that and go get some beer and crab legs with them. It's the relationships that make this movie.

If you haven't seen it yet, rent it soon.

"These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock!"

I was reminded of something funny this weekend. My friend Ianni celebrated a milestone birthday and got very very inebriated. Reminded me of a time in high school after we had gotten back from Greece. I was sitting on a bench outside of Sloane's and everything was spinning. Ianni sat down next to me and started talking about Greece and graduation when all of the sudden I ralphed all over the side of the bench. Ianni was stunned and so were Katherine and Josh who were fighting in the car in front of us. Funny how things worked out with us. Two of them in Vermont, one in the army and engaged to be married and me in Philadelphia already planning the move to Portland.