Sunday, November 30, 2008

T-givin'

Hello all, and I hope you had a delicious Thanksgiving. Currently I'm decorating bits of the house and eating Lucky Charms while the Sopranos is playing on TV. It's a fairly nice way to start to end a lovely break. Except we are so late in decorating! Will's apartment is decorated before ours, complete with a Dallas Cowboys themed tree.

(Also, be jealous, my boyfriend cooks delicious meals like Pad Thai for me, even honoring my pseudo-pescatarian diet*)

I'll be happy to head back to the city, and according to my iphone, they're getting a good bit of snow soon.

If I've seemed too happy in blogs lately, it's only because I try to sound really optimistic in my blogs, thinking the optimism will bleed into the rest of my life. At any rate, yes, seeing my friends and family is great, but not without its share of pissing-everyone-off- times. My mom and I got into the biggest screaming fest over-- what? an art project. We were finishing Will's commedia mask and I wanted to paint the mask while it was still on the positive sculpture of will's face shape because I was worried about the sides being too weak to support itself, and she said it was sturdy enough and that we needed to paint the edges more importantly, so we started yelling and she used the whole "I know better, I'm a professional artist" deal and I said I was trying to protect the mask from breaking and yadda yadda yadda...

Hot flashes must suck. One minute she's fine and then the next she's fanning herself and snapping at everyone. Five minutes later she's jolly again.

Sighhhh. I've been in a serious painting thing lately. It's weird.

Well, au revoir, I am disgusted by this blog post because it has no basic topic or story arc. Writing fail.

Will post something good later on in the week.


*My diet began as a pescatarian diet (no meat except for fish and seafood) but has now transisted into a diet I call the Intelligence Diet: I don't eat things based on how smart they are. For example, eating a whale, dolphin or monkey would be absolute cannibalism; fish are fine, and chickens are allowable sometimes. No cow or pig, because they're smart, especially pigs.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

"Home" vs. "Back Home"

The holidays make me so damn happy.

This weekend I'm getting a lot of homework done before Thanksgiving break. I have two photography projects due Wednesday and an acting scene to completely memorize for Monday. Fortunately then I get to head back home to get totally immersed in the Christmas spirit before heading back to the ci-tayy.

Jen said that soon New York would become "home" whereas Texas would become "back home". Back home implies the life you left, the prairie before the big city. It makes a lot of sense. Right now I thoroughly enjoy both lives, as they both have such good aspects... I wish I could combine the two in some way!

That is all today. It is a frozen, frozen day-- not like yesterday's "cold", which was crisp, dry and autumn-y, no. Today's cold is a moist cold that soaks into your skin, seeping through even your thickest jeans where it stays clinging to your bones all day. The only cure is blankets and hot tea in a radiator heated dorm room. Ahh. I wish I had one of my fat fuzzy dogs from back home to cuddle up with! I miss dogs terribly.

Well, that's all I have for today. Have a wonderful chilly day...

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I am grateful

I have many things to be thankful for. I'm going to list them because that is a healthy and happy-inducing thing to do.

My waist. I do very little to keep it in shape and yet it remains as if my internal organs keep far away from it.

I got cast in the musical reading of Darling, the coked out Peter Pan with male prostitutes and drugs and stuff. I'm understudying the lead and in the ensemble. I will spend all of January (half my winter break) up here rehearsing every day, which is damn cool.

I have a fantastic family who will cook delicious foods for me and teach me how to cook myself.

I have a wonderful and handsome boyfriend who is totally supportive of me working up here in the city.

I have awesome badass best friends who I miss deeply while they're at their respective southern colleges.

And, I have the coolest class in the world with two cool professors named Roger, which I am going to right now. We're going to take pictures outside today because it is a beautiful 30° day. Bye!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Pumkin' cookin

Thanksgiving break is just around the corner, and I'm starting to develop new interests.

New interest number one: cooking!

I suddenly got the desire to cook by going through Allison's blog and finding Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. I was immediately intrigued by all of the beautiful photographs of delicious looking food, apparently healthy, with lots of seasonal recipes involving pumpkins. Now, I'm not a vegan myself, but pumpkin is probably my favorite food ingredient of all time. Pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin pie, pumpkin ice cream... needless to say, the blog is now one of my favorites, and even if I don't cook everything she makes, anyone would enjoy looking at the remarkable food she makes.

I'm not a vegan, but for a very long time I was a Pescatarian (vegetarian with the exception of seafood, because sushi is my favorite). Then when I came to college I ate some chicken the first week, and sort of thought my vegetarianism was through. Now I want to go back and try again, and hopefully cook more too.

Oh yeah, the cooking part. I was sick of the cafeteria yesterday so I bought some frozen stir-fry vegetables and cooked 'em (so cheap!) for a delicious and relatively healthy meal. Cooking is healthy, so I want to get into that. Yeah. Well, I mean I have to get good at it; in the past I could have burned a PB&J if I got the chance.

And then maybe one day, I will try my hand at a vegan (when I can afford all the groceries). I can't wait to cook delicious pumpkin things for myself.


Sidebar: Funny idea. What if I made a cooking show? It would be called Spazz in the Kitchen, or something like that, and instead of one of those food network shows where everything comes out looking perfect like a magazine picture, I'd make REAL looking food like how I'd make it: all ugly and wonky, and stuff would happen like it REALLY happens when I cook, like things catching fire and me burning myself or spilling things everywhere. (No? Not a good show idea? Meh... it'd be humorous, at least.)

Monday, November 10, 2008

We don't look up

We rush, we walk, we look ahead or at the ground.
Far too rarely do people look up and realize:
look at where I am!
Look at what we can do!
But we're caught up in the current,
and no one ever looks up.
They never look up, so they never see the sun.
They never notice the sun
or the tall buildings reflecting it.
That's why the neighborhood looks gloomy.
The buildings catch all the sunlight,
reflecting it back and forth
but never letting it reach the ground.
We have to go up to see sunlight;
up on a roof or uptown.

Look for the sunlight, because otherwise it won't exist.
That's what I've taken upon myself.
I've had to learn to listen to people--
I mean really listen--
to find what they're about and let them in.
I figure maybe if I let enough people in
one of them will go look for sunlight with me.

I clean my face meticulously.
I try to take pride in my nails-- what sad remnants of them exist, anyway.
I protect my two un-losable items... iphone, wallet.
I love the subways.
(Is that weird?)
I love them.
I have strange, beautiful, sad dreams that wake me late in the morning
leaving strange thoughts, like how great being married with two newborn twin boys would be.
And then I say, "What?!" and wake up and shake the thoughts and carry on with the morning.
My life is odd-- busy and not.
Definitely not busy enough,
and desperately trying to look for all my shortcomings.
I'll see some sun eventually,
but it might be a dreary winter beforehand.


Saturday, November 8, 2008

Web Ads are getting out of hand... really

We're bombarded with all of those stupid flashing smiley ads, or ads for Proactiv, or ads that yell "Congratulations, you have been selected to win two free ipod nanos!" or some shit like that. Most often, it's either those "WHAT'S YOUR SCORE ON THE DUMB TEST?" or "LOSE FIFTY MILLION POUNDS IN FIVE MINUTES" And today I'm going to talk about the latter.

This is the single funniest ad, to me, and strangest....



Okay, so you can go from FAT BLACK WOMAN TO FAT WHITE WOMAN!!! Don't bother losing weight, but your skin turns lighter.

If that after shot is considered "fab", I'm a little disappointed with the world.

Seriously, is anyone even LOOKING at these before they send them off with a URL, or are they going for comedic relief?

Friday, November 7, 2008

Schoolingness

Schoolingness... and stuff... added a Film-Literature minor. That's just one minor, Film and Literature together. Which is awesome, and immediately solves my dilemma of film vs. English minor.

The city does sleep sometimes.

I'll figure out what I mean by that and tell you later.


Sigh.

Books, classes, screenwriting, dancing, letter writing, checking mailbox, laundry, phone bills, recycling all these damn water bottles around my place, cleaning my place, groceries, hanging out with Ashley down the hall, registering for next semester, trying awkwardly to figure out what all the other theater majors are doing and try to find those "safe" people and hang out with them... maybe.

But mostly, dream about that awesome day when Will comes to visit me in December and plan everything we could possibly fit into one long weekend.

And that's what I do with my days.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

I support gay marriage!

I support gay adoption!

I think they are biologically natural now because the world is too populated and they can adopt all the babies straight people keep making!


...it's an idea.

Fuck these prejudiced propositions. Let the people be.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

A wonderful moment


Today was a really good day, I think (besides a quick scare where I left my notebook in the cafeteria with my five page paper in it, and once I realized this class was in ten minutes-- but it's okay because the professors are always fifteen minutes late anyway) and was truly just another temperate, rainy Wednesday in New York. My favorite class is on Wednesdays, Urban Social Photography. I got into the class as a mistake, really-- I originally wanted to be enrolled in East Asian Studies but was placed in the sociology/photography course instead. Eventually, after hearing about many of my theater friends in the East Asian studies class who had mountains of paperwork due each time, and enjoying every sociology class more and more each time, I came to understand this happenstance as a sort of divine intervention. My professors, two handsome middle-aged scholars both with small beards and glasses (and both named Roger, incidentally; one is a sociologist and one a photographer) are amazing and seem to love every student.

Anyway, the classroom is on the fifteenth floor, and has huge windows facing uptown and what I think might be the Empire State building, far away. The windows are usually cracked open about a foot or so on nice days so we can enjoy the breeze as we watch photography slides or engage in a sociological discussion. There is a platform outside the window which I believe to be the roof- or at least, I call it the roof; it's a space with walking room and a ledge outside these windows. And I've always, always, had the desire to climb out one of those classroom windows and stand on the roof.

Anyway, today, I did. It was a rainy day so there was a pool of water accumulated directly beneath the windowsill, but once I stepped over that there was plenty of room to walk around and take in the marvelous city skyline. I did this twice, actually; once before the professors walked in the room and once after class was over.


Once almost all the other students had filed out to catch the elevator, I told Roger (the photographer) I was going onto the roof again, and after a pause (I had already swung everything except a leg outside) he said, "You know, I wanna see what that looks like too." So he clambered out after me, and remarked on how fifteen stories isn't actually that great of a height, but I didn't care, I just wanted to take some cool pictures of the city from a semi-high rooftop.



Peace and love ;)

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

I am a sheet of blotting paper
Lightly pressed against the page
you've written on
Absorbing the drops you left there.



...A Taiwanese poem. I'm researching Taiwan for this five page paper I'm supposed to be working on. Instead I'm nervously following the election and nearly tearing my hair out. I'm so scared. I need to find zen.