If you think this will be more amusing than my livejournal

Let me know what you think

2009-09-08T21:03:00.000-05:00

Please visit:

http://akgyorfi.wordpress.com/

To see what I am up to. For now.

A distressing event

2009-08-25T16:28:00.002-05:00

Clearly, I am not a web designer. Many things I am, but that I am not.

So for a while now, I've been thinking about starting a new blog. Not because there's anything wrong, but mostly because I feel like I've entered a new phase of my life. I am not in college anymore! I am an employed 20-something! I make next to no money!

Then that annoying little icon popped up in the left hand corner letting me know my photobucket account has been inactive for 90 days, and that it removed my header. Folks, I didn't even remember I have a photobucket account, let alone what my username and password are. So here I am, thinking about jumping ship and finding a new place to post my ideas.

Since I don't have internet at home and I'm in the middle of moving, this is not really the highest priority in the world, but I'm just letting you know.

Perhaps I am not so entitled to this

2009-07-20T16:58:00.002-05:00

Not too long ago I had to go into a tourist store near Times Square. This is the equivalent of going into one of those stores on Hollywood Blvd. near the Walk of Stars. If you’ve been to neither of these places, then you might not fully appreciate what I’m going to describe, but if you have, you know exactly the sort of torture I experienced. At its best, it’s like going to Hell and back again.

Since people have been visiting us in California (so nearly as long as I can remember), one of the pilgrimages we made was to Hollywood Blvd. and to one of the many souvenir stores there. Now, I have to admit that despite how much I abhor these places, I have a sort of fascination with them. Where else in the world can you buy salt and pepper shakers in the shape of Elvis, towels with Marilyn Monroe’s face printed in garish colors on it, flip flops with “BABE” printed all over them, or have shot glasses with unmentionable things in or on them? The answer to that is nowhere. Nowhere in this world can you buy such glorious crap as you find in those stores!!!! And what remains a mystery to me is how even though there are mountains of stuff just everywhere, mugs, cups, key chains, t-shirts, sweaters, etc., EVERYTHING is in order. Everything looks like it was just arranged two minutes before you got there. Absolutely all this stuff is neatly lined up and in order, and it looks like no one has touched anything, even though millions of eager tourists paw through this stuff daily.

So my roommate and I knew for a while we might have to pay a visit to one of these godforsaken places, but I suspect we were holding out actually going to see who would cave first. A battle of wills, in a manner of speaking. Much in the way roommates see who will actually take the initiative and put the toilet paper on the toilet paper dispenser instead of keeping it on top of the toilet. And since Mary Kate had been the one to put the toilet paper on the roller most recently, I decided I could take one for the team and go visit the nearest tourist shop.

I will remind everyone again that we live near Times Square. Lately my mom has frequently been asking me if I’ve been looking for a place to live next year, reminding me that it can’t be in a dangerous part of town and that she has maternal concern for my safety. Now, I know that it seems like a tourist magnet is not the most dangerous part of town (people always around, they try to keep it relatively decent for out of towners) but after living here for close to a year, I can confidently say that I am ready to live in the roughest part of town. I am ready to face any hooligan I may cross. Ladies and gentlemen since living in close proximity to Times Square I have witnessed such frightening things as Very Large Women squeeze themselves in between cars to go pee. I have seen people shoving pizzas as large as beach balls into their mouths while loudly contemplating what time they should go to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. I have seen small children narrowly avoiding certain death dodging between speeding taxis to get to the Sephora or M&M store on the other side of the street. I have had every manner of person shoving flyers, brochures, tickets to the biggest bus tours in the world, to comedy shows, stand up comedy, jazz clubs, Yankees games, to Lord knows what shows, condoms, deodorant, shampoo, trash, EVERYTHING and ANYTHING they could get their hands on in my face. And I’ve seen people sitting on the sidewalk. I have seen girls wearing shorts so short and tank tops so small in the middle of winter that I wonder if they ever had mothers. I’ve seen people trampled to a pulp into the sidewalk. I’ve also seen tourists pick things off of the ground and eat them. I’m pretty sure I have seen people lose their minds in Times Square. This place is, for lack of a more delicate descriptor, the biggest shit show in the world. I am battered and bruised, but I have emerged victorious from the battle and thanks to them, I now doubt that all the excrement found on the sidewalk of my street is strictly canine. And my mother is concerned for my safety in the future. HA. Every day I walk through Times Square I take my life into my own hands, and I pray that if I see a tourist barreling toward me I’ll be the ones to get my hands on him first instead of vice-versa.

My secret to survival? Every time I walk through this cursed place, this armpit of the world, I imagine myself astride my pet rhinoceros, lion, water buffalo, or any other dangerous (usually African, but always fierce) animal-pet, galloping through Times Square wearing nothing but a loincloth and with a sword drawn from its scabbard hanging at my waist (sometimes I have a bow and arrow), my faithful pet dismembering any person who stands in our way to the subway station entrance. The sounds of trumpets blaring is also involved. Because in my short life I have learned a couple of things and one of these is that there is no force of this world that can sway a Midwestern family wearing matching Crocs enroute on their way to Red Lobster from their projected path or a group of high school girls wearing their tightest jeans and highest heels and carrying their newest purses on their way to a club where they MIGHT not be carded. An atom bomb explosion can’t stop these people from altering their projected path. I think the only thing that can stop them is an act of God.

Back to the point, though, I obviously survived my excursion to the tourist shop with minimal damage done to my person. I walked in and was almost bowled over with all the t-shirts hanging on the walls 45 foot high walls! Seven for $10.00! And the cups! And the towels! And the snow globes! Oh God, the snow globes! And look! Hats! And socks! And magnets! And key chains! And shot glasses! The result of all this was that I bought a can of tins with “I <3 NY” and the name “Lori” written on it (incidentally, I know no one named Lori, least of all the person who is getting the tin), socks with the subway map printed on them, and a cup with, once again “I <3 NY” emblazoned on it. When I went to the checkout the clerk smirked at me as if he had once again won. “Another tourist has succumbed!!!” he was probably thinking. I know I would if I were him. I just smiled back because one happy day when I am retired I will come in every day and gleefully mix up the magnets and put the green pencils with the purple ones.

Even scarier than a murder

2009-06-30T09:35:00.009-05:00

I recently rewatched Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The first time I watched it I was in 9^th grade. I would not say that it left a great mark on my impressionable mind, despite being the tender age of… Lord, I have no idea how old I was in 9^th grade. If you remember, I had watched Leprechaun in kindergarten, and I looked under my bed for the little man until 6^th grade every night. I wish I were kidding. I was scared of leprechauns grabbing my ankles and biting me. I also VIVIDLY remember watching a TV show about extreme encounters with animals, where a boa constrictor slithered out of a toilet and a few rattlesnake bite victims talked about the tremendous pain they experienced after they were bitten. These anecdotes might seem comical in a way (A boa constrictor in the toilet, everyone!) but I remember the people on the tv show were genuinely scarred, looking around as if they expected a rhinoceros to charge out of their bedroom closet next. What I took away from that show was that I had to get to a hospital 11-13 minutes within being bitten by a rattlesnake, and that I should always look in toilets for boa constrictors.

Anyhow, Rear Window did not scar me in this same way. One of the only things I took away from it is that I remember the person I watched it with told me New York was like Alfred had portrayed it: one could see into another’s apartment and just sit around looking at everyone go about their business.

I guess this is sort of true. Let’s take a look at what we can see outside our windows.

Not too much from this window. This happens to be the view out my bedroom window. A couple of inches over to the left is my neighbor’s window, from which I can hear him pushing snooze every 10 minutes from 6 AM on. He, on the other hand, probably didn’t hear my alarm clock this week because I put it on silent. And I wondered why I wasn’t waking up on time. Silly me!

This is the view from our bathroom window. Unfortunately. I feel an apartment has much more character when you can see people outside while you shower. However, let’s move on to the south facing windows.

Nice, no? We have great full sunlight in the afternoon, which brings the temperature in the apartment up to a comfortable 95 degrees upon occasion. At night we can sit around and look at the city lights, and during the day we can look down at the neighbor’s yard and observe bunnies hopping around. Due to its enclosed nature, if someone is having a party with any sort of music involved every note reverberates off the buildings as if it is being played on a timpani.

Let’s return to this same scene at night. Ala Alfred Hitchcock, something sinister takes hole once the sun goes down.

Maybe I have an overactive imagination (I did major in liberal arts. I guess I thought I would be able to support myself with it.) but I think this seems like the perfect setting for murders to take place. What's going on in that lit window in the bottom right corner? Oh, nothing, Ben is just strangling his wife. And in the window with the big lampshade? That's where Joe is dismembering his son Al. And what's going on in the top left corner? A closer look you need? Is that what you said?

My roommates and I have each, on separate occasions, sat down on the couch, looked outside, and jumped up exclaiming something to the effect of "HELPTHEREISANAKEDMANINTHATAPARTMENTIJUSTSAWHISUNMENTIONABLES!" Now that I think of it, this should phase me no more. I walk down the streets here and everyone is nearly as naked as the day he was born. I guess we just weren't bracing ourselves for the sight.

So no, this is NOT a naked man. This is not George, who just can never seem to find his underpants. This just happens to be a mannequin perfectly positioned to give us a full front view whenever we happen to glance outside, sometimes giving us a start, but by now just a normal fixture on the horizon. And something that provides me endless entertainment when we do have visitors come over to see what the world outside our windows is up to.

It's rained here for about 10 days straight

2009-06-22T17:39:00.008-05:00

I will be the first to admit that I am a pretty sub-par interior decorator. This skill has mostly gone unnoticed to the unobservant because I have been lucky enough to live with people who put a lot of thought into surrounding themselves with pretty things arranged in pretty ways.

I wouldn't say that I don't have the eye. I can definitely tell you what colors look good together and what don't, mostly based on my knowledge of the color wheel from 9th grade art class, and I can also tell you what is a piece of junk and what isn't. And I wouldn't say I don't have style. No, the biggest drawback I have with decorating and domesticating a place is that I lack the experience. You see, all my friends and their friends grew up in households where they were allowed to decorate their room within reason. I suspect this is because they all spent a lot of time in their respective bedrooms, either grounded or on the phone talking about boys, perhaps doing the occasional homework, so the parents were all right with them decorating their space with things they wanted to see, since they spent a good chunk of their lives there.

In my home, the situation was very different. After we were old enough to move into separate bedrooms and when my sister and I randomly decided for about 10 minutes what our favorite colors were one month, my mother's deft hand and quick thinking transformed our rooms to reflect our preferences. And so since about 5th grade, my bedroom in California has remained very blue, and Agnes's has remained very yellow. Arranging furniture, buying appropriate colored rugs, and the correct colored comforters all announced to the world what color our favorites were. The fact that we spent very little time in our bedrooms (we were never grounded, punishment was as public as possible and going to hide in our bedrooms was not an option as a method of discipline, as then we would run the risk of not being reminded every 10 seconds what we had done wrong), so it never bothered me that I was not the one who had called the shots with the decor.

To illustrate how little I thought about what went into my bedroom, let me tell you the following: I was in a summer program in St. Louis for 5 weeks. During those 5 weeks, everyone unpacked, decorated, some even put up curtains and posters in their room. I placed my opened suitcase under my raised bed for easy access to clean clothes, and so it stayed until the very last day. Unpacked. Unloved. And unwanted.

When I went away to college was when I started to have problems. The first two years in the dorms were okay, there is only so much you can do with an extra long twin bed and a 4'x8' space, but I viewed moving into apartments with apprehension. My secret would be exposed! And so the first year I moved into a place, I had an air mattress for the whole year, and the second year I got a bed so big there was no way anything else would fit into the room with me.

In New York I've had a rough time. The layout of my room changes with the weather. I've moved things this way and that, dragging furniture out into the common area so I have enough room to maneuver the dresser two inches in one one direction or to shove my bitty bed into one corner. I think I've finally hit on arrangement where the furniture and decor combination isn't completely offensive, and I think this is due in no small part to what I've been surrounded by at work.

Here we have the Avenging Narwhal Play Set brightening someone's day a couple of desks over.

This is a model of an actual exhibition traveling the world.

(just kidding)

Here we move closer to home as we get a shot of my desk. A while back I was sent several broken fish from one of our exhibitions and I decided to take it upon myself to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sorrowing, and here they shall remain.

This is the Terminator Pup Sam.

I'm not saying my room is decorated with any or all of these items. But hopefully some of the inspirations stick.

Only the lonely

2009-05-11T16:42:00.002-05:00

Sara and I recently staged a weak attempt to bring a pet into our homes and hearts by buying a fish. We already have three plants, several hidden mice we hear crawling around between the walls at 2 AM, and some pigeons we enjoy feeding crumbs to on our fire escape. Considering our plants are still alive from November, and that we have managed to keep ourselves healthy for this same sustained period of time, Sara felt that it was time to try our hands at raising a fish.

Our apartment building does allow pets. Daily we see our painfully apathetic neighbor take her Pomeranian out for a wee. Without fail she is dressed in a ratty t-shirt and gigantic sweat pants, walking down the street with her enthusiastic pup bounding ten feet after her, eagerly sniffing at anything and everything. She occasionally stops to let the dog catch up with her, then she continues on her slow ramble for the dog to be distracted by the next leaf blowing in the wind. Her indifference to her pet is only paralleled by that one time in Chicago where I saw a mother pulling her baby carriage with the baby in it behind her. We always look after her in astonishment, thinking what better pet owners we would be if we only had one to love and to cherish. If it were a dog, we would be carrying that pet around, putting it down only when it wanted to go to the bathroom, promptly picking it back up again so that its precious little feet would not be sullied by the city’s grime and grit.

We went over to the local pet store, Petland, our hearts in our throats, faces flushed. “Would this be the day?” we thought to ourselves, “when we could bring another life into the apartment?” We walked around the store, looking at this fish and that, examining them for spots of color, strength of teeth, speed, and flipper size. Since we decided we did not want a tank and that we wanted to stick with a plain old bowl, that basically brought it down to one kind of fish: a beta.

I enjoy looking at betas, but they remind me of cats: you can’t really ever tell if they are sweet and loving, or if they are going to jump out at you and bite your head off. We asked an employee to direct us to the betas, and he looked at us dubiously.

“You just want a fish bowl?” he asked, and didn’t believe us when we said yes, we just want a bowl, we don’t want the whole nine yards and take the tank. I’ve seen what it’s like to have a fish tank, and I want no part of it, not while I am still in my 20s, anyway. You have to sit there and scrub the side with a toothbrush, clean the gravel, transfer the fish, worry about losing one of them when you’re draining the water, and so on and so forth.

The employee led us over to a shelf of the saddest looking beta fish I have ever seen, each quarantined in a separate bowl, and demanded we take a good look. Had we ever seen fish this sad? Had we? No, we said, and he declared the reason for this was because they were alone in the world and were not in a tank with other fish swimming happily. We argued we would be getting it a bigger bowl, colorful gravel, a fake treasure chest, MAYBE EVEN FAKE SEAWEED. The salesman, however, argued that the fish would still remain miserable, and that we should not buy the beta fish.

Needless to say, we left Petland empty handed.

What I’m wondering is how on earth did this happen. The salesman was ostensibly there to SELL us the fish, and he actually talked us out of owning a beta fish. Everyone has owned a beta fish at one point in their lives, especially in 3^rd grade I think. And I think everyone was jealous if someone had a prettier beta fish than them. Now that I think of it, I think that still applies today. I imagine if I had a beta fish, I would constantly be comparing it to other beta fish, because really, what else does the fish have to offer besides looks? Affection? Wisdom? Speed? No, I would still be comparing my beta fish to others, worried mine was somehow less colorful or spectacular looking.

So here we remain, Sara, Mary Kate, and I, fishless but definitely not friendless. And I also now know the most dedicated fish salesman in the world.

The Magical and Mysterious

2009-04-23T17:29:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure if you know this, but I am a big fan of mysteries. By the end of 3^rd grade I had read 49 of the 50 Nancy Drew books (incidentally, I never read the last one, The Mystery of the 13^th Pearl), after which I graduated to the local suburban library to bust through all the Agatha Christie books my greedy little hands could get on. I’m ashamed to say my taste in literature hasn’t developed a whole lot further than this. From where I’m sitting on the couch right now, I can see dozens of classics on the shelves my roommates have brought from home to New York, Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, Don Quixote, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons, The Everlasting Man, well-edified and refined friends they turn to when they desire some intellectual stimulation and high-brow conversation. They virtually spill out of the bookcase demanding attention and praise. I can also see from the couch my half-shelf of my own classics: The Historian, A Perfect Spy, Dirk Gently’s Hollistic Detective Agency. This is not to say that I do not enjoy good literature. In fact, I am a big fan. But when push comes to shove, when I really want to cheer up or to just let my brain stop for a second and run wild, I will most likely grab a tried and true mystery book.

Luckily enough for me, I can be entertained with mysterious things no matter where I go here. For instance, it remains one of the deepest mysteries to me why our trash room in our apartment building does not smell like trash. Every other part in our building has guaranteed smelled like garbage at least once, but the trash room, never. Our foyer regularly reeks of dog slobber, our elevator of rotten take out, BUT WHY DOESN’T THE TRASH ROOM SMELL LIKE THE PUTRID GARBAGE IN IT?!

A few weeks ago I got a membership at the local video store one block away from here. This move was prompted mostly by my unfortunate experiences with the bigger video rental chains instigating my distrust of organized video rentals stores, beginning in high school when my sister and I locked the keys in the running car in front of Hollywood Video at 11:30 at night, and stayed there while our car ran out of batteries. This new place is aptly called Video Café because they have both videos and they also allegedly serve coffee. They also have the largest collection of Hell’s Kitchen paraphernalia I have seen in the area. You can buy hats, t-shirts, sweatshirts, visors that all have Hell’s Kitchen emblazoned upon them.

This video store has the largest collection of VHSs I have seen since the 90s. I have no idea if anyone rents them anymore. I have never checked any of them out, and I have never seen anyone else check them out. Whatever time of day you walk in there, some sort of techno or hip hop song is playing as loud as the cheap speakers will go, and it is completely empty. My roommates and I are convinced that if you actually did ask for coffee, you’d be taken into the back room to be shown the latest delivery of coke they got in that day.

Over the store’s awning there is a marquee-type display that proudly announces the latest movies that might possibly be in stock for the intrepid customer. Movies that I never once saw lining their shelves. For instance, one Friday night when my roommates and I felt like watching a movie we could make fun of and that would provide us with a store of ludicrous characters and quotes we could reenact for each other when we got tired of reciting poetry to each other Saturday nights, I went in search of Elegy. You probably never heard of it. It has Penelope Cruz in it, and I watched the trailer for it about 3,235 times solely because there was a catchy tune in it for about 15 seconds. The store owner announced that someone JUST rented that movie seconds before I walked in, and it was out for the following 3 weeks. I might add that it was a new release, and new release rentals are 2 days. And the movie is so phenomenally bad that NO ONE would have wanted to watch it in all of New York. If you’ve seen Autumn in New York with Richard Gere and Winona Rider, you’ve seen this movie.

A member’s account is also appropriately their phone number. So when I am renting a movie, inevitably the city’s freaks materialize out of no where and I imagine they are there flipping through the dog-eared movie encyclopedia feigning interest only because they want to memorize my phone number. Have I become too self-involved and paranoid? I don’t think so. As I said in the beginning, I just like mysteries. So the next time I get a phone call at 4 AM on a Wednesday night and I hear a raspy voice saying something like “You’ve got to come to 145 and Amsterdam right now, they’re waiting for you.” I’ll just know it was the guy with the patch over his eye and the missing ear who was standing behind me in line at the Video Café and that I should bring the latest DVD I rented in exchange for…well, I guess I’d have to find out.

It was very warm yesterday

2009-02-09T22:09:00.002-06:00

I recently joined a gym here, finally. The red lights might be going off in your head right now saying "New! Year! Resolution!" right now, but no. This has been on the agenda for a while now, only there was always something better to do than to go subject myself to a gym representative for a solid hour who would drag me through one miserable facility or the next and talk to me like he's trying to sell me a 1988 Taurus station wagon rather than a gym membership.

Anyway, I am now the esteemed member of the Manhattan Sports and Health Club. No, not the New York Sports Clubs. That place is even more frightening than a Manhattan Whole Foods on a Sunday afternoon. It's always crowded to the point where I begin to fear for the buildings' safety: I doubt a lot of these New York buildings were built to stand up to the constant galloping of Wall Street consultants and ambitious interns who go to these clubs to get the day out of their system with a good 10 miles/minute jog.

This place, since it doesn't take from the main pool of gym goers, I think is left with mostly the stranger demographic of people who frequent gyms. Not strange as in what I was used to when I was still going to school, this is a different sort of crazy. In Chicago, it was a normal sight to see girls with long, stringy hair hit the treadmill in long flowy skirts and with bare feet, guys with thick glasses slipping down their sweaty noses while using the elliptical reciting Greek verbs aloud and making sure their feet reached the bottom of the stride right on the downbeat of the classical music piece they were listening to. We were just a bunch of nerdy students who, after a full day curled up in uncomfortable positions in the library to stay awake while reading our Derrida and Smith, needed to get the blood circulating through our bodies once again.

The other night when I went to the gym here, there was a young Broadway hopeful with the score to a show open in front of her, singing the tune while simultaneously using the elliptical. I have seen a man in a button up shirt and dress slack hit the treadmill. And tonight in a class, while an older woman twisted her legs behind her head to get a deep stretch, the older man sitting in front of her started talking about how she has to go to a certain psychologist because of some great connection she has with DNA.

The people at this gym also come in all different shapes and ages. At school, the overwhelming majority of the people were thin, malnourished, weak students. Here, the age group of gym goers ranges from 20-95, scarily thin to gigantic, sculpted like a body builder to wiggly like a bowl of pudding. Which brings me to the belly dancing teacher. The first time I went to the class, I asked someone else there who the teacher was. Without my glasses, a third grade boy jump roping at the front of the class could can easily pass for a belly dancing teacher. The other student said I'd know when I saw her, she was hard to miss. Just as she said this, a formidable Russian woman came busting into the room with her gigantic chests squeezed into a sports bra and her bottom half jiggling like it had its own mind in a pair of baggy gaucho pants. The student was right: it was really hard to miss her.

And you might wonder why, just as why I'm taking French, why I would be attending a belly dancing class. I'm not a creature of grace, the closest I come to being graceful is threading a sewing needle, nor am I incredibly coy and seductive. At least not in belly dancing. It's a different story when I'm peeling an orange. It's mostly because why not? and because I live with 2 girls who complain about not being able to fit into size 0s anymore at stores, and because I haven't been able to laugh at myself at no one's expense for a long time. It's been "Ahhhh, you mean the final is in an hour and NOT 3 days from now?" and "OH! I was supposed to write that addendum a month ago and not today?" for a while now, and just every time I screwed up, there was always a consequence. Here, I can suck at shimmying across the room with absolutely no adverse consequences aside from making a fool of myself, and it looks every so much more interesting when I do it because you never know what part will unpredictably jiggle next. This might be the only place where it's acceptable to have a little extra. So perhaps I am one of the crazy people who goes to the gym here now, on second thought. The biggest exercise I do is not only to run 5 miles on the treadmill, but to just be able to laugh healthily at myself when I make a mistake that doesn't matter.

All around goodness

2009-02-05T07:14:00.001-06:00

I very recently started taking a French class. You might be wondering why I'd do this at all, considering what a hard time I had with speaking, nay, life in general when I was taking Spanish and Italian class. Do you know what it's like carrying around two "pocket sized" dictionaries the size and weight of bricks every day? It's really terrible. Malo. Cattivo. What would be worse, though, would be not being able to express just how terrible life is in 4 different language. Or asking where the bathroom is when you really really have to go in any country where these languages are spoken.

From my short time getting acquainted with French, I can already tell we're not going to be good friends. On speaking terms, if you will. You see, with Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, what they all have in common is that the speaker rolls his R's. In fact, I sometimes maintain that the only reason I passed Spanish and Italian was because if all else failed, I could sit there and roll my R through class, thereby tricking the teacher into believing that why yes, I AM a pro at the past subjunctive! I could also roll every r that showed up in a word for 3 minutes at a time if they liked, demonstrating to everyone how to do so.

In French, though, I can't even pronounce my name correctly. Whereas in the past I could purr my name, "Adrianna" starting out as a soft aria crescendoe-ing after the "r" into a loud fortissimo, leaving no doubt in the listeners mind that the speakers name IS Adrianna, and it DOES have at least one r somewhere in there, in French it sounds like I'm trying to hack something out of my throat when I try to pronounce my name the "right" way. And all the letters you don't even bother pronouncing! Where I come from every letter is enunciated, even if not clearly, usually not giving preference to a b over an f, the speaker realizing that every letter there is for a reason, and should be pronounced. (Okay, maybe in English this isn't supposed to be the case. I do bother saying "-ing"s for instance. Yes, when I say "ganging" you can here EVERY g) In French, I think half of the alphabet figures in every word, and you pronounce about 2 of the letters. And I stink at this. Every letter has a job and damnit, they are going to do it even if the word ends up being slaughtered by the time I reach the end of it!

The class is an assorted group of young, old, tolerable, intolerable people. But coming together in one room like this asking each other politely what nationality they are and where they are from really pulls everyone together. As I have experienced in the past, even if I suck at this French thing, I am looking forward to the class ditz and the old ladies role play as Cristophe and Florence at the bus stop who meet up with their old friend Brigitte on her way to the Louvre, struggling through expressions like "tres bien" and "je mapelle." And there is nothing more entertaining than talking about relationships and all the frommage you like in languages you haven't mastered yet. You know, I don't even know if I spelled any of those French words correctly right there.

So in closing, I think a lot of the world's problems would be solved if major political leaders just sat together and took a foreign language class. Maybe they wouldn't solve any problems, maybe they'd still hate each other at the end, but during the class they would both be humbled at one point, and recognize that one or the other can order a coffee or ask the butcher for 3 pounds of meat like a FIEND. And they would be forced to ask each other what they did that weekend.v

Ring out the old year, ring in the new. Ring a ding ding.

2009-01-02T23:26:00.023-06:00

December

June

April

March

January

February

September

July

November

August

October

November

I'm sure you wish those were in order.

I've deliberated about what sort of an entry I should write. The normal one describing how I never make New Year's resolutions? One reviewing the sort of year I had? One talking about how happy I am December is over?

Given my current mood is to not write a cohesive entry at all, I don't think so.

When I was coming back from California to New York December 27, I got to the airport anticipating my plane would be delayed. And it was. I had already come to terms with the fact that every airline is informed in advance that I am going to be on the flight and then just delay departure by 4 hours, this time because the wind was whistling through a door, and instead of arriving at 1 am in New York, we would be landing at 4:30 AM.

Since I had already come to terms with this and am pretty complacent about the whole spending the night at the airport thing, I decided to get to know the traveling companion sitting next to me. I have a huge penchant for talking to people at airports. It is the easiest thing in the world: chances are slim to none that you will ever see the person again, and you don't even need to introduce yourself. When I was stuck at an airport for 5 hours once in Canada, I ended up having dinner with a man who was deliberating what to do with the girlfriend he was living with who wanted to get married, but who he thought was too old for him. My eloquent advice for him was to shit or get off the pot. And no, I don't think being surrounded by people who don't speak the same language as me would stop me.

Anyhow, given the sort of year I had and the sort of month I had ended it with, I found myself being on the receiving end for advice and a friendly ear. For four hours we analyzed what happened over the course of the year you see depicted above, which admittedly excludes extremely important events. The prognosis for all of this was that I'm going to be fine. That who knows what is going to happen this year, but that I'm tired of starting everything off expecting the worst. Does that sound like a New Year's resolution? Maybe.

And no, I don't know where May went. Evidently, that was spent in a happy post thesis stupor without a camera.

Talk that talk

2008-12-14T21:59:00.003-06:00

In recent years, I wouldn't have considered describing myself as a gullible sort of person. Growing up in suburbia did away with pretty much any sort of tendency I may have had to naively believe in anything that came my way. At this point you might be saying that if anything, that sort of setting should have made me more likely to accept anything without question, that under those circumstances if someone came up to me and told me there was nothing better in the world than the Santa Clarita Valley, I would have been brainwashed enough to believe this, but no, four years in high school and shopping at the local mall with a Charlotte Russe store in there showed me otherwise. Because it seemed impossible to believe that anyone would subject themselves to these things and still remain sane in the world, so I went through these formative years refusing to believe that these were the only things I had to look forward to in the world: peaking in high school and wearing a dress from Windsor Fashion to prom.

Then college was that time when, you know, the eye-opening education you're receiving is either supposed to shake your beliefs to their very core, or strengthen them, and then you emerge from this experience An Adult ready to face The World with a renewed Sense of Self and a self-assuredness in your step that wasn't there before, and a great interest in non-fiction books, e.e. cummings, and great French novels.

So ostensibly this is the state I find myself in now. A recent college graduate ready to tackle the world and show it who's boss. Which is why I'm so confused as to why I find myself accidentally believing things I really shouldn't be thinking twice about. Such as mistaking The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova for a piece of literary non-fiction writing.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with this book, but let me tell you what it's about: Dracula. And the point of the book is to let you know that Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, who died sometime in the 15th century, is still alive today. The author starts out the 909 page book describing research she did in the subject, which I mistook to mean that everything she is writing is non-fiction. After all, research = fact, right? So even after I read the following passage:

"The man had vanished; he had seen me see him. His face, between the awkward beard and new cap, had been indisputably a face from my university at home. I'd last looked at it just before it was covered by a sheet. It was the face of the dead library."

Even after I read that, that description of how the narrator saw a recently dead man walking around alive and well a few pages later, EVEN THEN, I just sat there nodding my head vigorously saying to myself "Yes! Completely likely! This man didn't actually die! He is still alive! I thought I saw someone like Thomas Jefferson walking down the street today, now I know how likely it is that he's still around!"

So it came as a big blow to learn that this piece of literature isn't actually non-fiction. It is about as fictional as Santa Claus and Charlotte's Web. Although the way things are going now, I get the feeling that this year is the year I will start believing in Santa Claus. I didn't when I was two, but now seems to be the time to start putting cookies out for him December 24th. So now I am left with reading 300 more pages of this book, and I am angry. I am angry because ever since learning this book is non-fiction, its writing has become significantly cheesier, and I have less patience than ever with the narrator's adventures waltzing through the south of France and Istanbul looking for a blood-sucking demon. And even though Hungary figures largely in the setting, the romanticized description of the people and the food nearly bring me to tears.

I am hell-bent on finishing this book now. I have dedicated too much time and effort to it. What I am left wondering, though, is HOW I could believe this was a piece of non-fiction writing. Has the ice-skating rink music I am subjected to every hour I am at work finally taking its toll? Does Sheryl Crow, Maroon 5, and Celine Dion on loop have this sort of effect on everyone, not just me? Because then I find this to be particularly disturbing. The museum would then be run by a group of people who would be looking for living dinosaurs in Central Park to put into cages, and would dedicate all their scientists to look for the Loch Ness monster.

Or is this recent character flaw simply a product of living in a city where I see insane things every day? A necessary lesson I have to learn to remember to keep my guard up at all times? This and other recent unfortunate events have taught me that perhaps it is best to be as skeptical about everyone and everything as I was in high school. The moral of the story is: be wary! Even if there are no vampires around to attack you.

Made in Vietnam

2008-12-01T21:59:00.002-06:00

There are some days where I'd like to think I can rely sheerly on my instincts to get around. There are those days, in fact. Days where I can stumble across Broadway and 47th without opening my bleary eyes, clutching my cup of coffee as taxis zoom by and horse carriages graze the tip of my nose, days where I can just make a run for the empty C subway track, trusting my gut that by the time I reach the edge of the platform, a train will have pulled up to the edge, the doors will have opened, and an empty seat will be waiting for me to occupy. Today was really not one of those days.

I got back from work today with a package awaiting me in the middle of our living room. The middle of the living room is still a wide expanse of nothing, with a couch and a table meekly lining the edge of the space, waiting for something to pull them together. So this package looked like something special, which, in fact, it was. It was the brand new coat tree I had ordered on amazon. This product was meant to be the missing link, THE household item that would scream "YOU'RE HOME" as soon as you walked in to the apartment. Nevermind that we have no microwave or toaster, that just a few weeks ago we were using the air mattress inflator to blow dry our hair, this furniture was going to pull the assorted collection of items in our apartment together to make it a cohesive whole. So I tackled the task of putting together this coat tree with gusto, relying on, what else, but my gut to put together the 5 pieces of coat rack.

I have put together Ikea furniture before without too much grief. Okay, I take that back. Now that I think of it, I think I remember infinitely preferring sticking the wooden pegs holding my bed together into my eyeballs than actually trying to put them in the designated holes, but the long and short of this is that I am now the proud owner of The World's Crookedest Coat Tree. Yes, I managed to foible on the most idiot-proof coat tree in the world. It even came with instructions, which I gave nary a glance to until it was too late. I wish I had my camera here to show you how crooked it is, using my perfect posture as a reference. Only now, I suspect that what with the weight of the world and day, and just of utter defeat, on my shoulders, I would appear just as slumped and tired looking as my brand new coat rack.

However, I am not giving up on this thing. I'm welcoming the new coat rack into this apartment as if it were my own flesh and blood, and I'm going to shower it with so many coats you won't even be able to tell it's crooked.

Today was a long day.

I need to go to Duane Reade

2008-10-07T22:05:00.002-05:00

I am no stranger to late night trips over to friends' homes or to big shopping centers where I can get everything from wrenches to cereal in one trip. In fact, I just waltzed home from Duane Reade right now at 11:32 PM because I realized I was on the dregs of my Listerine. My sporadic sort of life style lends itself well to the tendency of New York City stores staying open late. Living here means that I will always be able to buy those mystery packets of woman health pills that are the size of sardines and fig newtons whenever I feel like it. And I won't even need to get into the car.

So Saturday night, after deciding to make brownies at 10:30 at night, dragging ourselves all the way over to the corner convenience store 50 feet away, then all the way back, Mary Kate, Sara J., and I realized we only had one solitary egg. The recipe called for two. My tendency with these box pastries is to just call it a day and use one egg. If I would have had no oil, I most likely would have forged ahead anyway. Those box pastries were designed for pastry chefs with the absolutely lowest level of concentration and talent. I'm pretty sure I have made those funfetti cakes before without adding the water. However, this is one of the few instances in life I can think of where quality does not suffer despite the ease and low price of the ingredients. I have watched with horrified eyes before as Sara Lee fudgie brownies stuck into the oven at 500 degrees for about 2 minutes with goo still oozing out the middle have disappeared far before people even noticed the little chocolate cranberry biscotti I labored over for 6 solid hours the night before, fretting that the walnuts weren't chopped just right and that maybe the shape of that one cookie really was a little bit unseemly.

Since Mary Kate and Sara J. are a little boring and huge squares, however, one egg would not do. Nor would one egg with a substitution of a few tomatoes suffice. All they would take would be two eggs or none at all, we might as well could use the brownie mix to make chocolate milk. So around 11:30 at night, we decided there was no better time to get to know our neighbors than the present.

We have seen our neighbors in the elevators mostly. One time I was riding down in the elevator, and older man pointed out it was a good day that day because we were alive. He set the standard pretty low for ourselves, and the rest of the building seems to be following suit. In addition to the people who always seem to be wearing suits, who are mostly seen in passing storming through the front door, our apartment building is also home to people who look like they only decided to leave their apartments because they ran out of deodorant five months ago and they still really don't feel like taking a shower. They are the people I have branded the untouchables, the women dragging themselves around different hallways with the stringy hair, without a bra, wilted lettuce hanging out between their teeth and old tissues stuck into their armpits for later use, telling us they have bed bugs and that we're only a prayer away from having them ourselves. We're not entirely sure how they afford rent, but here they are and probably here they are to stay.

At about 11:30:57 PM, after Mary Kate and Sara J. had knocked on the door 3 seconds before, they came scampering back in to our own apartment. After the initial realization that actually it was sort of late (not too late to go to Duane Reade, but maybe too late to knock on a stranger's door), we also realized that the chance the neighbor could have been one of the bad seeds was larger than the chance it was a well-groomed young business man.

The long and short of this is that we have yet to meet our neighbors. And that it's still a good thing that the stores never close, because then we still had to go get eggs.

Apple Muffins

2008-09-28T22:45:00.000-05:00

I know I said I would write stories to accompany Natural History Museum dioramas. I know maybe this would have provided you with more entertaining reading than everyday details. I understand. After all, where else would you get to learn about the African grasslands people? Or about Armenian wedding ceremonies?

However, a more important issue has come up recently. That of grocery stores. This summer I read The United States of Arugula, a book about the development of restaurants in the US that led me to believe that New York would have gourmet food on every corner. All those convenience stores, located side by side, would be bursting at the seams with exotic vegetables, fruits, spices, and lots and lots of nutty, thick breads with crunch crusts. However, I got here and the grocery stores seemed to me to be like deserts. Here and there a few straggly tomatoes dotted the horizon, some overpriced cereal boxes shading their yellowed leaves, and bad spaghetti packets standing at attention.

On Saturday, Mary Kate, Jennie, and I went to an art show at Red Hook. The kind where you stand around and look pretentious. But if that's what it takes to get around the city, so be it. It's a small price to pay. After about an hour, however, although we had filled our souls with beautiful art, we still found ourselves desirous of more substantial fare than weird installation art and lots of watercolor panels with one syllable titles.

Jennie, Mary Kate, and I wandered across the street where we had seen large signs advertising a market. We delightedly examined the fruits and vegetables we found outside, deciding this was strictly a vegetable sort of place. We went inside the first room, where we continued to stroke and caress the ever-expanding selection of fruits and vegetables we encountered. (Yes, going to the grocery store is a very sensual experience for me). Then we rounded a corner, and lo and behold, paradise opened up before our eyes. It was Trader Joes on steroids. I have never seen such a selection of good food, far better than Costco or Whole Foods or any of those stores that call themselves superstores or whatever. I don't even properly remember their names anymore. This store put them all to shame. Such cheeses! Such huge sides of beef! Such preserves!

We left Brooklyn completely overwhelmed, which probably doesn't happen too often among real New Yorkers. I can see how one would be overwhelmed leaving Manhattan. The colors of this island no longer seem so bright, nor as beckoning. I left my heart in Brooklyn, in the olive oil aisle of that warehouse of a grocery store.

I'm Hungry!

2008-09-06T16:32:00.003-05:00

In every place I've worked before this, bugs have always been a BIG DEAL. The ants, the long ones that crawl in peoples' ears at night, the small ones that sort of just meander from dark corner to dark corner, if anyone ever saw one of those, it was akin to the apocalypse. Exterminators were called in, food was eradicated, every single crumb on the ground was lasered into nothingness, and no one could eat for 5 hours before entering the workplace. One of the most noticeable differences I've experienced this week at my new job is that there are bugs. There are also tons of plants littering every nook and cranny, and then when I walk up the stairs to the 4th floor, I am greeted by a sky-blue colored sheep, and a small model of a humpback whale in a forest of greenery.

Wednesday, after arriving in to Islip late at night and after a full day of spiriting over boxes to Fedex to have them shipped out Tuesday night, I started my job at the American Museum of Natural History. While I can't securely pass judgment yet about every aspect of my job, I do love where I work. Since it was my first week at work, I could spend quite a bit of time wandering through the museum and the different displays.

My favorite African mammal: the bongo.

And my least favorite part about the museum: all the cultural displays with the different ethnicity mannequins. They all look so sad. And unattractive. And so infernally bored with their surroundings that I would sit in front of the cases and just wonder "What did you DO in your past life for someone to design you so miserable and bored? So completely disconnected from your fishing/wedding/bread breaking?"

And so, what the readers can look forward to each week, I hope, is a different display case with my narration accompanying it.

I am really, really hungry now. I'm going to go look for a bite to eat.

Filling in gaps

2008-09-01T01:06:00.001-05:00

After the most harrowing experience I've had in a while, far worse than that time I was going to New Orleans and barely made it, almost as bad as that night when I had to write a 20 page paper in 12 hours and then do my hieroglyphs midterm, my friend Sara and I found an apartment in Hell's Kitchen. I never imagined I would live in a place called this, I always figured I'd end up there after I died, the maître pâtissier in a huge kitchen where lava bubbles underfoot and the faucets spew fire, barking orders at my lizard and dragon helpers, making sure the slugs are massaging the dough well enough and the rats are grinding the walnuts fine enough. Instead, here I am right out of college, starting life in Hell's Kitchen in a city I never though I'd ever inhabit.

In a fitting turn of events, I rediscovered my livejournal in the recent past. The one I kept in high school. The one where I started every blessed entry with something self-derogatory or negative. Behold:

05 April 2004 12:33 AM: this entry is very watery.
21 Mar 2004 09:10 PM: Look! Something more boring than reading my livejournal! (I proceed to provide the reader with pictures)
22 Feb 2004 12:02 AM: hello, one (or all). The week was remarkably unremarkable.

11 Jan 2004 09:50AM: I hate sunday mornings.

There is plenty more where that came from, not only restricted to the opening of every entry. In fact, at one point in my chronicling, I seem to realize that all I ever do is complain, decide I should fix that, and then go right back on complaining. It's like watching an accident happen. I cannot imagine how I did not get bored of wallowing in self-pity and low self-confidence. On an up note, though, even though my mother might not agree with me, she really could have done worse with a teenage daughter. If she was ever wondering where I was on a Friday or Saturday night, without fail I could have been found in Barnes and Noble, apparently. Or playing board games with the neighbors.

Oh, or updating livejournal.

I would be embarrassed if I didn't know that all that angst is just a natural part of growing up, evidently. I was tame compared to scores of other soul-searching entries written by kids the same age as I was, and I am happy that I can read at this and laugh now. Sometimes I worried that coming to college didn't change me an awful lot, that I still predominantly recognized the 15 year old me more often than some sort of a young lady who graduated college with a degree having read Adam Smith and Derrida. However, luckily, this is not the case. I no longer think I am the most awkward or unaccomplished person in the world, and no matter how many doubts I may have about what my skills are, I know I can learn what I do not know just as well as anyone else.

I'm sure if I ever come back to this entry in 5 years, I'll laugh. I'll most likely think that at this point in my life I thought I knew something, and that I did not know what was in store for me. That I never saw what was coming next. This is true, I don't know what's coming next at all, but I just want to write to my 28 year old self that at this point in my life, at 1:03 AM, September 1st, 2008, I am happy with something I have accomplished.

She also needs to know that she should do a better job packing next time around.

Anyone want some roommates?

2008-08-13T17:31:00.002-05:00

This past weekend I went to New York. A few weeks before that, I went to Costco. The two experiences were remarkably similar. When I walked into Costco, my initial reaction was "WhoooaaaAAaa JESUS CHRIST." It was very big, I was very small, there were a million things demanding to be held, eaten, shaken, smelled, bounced, thrown. It was a sensory overload. And I walked through the aisles, wondering WHY I would want a lifetime supply of Caprisuns or eggs. Or egg beaters. Until, of course, I found the GIGANTIC boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats and Nature Valley cereal bars, and suddenly it all made sense. YES, I NEED these large boxes big enough to move into filled to the brim with delicious cereal! Life is good now that I have these big boxes of food!

Going to New York was kind like this. Upon getting on the bus I noticed fat on ladies jiggles in a different way than in Chicago: in Chicago, my experience has been that I nearly bite my tongue off my chest bounces so dangerously close to my chin, whereas in New York I felt like my love handles were really anxious to jiggle. ANYHOW, I get to the city and everything is big, there are a million people, and I am very, very, very small. Chicago is a big city as well, but I feel like it's divided up into neighborhoods designed to still make you feel like you're in just that: a neighborhood. New York didn't really seem to try to hide the fact that it's a big city with millions of people, and that there is always something going on and if you're not doing them all at once then you're not worthy of living there. Chicago's more accepting like that.

The first evening I got there I set out to meet my friend in Battery Park. I don't know who's been to Battery Park, but it was the most confusing place ever. The streets just seem to change names on a whim, West Ave. or whatever it was just feels like changing to Prince St. or something, so it does. And getting to a guide book wasn't as easy as just walking into a Barnes and Noble, since I couldn't find the entrance to the store after 10 minutes of dedicated scanning and wandering.

Armed with a guide book and a water bottle, I started walking around the park to the HUGE office building my friend works in, and noticed that well, fine, everything DID look nice with the sun going down and all the people walking home in the suits and the rest of them just hanging out in restaurants very conspicuously checking out the few ladies in skirts there and oh look, there are all those people walking around the park and jogging with their dogs, and then ah! there's the Statue of Liberty and FINE this is actually kind of nice, and maybe I like it.

So, well, maybe it was just because I had been walking around for such a long time that I was delirious, or something did genuinely click with me, even if it was for just a second, but I thought I could like a few things about New York. I had a feeling I could find my humongous logs of discounted mozzarella cheese and Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, if you will. And so, I am moving there. By September 2nd, which is in around 2 seconds, so even though I want to, I don't have much time to flip out.

I do not think New York is the be all, end all of all cities. I do think it will be an interesting experiment. I'll let you know how it goes.

I just finished making a pie crust

2008-07-12T00:22:00.002-05:00

Three people in the past day have asked why I don't update this anymore. And what better time to answer their question than the present?

The answer is simple: I suppose I haven't felt like it.

I graduated. At the time, this in and of itself may have generated a long, windy entry about what I learned at college, a misty-eyed entry about ending a chapter of life and beginning another. Which all might be very true, but with graduation about, oh, exactly a month ago, I guess I gained a tiny bit of perspective.

That ceremony was not for me, as is the case with most big to-dos, I feel. It was for everyone who didn't get to be a part of my four year college career, and I don't like this because what I went through was not all about graduating. Yes, it was nice to end something formally and with capes that will later come in handy when I decide to make a fashion statement and wear it to a job I don't have yet, but overall, it did not bring me enlightenment, direction, A Purpose. Not that I was expecting it to, and yes, I KNOW that everyone is disappointed with their graduation. I'm perfectly content with mine. I was not expecting bells and whistles, and I did not get them. It ended with a pat on the back, a dinner at Potbelly's, and a stern lecture from The Mother about not having lived up to my potential. Which is always uplifting.

I went to DC last week to visit a friend. My flight back to Chicago was delayed a day (what I surprise), so the end of the day found me back in Lacey's twin size bed, the both of us holding on to the square inch of blanket and mattress we had by the skins of our teeth, which is oddly like the way I feel right now in life.

When it rains it pours

2008-06-01T22:27:00.002-05:00

In the past week, I have been entirely soaked with my clothes on 3 times. Let me count the ways how.

Sunday: After a jog in the middle of the day, it was decided that really, it was entirely too hot to exist in this world. And so with a hop, skip, and a jump, I was in the icy depths of Lake Michigan. Then to dry off, it was necessary to stand on the sandy beach with the hot wind whipping the trash and sand onto me. That part was barely pleasant.

Monday: You know how in My Fair Lady there is a big horse race? With a lot of women in big hats and men in tails? I went to a horse race in Arlington. Without a large hat, but with big dreams of winning lots of money betting instead to go toward a speeding ticket that had recently been acquired by a friend. After betting $10 that Moment of Repent, 9-5, would win 1st place and instead placing second, my hopes of dropping out of college 3 weeks before school was out to become a full time, professional horse better and wiling away the hours at off-track betting stations in knock-off Chanel or Very Tight Jeans were soon dashed and I comforted myself with the fact that while I might not belong at a horse track, at least I would never fit in with a group of people I hope I never fit with.

After the horse races, we all jumped into the lake once again. Apropos of nothing.

Friday: Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing got rained upon. I helped put away chairs while it was raining buckets.

And this is what it's been like recently. Trying to fit things of college into the last bit before I leave it. All of a sudden all the fun things are coming at once and I wish that it had been like this before.

Long Time Gone

2008-05-07T20:12:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago it was Earth Day. Or Earth Week. Because days have a habit of turning into weeks in some cases, except for when you really want it to. Like Halloween. Why can't Halloween be a week?

During Earth Week, greening everything was everywhere. There were seminars on how to green apartments, offices, attics, pots, pans, socks, and shoes. There were seminars on how to green anything in the world. And the one I went to was how to grow your own herbs.

Before I entered the seminar, I knew it was a bad idea. There is a small, but strong part of me that wonders every time I buy prepared food if it would have been better if I would have made it, if I could really just sew that skirt, or if I could really make my own spaghetti sauce with tomatoes I grew myself. It is the part of me that I'm scared will one day show up to some corporate firm wearing an apron and wiping her floured hands all over herself.

(Why I would be in a high rise office is beyond me, but there we are)

So I went to this herb workshop with my boss, and upon entering was greeted with the fresh smell of plants of all sorts. Edible ones, ones that sang, ones that would make a turkey dinner and serve it up to 25 guests. It was a veritable rainforest in the classroom, and we were allowed to take the sprig of one plant to start our own garden.

Since I hemmed and hawed about it far too long, and didn't get first choice, I ended up with Cuban oregano. Which I had no idea what to use for, but it is a start. The most beautiful Cuban oregano plant was mine, and I left the seminar glowing. And the glow lasted until I went back to work, where I was told that my oregano plant looked a little...frail. This is because they are not visionaries like I am. I see in the future a place where I will spin my own clothes from the wool of the sheep I have out in the back, where I will milk my own cows and bake everything in the world. And then my Cuban oregano plant will look like this:

2008-04-17T19:55:00.002-05:00

When I was home for winter break, I mentioned here that I saw a car bedecked with "I just got into the University of Chicago!" written all over it. While it was a little bit sad to see that I would no longer be the only Santa Clarita native here at this school (I suppose I am a little bit exclusive), I left a note on the car and restrained myself from writing "You'll be mighty sorry."

In any case, I met up with this girl last week when she was here for prospie day. This is a day all the Ras, RHs, tour guide leaders, and all manner of University-affiliated fanatics dream about throughout the year: the day they get to influence someone's decision to attend this school, whether it be to confirm that they are indeed fit material for this school, or whether it is to make them feel like an outsider.

(Getting in off the wait-list here, I never got the chance to prospie. Which I wouldn't have done anyhow. Adventure is my middle name.)

I remember first year we got stuck with some prospies. I say stuck because the RAs on each floor had to make the rounds begging students to house these prospective people for a night. I remember that the two girls we had were blond, and that's it. I have no idea if they came to this school, if they were tall or short, had big or small ears, or if they had little button noses. They came and they left, life went on, we never hosted prospective students again.

Perhaps to assuage some latent guilt I felt about not being more hands on with these blond girls, I went out to eat with this young lady and two other prospective students she had with her. And as I sat across the table from them eating my grilled portabella mushrooms with them munching on some garlic bread, I decided that I, Adrianna Klara Gyorfi, would try to impart some invaluable insight to these young people ready to set out on their own, something that would begin an informative and critical part of their life. And when I announced this to them, and they turned their bright eyes upon me, eager to soak up each piece of wisdom I was willing to impart (at least, I'd like to think they were looking at me because they were interested. Not because the portabella mushroom was stuck to my nose), the only thing that came to my mind was that there was only 5 mere years separating me from these three people across the table from me, but man. Are those 5 years ever critical.

And I had no idea what to say. Not that I would say anything, I guess, now that I think about it. It was fun coming here without prospie-ing, without knowing what to expect. That was just my style, I suppose I'll let the prospies develop their own.

(I almost went on an end of college reflection post, but not yet. Not today.)

A Nagging Thought

2008-04-01T19:50:00.002-05:00

I was always in denial about being reluctant to accepting change. In fact, I think I went out of my way to assert to people how open I was to change: on several occasions I said that instead of ordering a salad, I would take their recommendation and get the soup, and I was a vegetarian for AN ENTIRE MONTH, everyone. If those are not examples of someone who embraces change, then I don't know what is.

However, I always knew in the back of my mind that the whole thing was an act. A farce. There were examples abundant successfully stripping me of my facade: my unwillingness to wash certain articles of clothing, to change my glasses, to get a cell phone with a camera, or to pick out the three day old piece of apple wedged in between my back molars, for instance. A recent trip to the grocery store solidified the ugly truth.

Our over-priced grocery store, the Coop, was recently replaced with another overpriced grocery store: Treasure Island. I have no shame in admitting that I went at 8 AM the first day it opened to check it out. Lots of people I know camp out in front of shoe stores to be the first people to get dunks or high-tops or whathaveyou. I would do the same with grocery stores.

The store has the same decor as the old one, due to the rushed turnover period, which still took a painfully long time. This was a time with my section of the fridge was embarrassingly unstocked. I was reminded of rationing during WWII. It has the same prices, basically the same articles of food, and many of the same people.

One thing that did change was the location of foods. While the font, size, and color remain the same above each aisle, nothing is where it was originally. The pasta is a full 3 aisles away from where I am used to seeing it, the spices are 2 aisles to the right of where they should be, and the baking stuff is...I can't even recall. Not where it's supposed to be, though.

And I can't even begin on the produce.

This situation led me to become very disgruntled and impatient while shopping, while desperately having to go to the bathroom. So I wandered down the aisles doing the I-am-nearly-incapacitated-with-my-desire-to-use-the-loo walk, trying to find where the thick spaghetti strands were. Not with the Cecco pasta in aisle one, nor with the Barilla in aisle three, and since I was by now aware that different pastas were spread out in different parts of the store, that thick pasta could be anywhere. With the frozen food. With the beef. With the dried fruit. Wherever the fancy so struck the stocker, because it was not with the other pastas.

Treasure Island's catch phrase is "The most European grocery store." Such a hoity-toity claim is completely unnecessary at this point in the game, as it is the only grocery store in the area, and I would go to it even if it claimed it catered to extraterrestrial beings. Or if it said it was smelliest store around. I have no choice. I feel like I can control the interior organization of it, though. From now on, every time I go shopping there, I will move one food group to where it was in the Coop. After all, in Europe they're keeping all those old ruins sticking around that are everywhere. Like them, I'm reluctant to change some things.

Just a small aside

2008-03-17T11:38:00.001-05:00

This is why I think if something were meant to be somewhere, it would have been there already.

(I don't want to do my essay, can you tell?)

One Month Ago, I Ate Meat

2008-03-15T15:08:00.002-05:00

Continuing our adventures together in cuisine and in our relationship, Yennie and I decided a month ago to be vegetarians for a month together. Since some friendly boys made Yennie meaty dinners, Yennie's vegetarianism took a more carnivorous turn upon occasion, whereas, since my month proved to be a lonelier one, my vegetarian diet was easier to stick to as I faced my nights alone and hungry in front of my near-bare pantry and fridge.

While I didn't particularly mind I wasn't eating meat at all, I did mind being a HEALTHY vegetarian at times. Since I was determined to be a healthy vegetarian (none of this eating a half jar of peanut butter to get protein for me, thankyouverymuch), I had to enter the wonderful and weird world of eating grains, wheats, potatoes, legumes, and all manner of different vegetables so I wouldn't get bored with the classics. Several times I faced the dry foods section thinking"OH! This is what I'm eating tonight? Barley? The thing that that horse in the Thoroughbred book series ate everyday? PERFECT!", and since my strategy was to make food en-masse and eat it for a week, if I really screwed something up I was sort of stuck, but overall I sincerely enjoyed the experience. I feel I grew as a person as I can now say things like "Are those lentils you're eating? That plant belonging to the legume family? That provides 37% of your daily iron intake with one serving? Why, how delectable!"

And so, tonight, I am celebrating with making chicken curry and consuming it with friends, with my nose turned up at the salads and the veggies. Tonight, chicken, it's just you and me.

Yet another soap box

2008-03-10T21:40:00.002-05:00

Today the entirety of my Italian class turned against me.

(Except for Emerson Easley. This might be because she was afraid daily poking would turn into punches.)

This happened because of the following:

The teacher walked in and informed us that one of his other students had been held up at gun point on the red line the night before. And I DARED asked who the student was.

This instigated a whole torrent of "THAT'S PRIVATE!" and "HOW DARE YOU!" and "EVERYONE HAS A RIGHT TO PRIVACY!" and "YOU'RE SURELY GOING TO HELL FOR WANTING TO KNOW!" Mostly from the two most self-righteous girls in the class who think that talking back to the teacher/giving attitude/being godawful annoying is a witty thing to do in class. Since we had to explain everything in Italian, I didn't express "I've got a point and Lord in Heaven, please shut up" quite as eloquently as I could have. So before I do some more homework tonight, I am going to take the opportunity to blow off some steam.

I grow weary of this culture of anonymity that seems to be quite popular. Everyone's concerned with keeping their business to themselves, which is quite fine. I've got plenty of business that is mine and no one else's, but then I don't go around TELLING people about it. If that person who got mugged wanted that to be his business, then he should not have told anyone about it. Or he should have told my Italian teacher to not share the event. Because as far as I'm concerned, the minute he told someone this happened to him, he made it someone else's business.

And what's wrong with people knowing who he is? I understand that there are crimes out there where the person would not want others to know he was a victim. I GET ALL THIS. But not in the case of muggings, especially in a place where it's more or less becoming commonplace. The perpetrator remains anonymous, and so does the victim. And the more emails I get saying the following:

"Tall white male in his twenties got mugged at such and such a street at such and such a time by a young man in a hoodie."

The less I am going to care. Generalities have a way of doing that. But when a specific student was killed at the beginning of the year and a name was provided, everyone cared a lot more. Granted, that was a very serious crime, but I could look up the name on facebook and see if I had seen this person around, who his friends were, etc. And this isn't being a busy body, this is being part of a community of people, and unfortunately that sometimes means that you need to know names and other people's business, because that's how you can help them. This is especially applicable to colleges, where the school is sort of intent on building an intellectual/friendly/strong community. It's hard to make one when you don't know the names of people in it, especially the names of people to whom bad things happen, because you can't even support them when they need it most. It will sounds something like "The entire student body stands behind this one certain person whose name we won't tell you in this difficult time." Both parties involved remain remarkably anonymous, no? I can basically feel the love.

And when every day Star and the Enquirer are releasing censored pictures of Britney's lady business and information about Angelina Jolie's alleged phone conversations and tiffs and everything else I unfortunately do like to read, and we don't even know our neighbors' names, it all seems rather odd that I can't even know the name of a person who want some help.

This, in short, is why I talk to people and why I talk about people. There is a sign put out in a window of some alternate religious group near my old dorm that says the following:

Small people talk about people, average people talk about things, great people talk about ideas.

I think that is a rather hasty statement. Because it's easy to talk about ideas when you don't know how to relate it back to people. And where in that statement is the part about talking TO people?

Ah. It's nice up here. Time for something else.

And those two girls don't roll their R's nearly as elegantly as Emerson and I do.