Adventures in alternative lifestyles

So it's looking like my mother is moving to the bay area in the fall. A headhunter emailed her a couple months ago about an infection control job at a hospital in Fremont, so she did a phone interview, and yesterday they flew her up here to interview with them. Now what will happen to Sean, you ask? Well, it's very interesting. A few months ago my mom decided she wanted to rent out our guest room to a med student or such to help pay my student loans. Well, that idea has recently been scrapped because Mohamed is moving in. After 4 years in London and finally getting a Visa to come here and take his medical equivalency exams, he's decided that it's not worth it to renew his work Visa in the UK, so he's coming to America. So he will be looking after Sean when my mom isn't there. I think she'll be flying down on the weekends, not sure yet. So she's gonna try to get a place in Montclair (near Oakland) or in the Berkeley hills, and she will be able to afford all this cuz this new job pays 15% more than what she's making now. Sooo yeah, my mom's gonna be living near me now (sort of). Very weird to think about, but at least it means she'll be taking Chelsea and me out to dinner in the city haha.

Doggy doctors and things

So we took my poor dog to the emergency room today because after days of vomiting from both ends, several x-rays and an ultrasound, they finally figured out that she had a "foreign body" stuck in her intestine and she needed surgery to get it out.
Great.
So we're waiting at the emergency hospital and my mother reminded me that when I was little I wanted to be a veterinarian. She didn't mention that I also wanted to be a ballerina, an artist, a writer, a firewoman, an environmental-save-the-earth type, an astronaut, and a teacher at the same time. While my other aspirations continued on for weeks or months or years, my dream of being a veterinarian was cut short the day we put my first dog to sleep. Her veterinarian did it. I didn't know that vets kill dogs. But they do. And I don't. So I will never be a veterinarian.

Anyway, poor fucking Tika goes under the knife tonight. They think she has floss stuck in her intestine.
I never wanted to be a dentist.

On Manners

I'm making my way through New York Magazine's Urban Etiquette Handbook, and I've got to say, some of this is relevant to us college students. And if you're a college student in New York, well then, aren't you special?

Is it ever acceptable to talk to a stranger on an elevator?
If there are six or fewer people on the elevator, no. However, if the group is larger than six, you have achieved an Elevator Humor Quorum and someone must make a remark about the elevator’s lack of size or speed in order to relieve the tension created by standing in a tiny space with six or more strangers. If another member of the group makes the remark first, Elevator Humor Solidarity obligates you to chuckle mildly.

I think we should make a college etiquette guide. I'll start:

Is it okay to mention information from the Facebook in conversation?
Rarely. While, in some circumstances, it is permissible to say "Happy Birthday" because you were reminded by Facebook, most other information should be kept to yourself for fear of looking like a stalker. Interests, activities, wall posts and photographs published on the Facebook should never be mentioned in person, especially in cases where you aren't "Friends" with the person you are talking to. If someone tells you something you already knew because you saw it on the Facebook, don't use the opportunity to display how much free time you have. Instead, react as though you are hearing the information for the first time.

An Inconvenient Truth.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived our their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner on another, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some priviledged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

GO SEE IT.

I can feel Jennifer Aniston crying

Go look at the magazine and check out the picture of Brad holding her. It's intense.

Greetings from the Stone Age

So I have the day off today and I am trying to find as many things to do as possible without spending money. If I sit in my apartment all day I'll go crazy because there is no internet and no TV. I have finished unpacking and organizing everything, I'm sick of reading. So today I got up and made myself Frosted Mini Wheats and eggs. Right now I'm at the library on campus using their computers ha. I had to come her anyway to buy myself a Muni pass and vote (in the dorms, random polling place). Anyway, I want to kill some time here before I got back home, have a snack, and go to the gym. By the way, I can't find my gym card. I dug it out last night and it is no where to be found. I'll have to sneak into the gym but I can only do that for so long. Maybe I'll tell them my wallet was stolen. Gah.

Comcast comes tomorrow and I will be out of the stone age. Now I need to start work so I can buy a couch. Justin and Chelsea are gonna camp out in the apartment this weekend. Big fun and free dinners out. I love Justin.

It's still not over

Sooooooo a little update on my life because I haven't sat down in like a week. Last Thursday I had the mother of all freak outs and my mom and I screamed and hung up on each other and cried. Friday went pretty smoothly, actually. My mom arrived with the car, we dumped my shit in Berkeley, Chelsea and I cleaned, then signed out and hit the road for SLO. Which was amazing. We laid on Avila Beach and Bryan called and there were drunk people from the beer festival and yeah. We had amazing SELF SERVE frozen yogurt downtown. You go on and put your own flavors in and all the toppings you want and they charge you 24 cents an ounce. GENIUS. I didn't pay for the food the whole weekend because Justin threatened my life when I tried, so yeah. And Justin's room mate Tyler is truly the most insane person I have ever met. Many deep conversations while Justin and Chelsea were hooking it up upstairs. So yeah, SLO was incredible and I can't wait to go back.

Then two nights in Santa Rosa, coffee with Chris (the creator of Google as my nickname), and we moved in on Thursday. We have NO furniture, except for my TV table and a foam mattress I'm sleeping on. But we have pots and pans and food and dishes. So I can eat or sleep, basically. Comcast is coming on Wednesday morning to set up the internet and cable. Yesterday I addressed invitations and folded programs at my internship, then bussed it over to Haight where I'm pretty sure I got a job. The woman said they'd call but she asked when I could start and told me what I was allowed to wear so I guess that's good. Went "home" and baked salmon like a pro for dinner. Today we got up and drove back to SR for some anniversary party. Whatever, free food. Tomorrow I bus my ass back to SF so I can intern on Monday morning.

My life is really, really overwhelming and I hope I can pull through. Furniture will help.

It's, like, 'The Hills'

Looks like all it takes to get an internship at Teen Vogue is your own television reality docu-drama. Fuck that, man.

what you waiting for?

But the war wasn't all that way.

"There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought."

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried.

You asked for it

I'm posting, even though I'm ass-deep in finals and such. I've finished two papers thus far and have three tests and one more paper to go. I signed the lease for my apartment (see here) yesterday (with Chelsea, Jake, and Rueben) and we will be moving in on June 1st. So the plan is as follows: Mom drives my car up on the 26th with some of my stuff from home and we dump it and all my stuff here either at the apartment (we can't move in yet but Chelsea and my room is empty right now) or Jake's house (depending on when he has to move out). Then we put Mom on Muni and she spends the night at a hotel downtown and then flies back to San Diego the next day. Chelsea and I drive down to San Luis Obispo on Friday night and spend three night's at Justin's, going to the beach everyday. Then we come back up here and spent two nights in Santa Rosa, then move in on Thursday. Currently I have to choose a job. But not before I finish this week's work. Yeah. What else? I'll be down for a few days around the weekend of July 8th because it's Zeidy's 80th and we're going to Ruth's Chris in Beverly Hills. Lauren, I don't remember your schedule, but I think the week you're gonna be home is the week I'm at camp. Anywho, I plan to go home for a few days around my birthday and since I'll probably want my car, I was thinking of making a road trip of it and driving to Santa Barbara, spending the night, and then driving home. Perhaps vice versa on the way back? Let me know.

So there you have it. That is my life. I'm done with finals on Monday and then I have to pack up my life.

Opal? Oh, puh-lease.

Do I have a story for you. So an overly ambitious young girl who will do anything to get into Harvard decides to write a novel about an overly ambitous young girl who will do anything to get into Harvard. Even though this should be fairly simple, since the novel is basically this overly ambitious young girl's life, she still can't manage to pull it off without "unintentionally" and "unconsciously" ripping off another author. I can't say I'm surprised though... bearing in mind some of the kids we went to high school with, are you?

The story as printed in the New York Times.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

"She never talked of it--she went, punctually, directly. It was her instinct to go, and instinct like the swallows for the south, the artichokes for the sun, turning her infallibly to the human race, making her nest in its heart. And this, like all instincts, was a little distressing to people who did not share it... Some notion was in both of them about the ineffectiveness of action, the supremacy of thought."

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

If the best things in life are free, you can give them to the birds and bees

True story: La Jolla is so ridiculously wealthy they have iPod vending machines in their grocery stores.

Against Interpretation

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

Oscar Wilde, in a letter

By the way, that Pandora link (see right) is some gnarly shit. Check it out.

Here's hoping

Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman (sorry, Joaquin, I love you)
Supporting Actor: George Clooney
Actress: Reese Witherspoon
Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz
Screenplay (adapted): Brokeback Mountain
Screenplay (original): Crash
Director: Ang Lee
Picture: Crash

Edit: Geez. I should've placed bets.

Notice

I'm going to be playing around with the design on this blog in the next few weeks, so if it looks weird or something isn't working, that's why. Sorry for the inconvenience.

San Diego Barbies

Recently announced the release of Limited-Edition Barbie dolls for the San Diego area market:

La Costa Barbie - This princess Barbie is only sold at the brand new La Costa Forum. She comes with an assortment of Kate Spade handbags, a Lexus SUV, a long-haired dog named Honey, and a cookie-cutter house. Available with or without tummy tuck and face lift. Workaholic Ken sold only in conjunction with "augmented" version.

Rancho Bernardo Barbie - This modern-day homemaker Barbie is available with Ford Windstar minivan and matching gym outfit. She gets lost easily and has no full-time occupation or secondary education. Traffic-jamming cell phone included, headset sold separately.

Escondido Barbie - This recently paroled tattooed & nose pierced Barbie comes with a 9mm handgun, a desert/river ready lifted Chevy truck with dark tinted windows, and a meth lab kit. This model is only available after dark and can only be paid for in cash, preferably in small, untraceable bills. Unless you are a cop, then we don't know what you're talking about!

Del Mar Barbie - This yuppie Barbie comes with your choice of BMW convertible or Hummer H2. Included are her own Starbucks cup, credit card, and country club membership. Also available for this set are Shallow Ken and Private School Skipper. You won't be able to afford any of them.

Santee Barbie - This pale model comes dressed in her own Wrangler jeans, two sizes too small, a NASCAR shirt, and Tweety Bird tattoo on her shoulder. She has a six-pack of Coors Light and a Hank Williams, Jr. CD set. She can spit over 5 feet and kick Mullet Ken's ass when she is drunk. Purchase her pickup truck separately and get a confederate flag bumper sticker absolutely free.

La Jolla Barbie - This collagen injected, rhinoplastic Barbie wears a leopard-print bikini outfit and drinks cosmopolitans while entertaining friends at t he beach house. Percocet prescription available.

Lakeside Barbie - This tobacco-chewing, brassy-haired Barbie has a pair of her own high-heeled sandals with one broken heel from the time she chased Beer-Gut Ken out of Lemon Grove Barbie's house. Her ensemble includes low-rise acid-washed jeans, fake fingernails, and a see-through halter top. Also available with a mobile home.

Leucadia Barbie - This doll is made of actual tofu. She has long, straight, brown hair, archless feet, hairy armpits, no makeup, and Birkenstocks with white socks. She smokes good sinsemilla buds and prefers that you call her "Willow". She does not want or need a Ken doll, but you if purchase two Leucadia Barbie's and the optional Volvo wagon, you get a coupon for a free wheat-grass smoothie at any Whole Food's Market.

National City Barbie - This Barbie now comes with a stroller and infant doll. Optional accessories include a GED and bus & trolley pass. Gangsta Ken and his '79 Caddy were available, but are now very difficult to find since the addition of the infant.

Chula Vista Barbie - This Spanish-speaking-only Barbie comes with a 1984 Toyota with expired temporary plates and three baby Barbies in the back seat, but no car seats. The optional Ken doll comes with a pick up truck loaded 10 feet high with mattresses. Green cards are not available for Chula Vista Barbie or Ken.

Hillcrest Barbie/Ken - This versatile doll can be easily converted from Barbie to Ken by simply adding or subtracting the multiple "snap-on" parts. Bonus: free rainbow flag with proof of purchase sticker along with valuable discount coupons to all "F" Street bookstores.

PB Barbie-This Barbie is always bitching that she can't find a good man in PB

Patiently waiting

I think that my greatest passion in life is making plans. I plan parties, I plan nights out, I plan my day. I have 5 or 6 post-its hanging from the bookshelf above my desk: movies I want to see, grocery list, possible jobs, possible apartments. I'm obsessed with planning my life. I have an excel spreadsheet on my computer with every class I want to take during college planned out, along with a list of activities and clubs to do, and a list of possible graduate schools (if that's the way I end up going). I look at apartments and furniture and part-time jobs on Craigslist practically everyday. I even like to go to Target.com and pick out dinnerware sets for next year. It's a sickness.

So tonight, while Chelsea's at home for a funeral, Heather's on a date, and the women's figure skating finals were on (side note: way to fuck it up, Sasha Cohen. Add therapy to that training regimen), I tackled my excel spreadsheet some more. Actually, I have to back up, because this planning was spurred by my sudden inspiration to get back into my sports, because I'm hella lazy, as they say, in college so far. I pretty much go to class, go to the gym, and party. So I looked up the public session times at the Yerba Buena ice rink downtown (it's a 40 minute Muni ride but whatever) and after I bring my skates up here this summer I want to try to go at least twice a month, hopefully once a week. I also found a good dance studio downtown, printed out their class schedule, and put it on my wall. I'd like to take one ballet and one jazz class a week, but that's pretty ambitious, so I'm thinking maybe one of each every other week. A block of four classes a month costs $42, not too bad. And drop-ins are $13, which is a nice option. The only hitch I've found so far is the four block walk back to the Muni station after night classes, because SOMA isn't exactly Carmel Valley. Note to self: make friends with classmates.

ANYWAY. I filled in the class times I want for next semester (which I got from last fall's schedule, which is usually the same every fall) so that I only have classes Tuesdays and Thursdays, all day. Hopefully I can pull this off for the rest of college. It's sometimes nice to go to a school that caters to working people. So this would leave Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays for working, the gym, dance class, and skating. The chances of all of this happening every week is low, but at least half is fine with me.

Which brings me to the job hunt. I'm pretty set on getting a job soon and working during the summer in San Francisco and coming home for a few weeks starting right before my birthday. Hopefully this summer I can get into a skating/dance/working routine. Right now I just want to get a job at Stonestown (the mall next to campus) because I really don't want to commute. Plus the gym is at Stonestown so I have no excuse not to fit my work out in before or after my shift. There are a bunch of job openings at the mall, the most promising of which is Bath and Body Works. I'm thinking two or three shifts a week to start, more in the summer. We'll see.

Yeah. We'll see about all of it, actually. It's a nice plan, though, don't you think?

To end, I'll tell you about a strange experience I had today. There's this little old Russian man at the gym (not gonna lie, he's creepy) who keeps asking me, in Russian, if I speak Russian. Up until today I pretended that I didn't hear him, but he caught me on the elliptical. He said "stravutsya" (that is the most phoenetic spelling of "hello" in Russian I can manage), and I said "I don't speak Russian." "Oh, what do you speak?" "English." "Do you speak anything else?" "French." "Ah, tu parle francais, Madamoiselle." "Uh huh." "Do you come from France?" "No." "Well, wherever you come from, you are very beautiful." "Thank you." It sounds cute in theory but you had to be there cuz it's creepy. Anyway, I know I look like I'm from the shtetl, my mom likes to tell me all the time. I'd be a sex goddess back in Poland.

Speaking of the Eastern Bloc, I'm thinking of Eurail-ing to Vienna, Berlin, and Prague for winter break junior year. Yes, I've thought this far ahead. You should come with me.

Untitled.

Letting go has to be one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'd rather clutch whatever it is close and let it continue to boil my blood with whatever particular odors and connotations it concocts within my heart and brain.
With Mike I let go. I let go of being in control of everything in my world, I let go of the fear, and I can't even say I did it on purpose. It just happened.

Letting go has to be one of the easiest things I'll ever do. With school, it's so easy to let go, to not care, to let it sift under all of the trivial STUFF that somehow seems exponentially more important. It's the easiest thing in the world to say, "fuck it. I don't feel like it."
But the consequences are anything but. Because two weeks later I'm scared to go back to class because I don't know what I've missed, because I don't know anyone in the class. Because I'm scared of being alone, being alienated, being unsure, being OUT OF CONTROL. It's easier to watch yourself do nothing and scream it from the rooftops than it is to quietly try to piece together what you've taken for granted and what you've missed.
I'm older now. Wiser. I'm almost 19 and still...

I don't want to rant and rave about my inconsistency in school. I'm tired of that. And one of these days, trembling and proud, I'll walk back into that lab and I'll get over myself. Someday.
Whatever.


Ideas, moments are fleeting. Time passes, things change. Someone rocks your world, someone breaks your heart. And through this and that and everything else that LIFE entails...do we ever figure it all out? Do we ever STOP ASKING annoying questions? Do we ever stop stalking our friends? Do we ever stop being completely unsure? And what about the fear...does it ever go away?

I told Abbie today that I liked that there aren't answers to all the questions, because each time you ask someone new, you learn. You ask and you receive something new. A memory. A belief. An anecdote. A laugh a cry a hug a cringe. A bond. And you take one step outside the box that is inevitably YOU, that's all your thoughts and ideas within.

I personally don't have little quotes to fall back on. I wasn't raised that way. I'm pragmatic, I'm practical. When the game is over, the king and the pawn may go back into the same box, but that isn't because in the end, the maker of the game is trying to spread the message that big or small, black or white, royalty or peasant, we're all the same. That's just the way it is. It's a GAME. You need somewhere to store the pieces. Somewhere they won't get lost, where you can consistently come back and find them and use them when you need them.
And Jesus, maybe that's a huge metaphor for those sayings I don't believe in. Life isn't a fairy tale. Those always end up in happily-ever-after, and really, in this world, no one wants that. We need things to bitch about, to hate on, to gossip about, to complain... we're not nice, we're not "happy," we're HUMAN. We're not programmed to live happily-ever-after. We can't handle the lack of pain--we seek it out, we like the flaws, the challenges. It gives life depth, meaning.
"Happy" is one of those words your fourth grade English teacher told you was BAD or BORING. You were supposed to use "jubilant" or "satisfied" or "accomplished" or "content." Not happy. Never happy.

I told a couple people the other day that I thought chocolate changed the world. And I'm convinced it has. But like the proverbial butterfly who flies over Kentucky and causes a monsoon in Asia, history and the past are hard to fathom, especially their impact on our lives.
I'm in college now, I'm on my own. I now make choices that hugely and obviously and immediately change my life and my future. I made a decision to go to UCSB, to go to FSSP. That, of course was life-altering. Why wouldn't it be? Had I not gone, I wouldn't be the same person I am right now. I wouldn't know the same people, I wouldn't have been through the same drama, I wouldn't have discovered what I have about life and people and humanity.

I can't put my thoughts into words well. I can't create perfect, flowing, personality-filled paragraphs with correct grammar and syntax the way Matt does. I'm a terrible story-teller.
But the ideas in my head are valid. They're me. And as totally incompetent as I feel expressing them publicly, especially in writing, I do feel a desire to share my thoughts with the world. And in the end, I may go back a day later and be horrified at the utter SHIT that I wrote, but as a certain friend of mine likes to quote, "do one thing every day that scares you." And so I try.
I may not be able to face that lab or ask for real help when I need it, but at the end of it all at least I've written something down, taken a deep breath, and shared it.
"One step at a time," my dad has told me, all my life.

So I'm taking baby steps. Into what? Toward where? I don't know. But if I've learned anything at all in the past six months, it's from Abbie, and it's that life is HERE, and even if I don't go to class all the time and don't do my work perfectly, I can't waste my time worrying about it or being afraid I might do it again. There's too much around me I might miss. Too many new facets of someone's personality. Too many conversations, too many walks or quiet moments of clarity.

I often feel like I need to excuse my posts here for some reason.

Today I just felt like writing, and this is what came out.