Culture Check: 1,2,3 and 1,2,3

This weekend, I enjoyed a few cultural experiences that I have been putting off:

1) Reading The Old Man and the Sea.
I have been a huge Hemingway fan since eleventh grade, when I devoured For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises. He's one of the reasons I'm moving to Key West once I become a famous writer (Hemingway + classic literary writer Meg Cabot). But the subject matter of The Old Man and the Sea never really interested me. It's an old man out in a boat, fishing. There's no doomed love affair. I was sure I wouldn't like it. But this Sunday, I took the book to the pool with me and read the entire thing in one sitting. The way to read that book is definitely in the baking sun with quick breaks in the cool water, floating, looking up at the sky, and thinking about the book. I should never have doubted Hemingway. I loved it. And now I really want to write a paper about Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, The Old Man and the Sea, and the myth of Isaac and Abraham. Yay, graduate school!

2) Watching She's the Man.
Do not mock. I wanted to see this in the theaters and made myself wait. I had hopes for another 10 Things I Hate About You. Teenagers have the perfect amount of angst for Shakespeare's comedies: oh, how they suffer, but you really can't take them seriously. While this movie wasn't quite on par with 10 Things..., everyone watching found it hilarious (the line that won the most laughter: How come when I wanted to ask Eunice out everyone made fun of me but when Sebastian likes her she's hot? No, screw you guys. I hate high school.). I was slightly disappointed that all the sexual edginess of Twelfth Night completely disappeared. Viola was introduced to Duke Orsino (that being his full name in the movie, not his title and name) early in the movie, at a kissing booth. Duke then became interested in Sebastian's twin Viola instead of having a very strange relationship with Sebastian himself. I love how, in the play, people just fall in love with each other without having any idea of their actual gender (of course, later, everyone ends up in gender appropriate relationships)...but this was a teen comedy. Also, there was a tarantula named Malvolio.

3) Salsa Dancing!
I went to a wine festival this weekend with some friends from Texas who have been taking salsa dancing lessons. They know the moves. I don't (it seems to be a lot of 1-2-3s and hip movements). But I'm trying to learn...it's a great workout and a lot of fun. And, I'm going salsa dancing next weekend, so I'll have plenty of opportunity to hone my skills.

In other news...

I've been finished Guilty Pleasures for awhile now, despite its continued presence on the blog side bar. Are the Anita Blake vampire hunter books any good? Well, I'm on the third one now, and I have a strong, persistent desire to start wearing a cross. Preferably a big, silver one.

It's hair cut time. Time to find the perfect style that is a) hip enough for New York, b) easy enough for lazy graduate student maintenance, c) compliments my round face and d) doesn't need to be touched up very often. Any suggestions would be more than welcome.

I found this article about the girl who wrote The Washingtonniene an interesting look at the legalities and purposes of blogs. Check it out.

Television Without Pity has started recapping the first season of Grey's Anatomy. Best work distraction EVER.

Disturbing, unmagical news...

I have no desire to see Harry Potter, boy wizard, playing the lead teen role in Equus. I don't want to see Harry Potter being naked, having sex, or doing horrid things to horses.

In other disturbing and unmagical news, I am out of Coke Zero, both at my desk and my home.

Project. Run-away.

I wish I could make my own clothes. I wish I could take a blue bedsheet or a curtains or placemats or even legitimate fabric bought from a store and transform it into something stunning.

In college, I had friends who could make things. As our four years flew by, they created quilts, hats, shawls, skirts, pajama pants- you name it. I crocheted a very ugly hat that my friend wore in a play once. And I started to make a pink polka dot dress, until we realized it was about three sizes too small, and I just gave up.

The other night, while watching Project Runway, I snipped the plain green buttons off of my Old Navy Jacket and added funky vintage buttons instead (after looking for advice on how to dress well on a budget). The coat transformed into something new and beautiful. I felt so talented. I thought I had tapped into a previously hidden talent for fixing old clothes (thoughts fueled, no doubt, by the heroine in Queen of Babble) and could move onto other clothing projects I had sitting around: like my green wrap-around skirt with the bohemian pattern.

This skirt has been sitting in my closet for two years. I ripped it my senior year of college, on the way to a friend’s graduation party. I was sitting in the back of the car (which I hate) when we stopped at the Wawa to get gas. I climbed out of the back and stepped on my skirt. It promptly fell to the ground. I shrieked, “OH MY GOD, I’M NAKED AT THE WAWA!”, which is when the entire gas station turned and looked and saw me- not naked, but bottomless, at least, at the Wawa.

It took two years to heal enough to even consider fixing the skirt.

Inspired by my recent success with the jacket, this morning, before work, I decided just to sew that tie right up, good as new. It took less than ten minutes. I was feeling like a project whiz, like I might as well audition for Project Runway and start designing my own clothing line. I was visually planning my spread in Elle magazine.

And then I untied the ties (I’d left them tied when I sewed the skirt- it just seemed easier) and discovered that, somehow, I’d managed to sew the skirt so that one of the ties connected to both ends of the skirt and one wasn’t sewn on at all. It was completely un-wearable. My fashion dreams fizzled.

But I’m still in the market for other projects…

Weird Like Me

Note before I officially begin post: Something in my office smells like baby formula. There are no babies here. Conclusion: Someone's lunch smells like baby formula. Why would anyone eat something that smells like baby formula?

I've gotten stranger since I left college. Maybe even since I moved out of my parents' house one year after college. Strange in a I-role-play-on-the-weekends-wanna-see-my-Magic-cards kind of way. Except I don't roleplay. What I do is watch the Sci-Fi channel. Some of it. Like Firefly reruns, Battlestar Galactica (which I'm pretty much obsessed with), and the occasional Doctor Who.

And I've started reading paranormal romances. Which basically means vampires and anyone other supernatural being that happens to be befriending the vampires.

I haven't been too worried about this outlandish behavior, as my college roommate (who, ahem, needs to start posting again) independently took up Sci-Fi and vamps around the same time.

Turns out, however, it's just college grads in the suburbs of Bmore who are getting stranger. It's everyone! Paranormal romance is the new pink. It isn't just that, now that I read vampire romances, I suddenly see them popping up everywhere...they really are popping up everywhere. Which just proves that America obsesses over strange things...and now I'll probably grow bored of the entire thing.

For instance: I read everything about the Titanic disaster I could get my hands on until the movie came out and the market was flooded with an overabundance of Titanic books. Then I lost interest.

Anyway, if you wish to be inducted into the vamp-romance phenomenon, I have a few recommendations:

1)Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
This is the series that got me hooked. Harris creates a world where, thanks to synthetic blood, vampires and humans can peacefully co-exist. Her heroine, Sookie Stackhouse, is so great that HBO is creating a television series about her. My former roomie prefers the Mary Janice Davidson books, but I think the Southern Vampire series is much smarter and more engaging.

2) Happy Hour at Casa Dracula by Marta Acosta
This is a fun, chick-lit type vampire romance only recently released. I found it made an excellent beach read. Check out a full review here.

3) Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
I've only read the first chapter of this book (so take this recommendation with a grain of salt), but I've been trying to get ahold of the book ever since. Hamilton is, apparently, the Queen of the Undead books, so it should be pretty good. If I ever get it.

And if you want to get into Battlestar Galactica before the start of Season 3 in October, get going...there's a lot of space fighting to frakkin' get through! Though I'm pretty sure once I got hooked it only took me about two weeks to catch up. Yup, I'm a big, strange geek. And lovin' every minute of it.

Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemingway!

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

~ The final lines of The Sun Also Rises

"I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started."

~ A Farewell to Arms

"If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it."

"Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective."

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."

~ Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961

Writing, writing everywhere (and not a drop to get published)

At work I am supposed to be working on the things they pay me to work on and not my own work. I understand this concept.

Yet I have a sneaking suspicion that I follow it even less than previously imagined.

Case in point:

Today, I decide to do some of MY work for just a little while, because I am tired of working on this marketing power point presentation. So I log onto my other email account and pull-up a baby novel I emailed myself (baby because, at this point, it is still only about five thousand words long). I look over what I have in the email- not even everything I've written thus far- and decide screw it, I want to work on something else.

So I open a new word document and start typing about my favorite heroine (probably because she's not even remotely based on me, except for being short and blonde and loving books, because most of my heroines end up being short and blonde), Narnia Jones. And I can't remember what her ex-boyfriend the reporter's name is. Is it Tad? I feel like it's Tad. Why do I keep naming things Tad? It's a very stupid name. Am I really sure it's Tad?

So I click into My Documents (which includes, among other things, a file called 'The Tad Show' which is the first non-work related piece I wrote in this office and consists of an interview between me and a fictional talk-show host named Tad about my job in commerical bidding) and I have five files about Narnia Jones saved. Five. And that is only a very small percentage of the non-work related writing in this file.

Oops.

Also, his name is Tod Lear, not Tad. Thank goodness. Tad is a very silly name.

Of course, then I got to worrying (for some reason) that Tod Lear was the name of Elizabeth Wakefield's boyfriend in Sweet Valley High and I unwittingly copied it and, if my book is ever published, people will mock me mercilessly.

But no, his name was definitely Todd Wilkins. Aw, Sweet Valley High.

In other news, the title of this post is a lie, as I am about to have my poem Your Women published in the Poetry in Baltimore.com anthology. Not sure how much of an accomplishment this is, as I believe less than three hundred people were eligible to submit poetry to this anthology. Still. I love Baltimore. I love my poetry. It's pretty cool.

Ex-boyfriends in Heaven

Ex-boyfriends never go to hell,
no matter how many times
you suggest it. No, they ascend straight
to heaven, where they speak French,
wear matching socks, and always,
always arrive on time, with a full
tank of gas and a bottle of wine.
They never curse your cat
or your mother, never call you up
drunk doing Arnold Schwarzenegger
impressions, never say Hey Rita
if your name is Tammy,
never say Hey Tammy
if your name is Joan.
They're better trained than dogs
and they smell better, too, better
than Twinkies or camellias, better
than anything on earth. Once
in a while, they take a holiday,
drive their Porsches down
through the clouds
in one long line and ring
the doorbell in your dreams,
offering tender apologies, tender
chicken cutlets, tender love.
But before you take one sack
of groceries, before your lips
graze a clean-shaven jaw,
before you let one polished
Oxford loafer through your door,
remember that as soon as they cross
the threshold, the truth will slip
in behind them: ex-boyfriends only
exist this way in heaven, or
whatever you want to call it,
their new lives without you.

~ Gwen Hart, Lost and Found

Debate for an Icecream

Back from the beach: tanned, blonde and fat.

Every year I go to the beach with my mother's side of the family. Every year I walk on the beach, do some running (my cousins are exhaustingly athletic), and swim a lot. And every year I come back a couple of pounds heavier.

Why? Because we are food-pushers. We are a family of food-pushers (this term coined by my cousin's boyfriend).

At the beach, there are big breakfasts and lunches and dinners and cocktail hours (that go on for several) and lots of chips and cookies. How can a little bit of swimming against the current compete with all that?

I went down there, carrying a few extra pounds from the European cruise still, determined not to gain any weight. I would eat like a normal person and not be victimized by the food-pushing.

But then I got to thinking about how poor I am going to be once I move to NYC...shouldn't I eat now while I still can?

Now that I'm back on terra firma, I've picked up morning runs and a lot less food (partly because I can't actually afford to buy food but running is free). I want to be at least one step closer to svelte when I move. I want to be an attractive and elegant New Yorker. I also want the wardrobe department from some major television show set in NYC (Friends...Sex and the City...) to redo my closet.

So I have to lose a bit of weight and gain a bit of style before the big move (26 days!!!).

But one of my co-workers won free icecream for the entire office. From Maggie Moo's, which I've never had, but I've heard good things about.

How can I turn down free icecream? I won't be able to afford ANY icecream once I move to NYC!

Ow, my jaw, oh, god, ow...

I'm awfully tired of the words 'ball valve'. Luckily, I started a brand new job search today. The beginnings of job searches are fun. You're hopeful, there's a ton of options out there, and you get to update your resume.

Three weeks down the line, when you're stil listening to 'ball valve', they are decidedly less fun.

In the meantime, I'll search, and try to figure out what is wrong with my jaw. The left hinge hurts a lot, and it hurts even more when I tilt my head to the right. The following diagnoses have been offered:

- Heart Attack (my friend Lizzie, who apparently does not realize that my slight hypochondria combined with the awesome search powers of google, will take this idea and run with it)
- Hypochondria (my mother)
- Tooth infection (my mother...her solution: floss)
- Contagious jaw disease ("I don't know, but your sister has the exact same thing.") (my father)
- Forgetting that I accidentally kicked myself in the face earlier today (my cousin/co-worker...the kicking being the cause of the pain, not the forgetting)
- TMJ (my uncle. and Lizzie). This apparently stands for Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (thanks, google). I would have sworn the 'J' was for Jaw.

I am Jack's throbbing jaw hinge.

In other news, I now know my new address in NYC, so if you're the sort of person who needs my address, let me know!

Also, Happy Kafka's Birthday!

"We need the books that affect us like disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."
~ Franz Kafka

Musings on a subject close to my heart

Thought of the Day: Maybe I am ready for an adult relationship.

This weekend, I met up with my little from Alpha Psi Omega, my college (theater) greek organization. She graduated from college a little over a month ago. And we spent a lot of time discussing the transition from college to real livin', as I had thus found it.

In college (we discussed), you met a guy on campus. You didn't have to worry about getting his number or even learning his name, because when you live on a campus of less than two thousand students, you will find the guy again. He will pop up at the cafeteria or the next frat party or one of the few sporting events you end up attending. He will happen to have dated two of your friends and spilled beer on a third at a party last week. You will find him. No problem.

And then you find out what party he will be attending on Friday, Saturday, or Thursday night (I was an Honors kid- my partying nights were limited). You show up. There is no need to dazzle said boy with your sparkling wit and excellent conversation skills...because you are both drinking heavily, and suddenly "Hey, you want another beer" IS sparkling wit and excellent conversation. And if the stars are aligned properly and you both get similarly intoxicated and aren't seeing anyone else (or, sadly, maybe you are), you could end up back in his room (or yours), 'watching a movie' and whatever watching a movie may lead to.

And that's meeting men in college.

Suddenly, in the real world, you have to drive places to meet men, you have to go to bars or restaurants or sporting events or other people's weddings, and everything is off-campus, because there is no on campus. If you take a liking to someone, you have to get his number or give him yours, or risk never seeing him again. After all, the world is much larger than a college campus. And you have to do all this in a state of semi-soberness, as you have to drive yourself home afterwards.

And I've been resisting. So far, in real world livin', though I have exchanged the occasional phone number at a bar, I've still been trying to stick to the tried and true 'drunkenly run into each other' approach to romance. It's been working all right. I do, after all, have a fully stocked fridge and a very large collection of DVDs.

But I think it has stopped working. I mean, the method still works. Guys are guys, no matter what the age (and they're generally a step behind anyway, right?). But I think it's stopped working for me. Which, in a way, is a shame. I'm giving up a certain light-heartedness. But that's the difference between college and real livin'.

Which returns me to the thought of the day: Maybe I am ready for an adult relationship.

Maybe.