This American Kait

Okay, blarg

2011-07-20T19:43:00.001-07:00

I undeleted you. We'll see, though.

(I'll let everyone know when/if I decide to really write things on the internet again. It's just. I'm just too busy. All the time.)

On Kishi-ing out

2011-05-02T18:16:00.000-07:00

Today, I used the term "Kishi'd out" to describe an outfit of mine. I think I will look at this term more closely.

If you do not recognize the name Claudia Kishi, you are clearly not an adult woman between the ages of, I don't know, 22 to 31. That's okay. Claudia is a character in the famed Babysitter's Club books, and she was probably the coolest one* of the seven girls. Claudia was Japanese-American, a fact NEVER forgotten by any BSC ghostwriters, as they liked to borderline-racistly refer to her as "exotic-looking" in pretty much every book. She hated school, loved junk food (and hoarded it all over her room), and was really, really artsy. The most important thing about Claudia, though, was her outfits. She liked to express herself artistically through her clothes, which was apparently a personality trait, so a typical "meet Claudia" paragraph would go like this:

Claudia Kishi was the next to arrive. Claudia is the ultra-cool fashionista of the group. She's really artsy, and so today she was wearing a black skirt, neon yellow top with a strawberry painted on it, and over that, a vest she tie-dyed herself. She wore an electric blue belt she made out of shoelaces, and her earrings were made out of bells. She wore saddle shoes with socks--one blue sock, one yellow**, and a hairbow made of Persian kitten fur in her hair, which was pulled to side in a ponytail***. (And then, because every single one of Claudia's outfit paragraphs ended like this...) On anyone else, the outfit would look crazy, but on Claud, it looked great!

Should you need more (real, this time) Claudia Kishi outfits (you do), you should probably head over to this blog right now. What Claudia Wore will explain the essence of Claudia Kishi way better than I ever will.

This is all important because there have been numerous times when I have looked in the mirror when trying on an outfit and thought, hmm, totally Kishi-ed out. Does anyone else ever think this? Anyway, then I'd take it down a notch. But why am I taking it down a notch? Because I am 25 and have real responsibilities, and not 13 and fictional? Whatever. I have enough clothes, but I can't buy anymore. New rule. So I have to start piling them on nonsensically. It's the only way.

So. I'm going to Kishi out for Emily's party. And even though on anyone else, the outfit would look crazy, on me it looks great!

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*I actually kind of hated Claudia as a ten-year old reader of actual BSC books, because I'd be reading and--ugh, okay, the BSC books started each chapter with like a paragraph in one of the babysitter's handwriting, sort of like a journal. And Claudia's paragraphs always SUCKED because she was supposed to be really bad at school, and so her journals would read, "today i had to take brad to the after skool scool school program. he was verry exsited to go. but janie couldnt go becuz she had to do some werk." I had less patience for stupidity then--I would inwardly roll my eyes when kids couldn't read out loud well, and I usually did all of the work in group projects, so I definitely didn't have any sympathy for a fictional character who couldn't spell. And really. It was like reading Flowers For Algernon before Charlie got ultra-intelligent, except the journal entries never got better.
**This two-different-socks thing was a favorite of The Kishi
***Ditto for the sideways ponytail. Do you like my ponytail? Really, only click on that if you want to see a bunch of hipsters from 2008, and a headache.

Birthday resolutions!

2011-03-03T12:12:00.001-08:00

Yeah, I know, it was a month ago, but on my birthday I made all these resolutions. Simliar to New Year's resolutions, but with more pressure, because I do it with the phrase "and you won't be getting any younger, either" echoing in my head. My birthday resolutions are as such:

1. Get a new job. One I kind of want. One that makes me happy so I don't keep perusing acquaintances on LinkedIn with envy. Please, please, get a new job, Self.
2. Write the Greatest Teen Novel of All Time.
3. Go to the gym like a crazy person AND
4. Lose some weight, thereby making me--
5. Become super duper hot.
6. Do something awesome and creative! (And vague, apparently!)
7. Move.

If I can pull these things off, I'll consider 2011 a success. Heck, if I can pull off half of them, I'd consider it a (modest) success. Ugh. I just typed heck. Okay. So.

So far, I've been working steadily toward #1, though we'll see how that goes. I've made hardly any progress on #2, mostly because I've been kicking ass on #3. I joined this new gym that has ridiculously nice studios and like 80 classes offered during the week, so I've been going almost every single day and doing crazy person strength training and cardio drills and zumba (hardcore workout! Had no idea) and yoga and what have you. So. There's that.

There are a lot of questions I have as I go into 2011, and my 25th year. What the h am I going to do with my life? How do I get there? Why am I envious of random people I barely know who have way better jobs than me? Where will I move? What are some good workout songs?

Answers welcome to any of the above. Especially the last one, cause I can only listen to "Move This" so much.

Are they made from real girl scouts?

2011-02-26T18:28:00.000-08:00

I bought a box of Thin Mints from these sorority girls on Friday at work. That makes it sound like some kind of backwards drug deal, but I'm pretty sure the actual girl scouts were around there somewhere. Anyway, it was raining, so I stuffed them in my purse and went back to my office. Later, when I was on the train, when I opened my purse and saw the cookies staring back at me, my thought was one of the following. Guess which!

a. Thin mints! Yum. I am excited to eat these.
b. I can't believe girl scout cookies cost four fucking dollars!
c. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I have these things just out in the open, what if someone punches me for them? There's a lot of angry people in Boston, and the majority of them are here with me for the 5:00 commute home. I'm gonna get punched and then robbed of my cookies!

Answer: c. This was my immediate reaction. Choices a and b, for the record, are classified under "How normal people react to seeing girl scout cookies."

Then I came home, gave the cookies to Caleb, and ten minutes later, had only half a sleeve left.

happy birthday to me.

2011-02-13T17:20:00.001-08:00

I turned 25 on the 5th. It was awesome. This is important, because a few days before I was to turn 25, I realized something. My birthdays have all sucked.

I could recap what I sent to the friends. Instead, because I am lazy, I'm just attaching the email. I cut out some boring parts. Here we go.

Alright, friends. This is gonna get REAL self-involved, REAL quick. Just a warning.

So. My birthday's on Saturday and I'm one of those people for whom a birthday is a glorious occasion for people to pay attention to me and shower me with cupcakes. I'm really, really excited to have a birthday on a Saturday.

Here's the thing, though. My birthday has only NOT sucked one year (age 18, had 80s themed birthday party, got Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, received a cake from Lily emblazoned with "Kaity [last name]: Best Thing Made in the 80s," hung out with Scott for the first time in years, etc. [ ...Wow, that birthday was awesome.]). Every other year of my semi-adult life, it's been kind of awful. Let's review, shall we?

24--Hang out with Caleb, go over a friends house, end up at, get ready, wait for it....THE BEACHCOMBER. Enough said. (Emily and work friends, I'll explain this to you sometime. Everyone else: seriously, that's what I did.)
23--This is the year that Caleb stayed up all night the night before making me a card and then passed out once he got to my house. I let him plan the day full of activities. He took me for a driving lesson in the parking lot of the South Shore Plaza.
22--Oh, yes. This was the year I spent my birthday crying in a tiara, making terrible decisions and alienating friends. Good times!
21--I turned 21 on February 5. I left for Mexico on February 7. This meant that on my birthday, I was in Quincy, crying because I didn't have any friends there and all of the friends I did have were together, having a Superbowl party, and calling me up drunk. This was probably the low point, which is really saying something!
19, 20--Every single year, this was the day we either 1. started classes, 2. moved back in and thus had to spend the day traveling, 3. was the fucking Superbowl, or 4. some combination of 1, 2, and 3.
17--Went to school, and then worked at the Fruit Center 3-8.

Conclusion: PITY ME.

Now, this year, I want it to be good. No! I need to set better standards. I want it to be GREAT!

So here's what I want. I want you guys to, if you can, come out on Saturday night. It's pretty last minute! So, you know, I won't hold it against you if you can't, but if you're not doing anything, THAT NIGHT IS NOT THE TIME TO HATE THE WINTER AND NOT LEAVE YOUR HOUSE! Well. If it's unsafe, don't leave. I don't want to pull a [place of work] and make people do completely retarded things for the sake of getting somewhere they don't necessarily want to be (Bam! I hate [place of work].) I want to have some drinks and hang out with a medium-sized group of friends. Friends, significant others invited, of course. I want to not hate everything because it's fucking February and this month sucks.

This is your mission, should you choose to accept it. Help my birthday not suck.

Q: If you want to have a good birthday, should you send a self-involved guilt trip out to your friends?
A: YESS!!!!!!!!

Katie took over once she saw my email, and basically threatened everyone (I think) into coming. Who knew a tiny redhead could be so threatening and awesome!? We went to the Rattlesnake in Boston, and I got drunk and hung out with a lot of friends, AND there were surprise cupcakes! I was showered with cupcakes! It was great. It was really, really great. So that's how to have a good birthday. If only I knew this before!

So. There's that. Happy birthday to me!

today: a baby, a bottle of wine, a bajillion photobooth photos

2011-01-17T18:24:00.000-08:00

I went and saw my best friend's tiny, adorable baby, which would raise pretty much anyone's spirits. Delia, who kind of gipped herself by deciding to be born on Christmas Eve, was very charming and sleepy the whole time. It was extra-cute.

Later, Caleb and I went to a quieter, prettier place (Scituate) to have dinner at a quiet, pretty place, and basically not be in a city. This was also nice, though not as adorable.

Now, we're splitting a bottle of Malbec and he's telling me about how Tupac used to do ballet. (??) We (I) also decided to take (force partner into taking) some PhotoBooth photos. Fortunately, he's kind of buzzed off of that Malbec, so stuff like this can happen:

Unfortunately, it quickly became something he got really into. Huh.

He started flashing the camera! Also, FYI, I'm pretty vain and I look terrible here, so I think I'm proving how committed to blogging I am right now. Congratulate me! (?)

While Will Smith never wrote any raps about it...the poet Robert Lowell was born here!

2011-01-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

Last night the plans were to go to this poetry slam and then salsa dancing in Cambridge. I came home after work, lay down on my bed and found to my surprise I wouldn’t leave. The rising panic of being 24 and without any real life plans had reared its ugly head once again. It seems like more than that, though, but I can’t put my finger on what it is. I ate too much Thursday night when I went out with Scott, and the whole rest of the night I was awake in bed, not sure if I would get sick or if I would just be filled with panic and self-hatred. All that, for eating too much Mexican food, something I usually file under “Awesome Things.”

It’s been gloomy here, of course, the onset of Winter Madness** coming on. The past few days have been literally blinding with their beauty, with the snow and ice in all the trees. It’s been alright, though. I don’t feel the SAD yet, probably because it’s so bright all the time. But things have still not been quite right with me.

Caleb saw this as I lay in the fetal position in bed. “I feel sick. I won’t go,” I said. Caleb, I think, saw what was happening when I didn’t, because I just thought maybe I really was sick. So he was like, “Wait, let’s try this!” and then he turned on his iTunes, and he put on a meditation tape.

I lay down and closed my eyes and Caleb sort of petted my head and listened to this eerily calm English woman tell a story with, of course, a thinly-veiled metaphor for throwing away your worries. It was kind of ridiculous, but you know what else was ridiculous?

IT EXPLETIVE WORKED.

I was so relaxed and relatively happy after that that we went out to Cambridge, despite the totally expletive freezing weather and the fact that my boots were not working as protective footwear, thank you, and we went to the end of the poetry slam, and then went dancing with everyone. And it was nice, and the fact that no man there besides Caleb was over 5’5’’ was funny, and fun.

Of course, it didn’t last too long, so I went and sat down while I freaked out about why I couldn’t breathe very well, and my friend Lily came and sat down. Lily and I went to high school together, and we have kind of led these parallel lives in weird ways, and so when she sat down, unaware of what was going on, and said, “The other night I had such a huge panic attack and couldn’t breathe!” I had to laugh. “It’s the choice!” she said. “AHH! IT IS THE CHOICE! WHAT DO WE DO?!” Etc, etc.

And I found that going through it with someone does make it better.

That, and meditation tapes with English women telling weird hypnotism relaxation stories. I’m New-Age now, I guess. I have to do more yoga.

**Most superior 30 Rock episode...only because they went to Boston and talked about how much the weather sucks here the entire time.

snow day, two ways

2011-01-11T20:16:00.001-08:00

Since we're going to apparently get 17 inches of snow sometime between midnight and 9 AM, something amazing has happened. My workplace shut down preemptively! It's a snow day!!!!! Surprise, you're me, and you have a whole day off. What do you do?

Snow Day: The Perfect Version

9:00 AM: Wake up. Rise, and look outside at all of the snow. Then make glorious breakfast of pancakes, the greatest foodstuff on earth, and eggs. Bask in glory of said breakfast.

10:00 AM: Accomplish something, anything. Write, write, write something for a while.

1:00 PM: Take break from write, write, writing to do some laundry. Thus begins the Hour of Tidiness.

2:00 PM: Finish Hour of Tidiness, wherein I cleaned everything that needed to be cleaned!!! I am so perfect today.

2:30 PM: Force Caleb to make me something delicious, then eat it. It is both delicious and healthy!

3:00 PM: Sledding!!!! Then making a snowman with Caleb in the meadow, naming it Parson Brown, etc.

4:30 PM: Nap

5:30 PM: Contact all friends who I keep meaning to get in touch with but forget to by the time I get home from work each day. Laugh!

8:00 PM: Make glorious dinner to consume with glass of wine.

9:00 PM: Eat a pomegranate**.

Snow Day: The reality

9:00 AM: Wake up. Rise, and look outside at all of the snow. Go downstairs to make that nectar of the gods, pancakes. Then realize I am not hungry, as it's 9 AM. Drink 4 cups of coffee instead.

10:00 AM: Ahhhh! I AM SO MUCH ON CAFFEINE THAT I CANNOT DO ANYTHING EXCEPT BE REALLY HAPPY!!!!!!

11:00 AM: Get started with work. Today is a day to be--OMG TEEN MOM IS ON RIGHT NOW BRB

1:00: Hungry. Very hungry, but should make real meal. Munch on some rice cakes while deciding what meal to make.

1:30: Have decided upon a--DID I SERIOUSLY JUST EAT 650 CALORIES WORTH OF RICE CAKES HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE NOOOOO

2:00: Feel rice cake guilt because am still hungry due to fact that have only eaten rice cakes.

3:00: Whine for a while about going sledding. Finally go, but after two rides give up and go home.

4:30: Nap

5:30: I should probably do something. Oh yeah! I have to watch 30 Rock episodes I've already seen and reorganize my underwear drawer. That was definitely it.

8:00 PM: Dinner. Glass of wine.
8:20 PM: Glass of wine.
8:40 PM: Glass of wine.

9:00 PM: Pomegranate.

11:00: I didn't call anyone today! I am the worst friend ever and now they're in bed! Wahh, wahhh.

Let's hope my day has the productiveness/fun of the first version, but with the Teen Mom episodes of the second.

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**I had my first pomegranate EVER yesterday. AHHHHH! Have you seen their insides? They are the creepiest fruit of all time!!!!

Boston Bowling

2011-01-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

I decided right now that one of my New Year's Resolutions would be to write here more. So.

Last night Caleb was like, "Let's go to OfficeMax, I need to buy a really expensive chair," and I was like sounds awesome, I love going to look at office supplies after 8 hours of being surrounded by them. But he has driven me around constantly for the past two years. So. You could say I owe him. I went.

Of course I ended up at the Target across the way, where I found adorable socks for 70 cents a pair and then started stocking up much in the same way a squirrel does with acorns, except that I was desperately stuffing them not into my mouth, but a shopping cart. Then Caleb's sister called, and we had to stop shopping, because Boston Bowl was happening.

Oh, Boston Bowl. The thing about Boston is that nothing stays open past 1 or 2 AM here, except Boston Bowl. It's open 24/7, and it's all-ages, it's located about 15 minutes from my house in Dorchester, and they give you free socks with the logo on it. So the result is that the clientele of Boston Bowl are some of the most ridiculous, diverse, drunk (depending on the time of day) people ever. This doesn't really make bowling as an act more interesting, because basically nothing will do that, but it is a pretty fun place to go, occasionally.

So last night all of Caleb's siblings and his cousin and his brother's wife all went bowling.I used the big balls for the first time. Yup, not editing that sentence. As a result, I got a much better score than I usually do (a 71 instead of approximately a 34!!!!). Caleb sang love songs, etc.

Actually, I'll just show a video from last night which will basically show it all:

Great night. The choreographed bowling sequences and English guy singing helped.

Happy New Year! I have a license now.

2011-01-02T19:52:00.000-08:00

I guess the last week of 2010 was a pretty important one, because on Christmas Eve my best friend from childhood had the most awesome baby in the whole wide world, a little girl named Delia. Immediately after that another good friend called to tell me she was pregnant. Then, I guess because I realized that while I definitely don't want children now, I should work on being, um, more adult, I got my license. Yes, my driver's license. Yes, I'm 24. No, I never previously failed the test. I just live really close to the T*.

If you're wondering what it's like to get your license when you're 24 and not 16, it's your lucky day! I was super duper nervous. Terrified, actually, which was completely unnecessary because I can drive, but for some reason my body was like "Hey, guess who's going to throw up everywhere!?" and so I was like, "Ugh, Caleb, I'm going to throw up everywhere!" And then he was like "Why are you nervous? You're going to be fine!" And then on the way there, my body was like "Just kidding now you have to poop!" And I was like "Caleb now I have to poop!" And he was like "No you don't. Now let's practice parallel parking."

And then I was like this:
I had the test in Cambridge, a city of tiny streets and many yuppie pedestrians**, and there was this ridiculous snowstorm a few day prior, which made the streets become even tinier with the snowdrifts. But I did it. Because getting my license is kind of like getting an Oscar, I will give my thank you speech now. So. I'd like to thank Caleb, who basically taught me how to drive, took me on the test, kept me calm, dealt with me looking like a bulldog at him, and also, when I turned during my parallel parking part of the test, subtly pointed to the front to make sure I checked the front end. He is wonderful and patient and I love that I can give him hugs on the regular. I will also thank the Bill Cosby-esque RMV guy, because he was pretty awesome, my dad for letting me use his car, and the dumb people I went to high school with, for making me think, "If they have their licenses, why don't I?!"

Caleb was really proud of me. I was feeling like I had accomplished something, too, until today, when Caleb and his brothers decided to climb Mount Washington and then sled it. So. I'm back to being uncool and not bad ass. It's okay, though. At least I can get myself to the mall now.

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*I realize this is not a real excuse.

**Cambridge is, as a city, probably slightly more than how I've described it.

ahhh!

2010-11-09T20:19:00.000-08:00

as it turns out being serious is terrible! So everyone can re-read this amazing story and remember how good I am at voting!

maybe I just had to type this out

2010-11-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

Lately, things have been rough. Well, that's not true. Things have been rough with my job.

That might not actually be true, either.

I don't talk about my job much here, because there's not much to say about it apart from the fact that it's pretty mind-numbing work, I have to travel for two hours on the T every day because of it, and it doesn't pay nearly as much as similar jobs at other universities (The day I found this out was a bad day). There are good parts. I like the people I work with, and the people I work for are alright, too, all in all. And, of course, the benefits are excellent, which is how they get you.

But it's hard to be bored for eight hours a day. And it gets to me. Sometimes, I can actively feel my spirit being crushed. So...you know, it's new-job-applyin' season! Obviously.

I was going somewhere with this! Ah, yes. When you have a job that takes up 50 hours a week of your life, and it's a terrible, going-nowhere job, you begin to think that maybe you're not awesome. That maybe you're actually kind of stupid, or just not made for offices, and that you'll never fit right anywhere. This has been starting to happen with me. It's been this recent thing where I feel terrible all the time, just all the time, even when I'm not there. I don't know how to fix it. But I think, maybe, writing about other people--the ones I love--might help, because they make me feel okay. So that's up next.

That, and applying to lots and lots AND LOTS of jobs.

Because I don't like feeling like this. Not cool, self!

Halloween, or: Let's get ready to play that stupid song by The Rembrandts!

2010-11-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

So on Saturday night Katie and I went to my friend Stacey's house in Brighton for a costume party. She throws the hardcore kind of costume party, where there's a theme and everyone signs up in advance so that there aren't repeats of certain characters. Everyone Stacey knows is there, and everyone is ridiculous. So when I asked Scott if he wanted to go, I wasn't surprised when he said no. That kind of party, the one where there are tons of people and dancing and a lot of screaming people and costumes (with a Disney theme this time, as turns out!) is akin to his fifth circle of hell. Of course, Katie said yes, so off we went, she dressed as Tinkerbelle and me as um, "Megara." (I was supposed to go as Jessica Rabbit, but then I couldn't find a super sexy red dress, so I had a huge red wig, so I googled "red haired Disney princesses." Apparently, Hercules' girlfriend is Megara, and she has a purple toga and red hair. So that's what I did.)

The party was alright, but eventually we decided to go home (to Cambridge, where both Katie and Scott live.) We ordered a taxi and started talking about how awesome it'd be if Scott were here**. Then this happened:

Me: Let's just go to Scott's house right now.
Katie: Yeah. Scott's awesome. Let's do it.
Me: Haha!
Katie: No, really.
Me: I'm a text him right now and tell him we're coming over.

Question: If you were a quiet, stay-at-home type, and two girls with the reputation for being a little less quiet and stay-at-homey called you drunk and demanded to be let in your house at 1AM, what would your reaction be? If you're Scott, this is it:

"Well, okay....we just had some foreign kids in costumes walk in here thinking it was their friends apartment." Can you sense the sigh of resignation? "I guess I can't stop these drunk friends from ruining my life. Again. Sigh. Okayyy."

And that, readers, is when my life became like Friends.

This is great! I'm just going to walk into my friends' apartments with little to no warning and have wacky adventures all the time. Except, instead of making it like the actual sitcom Friends, I'm going to make my life into a good, watchable show.***

Of course, we didn't end up going over to hang out. Not because we didn't want to, but because it took TWO HOURS to get a taxi, and then we only got it because we left. It was basically the worst thing ever, particularly because instead of being at a fun party it had morphed into various people with relationship problems flipping out, and also people throwing up and passing out. Well, I guess I mean to say that it ended up like a typical party. But I'm not used to that! I'm 24 now! So it was bad. Because we thought the taxi would come for 2 HOURS! AHHH!

Anyway. On the way, home we passed Scott's. "I'm really disappointed we didn't get to see Scott tonight," said Katie.****

Me too, Katie. Me too.

**This conversation happens between Katie and I all the time. Scott is awesome.

***Boom, roasted.

****Katie just emailed, and would like to make it clear that "we're never going to Brighton ever again - UNLESS we have a car, the tank is full of gas and it's 70 degrees out." Indeed.

Well, where have I been?

2010-10-21T21:15:00.000-07:00

I don't know. I've been going to class, hanging with Caleb and Katie and Scott, etc on various occasions, going to another soccer game, listening to Katie's most hilarious dating shenanigans, visiting George's Island, applying to jobs, hung out today with my friend who dresses like Emma Pillsbury, and OH YEAH I saw Caleb's younger brother get married in New Hampshire ("The night of 40,000 Jordan almonds") and camped out there for a weekend.

So things are going on! But the fact that I don't know how cameras and computers work and I can't put photos on my computer means that I don't tell anyone anything! So. There's that.

In conclusion, today Katie sent me and our other friend an email about attending a play. This is how it ended:

$20 for night shows, $15 for the day. Kaitlin - all the night shows they serve WINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, OKAY, I'm going. Stop looking at me like that.

School update!

2010-09-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

Oh man, I am so nerdy. And you know what nerds do. They talk about school!

My class was awesome. To review, it's a gastronomy (the study of food) course, and it's a seminar-type class. Our professor is, from what I can tell so far, an all-around wonderful human and wicked smart, as professors are wont to be. She's young--probably in her early thirties, and I think the classes are going to revolve more around conversations between all of us than her just lecturing at us. So I really like her, even if she speaks Italian and French fluently and does that thing where she'll be speaking in English, and then an Italian word will come up and she's pronounce it the Italian way, a habit I usually find extremely off-putting. But it works for her. Also, each week two people from the class are bringing food in. This is exciting, because like half the class went to culinary school. It's terrifying for the same reasons.

The thing--and I'm predicting some weirdness coming about here--is that I am one of two people in the class who are not technically part of the graduate program. So, you know, that means everyone in the class is kind of a serious foodie. I mean, I get it. I love food writing, and reading cookbooks, and I do a fair amount of baking and cooking, and having a bad meal is truly disappointing. But...I am not one of Them. We went around the class, and we all said what we'd cook for the class to explain something about our personality. I said banana cream pie. Another person in the class said "a salad made with tomatos and basil from my garden and my homemade mozzarella," and then that devolved into talking about making cheese, and then ANOTHER girl started giving her tips on making cheese. THEY MAKE CHEESE. Do you have any idea how hard that is!? IT INVOLVES SO MUCH!!

But. It's okay. They're not annoying about it, everyone seems super nice. And I really am so excited to study food. And maybe by the end of the semester I'll be the type to make cheese. Only, I won't be annoying about it. Actually, that's a total lie, if I ever learn to make cheese I'm definitely going bait everyone with "Hey, wanna come over for pizza, friends?" and then I'll be like "MMMMM this mozzarella is SO GOOD!!!! Good thing I MADE IT!!!!!! I MADE THISSSS!!!!! I MADE CHEESE!!!!!! Or, as the Italians say, formaggio." Let's hope I never get my hands on curd.

The best benefit of my job is...

2010-09-12T20:27:00.000-07:00

Free education! Good thing I'm a nerd.

So. I have my first graduate-level class tomorrow! I'm taking an Introduction to Gastronomy and Food Studies course, and basically it will be looking at food from a different academic perspective each week. So the first week is American Studies, and then we'll be looking at food in perspective to anthropology, art history, geography, etc. I'm a little nervous, because the amount of reading is...well, it's a good thing I have to commute two hours a day, because I'll be very busy reading! But I'm really, really excited. You can tell from how many exclamation points there are here.

Katie starts school on Tuesday (also a benefit of her job) so we're both really excited because we can be nerdy together and also get together and be like "Wow, it's soooo hard to be a grad student even though we're not really grad students. Let's study!"

IT'S 90210!

2010-09-02T06:36:00.001-07:00

And I'm going to an art gallery opening in Southie called "Teen TV Residue" that one of Katie's friends is showing some work in. It's going to feature works that apparently "examine the impact of teen dramas," which makes me wish I could have watched more teen dramas growing up: I really only seriously watched Dawson's Creek, and not when it was actually being aired because we only had one TV, and my mom was super weird about me watching stuff like that anyway. My DC watching was done in Mexico, at the age of 21, where I'd watch from 6-8 AM every morning when I inevitably would wake up and not be able to go back to sleep. And that was it.

Also, Hallelujah the Hills is playing the after party, so I'm excited about that, too.

But anyway, should be fun. I wonder which came first, the art or the probably-drunken realization of wait...you guys...this year on September 2nd it's going to be 90210! We should do something!"

On Turning 25, or: Kaitlin's Really Annoying "Quarter Life Crisis" of '10.

2010-08-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, it was my half-birthday. This led to a mini-crisis of identity. More on that later.

Okay, before I start, let's get something out of the way. The fact that I was actually thinking about my "half" birthday at all makes me a huge asshole, because first of all, I'm 24, not 7, and more importantly, it's my OWN MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY. "Oh, happy birthday, Mahm. I know you're in your middle 50s now, but I'm almost 25! I'M ALMOST 25 OHHH NOOO! So double asshole, really. But it happened, and it led to this, which should probably be addressed, so whatever.

I've never been that person for whom a birthday is a big terrifying event. Not yet, anyway. I imagine it will happen at some point, but for the past couple of years, I've enjoyed my birthdays. Being 24 has been significantly better than being 22, but there's a lot of room for improvement, right? So when friends were all like, "I'm turning 23! I don't want to turn 23!" or "24 is so old," I'd roll my eyes. No, 24 is not old. 24 might be old to a 16 year old, but 16 year olds are The Worst and no one should ever care about them. 24 (in my particular social group, anyway--I realize other 24 year olds have like, babies, and other responsibilities that automatically make you a lot older and wearier in experience, if not in age) means you get to make your own money and have some independence and stay in one place if you want to, or leave and go to a whole new place if you want to, and it means you can try several hundred different things without having to worry about families or house payments or losing a big, high-paying job. There is nothing bad, or old about 24. All you have at 24 (well, unless you have a baby, in which case you have other things) is freedom, and that's pretty big. It's definitely not all awesome either--at all--but I think the parts that are not awesome for me--having to worry about money all the time, not having a great job that you love, not being in a stable place--are problems that will lessen or be eliminated (...hopefully) as I grow a little bit older.

So why am I freaking out about turning 25 in six months? I guess I always figured that 25 was a point where I'd have my shit together. Or, at least a little of my shit together. Maybe a half a poop together. Here is what, at the age of 18, I figured my life might look like:

I wake up in the morning in my bed in my own adorable apartment that I live in, magically, alone. I wake up and dress up in a super-stylish, yet professional outfit (I call this "Marie-Claire business casual"), kiss some kind of pet goodbye, and go off to my job in some generically creative job where I work in a beautiful office with low, complimentary lighting. After a day there, I meet up with some girlfriends and get a drink, and then go home to hang out with my boyfriend or something. My life was straight out of a romantic comedy's version of life.

The thing is, I have some of those things, but they're just different. I have the boyfriend I love and some (well...one or two...KATIE!) girlfriends to hang out with, and that's a part of my life that I really love a lot. But the vast, vast majority of my friends are guys, and I love them too, don't get me wrong, but it's just different than I what I figured my life would be. Getting together takes some planning, more often than not. Usually after work I'll end up just going to the gym and coming home and then I'll hang out with Caleb, but be pretty tired and boring. I live at home, something that may change within the year, but may not--and when I do move out, it will obviously be with roommates, and in a really shitty apartment that I'll pay too much for, because that's what happens when you live in Boston.

I don't know if things would be different if I had a job I was obsessed with, or my own apartment, but I can't help but imagine they would. But maybe they wouldn't. Who knows? The thing is, I am 24 and in--yet again--another in-between place. Which is exactly the thing I thought would stop once I got out of college and was an adult for a few years.

I got over my mini-freak out, though. I mean, hopefully by 25 I'll have a better idea and time of when to move out, a different job, and I'll continue to work on the things I want to do. I do have some things settled, after all. My problem is that I DO have deadlines. You know, "goal one by this age, goal two by this age." 25 has never been a deadline, but 26 (modicum of career success) is, and so is 29 (write something good) and 31 (marriage). I'm sure, years from now, I'll think back to that and be like, "Wow, super awesome way to set yourself up for failure, Kaitlin, and by the way you can't force yourself to get married by a certain age so GREAT IDEA on that one**," or if I'll be like "Good job, Kait! You are an accomplished writer and baker and you speak three languages and also, you are married by the age of 31! Way to predict the next teen girl book trend. Now you're super rich!***" or if I'll just be like, "Looking back, I can't believe I thought I wanted _______, or that I didn't know that _____ would be the perfect career for me. It's cool though, I'm glad I've accomplished _____, even if I didn't accomplish ________.****"

That's a lot of blanks to be filled. I'm okay with that.*****

** Noooooooo!
***Yesssssss!
****Probably, this will happen.
*****I think.

something about cats

2010-08-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

I will probably have to write soon about my impending (6 months from now) 25th birthday and my annoying mini-life crisis that is coming along with it, but before I do:

I was walking to work today and started laughing to myself. I was only semi-aware that I was doing it, but I was just cracking myself up and walking into work. My coworker Dave, called me over and was like "Whaaaat are you laughing about?" And then I started to tell him and in the middle was like, "Oh, no. Oh, I am so lame. Ohhhhh, no."

Because what I was thinking about was...you know how cats are wicked strange and totally love bathrooms? Every cat I've had, whenever I go into the bathroom, they like to follow me in and rub against my legs. And I'm like, go away Pandora, I'm peeing, but she's all, purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I think that's when they know. They know they have you cornered and you have to pay attention to them.

And that...that's what made me laugh. It made me laugh really hard. To myself. Oh, no. Getting lamer by the day.

GOAAAAAAAALLLL!!!!!

2010-08-08T15:49:00.001-07:00

On Saturday my friend Katie was like "I have free tickets to a soccer game," and I was like YES LET'S GO, so we went down to Gillette Stadium to watch the New England Revolution against DC United and WIN. As a rule, I avoid sporting events because I think they're majorly boring, but I love soccer. So this time, it was different.

So, this was the first time I had ever gone down to Gillette Stadium. Perfect weather, and we had excellent seats. And the Revs won against their rivals, the wicked douchey DC United. But, you know, it was a little depressing. The stadium was only half-filled--they closed down an entire half of the stadium to begin with, and then the part that was open was like maybe three quarters filled. Plus, they had filmed the players being like "Cheer for us! Louder!" which was actually kind of funny cause one of the players they filmed clearly had little to no enthusiasm for what he was saying, and stared down the camera as he was saying it really scarily. Most of the other guys just looked confused, except for hot Taylor Twellman.

So. Here are 5 reasons to go to more soccer games/Revs games.

1. This is a general statement about soccer, not just the Revs, but soccer players are obviously (obviously) the hottest type of athlete. Daaaaaaaamn.

Unlike football players, who are all meaty and scary and also covered with helmets and tights, and baseball players, who can be like superfat and 'roided out, soccer players have the best bodies ever, because all they do is run fast and kick things. Tennis players all look like major douches and hockey players are super angry, possibly because they're all from Canada and can't get their aggression about the extreme coldness out any other way. Hmm, well ,basketball players are pretty okay except for the fact that everyone is freakishly tall, not that there's, um, anything wrong with that (Caleb). But soccer players are all just "Look how athletic I am, with only a medium, normal-athlete amount of anger."

2. The Revs have nonsensical mascot (a fox named Slyde), but they also have those guys that dress up like Revolutionary War heroes that you usually only see at re-enactments. They shot off their muskets at the beginning of the halves and when goals were made.

3. Since goals pretty much never happen, when they do it's a five minute party.
Yesterday when we got a goal, everyone started yelling, all the soccer hooligans went crazy, the speakers played some adrenaline-inducing song, and the above mentioned Revolutionary War guys shot off their muskets. And the celebration went on for a really, really long time. They've gotta milk it when necessary. I'm sure this is the case in every soccer game.

4. Soccer hooligans! They have their own section, and they get really excited and dress up and also, for some reason, they brought a band yesterday. And they stood and were really excited for the ENTIRE game.

5. Because no one goes to soccer games in the US, tickets are way cheaper and the experience is much more personal. I think everyone in the stadium got on the big screen at some point. I'm pretty sure when it happened to me and Katie, we were stuffing our faces with pretzels. Of course. Whatever. Also, afterward there was a place where all the kids could meet the players, and all of the seats were pretty good.

Okay, so, it's time. I finally found my sport to be a crazy superfan about (and by that I mean, I will probably follow the team's season.) And I'm glad that I chose the best looking sport. The end.

Vermont was technically pronounced "Vayr-mon" back in the day. You can tell people this if you want everyone to hate you.

2010-08-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

Caleb and I have been really lucky in that almost every other weekend, we end up taking a little mini-vacation and going somewhere Awesome. We started off in Delaware, which was awesome less because of its, um, natural beauty and more for the friends there, and then the following weekend we were invited by my friend Katie on an effing yacht down to the gay-mecca of Provincetown, where we fell asleep that night after fireworks on the gently rocking sea to the lullaby of the thumping remix of "It's Rainin' Men" blasting from the club on the harbor. Then in mid-July we went to Star Island in Adirondacks, which you heard all about, and this time, we were invited by my friends Eva and John to come up to Vermont for the weekend. Eva has short, bleached hair and is really pretty and John really likes The Cure and wears a lot of black and they are an awesome couple. Actually, now they are an awesome engaged couple, because when we got up there it turned out that John had proposed earlier that week. If I was a better blogger, there'd be pictures of all these things. But I'm not, so you're just stuck with words. Suckas.

We spent our time there reading and swimming in the lake and drinking an assload of wine, and sailing, and then we told "scary" stories over the fire, which needs to be put in quotes because all of my scary stories came straight out of what I remembered of that children's book, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. "The woman wore a ribbon around her neck....and when the ribbon came off so did her head!" I am the worst.

Every time I go to Vermont, I end up yelling something like "Why don't I live here?!" Why would anyone not want to live here, where the highways wind in between green, green mountains and over gorges and lakes and through towns like Woodstock? Route 4 (or I guess, Vermont in general) has a lot of ski towns, so everything looked really Sound of Music and alpine. If you've been to Vermont, you probably understand what I mean. Everything is just in a constant state of beauty, green green green, and when you drive over the border to New Hampshire, it's still pretty...just less so. Less green. More stores. Less windy roads and more regular lame highways. Caleb thinks it's because New Hampshire gets sea air and Vermont gets Lake Michigan air or something. So apparently sea air makes places uglier. You know what else gets the ugli-fying sea air? You know what place is on the sea? Quincy, where every time I come back, I end up yelling something like, "Why do people live here?!"

I WENT TO A HANSON CONCERT SATURDAY NIGHT

2010-07-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

And it was weird.

It started off fine. Jess and I were in Cohasset, one of the super rich/white/boring towns on the South Shore here. There were, as I guess should be expected, hundreds of young women, ages 17-27, all of whom looked they came straight out of a Forever 21. I was wearing a blue dress with a pattern of tiny bows all over it, I realize I'm included here, I know, I know. We took our seats and found ourselves in the middle of a sea of floral-patterned dresses and hair bows and an air of Hanson-frenzy-fueled hostility, and I suddenly realized what it must have been like to be in a sorority. Jess and I sat down, prepared to sit through a bunch of their new songs in order to get to "Mmm Bop," and "Where is the Love?," and we assumed that's what everyone else was doing.

The stage at the South Shore Music Circus is in the middle of the crowd, and it rotates. So the band has to run through the crowd to get on stage. These huge bodyguards come down and form a chain to protect Hanson from their apparently crazed fans. "This is stupid," I said to Jess. "It's Hanson! Everyone here is like 23. Everyone's just here to hear "Mmm Bop." We snickered. Then Hanson came on.

Okay, so um, apparently Hanson is still fucking HUGE. Like, really big.

This was shocking.

They went into a song off their new album (which was released a month ago, by the way, we looked this up) and the entire audience began singing along and dancing. Everyone. Including the obese 30 year-old next to Jess who kept pointing at Taylor for some reason. I had no idea how to react to the sea of 20-somethings yelling about Hanson, so I started spasming into totally inappropriate, hyper-sexualized dance moves. Just kidding. I only did that for a minute. Or two.

But I'll say this: Hanson is pretty okay. I mean, all of their songs sound extremely similar, but hey, they put on a pretty good show. Also, I had the weird experience of re-finding Zach to be attractive. I think, though, that my attraction to him is based on the fact that he's a drummer and less that he is a Hanson. Also, they were so nice and smiled and made eye contact with everyone, even the creepy superfans. And they have to perform "Mmm Bop" every time they have a show, which is probably really annoying. So I give them credit.

We spent much of the concert pointing out the approximately four guys that were there. They all won boyfriend/husband/father of the year awards, because holy mother, those men looked totally miserable. There was one guy clearly there for his pre-teen daughter, standing in the front row with a look that can only be described as "hopeless misery." Hanson really wasn't that bad, though. Meanwhile, all of the boyfriends I saw did the same thing--stood behind their girlfriend, put their arms around her waist, and then when she danced they would be forced to dance along. Also, there was a gay guy behind us, and when they came on for their "encore" and did "Man From Milwaukee," (one of the songs I knew because it was on the album I listened to when I was 11,) he spent about five minutes screaming "NO FUCKING WAY!!!!!!!!!! NO FUCKING WAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

So I guess what I'm saying is, it was weird. But it was also awesome.

And then I saw Modest Mouse on Monday night at the House of Blues, which while musically is more my speed than Hanson, the crowd attending (and let's be honest, the concert crowd is an important part of live music) was not nearly as entertaining.

Granddad and tubing and cousins, oh my

2010-07-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

There are only a few things you need to know about my trip to the Adirondacks with Caleb's entire extended family:

1. GRANDDAD

Granddad is the 86-year-old patriarch of the family. He wears those little sun hats that only old people and babies wear, and cable-knit sweaters. He is extremely cute, and brought a karaoke machine so he could serenade Joy (Caleb's brother's fiance) with "Stand By Your Man" off-key. He also kissed my neck in an attempt to demonstrate to the male cousins how to make a girl "weak in the knees," so I didn't say goodbye to him for fear that he would try to make out with me.

2. TUBING

The entire weekend was like summer camp. There were organized runs (wtf), and a huge scavenger hunt, and then of course swimming and canoeing in the lake a lot. It was really pretty fun, except when I was made to go tubing twice. That part was also like summer camp, because of what I know of summer camp (the show "Bug Juice" when I was like 12, and various reality shows about fat camps), there's always one thing that you don't want to do that you get forced to do. Mine was tubing. Listen, there are two things I really don't like: feeling out of control and going really fast. Tubing is both of those things mixed together in some sort of aquatic perversion of what's supposed to be fun about a lake. "Oh, can you just go tubing with me?" Caleb would ask, and then he would look really sad and say "It's okay if you don't want to." So I felt really bad, and knew I had to go, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to go as fast as Caleb would like and I would ruin his fun, thus developing this terrible cycle of Kaitlin-guilt. But I wanted to go when everybody wouldn't be watching. Caleb's entire family was on the dock yelling about how awesome it will be, which was horrible and embarrassing, so I finally just went to make them stop, which may have been their goal. This is where I cut to flying around on the lake, bumping on the waves at some kind of light speed. "TUU--UBIIIN-NNG SUUU-UUUU-UCKSS-SSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I yelled at Caleb over the motor, who by that point was laughing and trying to stand on the float in glee.

Tubing sucks.*

3. COUSINS

Holy mother of God, Caleb has like 8000 cousins and they all are strapping and handsome (the boys) or really enthusiastic and happy (the girls). We were all in one big house, with a few people at a smaller house a few steps away. It was crazy. It was also really fun to be around, because it's just not what my family's like at all. When they weren't swimming or hiking or boating or tubing, it was dark and they were playing bananagrams or sequence or pitch or some kind of card game, and when they weren't doing that, they were eating. I loved it, for the most part, even though I was pretty awkward.

Anyway. I don't think this weekend made me want to have a million children, or even any children, but it did make me reevaluate a tiny bit what extended family should be like.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*But I still feel guilty for being negative about it, because it makes me into the whiny girl at fat camp who fakes sick and then eats the Ring-Dings she snuck in her pillow while everyone else learns to have fun doing aerobics.

Gonna take a dip in Star Lake

2010-07-15T18:33:00.001-07:00

I'm invading a family reunion tomorrow. Not my family's, of course. Caleb's.

It's going to be weird.

Well, it'll probably be fun, too. But it's always weird to be at family functions when you are not quite a member of the family. Especially because my family is...well, it's different than Caleb's. Caleb's family is fresh-faced and all-American, and they like to give each other hugs and hang out and play games together. My family, meanwhile, is good at giving uncomfortable hugs and not ever talking about feelings. My sister and I usually bond while saying wicked awesome things in monotone, listening to music only hipsters in Allston care about and talking about her latest love conquest. Which is fine. I like that, see. I keep picturing my, um, non-athletic body, my dark eyes and Mediterranean complexion, my obsessive packing of 18 different outfits for four days, my Woody Allen-esque neuroticism. There's no way around it. I will stand out among the super tall, skinny, blue-eyed, carefree siblings and cousins.

But, it will be fun. I really like his siblings a lot, even though I don't look like them and will probably not join any weird group hug softball game things or whatever it is they have planned for this weekend. But if his siblings are awesome, hopefully his cousins are too, and I'm excited to go to upstate New York for the first time ever.

In conclusion, here's a new song by Band of Horses that everyone should listen to.

I'm bored: A list

2010-07-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

I'm doing that thing where I have a lot of mysterious energy and I want to do something stupid but it's 12:30 AM and I can't. Things I want to do, right now:

-Make a huge, sprawling Jackson Pollack-esque painting and hang it up over my parents' bed.

-Find people who I know or used to know who are doing way more interesting things/are way more successful than me, and google the shit out of them. Unfortunately, I am 24 and from Quincy, so this doesn't really happen all that much.

-Convert my garage into the perfect space for a Delaware-esque dance party, complete with space for the DJ Easyreader, a fog machine, and disco ball.

-Change my facebook relationship status. People ALWAYS freak out about them. Unfortunately, if I changed it to "single," people would be sending me these empathetic, sad messages all day which would be depressing, and if I changed it to "engaged" it would be kind of funny to see how many people were like OMG!!!!!! WEDDINGS!!!!!!, but I have at least one friend for whom this would be a huge, sad disappointment when it came out that it wasn't true (Hey, Steve). Either way, I'd be toying with people's emotions because of me, and that's only fun for like five minutes before I become guilt-ridden and sheepish.

Instead, I'm blogging, a past time with possibly the least bad ass name ever.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Guess what I did on the 4th of July? In some kind of bizarre switching of my lifestyle with an annoyingly rich person's lifestyle, I spent in on this yaught-like boat and boated a couple hours down to Provincetown, a place known for it's large percentage of leather-clad gay men. It was the perfect place to be. We spent our days lounging in the sea and on the beach, and the night watching fireworks explode over our heads. And then, for a less-awesome, smaller part of the evening, I spent some time puking over the side of the boat. Whatever, it was bomb, all of it. Caleb and I slept outside, on the top of the boat, and I woke up when the sun came up. It was strange, to be there, in the land of people who laugh with a hearty "Ha, ha, ha" instead of a girlish, insecure giggle. These are people who don't have the troubles of us normies, but must instead spend their days figuring out what to name their boats and calculating how much of an SPF they'll need. I mean, I had a sunburn and crazy, windswept hair when I got home, and it wasn't just from being at Wollaston Beach, staring at the depressing cityscape of Boston. It was from actually being in the ocean. Wowza.

I went with my friend Katie and her awesome boyfriend and my awesome boyfriend and a few others, and it was just fun to hang out with her and everyone. Friends are good. The ocean is pretty good. Nature is definitely good. And gay men on an all night bender at some club blasting Gloria Gaynor and I <3 Lesbians t-shirts are DEFINITELY good.

I love community theater, kind of.

2010-06-13T11:10:00.001-07:00

So, as I think I mentioned, I'm in a play with a community theater. It's...basically what one would expect from a community theater group. Everyone's super weird, and we perform in my old high school, and everyone--everyone--has felt the need to drink heavily after the performances.

I think community theater might be one of those things I keep doing. It's just so insane. There's a woman in the cast who is deeply stupid or on drugs or maybe deeply stupid after years of drugs, and her boyfriend is a sex-phone operator and wears a creepy fedora. The director has absolutely no idea how to direct a community theater group, and kept talking about "professional theater," and then constructed a nonsensical set that is the worst. The old ladies in the audience narrate exactly what's going on in the play as it happens. It's just insane.

There was also a cast photo in my two hometown newspapers a few weeks ago, and they passed it around at rehearsal. Everyone was talking about how it was pretty flattering for everyone, despite the fact that everyone was in workout clothing and looked gross that day, etc etc. Then it got passed to me.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD MY BOOBIES ARE ALL OVER THIS FUCKING NEWSPAPER.

Residents of the South Shore and subscribers to the Patriot Ledger, I officially apologize. It was obscene--I think I was actually posed in a way to make them even more obscene--but it's just, they're uncontrollable. Whatever.

On the brightside, a girl I knew from high school is in the play, and I heard the single greatest story of all time from her. I won't get into it now, but let's just say that she went to NYU, and, against all odds, ended up in two different seminars--one with Mary-Kate, one with Ashley Olsen.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT IS SO AWESOME AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I made her tell me all about it because HELLO THE OLSEN TWINS AHHH. Maybe some day, I will appropriate Katie's stories for my own, because holy mother, I couldn't have made up better ones. But not yet.

So basically, that's been the best part of the play. Hearing the stories about the Olsen twins at NYU.

Anyway, if anyone in the Greater Boston area/South Shore feels the need to see a play by a community theater in an old high school anytime soon, you know where to go. Sigh.

Guess who got bored with writing things on the internet?!

2010-05-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

Anyway sometime last week Scott was like "Listen, I need to go to this art show opening because my friend's working it and I don't really want to stand there alone all--" and I was like "FINE FINE I'll go because I'm sooo awesome to bring to art things" and so on Friday night, we piled into Scott's car and went up to this museum and sculpture park that is housed in a fucking castle. There, we would be plied with free alcohol and weird cheese things, only to be forced to look at one of the artists be super into herself and dress like a crazy laundry hamper. But we didn't know that then.

Anyway, one of the exhibitions that was opening that night involved huge, detailed sculptures made out of tires. They were awesome. They were actually really amazing, and, you know, I would have been really into the artist had I not actually seen her or her photography.

But I did, and I can conclude that this artist is The Worst.

Her photography was basically a series of pictures of herself collecting tires in what looked like a dump, which would not be that off-putting, except that A) she titled the photographs "Founding Warrior," without a trace of irony ("UGHHHHHHH WHO DOES THAT," I said loudly to Scott, before it became clear that she was approximately three feet away from me), and B) she managed to strike the most epic of poses in getting these shots. I thought maybe someone else took them, but Scott was like "No, it looks like she might have actually taken a tripod, set it up, and then taken the pictures," which is a lot of trouble to go through to make yourself look noble when you're just scavenging for what will eventually just be a sculpture in an art museum that rich people get to see. And I was like, "I WILL JUDGE YOU AND YOUR AWESOME SCULPTURES AND STUPID PHOTOS."

She came in with a pile of fabric on her head, and rope looped around her sneakers, and then I knew that she was a person I would not want to talk to, because I'd probably be like "Oh hey" and she'd be like "My work is a product of the metaphysical psuedo-realities inhabited by the energies of heritage and thought." and I'd be like, "Okay, you know what?...Nevermind."

The next day, we went to Vermont.

We went up for Caleb's childhood best friend's graduation from UVM. It couldn't have been more perfect weather, and Vermont is obscenely beautiful. (And it was weird, because almost as soon as we crossed into the New Hampshire border it immediately got less beautiful. It didn't become ugly or anything, but it was just not as lush and mountainous and epic as Vermont was. Not that New Hampshire isn't all that. Just...not on 89. Okay. Anyway.)

But the thing about Caleb's best friend is that--so, okay, he was homeschooled and his mother is an artist and he grew up in this crazy old house, and I think as a result of that he sort of was like "Fuck it, I'm GONNA BE A FRAT BOY!!!!!"

So we hung out with frat boys all weekend, which was something I spent four solid years actively avoiding in college, but whatever. These weren't ordinary frat boys, but the kind of frat boys that spent their childhoods skiing in Aspen and had four first names, all of which are colors or cities or just random syllables put together to create a name and had relatives who came over on the Mayflower and built American empires.

So I learned things. Things like this:

-When a guy is like "Oh bro, how often did we read The Preppy Handbook? Man, those pages were dog-eared!" you can make an educated guess as to how long my night was.
-Rich, preppy boys talk a lot about polos. They also own all of the same clothing. And they like to talk about that. Huh. They spent a really, really long time talking about clothing, actually.
-I went for a walk around Burlington by myself, and kept thinking about ducking into the packie and getting a fifth of something. I realize now that when I'm that strongly considering something like that, I just need to do it. MY INSTINCTS WERE RIGHT.
-Burlington is an awesome, awesome place. The trustafarians and frat boys that make up 80 percent of the town are not.

Ahh. Two events. Two very different subcultures of people. A lot--a lot--of alcohol that I should have drank, and didn't. Next time, I'll know.

Hiiiiiiiii

2010-04-27T20:18:00.001-07:00

Look, I need to talk about the Bacon and Beer Festival and also show you the worst piece of art ever created, but because it's crazytime now at the office and I don't have spare time during the day, and also because after that terrible experience as a bridesmaid I've actually been doing things like "getting off my ass" and "going to the gym" all the time, and also because I'm in a play and rehearsals are starting and also because I have a real-life boyfriend that I like to spend real-life time with, I don't blog anymore. But there'll be some kind of update later this week. Maybe.

"UGHHHHHHHHHHH"--Old Lady McGee

2010-04-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

So, here are some fun things I've done recently:

1. Jamaican food

It seems as if on every corner in Dorchester, there's a Jamaican hole in the wall that sells these beef and chicken patties, which are like, chopped up meat wrapped in this really flaky pastry. Since Caleb agreed to do this article about how to eat cheap in Boston, we drove around all Sunday morning buying all the different kinds. The chicken things were really, really good. All spicy and curry-like. They are $1.00-$1.50, and they come highly recommended, should you ever need to eat something in Dorchester.

2. I bought Caleb tickets to the Boston Beer and Bacon Festival. And now I feel really guilty.

Look, everyone knows bacon is extra delicious. But--ahhh. I don't know why! I don't even eat bacon myself! Pigs are the cutest, and they have tiny little piglets, and they're smart, like really smart. And bacon is so bad for the environment! And I can't deal with it. SO WHY DID I BUY TICKETS TO THIS EVENT? I have no idea. I saw the festival, thought "Hey, that's something Caleb would love," and bought two tickets. IT HAPPENED SO FAST. Oh, no. Guilt.

In my defense, the proceeds go toward some really awesome charities? I still keep cringing, though.

3. In something not food related, I GOT INTO A PLAY!

So two weeks ago I was searching for my local community theatre, and as it happened, they were having freaking auditions for the newest play. So I was like, "Oh, what the hell," and went. I didn't think I was going to get anything, because while there were two roles appropriate for 24-year-old women, there were like way more girls my age at the audition than for any other role, and no one knew who I was, while there were definitely people who knew each other. Plus, I had just gotten a spray tan** and so my eyes were wicked red, and I had allergies, so I looked like I was on drugs or something.

(**You know what else is weird about being a bridesmaid? It makes you say things you would never say before, like, "Where can a girl get a decent spray tan in this town?")

But I somehow did something okay, because I got the part I wanted! Rehearsals start Sunday.

I have to say the best part of the audition was that there was this wicked old woman, and she was really grumpy and hard of hearing. So the director started talking to us, and she was like "I CAN'T HEAR YOU," so the director spoke up, but not like, shouting. She spoke for a minute before the old woman had to make it clear that she couldn't hear. "UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," she said. Awesome. I think that's what I'm going to do from now on to polite strangers when they don't do exactly as I say. "UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."

4. LOOK AT DAILY PUPPY TODAY!

"THIS WILL BE THE SUMMER OF KAIT!"--A wedding story.

2010-04-20T16:06:00.000-07:00

So last weekend I was a bridesmaid in my childhood best friend's wedding. It was beautiful. I know that whenever there's a post about a wedding, there needs to be like eleventy million pictures illustrating it, but I really don't care that much about floral arrangements, and also, I would want to show you my friend, but she doesn't read this blog and so I don't want to put up pictures of her, if she doesn't know they'd be up. You know.

I could, of course, put up pictures of myself...but. Okay. So, Jess, the bride. She has always been a very, very beautiful person. Like, beautiful on the inside, of course, but her outsides are really beautiful too. Obviously, on her wedding day, she was crazytown hitting everyone over the head with her prettiness. The maid of honor was also extremely pretty, and tall, suspiciously like a model. And the other two bridesmaids were really cute and tiny.

And then there was me. And I looked awful. (And don't say it! Don't say but I'm sure you were...I wasn't. Listen, I know. I have pretty moments. This was not one of them.)

My hair was in an updo. My makeup was...okay, but it cost me $50. I looked fat in the dress. I felt really, really bad about myself. So, so awful. The way I dealt with this? Taking advantage of the open bar, of course! It was the first time in recent memory that I drank--consciously made the decision to drink--because I felt inadequate and full of self-hatred. I'm almost a real person, now, aren't I?

The wedding itself, of course, was very nice. Jess was beautiful and happy and her husband cried and they were extremely sweet. Her uncle did a reading and it began, "Brothahs and sistahs, we ahhh heeahh..." I sat next to an old lady (Jess' grandma) at the reception who said hilarious old person things. Caleb and I danced to "The Way You Make Me Feel" by Michael Jackson. There was a typewriter for a guest book.

But I came home not daydreaming about my own wedding, but with a steely resolve. Never again would I weep (weep! Really!) at multiple points during a wedding, not because of my happiness or sentimentality, but because I was ugly! I got home and dug up my yoga pants and my gym membership. "THIS WILL BE THE SUMMER OF KAIT!" I proclaimed maniacally and George Constanza-like to no one in particular.

But anyway. As for the wedding gift? If you were one of my five readers around this time last year, you will remember my post on wedding gifts and how I have this preoccupation with at giving something both useful, and fucking weird.

Jess and Tom didn't ask for a rake this time, though. So I got them a digital photo frame, which I'll send over this week while they're on their honeymoon. I'm going to pre-load it with pictures...of myself. Doing awkward things. That way, I'll always have the imagined memory of them plugging in the frame, and then watching, as picture after picture comes up, my face. Me, tripping over a dog. Me, pointing and laughing at the teenagers doing something unethical and confusing to the statue of John Quincy Adams in Quincy Center. Me, looking nauseous in the back of a taxi cab in Mexico. Me, dressed as a pea pod. That way, it's not like I'm giving them an empty frame, but they (hopefully it's clear) can erase the pre-loaded pictures and put the ones of them, you know, celebrating their marriage vows and all. Oh man. I may not have been the prettiest bridesmaid. But I'm definitely the best wedding present giver.

In which my subscription to dailypuppy.com is the best thing ever for me, worst thing ever for everyone else

2010-04-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

I realized recently that I spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at pictures of puppies. It started off innocently enough, when I would google images of puppies when I was sad in college. Now I subscribe to the dailypuppy, which is one of those things that Caleb looks increduously at and is like "I cannot believe you subscribe to that," and I'm all "BACK OFF AND LOOK AT HOW AWESOME THIS BLACK LAB IS."

The result of this is that Caleb's ambivalence about dogs only grows, and now he gets great pleasure from saying things like "Dude, fuuuuck puppies," or like "Puppies are stupid and I don't get what they're about," which are sentences that just translate to me as "Maybe you should show me adorable puppies all the time so that I can learn to love them." Which is what I do. Observe a typical moment!

I see this:
Me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

(I find out the puppy's name is HENRY (!!!), then I look at the following picture of puppy, what could be better, etc)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! (breath) AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! CALEB LOOK!!!!!!

(I show the picture of Henry (!!) to Caleb. It should be noted here that I have shown the same picture to him four times in the same day as he has done homework. Each time, the same reaction. First, a blink. Then---)

Caleb: What am I supposed to feel when I look at that?

Me: HE IS JUST A BABY!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Caleb: Why do you keep showing me this puppy!?

Me: HENRYYYYYY!

Other puppies I have shown Caleb, yelling things like "Look at its tongue!!!!," "Look how it looks likes a baby bear!!!!," "Look how it's sitting!!!!!":

my anglo-saxon temperment and I have been BUSY sleeping under desks , thank you!

2010-04-08T16:38:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I know, I'm blog-neglecting again, but you know, it's been pretty nice out here, and Caleb and I have been tearing my room apart in order to make it a place people would easily recognize as "a bedroom" or "a habitat of someone who isn't a gorilla who likes to hoard ripped-up clothing," and plus I got pretty sick and THEN I spent a night sleeping under a desk at a university I do not work at nor attend, because Caleb was alone and working on a newspaper thing, only to get up and go to work with a stuffed up right ear and the inability to really hear my own voice. And then I had to construct the greatest of all inspirational speeches by patchworking different inspirational speeches together so I could try to um, inspire my friend Scott. So there's that.

So. Hi. Here's a story.

There's a reason why I love to study languages, and I think it largely has to do with the fact that the beginner's workbooks are so fun. The sentences they make you construct are totally not useful at all, and the illustrations are ALWAYS fabulous. Take the extremely obese person staring at you with a surprised look on its face. "Carlos is fat," it says. Awesome. I'm getting sidetracked.

On the way to work I've been studying this French reader, and before it goes into the readings they review grammar with you by having you read these dialogues between Julie, an American girl, and Marc, a French guy who (I think) is her sassy gay friend who likes to correct her grammar all the time. So if you've studied a romance language, you know that when you want to say "I'm hot," temperature-wise, you have to say "I have hot," or else it just sounds like you're saying that you're a hottie and you know it, and for some reason want to tell others that. This is the (translated) dialogue that my book used to explain this.

Julie: I am cold.
Marc: Ah, oui. It's because of your Anglo-Saxon temperment.

Then they clarify the "I am cold" vs "I have cold" thing, etc.

This is AWESOME. Right? The casualness of Marc's reply, the assumption that Julie would come out of nowhere and be like "Hey, I hate hugging and talking to people and feelings. I'm cold." Then, the fact that Julie never at any point is like "Um...wait, what the f did you mean before when you agreed!?" Am I the only one that thinks this is awesome? I think I may be. I know this because at work I pretty much say everything that comes into my head the moment I think it, but I didn't mention this because I feel like they would have been like "Um..." and turned back to their work.

Spoken with attitude on the T:

2010-03-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

Scene: a packed T car. 8 AM. A crazy woman gets on the T and starts mumbling about the blond girl behind her.

"If that bitch pushes me one more time, I'm a beat the shit out of her."

Pause.

"And then I'm gonna say sorry."

Things I'm forcing into posing for me, extreme room makeover (kind of), the worst word ever, and something that may not actually exist. In that order.

2010-03-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

1. PHOTOGRAPHY

My life has been taken over by photography and the fact that I am particularly bad at it. Before work, during my lunch break, hours (HOURS AND HOURS) after work. I AM SO BAD AT THIS.

It's a shame too, because I'm taking/have taken pictures of the following awesome things and would like them to actually be awesome in print:

-Caleb
-pancakes
-Greater Boston area-based nature (all of it)
-old-fashioned looking train station clock
-Misty (black lab)
-Boston at night
-"Famous Person"*
-carousel horse
-various old things (people, tea cups, trees, etc)

MOTHER EFFER. The bright sides:

1. I am better at photography now than I was before...um.
2. I have a reason to be all "Take me to the carousel! I want to go to the carousel RIGHT NOW!" in a British accent to whomever will listen (Caleb), and then pretend to have a breakdown watching the carousel go by a la Holden Caufield.
3. I get to say things something along the lines of "Yeah, well, yesterday, when I was googling 'pancakes'..."

*I have to photograph a Famous Person. I'm not exactly sure who I'm going to do, which means I may or may not end up taking the advice of the person who told me to get Uncle Sam Rounesville, a guy who changed his name legally to Uncle Sam and maintains a billboard on a corner in Quincy about patriotic duty. Further ideas are welcome.

2. EXTREME ROOM MAKEOVER

Two weeks ago at some point I decided I would do an Extreme Room Makeover on my room. I'm putting two twin mattresses together on my floor, getting rid of almost all of my clothes, painting the walls, and just making everything about it awesome. The steps, as I figure, go something like this.

1. Get every article of clothing out of the closet/drawers, dump on floor.
2. Sort clothing, then launder and get rid of it.
3. Clean off desk/table/shelves, cover with tarps.
4. Paint.
5. HAVE AWESOME ROOM!

As of now I have accomplished...step one.

I have been living like that since, sleeping on the mattress on my floor in what amounts to a valley in between the mountains of clothing.

3. I, BLOGGER

Does anyone hate the word "blog?" Like, do you feel really stupid and sort of mumble the fact that you blog when it comes up in conversation? It's awkward, and weird, and I might as well be like "I'm a flibbery ligit! I gazoozle on my gleeterzup!" I hate it. They should have picked a real word. Or a word that doesn't sound like I'm a character in a Dr. Seuss book. (I guess this could be said about the entire internet, though. Google, twitter, flickr.) Complain, complain. Wah wah.

4. "CREATIVE MULTIMEDIA"
Should I take a class that's about "creative multimedia?" I feel like it may be fairly useful in the future, and it would look good on a resume (maybe), so maybe I should. And the course only goes on for five weeks. Unfortunately, it's during May and June, and it's twice a week from 6-9:30. Should I do this? And what is "creative multimedia"? And why do I feel the need to constantly surround it by quotation marks, like it's not a real thing? I do that with "consulting" and "life coach," too, so I feel like it may not be a real thing. Hmm.

That's all for now. I'm cutting myself off. I realize this is my own blog, but really. In the next post, expect residual guilt from supporting a delicious cause, Edward Rowe Snow, and fabulous local news coverage, among other things.

The Russian Party, or: how sorry of a state can I be in if there are blintzes everywhere?

2010-03-17T20:12:00.001-07:00

I forgot to tell a story from what happened to me a couple weekends ago. I was invited to a party! But not just any party. It would be a Russian party. With hipsters. HOORAY!

Reasons Why This Party Was Awesome

1. I finally got to meet Jason, and Dan, two of my friend Scott's friends from college and OMG JASON IS AN INTERNET SENSATION.* Scott is this guy, and this is his very thoughtful blog.

2. I also got to meet Jason's girlfriend Natalie, who is also awesome and artsy and stylish and had a hilarious fur jacket that was totally Russian. And you know, it's kind of imperative that you are awesome and have a hilarious fur jacket to be friends with me, so I knew it'd be cool. (It was her idea to have a Russian party, naturally.)

3. There was borscht. I didn't have any, but it was there.

4. It was just the right amount of people, and almost everyone was pretty cool and capable of having a decent conversation. This would exclude me, of course, as I...well. I'll explain.

So. There was a problem. The problem was, I had a pretty bad cough and took a bunch of medicine for it. I also had (have) a pretty good talent for making terrible decisions. So, uh, you know, I was like "Hmm medicine and alcohol, maybe I should check...OH HI VODKA OLD FRIEND" and then, if you want to know how to pretend to be me inebriated, just follow this guide.

Step one: Find boyfriend, yell "MAKE OUT TIME!" and then furtively look around to make sure no one's coming, and try to make out at the same time.
Step two: Dance with self near couch to Whitney Houston.
Step three: Feel dizzy, decide to sit on couch.
Step four: Morph from sitting to sprawling, try to explain in nonsensical, hard to follow mumblings why a particular Hieroglyphics song is really bad to have played after Whitney Houston.
Step five: Pass out.

I woke up sometime later, groggy, to the voices of Jake and Caleb. "She's in a sorry state," I heard Jake say, and I remember thinking it was funny, because of course Jake would use the phrase "sorry state." Then I realized he was talking about me, so I woke up, and was immediately even more confused, because I heard the booming Boston accent of another childhood friend, Tom, who hadn't been there when I was previously conscious that night. I tried to figure out how long I was asleep for, because that kind of thing is embarrassing, right? I mean, I'm not five, so I really can't get away with that kind of thing anymore. Anyway, I kept asking various people how long I'd been asleep, but I was only able to narrow it down from somewhere between one and eleventy million hours. Whatever. I felt a lot better, and I don't even think I was that drunk when I woke up. Unfortunately, I felt really unsocial and lame, but that's probably good, now that I think about it. Had I been all there but wasted, I'd probably have, like, slapped some strangers ass and then been like "LET'S TALK ABOUT THE MUPPETS' CHRISTMAS CAROL."

It was still a really fun night. And I got a good nap, so wins all around.

OH, tangent: I hate to sound like a grumpy old man (just kidding, I love it), but that was the same day I got a Blackberry. I didn't want to get it. "I have this old phone and it just works fine so whatever," I said (in total old man mode), but I eventually gave in. OKAY. Blackberries are kind of terrible. They're cool and everything but I have to charge it every night and it runs out of batteries so quickly. Meanwhile, I've had my old phone on and unplugged. It was totally charged that night, so I've just left it out. It's been almost two weeks, and it's only gone down one bar. Bam. That's what I get for getting a phone named after a tiny fruit.

*Seriously, he is an internet sensation. He cowrites a very popular tumblr about charts! It is extremely awesome. Czech it out here.

PS I also fell asleep at this party. Maybe it wasn't the medicine. Maybe I'm just lame.

I need a long, semi-awkward hug.

2010-03-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

It's been raining incessantly all weekend and today, my desk was flooded when I got to work, I have class tomorrow and I don't wanna go, I maybe messed up at work today, my boyfriend is in New York City at MTV parties (I'm not cool enough to know what that means, exactly), my room is in "Kaitlin decides to do Extreme Home Makeover on her room and doesn't have time to finish it so there are bags of clothing everywhere"-mode, and I don't look like Kim Kardashian.

DAMMIT. I AM A JERK.

And now I have guilt over two complainy posts in a row.

DOUBLE JERK.

Why, Awkward Red Sedan Thing from 1998? WHY!?

2010-03-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

It's official. Caleb's car, the Awkward Red Sedan Thing From 1998 freaked out on him for the last time, and is being sold for scrap metal. DAMMIT. This means:

1. We'll be riding the T a lot more now, which is unfortunate, as the T makes me want to punch something in the eye.
2. Caleb will be all "You really need to get your license, Kaitlin." and will be all responsible-sounding and super annoying, which means that I'll have to get my license, which means I'll probably also have to learn how to drive on a highway without sobbing hysterically and pounding the wheel, yelling, "I DON'T LIKE THIS OR UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS!".
3. No more adventuring to other places that are not full of buildings. You can't see this, but I'm pouting.
4. Caleb will probably start riding his motorcycle, which is fun and all when I'm like, on it, but when I'm not it'll just be Unrelentinganxietyville, which I say like it's a joke but...it's not.

Does anyone/anyone's signifcant other have a motorcycle? Alternatively, can someone distract me with cute baby animals or something?

Edit: By the way, I'm fully aware of how not real and first world this "problem" of no longer having a car is. It's like the time my iPod and computer died in the same week, and I was like "NO! WHY!" and then I was like "Wow, my 'problems' are so awesome I have to use finger quotes to say that word." I know. I KNOW. My complaints still stand, though.

I just have to get this out.

2010-03-08T19:28:00.000-08:00

Every time I put a TV on, I immediately flip to MTV and I'm like COME ON, SIXTEEN AND PREGNANT! BE ON! COME ONNNN!

I've only seen two episodes so far this season, and I'm not sure if the girls this season are as awesome as last season. Where are the ultra-mature, terrible-life-decisiony Macis? The extremely stressed out and thus super hilarious Ambers? WHERE'S THE GARY OF THIS SEASON!?

Someday, I will make someone fix my computer, and they will go through my photos and be like "Why do you have a picture of Gary from 16 & Pregnant on your computer?" and I will be like, "You have correctly identified this picture, and that is how I know you are awesome."

I just like looking at your face.

2010-03-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

By popular demand....axe-murdery pictures of Caleb!

I don't know, does "three people" count as "popular demand to regular people? (Because it does if you're me.) Since I don't know how to use a scanner and don't feel like figuring it out, I just took pictures of my pictures using PhotoBooth.

And I was like "You have nice bone structure," and he was like "Oh geez," and I was like, "Mmmm. Angryface."

This is less "axe-murderer" and more "It's snowing directly in my face and you won't let me go inside. Why is this happening to me? I'm skeptical of what love is now."

ANYWAY. That's all for now! It's like 50 degrees here and I have to get outside. Have a good weekend all.

I just haven't used the term "axe murderer" enough in this blog.

2010-03-04T11:57:00.000-08:00

I developed and printed some pictures for my terrible photography class yesterday. I was really excited to show them to Caleb, since he was my model. "Oh geez," he said as I flipped through them. Later on, this happened:

Me: You look like such a bad ass!
Caleb: I look like an axe murderer.
Me: No you don't, you look detached and cool and vaguely angry!
Caleb: Like an axe murderer.

Later, I showed his brother Micah the prints.
Micah: Cool!
Me: Thanks!
Micah: He looks like an axe murderer!

Listen, the assignment was to do a very close-up, straightforward face. ANYONE CAN LOOK LIKE AN AXE MURDERER WHEN IT'S LIKE THAT.

On the first of March, on the holiday...

2010-03-01T19:59:00.000-08:00

AHHH! I only have ten minutes until it's no longer the first of March, so....happy Casimir Pulaski Day! I only know about this holiday because of the beautiful Sufjan Stevens song that's named after it.

Two thoughts:

1
I remember when I first heard that song, I was immediately thrown off because it begins, "Goldenrod and the 4 H stone/The things I brought you when I found out you had cancer of the bone" and I was like, really, that's kind of stretch of a rhyme. (I wasn't so freaked out by the subject matter because I believe Scott warned me--something to the tune of "So, Kaity, I've been listening to this song a lot, and you know, it's really very good. It sort of reminds me of 'Remember the Mountain Bed,' except it's, uh, about bone cancer.") But anyway, it doesn't matter. It's a beautiful song. And yes, it really is about bone cancer, and it's still amazing. Listen. And that will be my gift to you this Casimir Pulaski Day. If you haven't already heard it.

2
Look at Casimir Pulaski's moustache! It looks like someone just drew it on to make him look EXTRA devious. This will have to be my gift to you if you have already heard the song. There.

Jodi Picoult, or how I learned to stop worrying and...still hate Jodi Picoult

2010-02-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

Over the long weekend (It was Valentine's weekend, for those of you who don't live in Massachusetts and therefore don't have a three day weekend for the glorious fake holiday, Patriot's Day), Caleb and I went out to western Massachusetts.

It was pretty cool. There were old, old rundown farmhouses everywhere, and barren farmland, and, as I told my friend Terence, the entire thing looked like it was part of some M83 video. But this post isn't about that.

We went over to Northampton (Awesome Lesbian Town USA! I love that place, it's so great and open-minded and rainbow-strewn), and were walking around the downtown area, in and out of shops, when we came to a used bookstore. Naturally, we went in. I came out thirty minutes later, nauseous and kind of giddy. I had done something very wrong.

I bought a Jodi Picoult novel.

Okay, so the thing is, Jodi Picoult is possibly the worst mass-produced writer of the current age. I know this. But...the book I bought was about Amish people. AND I HAVE A FASCINATION. So I did it. I bought it. For five dollars. I also bought two significantly better books, books I used to cover the Other Book I bought, books I used to assuage my guilt and embarrassment. Later, they became books I actually read and enjoyed, but no matter.

Anyway, so I read this book over two days while at the law school and on the T. I covered the novel with paper so I could read it without people judging me**. The book, unsurprisingly, was terrible. But I was still disappointed. I think the reason why it was so bad had something to do with the fact that Jodi Picoult wrote the main character, Ellie, like she had a mild form of autism. Consider this.

A young Amish woman (Katie) who has just given birth and may or may not have murdered her baby tells you, her lawyer, that she sees her dead little sister (Hannah) ice skating on the pond sometimes. You are currently at said pond.

You should:

a) Say, "Oh, okay" and then back away into the farmhouse, waiting for dawn to come so you can call a psychiatrist to come check this girl out.

b) Ask her to tell you more about that in a soothing voice while making mental notes to, in the future, tell a psychiatrist about this disturbing situation.

c) Stare smugly at Katie, and then scream "Hannah! Come on out and play!!!!" and then when nothing happens, shrug and say "Funny, I don't see anything. Imagine that." (p. 64)

Apparently, if you're Jodi Picoult, YOU CHOOSE C.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHE IS SO AWFUL I CAN'T EVEN DEAL WITH IT ANYMORE.

Anyway, okay, I know. This was my fault. Never buy books that I know are going to be The Worst again, I know. I get it. Lesson learned.

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**I just reread that sentence and ohhhhhmygoshIamsoneurotic

PS You know that song "Damn, it feels good to be a gangster?" Apparently one of the men in that group, the Geto Boys, was a midget. Huh.

PPS The book was called "Plain Truth." Blarggg.

I hate myself for posting about the Olympics.

2010-02-27T06:09:00.000-08:00

So...I don't care about the Olympics, which if you know me at all shouldn't be surprising. I don't like extreme patriotism, I don't like the creation of drama or the exploitation of an athlete's real suffering (see Joannie Rochette, Dan Jansen) to sell things, I really, really fucking hate the idea that people seem to think that figure skaters (or even ice dancers) are not real athletes*, but most of all, I just don't like sports. So the idea was that I wouldn't watch the Olympics at all.

But last Friday I ended up watching them at like 1 AM after we got home from some party. Finally, I was sitting down with a pretty open mind. The Olympics had their chance to woo me. What did they show?

THEY SHOWED CANADA VS. DENMARK WOMEN'S CURLING. No really, they did.

But I watched. And it was kind of addicting. Well, not really the curling so much. That still sucks. But it was really, really fun to watch the scary, middle-aged Canadians (seriously, they were all like 45, so if you have dreams to get to the Olympics and have no real talent, start curling), and the young, supermodel-esque Danish team, who were really pretty until the stupid stone thing was let go and suddenly their faces would contort and they'd be like "OOLENACKKKKK! BLUG EFEGGGGJAAARRRRKKKK!" at their teammates. But then NBC didn't show the rest of the game! Strike one.

Then last night I watched a few of the um, realer sports at Caleb's. Speed skating and Apolo Ohno's weird face was on, and skiing was on, and it was...okay. It was mostly funny listening to the announcer talking about Lindsay Vonn and Maria SomethingGerman's friendship. "A very unlikely duo," they said, like they were talking about a fucking fish and a cat becoming best friends. Two young women who ski professionally is an unlikely friendship pair? Strike two. And bobsledding was on, which was fun to watch because they were going so fast and the bobsledders look kind of funny getting into the sled, but I was still kind of like "I don't know, what's hard about this?" until the bobsled TURNED OVER and they were going out of control down the slope and I was like 'OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO WITNESS OLYMPIC DEATHS NO NO NO STOP" but then---then they got out of the stupid thing no problem, and were just really angry and throwing their helmets around. So they were fine. Strike three for making me scared for Russian bobsledders.

So that's it, Olympics. I gave you a chance, and you had to fuck it up.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Seriously? The main argument here seems to be "No sport that wears sparkly costumes is a sport," which makes me think no one who says that has ever watched ice skating. And they should. It's a really fun sport to watch because it is goofy, definitely. The men are...wearing sequins, and the women all look like tiny, delicate people with scary drag queen faces because they're wearing so much makeup, and everyone makes really intense angry faces all the time. But if you see what those people can do, and factor in that they do it while wearing glitter leotards (and combine it with the fact that the men figure skaters have, in all likelihood, been made fun of nonstop for their entire lives for doing it,) it's really, really, really impressive. Also, curling is in the Olympics, which alone should negate ANY undermining of figure skating right there.

Edit: Hey, how much hooking up do you think goes on at the Olympics? Almost everyone's really young and, you know, super fit, and plus everyone's like really tense from being crazy about sports no one cares about. Hmm.

cause I sleep well when I dream away

2010-02-23T18:04:00.000-08:00

Every couple of months my body freaks out and I end up going to sleep at 7:30 PM and waking up 12 hours later. And then I feel the need to tell everyone about it, which I do in the exact same way:

Friend/coworker/stranger: So did you do anything last night?

Me: (all giddy) I slept for TWELVE FUCKING HOURS!!!!!!!!!

Friend/coworker/stranger (already bored): Wow.

Me: I had crazy bear dreams!!!!!!

That last part is, I guess, only true to today's version of this conversation, but it generally involves crazy dreams, probably because whenever I sleep for twelve (fucking) hours, I wake up guiltily throughout the night, though I ultimately let my questionable, soporific id take over my more responsible superego. And whenever it happens I always think it's awesome and worthy of conversation, but I realize it's probably not and see I'm writing about this now why am I doing this??

So...here's something else.

I don't usually hang out with sixteen year old boys (the last time I did on purpose being when I was a sixteen year old girl), but I see Caleb's youngest brother a lot, and it's pretty much always awesome whenever he's around. Like this:

E: Teachers are terrible! My teacher assigned this thing in class, but she didn't post it online and so I didn't do it and I ended up prepared for something else.

Caleb (really parent-like and stern, secretly thinking he's going to be sooo funny): Did the teacher tell you the assignment in class?

E: Yes, but...

C: Was it your responsibility to write it down then?"

E: Yeah, but...

C: So it's the teacher's fault you didn't write the assignment down?

(Long pause)

E: Caleb, everybody hates you.

Kait and the High School Musical Effect

2010-02-16T19:57:00.001-08:00

You know when you're in an art museum and you're in a group of friends wandering around and eventually you get into the modern art section and you're like, "Oh no," because you will eventually end up in front of some Mark Rothko and inevitably, someone's like "Are you serious? I could do that," and they roll their eyes and walk off toward the Rembrandts, and you roll your eyes at them because it's such a cliche but on the inside you're like "Yeah, I know, I could too"? You know when that happens? There's a name for that.

In the spring of my sophomore year of college I took a class in the American Musical. It was great, and it fostered my love of the musical*, blah blah blah, but more importantly, it gave me the official name of that phenomenon when your mind is blown by the annoying simplicity/shittiness/mind-blowing-obviousness of the massively popular thing you're looking at.

The High School Musical Effect.

I guess it's tradition at the end of that class, after exams, to look at a musical that is currently out and popular. Since I took it in the spring of 2006, guess which musical was supersuper popular and not going away anytime soon? Right. I was honestly kind of excited to see High School Musical, not only because it was wicked popular and I figured there had to be some merit to it for that, but because it had a pretty funny name for Disney movie. So we sat down. And I watched this for two hours.

And then I was like this:

And then I was like, "Oh yeah, eight-year-old children made this movie wicked popular." And then I made the above face, again.

Listen, I didn't (really) care that the acting was terrible, the singing bad, or even that there was a character named Sharpay. But I did care that was insufferably boring, and super vanilla, even for the Disney channel, because, you know, I thought the title kind of implied that maybe the writers were capable of something funny or self-aware. "Well, fuck," I thought, my eyes narrowing. "I could write a better film script than that."

And thus was College Musical born. It became my challenge, one that was pretty easily fulfilled, as the only requirements were, "Don't be as bad as High School Musical." It wasn't. It was actually kind of funny, and fun to write, and it took me awhile, but I finished it. It was better than HSM, I can say that with confidence--and that's bad, because it wasn't even a musical**.

Anyway, there's a point to this, the point being that I realized what my next Big Project needs to be. But...I'm not going into that right now, because, you know, it's midnight, and girl's got a law school that needs tendin' to in the morn.

_______________________________________________________________

*I can recommend the shit out of musicals now, if you're ever in need.

**I have no musical talent, so I don't know why I decided to "write a musical." I didn't. I wrote a play, I guess. I did, however, choreograph elaborate dance sequences in my head based in chemistry labs and on the University of Delaware campus, so that may count for something.

Merry Valentine's Day!**

2010-02-14T08:21:00.000-08:00

In honor of lurve, I will just repost a blog I wrote before about how doing something every high school student does led me to meeting someone who I, you know, fell in love with, and would hate that I almost ended that sentence with a preposition, so I'm not ending it with a preposition, OKAY BUDDY?! Here we go.

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Investments, or How I Learned to Sincerely Love Driving School

When you walk to the nearest T station to me, you end up on a sidewalk down a fairly steep hill. It's a busy street, and the store fronts that line it are among the more depressing-looking--there's a Chinese massage parlor and a couple of small Asian stores, and then--the most depressing place of all--a tiny driving school. Everything in the driving school makes it look like it's constantly on the verge of shutting down--the sign hanging half-heartedly in the plexiglass window telling when the next classes will start, the office with its bare metal desk and lineoleum floors, the driving school room that is, from ceiling to floor, eggshell white with those terrible metal chairs--it looks awful. The driving school isn't struggling, and the company has been in business for as long as I can remember. It looks terrible for a very simple reason: they don't have to give a fuck. Everything about this place tells the student, "We don't care. And we don't have to. Because you have to come here if you want to drive, and we don't owe you anything." Whew. Touche, student-driving-place.

Anyway, I was seventeen when I went to driving school there, and--hey, it was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, making it exactly six years ago now--and I remember very little about the actual school. I got a 100 percent on the written test, I remember that. But I never did the important part and finish my actual driving hours, and so I never did get my certificate. In Massachusetts, if you want to get your license before you turn 18, you need that certificate, but I didn't particularly care, even if I had paid for the stupid school out of my own stupid pocket. I didn't really care because I live insanely close to the T, and my parents had made it clear that I wasn't getting a car unless I was buying it with my own money, and that wasn't going to happen because in those days I still actually had a "college fund" (seriously) that I contributed to on a biweekly basis with my earnings from the gourmet grocery store in the rich neighboring town that everyone from my blue-collar city despised.

Okay, time out: does High School Me sound like a character in a country song? I do, don't I? "Yes, back in those days I worked at the grocery store servin' the rich folk to save money!" "Warring towns between rich and poor!" I'm sorry. It wasn't really like that. My life is nothing like a country song. It just sounds that way in writing/retrospect.

Anyway, six years later, I still don't have my license, though that may or may not change on Friday. And driving school would have just been a meaningless bloop during which I watched some movies from the 1970s about not drinking and driving and lost a ton of money for no discernible reason, except that it wasn't. See, I was pretty gregarious then, more so than I am now, and so I became friends with the tall shy kid that was sitting next to me, too.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

So Caleb (because of course that's who the tall, shy guy was) and me and two other kids--a friend of mine from high school and my best friend's younger brother--we of us would goof around the way you're supposed to at driving school. Afterward, with the exception of Justin, I very rarely saw any of them. And even that wouldn't be that important, except that six years after that, through a fairly straightforward but extremely random set of coincidences, I would be in love with that tall shy guy sitting next to me. I could talk about how that driving school is sort of a metaphor for the not-so-lovely backdrops of where we live now and how something nice came out of it anyway, but I'm not going to.

So as it turns out--that terrible, eggshell-white, metal-desk-laden hole in the wall I never learned to drive at? I love that place.

And that couple hundred dollars (I think it was $315) I spent when I was seventeen to not learn how to drive? That may have been one of the best investments I've ever made.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So that's it. It's a long weekend here in Massachusetts, so we're adventuring. Go eat some chocolates out of boxes with Snoopy on the cover of them, and have a good one.

**People don't hate Valentine's Day still, do they? I mean, people don't really take it seriously or anything. Right? It's a holiday based on pink and food items being shaped into hearts.

I ask this because when I was sixteen I refused to celebrate it with my boyfriend because it's "such a commercialized holiday," and I was all about being REAL, and now I'm trying to figure out if I'm getting soft in my old age. But really. Unless you really, really hate prix-fixe dinners. Then I guess you should probably hate Valentine's Day.

Top 5 worst musical crimes perpetrated by Stevie Wonder in the 80s and 90s. Go.

2010-02-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

"I’m in a listing mood because I finally got around to watching High Fidelity last night. I’m the same way you are - no, I don’t have to watch it after I start quoting it a lot. I have to watch it when I see YOU quote it."

~From an email from my friend Terence.

Ah, High Fidelity. The best movie/book about music, love, and list-making you'll ever find.I think it deserves a Top 5 list**.

Top Five Quotes from High Fidelity, the Greatest Movie on Earth

5. Barry: How about Jesus and Mary Chain?

Customer: Oh, I don't know, they always seemed...

Barry: They always seemed what? They always seemed really great is what they always seemed. They picked up where your precious Echo left off, and you're sitting around complaining about no more Echo albums. I can't believe you don't own this fucking record. That's insane. Jesus.

This is the attitude I take on whenever people haven't heard of/listened to a band I think they should. And then I mutter "That's insane. Jesus" under my breath, and then I think it's funny, every single time.

4. Barry: Rob, I'm telling you this for your own good, that's the worst fuckin' sweater I've ever seen, that's a Cosby sweater. A COSSSSSBY SWEATAHHHHHH!

3. Rob: What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

High Fidelity clearly has the greatest opening AND closing lines, because this is the opening line, and the closing line is this:

2. Rob: The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway... I've started to make a tape... in my head... for Laura. Full of stuff she likes. Full of stuff that make her happy. For the first time I can sort of see how that is done.

And then he presses a button and Stevie Wonder's "I Believe" comes out and credits roll, etc, and it's so bomb.

1. Rob: I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.

Oh, man.

Oh no, I feel another coming on....it's like a sneeze...hold on....

Top 5 Quotes with Egregious Swearing/Hilarity from High Fidelity, Greatest Movie on Earth

5. Rob: CHARLIE! YOU FUCKING BITCH! LET'S WORK IT OUT!

Possibly the best way to explain how one feels after they get dumped.

4. Rob: (Pause) Is that Peter fucking Frampton?

(Side note: every. single. time. I hear "Baby I Love Your Way," i'm like "Is that Peter fucking Frampton?" and then I crack up. I realize now, as I type this, that I am terrible.)

3. Barry: Holy Shite. What the fuck is this?

Dick: It's...uh, the new Belle and Sebastian.

Rob: It's the record we've been listening to and enjoying, Barry.

Barry: Well that's unfortunate, cause it sucks ass.

You know what else would have sucked ass? If Jack Black wasn't in this movie.

2. Rob: What. Fucking. IAN GUY!?!?!?!!?!

Also probably the best way to express how you feel after you realize there may or may not be another person that led to your breakup.

1. (Liz walks quickly into store.)

Rob: Oh, hey Liz.

Liz: Hey, Rob. YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! (Turns and quickly walks out of store)

I love any time Joan Cusack is in a scene in this movie. Later on, she's in a scene talking to Laura and she finds out all of the shitty things Rob has done, and she's like "That is shocking. That is shocking." I would imitate that line--at least, the way she said it--so often that by the time I was a senior and my boyfriend at the time dumped me, all my friend Grace could do was say, "That is shocking. That is shocking." It's funny now. At the time I was like "BOO HOO I KNOWWW AHHH CRYING JAG"

Whew, i feel better. I also invite you now to tell me your favorite High Fidelity moments, and/or the Top Five worst music crimes perpetrated by Stevie Wonder in the 80s and 90s. Go. Sub question: Is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins--is it better to burn out or fade away?

**Which makes this a top five list about a movie/book about top five lists. Meta!

Birthdays & Letters & Weirdly Politically Incorrect Book Titles That Seriously Distract from the Original Purpose of the Book, oh my!

2010-02-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

First of all, I want to thank everyone for the birthday wishes and encouragement to eat cupcakes and generally behave however the hell I wanted to on my birthday. I did! I didn't actually make cupcakes...because I spent Thursday night shopping for a special work dress to wear (really), but when I came in there was a huge, half-eaten cake sitting on the front desk!

"Sweet," I thought. "I'll smudge around the frosting and make it into a K!" Then I walked up and saw it was a cake for a Haiti fundraiser. So then I slowly backed away.

Anyway, the rest of the day was fine, full of cake and pad thai and OMG Caleb got me two board games--one (Blokus) of unspeakable geekery, and the other (Apples to Apples) a fun party game which becomes funner once I figure out the right way to make it into a drinking game. He also got me amazing stationary paper and my own stamps so I can personalize the hell out of some stationary, and then start writing letters again. I'm really excited about it. How could I be unexcited about it? There is a stamp of a moose head.

Our birthday/Valentine's Day celebrations are happening next week, though, so on my actual birthday we just ended up going to this local show where I saw a bunch of guys I went to high school with--they were basically unchanged, besides the fact that most of them were a lot fatter. It was fine. Whatever**. Saturday it was freezing, so we stayed in all day lounging around, got our asses kicked by one enormous meal we ate at this Irish pub on Beacon Street, and then passed out by 8:30 PM. It was pretty fun, overall.

Anyway! I went to my work library again today...which means one thing. Another installment of.....

Why the hell would someone name a book this!?

I know, I know. It's old, blah blah blah, that word didn't have the stigma it does now. But substitute "mentally challenged" in. Go ahead. Does the title sound any better? Didn't think so.

Anyway. That's all for now.

**Apparently, seeing high school people renders me about as eloquent as I was back then.

What Not To Do On My Birthday: A Cautionary Tale

2010-02-04T04:30:00.001-08:00

There's a point, somewhere in season five of The Office, that Kelly Kapoor gets angry at everyone. She's really mad at everyone in the office because they all forgot her birthday the day before and she got especially dressed up and no one paid any attention to her. And so then Jim and Dwight plan to give her a birthday party, and she gets to choose an hour of TV or an hour of napping. And she loves it. She chooses the nap, and then gets under the table and is like, "I'm too excited to sleep," just like that little kid in the Disney commercial.

I was sitting there watching, pretty much shocked. I was having one of those moments when you recognize yourself. Oh my God, I thought. I'm actually like that in real life.

My Birthday: An Introduction

I get really, really excited about my birthday. I feel very special on it. I think I secretly glow on that day. "But Kait," you say. "You're not six."

I know. But listen to my terrible birthday history! Here are the facts:

FACT: My birthday is in early February. FACT: I live in New England. The holidays are done, and any kind of spring forty-degree weather is at least seven weeks away. Because I hate the winter, my birthday is literally the only beacon of light in a season of broken spirits and frozen tears and what have you. Well, now it's slightly better--I have an anniversary of sorts and then Caleb's birthday and then mine and then Valentine's Day, which is not really a holiday I care about but usually the decorations are cute and I get candy from various people.

FACT: In high school, I wanted so badly to not be That Guy who makes a big deal out of his birthday that I took the complete opposite route. I didn't say anything about it at school. I worked in a grocery store on my 17th birthday.

FACT: My 18th birthday, I gave up on that. I had this sick 80s themed birthday party, and everyone came, and it was wicked fun. I realize this is not a terrible birthday fact. But wait, because....

FACT: ...after that awesome party I was out of the closet about celebrating my birthday. But in college, it always ended up happening right before we came back to school from winter break, or on the day of moving back in. So my birthday usually ended up being kind of okay.

FACT: ...except on my 21st birthday, when it went from okay to SUCKING. I was going to Mexico in two days, so I was at home in Boston, where I had like no friends. I ended up calling my boyfriend at the time, and he was hanging out with all of my friends. And everyone was watching the Superbowl and drinking and having fun, while I was alone upstairs in my childhood home. Then I didn't get carded when I went out to lunch. And then my dad spelled my name wrong on the cake. And I was really worried about going to Mexico and missing everyone. And then I cried.

FACT: Yes, I am really into my birthday. But I'm also into other people's birthdays! This is important.

FACT: My boyfriend's birthday is two weeks before mine. This is also important.

The Cautionary Tale

So, as we know, Caleb's birthday is right before mine. And I was really excited for it, even if he wasn't. I might have actually been more excited for his birthday than mine, because it meant I could plan fun things and I made the whole day for him. When the day came around, I made a delicious lunch for him, we went to the Sam Adams brewery, the aquarium, took a nap in the car in a parking garage, (...not part of the original plan), met up with friends for dinner, and then met up with a bunch of people for drinks at Rock Bottom. It was a great day.

So the thing was, as a result of that great day, we started talking about my birthday. What did I want to do? What should Caleb plan? "Oh, you'll think of something." I said, confident that he would think of something. It didn't have to be nearly as elaborate as what I planned for him, but you know, maybe one fun activity. Something. Anything.

That day, he showed up, looking ragged. "Hey," he said. "Hi!!!!" I said. "I'M 23 NOWWWW!" He gave me a hug and a card, and then he said, "Do you want to take a nap?" It was 9:30 AM.

I looked at him and decided that he should probably sleep. So I made breakfast for myself. Okay, not that bad. Could get much better.

Except that he kind of figured that simply taking the day off from school would be enough. And, you know, it should have been, but if you need reasoning as to why it wasn't...you know. Just reread this entire post. His fun activity was teaching me how to parallel park. Etc.

I was pretty pissed. He couldn't have thought of anything better than driving lessons in a mall parking lot? But as soon as we went into a video store, and he picked up Mamma Mia and asked "Do you want to rent this?" I knew I had to forgive. I just had to. Because though Caleb and I share a number of similar interests, the musical is not one of them. This is a boy who continually accidentally calls Rent "Lease." And it's not that he's not interested, it's that every time we went into the store and I picked up Mamma Mia, he'd groan and say, "Kait, I really don't want to watch that." Which for Caleb is like a normal person grabbing the disc out of the cover and smashing it against a wall. He really, really hates musicals. And he looked so worried, holding up the DVD in front of him like a little kid. I had been a huge bitch.

So I forgave, and then we went home and watched When Harry Met Sally, because I adore it, and he made me delicious quesadillas, and then I drank margaritas until I passed out in my bed.

It ended up being a pretty good birthday overall, and a cautionary tale for both of us. For Caleb, it was "When your girlfriend is an insufferable brat about her birthday, it's probably best for the both of you to just indulge her," and for me, it was something like "Don't take the people you love for granted blah blah blah stop being insufferable on your birthday etc etc etc."

Whatever. All I know is, I turn 24 on Friday, and if baking a ton of cupcakes to bring to work and wearing an extra-special outfit is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Thanks for ruining my life, photography.

2010-01-31T17:00:00.001-08:00

So okay, first of all, I need to make one of those lists of things people want to do before they reach some kind of an age that everyone's making, because I think I'm currently about to ACCOMPLISH one of the things, and I can't accomplish it before I can triumphantly cross it off a list. Not that I'm in any danger of that currently, because OMGTHISFUCKINGCAMERA.

I'm in this photography class right now at the university I work at, and so we're working with 35mm SLRs. This is exciting for the following reasons:

1. I think I'm going to get some really nice black and white photos out of it

2. Learning how to shoot a really nice photo is one of those goals that belong on the aforementioned list.

3. My current idea of "photography" involves a computer camera and looks like this:

Photobooth is one of those applications that comes with the MacBook and continually causes Caleb to roll his eyes/complain about it/try to get it off my bar of ready-to-click things. I love it. But I can see how it may be time to move on.

Unfortunately, I can't load film correctly, don't understand what the tiny little numbers on my lens means, and spent about three hours today trying to figure them out, only to come out with two rolls of ruined film and no pictures ready for developing on Tuesday. So til then...

Thanks, Photobooth!

(This, by the way, Pandora, the fat cat who always stares at me in this really judgy way.)

Newburyport

2010-01-28T18:22:00.000-08:00

In the morning a few Saturdays ago, we were trying to figure out where to go for breakfast. (And um, before we go any further, it'd probably be good to note that I have this weirdo obsession with seeing every little town in Massachusetts I haven't been to before, which is most of them.) So it started off like, "Let's go to a little breakfast place we haven't been to before," and then that sort of became "Let's just go to a neighboring town," and then that became "Let's just go somewhere totally new." So while I got ready, Caleb checked google maps and chose a place, and then refused to tell me where we were going.

As it turns out, we went here:

This is Newburyport, this town on the North Shore. It's beautiful and filled with tiny little beach houses and adorable things and nature, all of which are generally

missing in my daily life. We started out in the nature reserve on the ocean, which was fucking FREEZING. But beautiful. But seriously. I spent a lot of the time being like "Wow! This is beautiful! This is like a beautiful tundra! This isohmysweetlordIdidnotdressforthisahhh."

So even though Caleb was having fun looking like pensively toward the ocean (see image at left, sigh), we left fairly soon and went to downtown Newburyport, which was even more adorable and filled with all these antique shops and book stores and we spent a while there, and then got the greatest dinner ever at this Mexican bistro. Oh, and we never found a breakfast place. That's okay though.

Edit: Guess what else happened while we were up there?

Caleb: Wow, there sure are a lot of Scott Brown signs up around here.

Kait: Yeah...must be the rich people...

C: Yeah.

K: He...he wouldn't win, right?

C: Har, har, har.

K: Har, har, har.

(Uneasy silence)

C: He might win.

K: He's everywhere.

C: Oh, no.

Sigh.

Well. Besides that, Newburyport was a win.

Oh, hey Internet.

2010-01-18T20:49:00.000-08:00

Been a long time. I'm just never near a computer in my free time anymore. And though my weekend was everything a good long weekend should be, I don't really feel like writing about it because I have to get up extra early tomorrow and vote so that Martha Coakley wins the senate seat, because I'll be on campus all day with work and then at my first photography class. SIIIIIIIIIIIGH.

So anyway, here's a pretty picture of my mom and her sisters, circa 1978, which is probably more awesome than anything I would have written.

In which I am currently in the midst of the Sunday Night Blues.

2010-01-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

I had a such a nice weekend. Really. We had an adventure up in northern MA near the shore, and it was just lovely. I keep sighing wistfully about it. But since right now I'm currently all Saddy McDepressionface, plus I can't seem to get pictures to load to my computer, I won't write about it until a little later.

So in the meantime, remember how awesome these were?

They were way cooler back in the 60s.

2010: The Year of the Tiger Disapproving Bulldog

2010-01-04T17:13:00.000-08:00

Want to read about some vignettes from 2010 thus far? No? Hold on a sec.

Now, what was that you say? Kind of? That's better.

January 1st 1:00 AM: I am in a kitchen, watching a large, doughy girl wearing a tiara (you know the type of Girl I'm talking about here, right?) yell drunkenly at everyone in the room. I stare at her and start fantasizing about ripping the tiara off her head, because wearing a tiara on NYE is The Worst. My friend Danny starts talking to me about New Year's Resolutions, and asks me what mine is. "To get hotter," I reply thoughtfully, and take a large gulp of wine.

January 1st, 12:30 PM: I'm in a little breakfast place with Danny and Andrew and Caleb. We're all eating and watching the Rose Bowl parade. I see bull dogs and I'm like "AWWWW!", but then I see that it's people making English bull dogs wear tut us and snowboard down a little slope, and then go back up agai n in this little house "ski lift," and I think, "That's weird, right?" So I poked Caleb to look at the TV, and he was like this:

January 2nd: After a little party in Brookline (to which I wore my glittery Caesar leaves), Caleb and I decide to share a cab with two guys we met there.They're the type with nice haircuts and scarves, and if they weren't actually studying to be an architect and a lawyer-type, that's totally what I would have pegged them for. Anyway, we get into a taxi, and the lawyer-type asks him if he has a credit card machine. The taxi driver doesn't. Apparently, this is illegal. I know it's illegal because the lawyer-type started screaming at the guy. "THAT IS ILLEGAL ACCORDING TO SECTION BLAH BLAH BLAH I'M ANGRY YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW AHHHHH" he yelled. His friend waited patiently. I poked Caleb. "There are like, two taxis waiting on either side of this taxi," I said. "Yeah..." Caleb said, and he didn't have to finish the thought. But he's so angry. We ended up in another taxi with a gentle Haitian guy, and it was kind of terrifying because it was like 1:30 on a Saturday night and it was snowing and the roads weren't great, but at least there was no yelling. (The guy was actually pretty cool other than the law-student yelling, though.)

January 3rd: I go into Boston for a while with all of Caleb's siblings, plus his cousin. Here's the thing: all of them are like, seven feet tall and have pretty blue eyes and generally look like they're perpetually going to play soccer or have a picnic or something adorable like that. Meanwhile, I wore like two sweaters and a jacket, and my dad's wicked heavy snow boots that are way too big, go up to my knee, and don't let me flex my foot. At 5'6'', I'm hardly short, but these are a long-legged people. As a result, I not only felt like a dark-eyed midget, but spent most of the day literally waddling after Caleb & co. We walked home from the T, and as everyone threw snowballs at each other and laughed, (yes, they are That Family. But they're all awesome, which is probably why everyone gets along so well) I struggled to not fall over, because I'd probably end up like Randy from A Christmas Story. "Randy lay there like a slug. It was his only defense." And when I got home, Caleb was like, "How's it going," and I was like this:

Guess what!?

2010-01-01T18:25:00.001-08:00

I FOUND GLITTERY LEAVES!!!

I shall pretend to put them up my nose. You're welcome.

I also made a headband thing out of gold sparkly leaves to wear to a cocktail party in Brookline tomorrow. It took me five minutes and cost 25 cents to make the whole thing, so I'm posting a picture despite messy hair and lack of real clothing being worn. Be proud of me.

Also, happy new year.

In which it's clear that I'm not resolute about anything except my neuroticism

2009-12-30T19:31:00.000-08:00

Does anyone have a new year's resolution for 2010? Or, like, nineteen, like I do? Do people even make new year's resolutions anymore?

I never really did this before, and now I feel like it's generally a bad idea because if I realllly want to do something, I shouldn't make it into a resolution because since when are new year's resolutions actually obeyed/completed/whatever it is you do to a resolution? But what if I...created a few....goals. Just, um, things that I want to do. Then they're not necessarily doomed to be broken! Look, it's not my fault I happened to get my shit together within the last three months and that this particular time period would be a good time to set some goals for myself! So whatever. Ugh. Stop looking at me like that.

But seriously. Do you guys have any?

(from nedroidcomics)

Last night was a Sam Adams, merlot, and vodka night. Because I don't know what "consequences" means.

2009-12-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Caleb was all "I'm going to hike up Mount Washington, and then sled down it because I'm soooo strong and brave and ruggedly handsome and also a little bit of an idiot because who the hell sleds down Mount Washington" so I was like, "Well, I guess that's my cue to sit inside and watch the Sex and the City movie and then take a nap and then go out and get hammered with my friends downtown."

Man. Beer, wine, and liquor, all mixed up in my belly. I can't even get drunk properly.

I wrote this yesterday but then Caleb came over and we watched eight episodes of Mad Men

2009-12-26T09:17:00.000-08:00

And then he was like, "Can you make me a drink, darling?" and smacked me on the ass and I giggled and scurried off to the whiskey. Just kidding. But he DID ask me to make him a drink, and I thought it was kind of funny.

ANYWAY. Here is my original post.

Merry Christmas.

I've spent the past 10 days at work doing exam stuff, so that meant we had to come in early and leave late and not go to lunch. So that mean I didn't get to go to the library once or even eat actual meals that weren't comprised of truffles and coffee. And I was like, "UGH Law school sucks for everyone." But that's okay. BECAUSE I GET THE NEXT TEN DAYS OFF!

Hooray! Law school is bomb if you work for one.

Anyway, I've been listening to Sufjan Stevens this season, because he writes amazing original Christmas songs, and then covers old Christmas songs. And while I could talk about other awesome Christmas songs by other artists that I love, this is just way easier. So here is a Sufjan Stevens Christmas song guide!

If you are in lurrrrve but and want to hear a sweet song about love and Christmas but still want to feel vaguely melancholy for unspecified reasons: Christmas in the Room*

If you're in the crowd that will go to church on Christmas Eve, and again on Christmas day, and might possibly read the bible between that: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

If your family is really cute and does things like have traditions near Christmas: Come on! Let's Boogie To The Elf Dance!

If your family is vaguely dysfunctional and doesn't have any cute traditions and you want to make yourself feel better about that: That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!**

If your family is pretty weird but pretty much super happy anyway!: Put The Lights On The Tree***

If you're in a totally effed, semi-emotionally abusive relationship with someone who probably really gets into semiotics when you fight and you've always wanted a Christmas song about that: Did I Make You Cry On Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!)

Anyway, merry Christmas. This one was way better than that time I had to talk a large green furry man-thing from stealing Christmas from everyone and then had to eat roast-beast with the singing residents of my village.

*This is the song that I took parts of and put on Caleb's present last year. It was adorable, even for me.

**This song is really, really good, even if your family isn't vaguely dysfunctional.

***Look at this adorable little weirdo music video for it!

I didn't even have to learn to love jury duty!

2009-12-15T18:50:00.000-08:00

Since I'm super into civic obligations, you can imagine my excitement at having to serve jury duty today. Fact: as it turns out, jury duty is awesome if you have a boring job and literally no personal responsibilities. So I really enjoyed it.

We had to watch that video (on tape! Retro!) that they show across Massachusetts. It starred the Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, who introduced herself as "Mawgret Mawshell." Okay, I think, hardcore Boston accent. But she kept talking, and I realized her 'r's didn't disappear. They just became 'w's! "Juwwy duty is a sacwed wight," Judge Marshall said, and from there she lost me. I kept waiting for her to pause, and then launch into "Mahhh-wage! Mahh-wage is wot bwings us togetha todayyyy!"*

Anyway, for some reason the juror's waiting room was in a library of sorts. It was the kind of library that was entirely old law books, and thus rendered useless to me. I had brought the ubiquitous language text book and a New Yorker, but I didn't feel like active learning, and sometimes I feel that I look like a big douche bag reading that particular publication. So at some point I turned around and picked a random book off the shelf. And oh, the things I learned.

So I'm not exactly sure what the deal was with this book, but it seemed to be all the mid-trial decisions made in trials regarding evidence. Like, it was ruled that someone's opinion of if a person looked underage would work, but a textbook detailing a medical condition wouldn't suffice as evidence. I think that's what it was about. But it went from 1857-1983. And it detailed all of the crimes that happened in the area!

In 1898, someone got in trouble for buying booze for a minor, and in 1952, someone was tried for (as far as I can tell) impregnating a woman. Not raping her, but impregnating her. That can't be right, can it? Apparently, the woman also had syphilis, so...there's that! And in the 1870s, some 14 year old girl burned down a barn and told everyone that it was her fault. But as far as I could tell, no one believed her and it had to be ruled that her admitting she did burned the barn down and having evidence that it was burned down be included in the trial. I can imagine it now.

"I burned down the barn. I did it."

"Why now, young lady, don't go telling tales like that!"

"I took a torch and burned it because I hate my parents."

"Hah...hah...well, you lady-folk sometimes get a little emotional! Now, did you see any suspicious figures in the area?"

Also, in 1857 it was ruled that "Any person should be competent to testify whether a certain liquor is gin." First of all, really? Any person? Second of all, I would love, love to know why that had to be clarified.

Anyway, I got let out early, because all of the cases for the day got dismissed.

So then Caleb and I went to Harvard to look at this really old dictionary. The first English dictionary, actually, and it was awesome. We had to leave our jackets, my purse, and any outside materials in the locker outside, and then show two forms of identification, and then fill out a form, and finally we could look at it. I like looking at old books, and this particular book was such an insanely awesome accomplishment that it was cool to look at it and even handle it without gloves. On our way back, we were all invigorated by history. "That was so cool!" we kept saying.

And, oh shit. I just realized writing this now--only just now--that I am extensively, irreversibly dorky. I'll just quit while I'm ahead.

This week in 'strange things I find in the library during my lunch hour'

2009-12-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

A treatise on....well. You can see.

For the record, I found this by accident while looking at books about ancient wedding rituals. While I didn't find the particular book I was looking for, I did find this: a book that uses the term "vigorous farting" repeatedly. FINALLY.

No, I'm not sure why it was in the same section as the ancient wedding rituals.

And no, I didn't take it out and read it. I am a lady.

Weird Titles I Find in the Library

2009-11-30T21:26:00.000-08:00

By now, it shouldn't come as any sort of surprise that one of the things I occasionally like to do during my lunch hour is wander around the university library and find books according to one particular topic that I decide on beforehand. I mean, that sounds about right for me, right? My topic today was rather boring ("Christmas Around The World"), but while I was leaving the holiday section of the library, I saw two weirdo books!

Weirdo Book One:

Camp Counseling

This is was the size of my old, dreaded biology textbook from back in the day. It was really, really big. And while I guess maybe this isn't that weird, as there is (I assume) a lot of material to cover when being a camp counselor, I really appreciated it because it's like that montage in Wet Hot American Summer when Janeane Garofalo is looking for books on astrophysics because she's in love with an astrophysicist, and Astrophysicist Henry is looking for books on camp counseling because he's in love with Janeane Garofalo. Yesss. I really love that I found that stupid book.

Weirdo Book Two:

Bathing In Public In Ancient Rome

It's the inclusion of "in public" that gets me. That, and the fact that there is enough to write about bathing in public that it warrants a 400 page book to be written about it. Actually. That might not even be that surprising. It's just, they couldn't have thought of a less-weirdo title? "The role of bathing in Roman Society" probably wouldn't have caught my eye. Whatever.

Knowing that the library has titles like these, I think I'm going to redirect my occasional lunchtimes searches a little from random topics I think of to really, really obscure ideas and subjects to find books on. Does anyone have any really good, very weirdo/obscure subjects I should try to find books about?

The Southie Party; or: How I learned to love someone else's drunken escapades

2009-11-23T15:42:00.001-08:00

So Friday I decided it would be a good idea, for some reason, to go to this party in Southie. It was not a good idea. It was a terrible idea, because first of all, I was exhausted after a week of unfulfilling, menial work, and second of all, I did not pregame or bring any alcohol to it, which I most definitely should have.

Anyway, the party was full of punk kids, and the apartment was an absolute shit hole. The bottom floor looked like a basement, the walls wore torn away to show the exposed wires, and upstairs was somehow actually more disgusting, the kitchen floor tiles torn away and covered with a layer of dirt, smashed bottles laying around, open jars of jelly in the cabinet. I mean, come on. Who the hell seriously lives like this voluntarily after the age of 21?

The kids who were there were almost kind of charming, because of how Boston they were, but that ended up being the same thing that depressed me. Southie boys are just like the Quincy boys I grew up having to deal with*(1), in that they have the same Boston accents that they'll never get rid of because they never want to leave, and they still like punk even after high school, and they drink too much and swear a lot, but probably aren't awful people. Most of them are pretty nice, actually. Funnily, and weirdly, this particular house had random Irish Catholic things all over the house: a "Lord's Prayer" embroidery hanging up on the wall (this was probably only half-ironic), a saint medallion on the floor, a bookcase with Catholic prayer books in them, insane alcoholics shouting about things.

Plus they all wear claddaugh rings!*(2) So I felt more connected to them.

There was one pretty great part to being at this party, though. I was reading a National Geographic from 1999 and on the phone with Scott on the third floor landing, when a girl stumbled out of a bedroom. She almost fell, so I caught her, and she was like "Hi, I'm Mary!" and so I introduced myself, and asked her if she needed any help. "No, I'm fine!!!" she yelled, and then promptly fell all the way down the stairs and knocked over a barrel filled with trash. I felt bad, but not bad enough that I didn't immediately start laughing at her. I don't think she noticed, though, considering her general state of inebriation. She also slapped my ass later, and then she got into this mysterious wheelchair that was there, and then she fell over backwards onto the floor.

So overall, it was pretty awesome to have her there. I need to bring Mary to all the boring parties I go to.

*(1) Or, more accurately, Quincy boys are just like Southie boys, since the culture here in Quincy is to, for some stupid reason, idolize Southie, a place with a history of unspeakable racism and poverty. Quincy is, at times, a diluted version of Southie, probably because so many people migrated from Southie to Quincy and raised their kids here. But it is diluted--Quincy isn't Southie, of course, so the crime is far less and the racism is better than, well, Southie's history with race relations (which is actually a pretty terrible way to describe it, as pretty much any given American city's history with race relations is better than Southie's) , and we're mostly blue-collar instead of straight-up poor. But growing up, it was a very common thing to hear someone talking about how they actually were born in Southie, or their parents were from there. It's super annoying.

*(2) Okay, here we go: This is a claddagh ring. I have a weird loyalty to the ring claddagh. My parents have them as wedding rings, and I wear mine every day, and have since I was sixteen. It's the last vestige of my vaguely Irish Catholic background. They're very common around here, but every time I leave the Boston area I get questions about it. And I kept being shocked, because I really thought they were a pretty well-known symbol everywhere. But anyway. The hands are for friendship, the heart is for love, and the crown is for loyalty. And they have a secret code to tell you whether the person wearing them is in a relationship or single or what. Claddagh rings are bomb.

Doing my civic duty, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love to vote

2009-11-15T21:26:00.000-08:00

MY STORY ABOUT VOTING

A couple weeks ago, right before election day, I was walking into the T when a semi-dorky guy stopped me.

"Are you voting here?" I stopped in the midst of grabbing my Metro, did a slow half turn, and glared, for no other reason than it being 7:50 in the morning and the fact that I had to commute for an hour and was in no state to have a conversation like a decent human being. He looked back at me, puppy-like, probably confused as to why I was so immediately combative.

"Yes..." I replied, in what would probably be categorized as a "low, raspy growl."

"Okay..." he said, and gave me a little pamphlet with his resume on it. I took it, stared again, said, "Okay," and then turned around and walked to the platform without another word.

"Have a nice day..." he called out from behind me. But in that simple phrase I heard much more. "I'm awkward and polite," it said. "I just wanna be on School Committee. Please don't hate me."

I walked up the escalator, feeling like a douche, which probably came from my being a huge douche to that guy. He was really nice to me when I was really inexplicably angry and rude. I looked at the pamphlet. He put his whole educational resume on it, with a picture of him and his family. And he was only running for School Committee, possibly the least exciting post to be running for in city politics.

I decided then. I was going to vote for him. And I was going to only vote for him.

A few days later was election day. I went to my old elementary school, and looked at the ballot. The mayoral race between the two candidates in my city was pretty intense, probably because for some idiotic reason Quincy gives a ton of power to the mayor, more so than most cities do. It was a really close race. As I thought both mayors were kind of tools, I didn't really care who won. I voted for my school committee guy, and left.

(Do you know what this means? It means I went out of my way specifically to vote on school committee. I do not have children, nor am I working or in the public school system.)

I probably would have forgotten about it, had I not been sitting in my kitchen the next day. The paper was right in front of me, and I thought I'd see if that guy won.

He did. He won.

BY ONE VOTE.

There is a moral here, and it is: DOING YOUR CIVIC DUTY ON A LOCAL LEVEL IS AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD DO IT.

The end.

This post includes a picture of an obese spider.

2009-11-13T18:34:00.001-08:00

1. Right now I'm baking a pumpkin pie (because for some reason every day at work someone brings up pumpkin pie and I'm like oh man) and drinking crappy wine. Caleb's over, and is all hyped up crazy as the little kids we volunteer with. I have been bitten, wrestled to the ground and tickled, poked, and been generally creeped out by him within the past hour. It's been weird.

2. Work is going well, I guess. Boring, but I like the people I work with, and this morning everyone spent about a half hour looking at puppies, which is how I officially knew I would belong.

3. When I was little, I read something in a book that said that if you're afraid of spiders and see one, you should name it after a friend, and then they're not so scary. This actually works. So, that being said, please meet, ahem, "Steve Boutry."

Look at this fucking spider! Steve has been living on our front porch since October, and he grows more obese each day. He hides behind a board on our porch. My parents, thankfully, refuse to remove him. What a bad ass.

4. Caleb and I, along with Nathan and Danielle, volunteered again yesterday. I got the easy child, the girl who is older and very polite and friendly and works on her homework when you ask her to. This was on purpose. I'm terrible with kids. Like, truly terrible. I talk to them like they're normal human beings, you know, like there's no special "kid voice" or manner of speaking, but you know, maybe there should be. At one point two of the kids started fighting, and I looked at Caleb. "This is my nightmare," I mouthed, but I'm pretty sure he didn't get it. He got the difficult kid, a tiny fellow who spent most of the time running around in circles and climbing on people while screaming "AHHHHHHHHHHH!" Oh man. This happened, though:

Tiny kid: Is that your girlfriend?
Caleb: Yes.

Tiny kid: (hysterical laughter): Do you kiss her?

Caleb: Yes...(at which point I look over like, you can't actually tell the truth here)

Tiny kid: Do you kiss her a lot?

It was really pretty funny. But that was about the longest Caleb got him to sit down. The kid then stood up and started running into the wall, so there's that.

Anyway, I still have to officially tell the Greatest Voting Story Ever. That'll come soon.

In which I have a minor freak out, put "Moon River" on repeat, etc.

2009-11-07T20:03:00.000-08:00

Since I last updated, all of my time became occupied by being sick and work and hanging out with my boyfriend and friends instead of my computer. Which is weird, because that's pretty much all I did before, but I found time to update then. But uh. I didn't feel like it this week.

So. Hi.

I find that I'm sick of a lot of things. I think I might hate living in a city. I hate the train, taking it every day and squishing myself between people and not having any room to read and having to blast my iPod out of necessity, because people are too fucking stupid to turn their music down so everyone hears their shitty music. I remember when I moved to Delaware and thought it was so strange to live in a place that was so suburban, how I couldn't see any tall buildings around or take public transportation anywhere besides the mall. I used to find the the tall buildings downtown beautiful and interesting, but now I just find them terrifying and haunting, these sterile hunks of grey looming over everything. I can see them as I walk to the train on the horizon, I see them on my way to work, and I see them at work when I look out the window and over the Charles.

I'm sick of feeling like every breath I take is full of chemicals, and I'm sick of traffic. I'm sick of Dorchester and being afraid to let Caleb go home alone at night because I don't trust the people who live there*. I'm sick of worrying about whether he'll get pulled over in his own neighborhood because they think he's a dealer. Because yes, that happens. I'm sick of the crime there, and the fact that I've always been used to hearing about shootings in Dorchester because it's always been that way. I hate thinking about the terrible state of Boston Public Schools and the kids who go there. I don't even live there.

And I should note that I'm not even a country-oriented kind of girl. I've always been more comfortable in cities, and I'd probably freak the fuck out in a place where there weren't street lights or neighbors. But I wouldn't mind being in a place that wasn't full of buildings and construction and desperate people. Maybe a place that had real woods, the kind you could walk through and not see a busy road, or a body of water that didn't have the Boston skyline over it.

For the past several weekends I've been like--it's like, suddenly I think that I'll get the fuck out. I'll take the commuter rail to some weird beautiful place in Massachusetts, to Newburyport or Wellesley or Shirley, and I don't know what I'll do there, but at least it will be a place I've never seen before and it'll be without buildings and buses everywhere. Every morning I go past South Station, and I'm worried that one day I'll be like, forget this, and run out into the station and get on the next commuter rail to some weird town that used to be Shaker or was the founding place of a utopia** or something. I'll just freak out and have to get on the train and go somewhere that isn't into the city. (Kind of like Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, minus the mind-fuckery.)

All of this kind of makes me want to crawl into bed and make Caleb snuggle me and listen to Moon River or watch When Harry Met Sally. I will go do half of those things now, which will have to be good enough.

*So, I'm at Caleb's house right now. As I was writing that, there was some kind of fight going on outside. I peeked out the window and Caleb told me not to, because if the cops were called and the people fighting saw us looking out the window...AUGHH. STUFF LIKE THIS.

**Shirley and Harvard MA, among others, were centers for both Shakers and a utopia or two. Western Mass seems to have been a magnet for people with plain, durable furniture and weird communal living ideas.

Subtle Sexuality, Or: Caleb's day vs. my day

2009-10-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

Spoiler alert: Caleb wins

Caleb: In beautiful, 75-degree Austin Texas.
Me: In Boston, which had a nice day today, but....it's Boston.

Caleb: Went to various journalismy conferences that he got to choose.
Me: Went to my job in a law school.

Caleb: Frolicked, learned things
Me: Had to leave work two hours early and go home, as have stomach problems (which I will not go into detail with, because I am a lady and this is not that kind of blahg) and a sore throat that kind of took away my will to live for approximately 10 hours today.

Caleb: Hung out with Scott, my friend from highschool
Me: Hung out with my cat, Pandora. Let me explain what this means. As I languished in bed, my cat came in to hang out with me. And I got all happy like, "Now I have a friend!" Which, if you look up "pathetic" in the dictionary, is probably in there somewhere.

On the brightside, tomorrow we can dress up for work, though I'll probably just go as a cat because I spent this entire week feeling terrible instead of creating my outfit. And I missed The Office because I was sleeping, but on the brightside, then I checked out Hulu and found out that Kelly has created a music group called "Subtle Sexuality," so I mean, time well spent there, because I'm pretty sure I'm going to start trying to incorporate that phrase into my life as much as possible now (see blahg title)

SO ANYWAY

2009-10-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

The reason why I slept eleven hours on Monday is because on Sunday, Rachel (aka one of my best friends from college who lives in some lame square-shaped state approximately 2,000 miles away from me) came to visit, and so did Scott (aka one of my best friends from home who also lives approximately 2,000 miles away from me, but in a slightly more squiggly, Texas-shaped state). What luck! Especially considering I want them to get married! But that is neither here nor there. For now.

Anyway, Caleb and I picked Rachel and her sister Caitlin in Nashua, and then we drove back to Massachusetts and got Emily, another one of my best friends from college, and decided to tour Boston in the freezing, pelting rain. It was terrible. So we went to the Harpoon factory tour (FYI: Harpoon is, after hashing this out with Steve, a decidedly better tour than the Sam Adams tour. Sam Adams is way bigger and so their tour is much more like, touristy and prepackaged. And at Harpoon we went on a tour of the actual brewing site, and then literally just drank for a solid half-hour, and plus the beers you drink are way more varied and awesome. Like, this last time they had a winter ale that was kind of cinamonny, and a cider, and when they mix the two together it tasted vaguely like apple pie. Plus, they have my favorite beer. Harpoon wins.)

So then, because the weather was so terrible, we just went to the North End for Rachel's birthday dinner. Three hours and six bottles of wine later, we (or at least, I stumbled) out to go to some comedy show and meet up with Scott and Tom. Ugh. I was pretty drunk, but not so drunk that I was going to throw up or couldn't walk in a straight line. Just drunk enough to not be able to say what I mean and to feel like a huge douchebag. So that was...something. Then we went to the comedy show, where I do not remember actually listening to anything, yet I'm pretty sure I laughed at stuff. I think I just laughed when Tom laughed, because he has a really loud laugh. Good times.

So, yeah. Then I slept eleven hours the next day.

____________________________________________________________

In other news!

I think I know what my Halloween costume will be. I'll give you an awesome visual hint:

A creepy blonde wig

PLUS

A red tank top

PLUS

a black marker (I didn't feel like Google imaging)

EQUALS

Lindsay Bluth in Arrested Development, from that episode she tries to get the cell mates to catcall her to feed her self esteem and George Sr. keeps paying them off, and also from the episode where she tries to seduce Ice the Bounty Hunter!

The only problem is if people are not aquainted with Arrested Development, they will think I have a terrible sense of humor and am trying to make a desperately unfunny blonde joke. Though...chances are if you don't know Arrested Development I don't want to know you anyway. So maybe it's a win-win.

I slept for eleven hours last night.

2009-10-20T15:32:00.000-07:00

ELEVEN FUCKING HOURS!!!!!!

What should I be for Halloween?

A stupid day, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love deal with moustaches

2009-10-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up and was lying in bed, and was loosening up, so I was sort of rolling my head around. You know what I mean? Just rotating my head in a circle, when suddenly I got this terrible pain in the back right of my neck. And then I realized I couldn't move my head to the right. And it didn't go away, like I thought it would.

So that happened, and so shortly after I woke up I called Caleb to make him feel bad for me. "It hurt so bad," I whimpered, to which Caleb was like "Wait, you were rolling your head around? Did you know that you're not supposed to do that?" Silence. "Yeah, you're never supposed to do that. If you wanna loosen up your neck muscles, you need to go one side, then the other, then back and forth. The way you were doing it is really bad for you." Oh, really, Caleb? REALLY!?

So THEN I had to clean my room, aka the worst chore ever.

And then Caleb picked me up so we could run to the mall. This would make things better, right? I run out to the car, and get in, and am about to close the door when I turn to give him a kiss, and there, right above his lip, is--

A BIG BLONDISH CATERPILLAR-LIKE MOUSTACHE.

This is what happens next:

A full three-second pause. I am speechless. Then I started scrambling to get out of the car. Caleb started driving. "I'M NOT STAYING IN THIS CAR WITH YOU," I yelled, while Caleb began to go faster, the car door still open. I gave up, and closed the door. Then he tried to kiss me, but that wasn't going to happen. Then he put his hand on my leg. "THIS IS MAKING ME FEEL DIRTY" I yelled, again. And again.

(My distaste of this certain kind of facial hair stems from the fact that moustaches are The Worst. You can get away with it sometimes, if you are an older man with a kindly face. Otherwise, like top hats and faux-hawks, moustaches on young people are never to be trusted. There is this awful kid at the University of Delaware who always wears really tight shorts and has an ironic moustache and is really short, and every time I saw him I just wanted to throw up. Obviously, my reaction to Caleb was not as strong as that to the one of that awful hipster guy, but I still don't trust the moustache. This is a really long parenthetical reference so...the end.)

So then we get to the mall, and I start running away from him because should I really be seen with a moustachioed man? And so Caleb gets tired of chasing me and goes upstairs, which would be fine, except I don't have my phone. So, in my depression from having a sore neck and a moustachioed boyfriend, I spend seventy dollars in a Forever 21, and yes, I'm blaming that on external factors and not the fact that I am fiscally irresponsible. And then I have to find a pay phone and I feel pathetic because I'm on a pay phone. Plus, by that point I feel bad for having shunned Caleb for having a moustache, because I do love him and all, and my love shouldn't be that conditional, or conditional at all really, so I find him and give a hug (in public) to show him that I will love him no matter what, and after that we got something to eat, and Caleb tried to talk to me about semi-serious job stuff, and I couldn't take him seriously because he had a moustache.

Epilogue: The day got better after that, because there were naps and heating pads involved.

What do old people and Mormons have in common?

2009-10-16T16:02:00.000-07:00

Answer below.

So.

Last Saturday my gentleman caller and I went to see a matinee (A MATINEE!!) (I'm an old person on the inside) of an August Wilson play*, and we also went out to breakfast at a local breakfast restaurant with gingham curtains (I'm old), and we stayed in on a weekend night to play boardgames with Steve and Amy and Caleb's little brother (old), and I enjoyed ALL of it, a lot, and I wouldn't have wanted to do anything else.

Then yesterday we decided to establish Thursday night as Date Night (kind-of old), so we were joking about sounding like old people. We went to Museum of Fine Arts and then we got Mexican food, and by the time we got home it was time for The Office. So we watched that and then 30 Rock, and then, at like 10:25, I was like, "Hey, we can hang out, but first I think I'm going to...take a nap,"** and Caleb was like "Oh okay sounds like a plan. A nap it is." We woke up eight and a half hours later. (OLD!)

But it's really okay to act like an old person at the age of 23, I think. Because old people, like Mormons***, know the hell out of dating and as a result, have the most fun.

Things Old People Do That Are Awesome and Might Also Make Good Dates, Maybe

1. Walk hand-in-hand along a place of natural beauty.

2. Frequent local eating establishments that have things like flowered wall paper and framed drawings of ducks on the wall. (Newcomb Farms Milton. Bam. Done.)

3. Take naps. (Maybe not "awesome"...or a "date," but we do it a lot, together, and so do old people, so it's going in.)

4. Go to matinee performances of things.

5. Go to things like free lectures and museums to further your knowledge...for the pleasure of learning (I suppose "getting tickets to visit the MFA gift shop and then stopping and looking at all the art on the way there" doesn't really count as a learning experience as much as us kind of ripping off the museum, but at that play Caleb and I sat around for the discussion after the play, so that counts.)

6. Sit around and talk near fires.

7. Stay in and play board games. I have done ALL of these things! In the past week! If only I had drunk gin out of a plastic water bottle in the middle of the day and yelled casually racist things at my family members, and my inner-old guy would have come out in full force.

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*The play was Fences, and we really were amidst a sea of white hair. Later on, I would go back to the gentleman caller's house and tell Micah that we were the youngest ones in the audience and Caleb would be like "No you're exaggerating," but I WASN'T. The only other people I saw even somewhat close to our age were two miserable-looking adolescents who had clearly been dragged there by their parents. I WASN'T EXAGGERATING, CALEB.

**This isn't the first time I've done this. In fact, since I started this job I have this habit of telling Caleb I'm going to take a nap like, an hour before I'm actually supposed to go to bed, and then I end up really falling asleep. I'm in some kind of denial.

***My friend Rachel would tell me stories about her Mormon friends: how one of them took a class about dating in school (THEY TAUGHT THEM THE "RIGHT" WAY TO HOLD HANDS), and how they create the best dates ever because they can't stay home and have sex, or socially lubricate themselves by getting drunk, so they do things like go on a group date to Goodwill and pick out goofy outfits for each other and then go bowling. Or something. It all sounds very charming, minus the fact that they can't, uh, kiss lying down.

Hey, wanna hear something marginally strange?

2009-10-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

Everyone has some weird thing. Want to hear (one of) mine?

So in the past week or so, I've heard a couple of different references to synesthesia, aka that total weirdo neurological disorder where people see letters and numbers as having colors, or they hear sounds with motion. And every time I hear about it, I get kind of jealous of synesthetics, because it reminds me of my freak thing, except that 1) they have a fancy neurological excuse, and 2) their freak thing is like seven thousand times cooler, because they can taste words.

This, courtesy of Paint, is my freak thing:

As long as I can remember, I've associated numbers (and letters) with having a gender and, in some cases, a personality. Hmm. I guess I thought everyone did that, but, uh, I recently discovered that not everyone does. It's not something that I think about often or anything. Just, numbers and letters are inherently male or female, and some of them have personalities, and that's just how it is.

Man. I wish my weird thing was more awesome.

Hey, whatever. Everyone has something weird. Some people have asthma or are narcoleptic. Some people think sounds have colors. I think that the letter "B" is a particularly shy, sweet girl. It's okay. We're all weirdos.

PS Did you like how I gave some numbers bowties? That's really the only reason I did Paint art for this.

Darling (n): sweetheart, favorite person

2009-10-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

So you know what I figured out? I hate using the term "boyfriend." I use it, but I hate it. I'm not sure why, and I don't care at all when other people use it, I just personally would prefer not to. But I'm in a position here at work, where people who don't know Caleb yet ask me questions having to do with him quite often, so the term has been coming up in my every day vocabulary more often than I'd like. There's a whole array of much more awesome words I can use to describe what Caleb is in relation to me, but I don't know exactly which one will work best.

The term "boyfriend" makes me feel silly. Besides, Caleb's not a boy ("....not yet a womaaan"), and uh, 'Guyfriend' doesn't work because it's how I refer to all the guys I'm not in love with but enjoy having around as friends. 'Manfriend' is kind of fun, but it 1) brings up thoughts of Manfred Mann and 2) sounds like it should maybe be in a beer commercial. I hear the term "partner" more and more now, and while I like the whole idea of it, I don't like that I can't say it without rolling my eyes. I mean, honestly. Then there are the made up words. Like Manpanion, which from certain people's mouths may be cute, but won't work with me because I will inevitably sound like a douchebag.

I went to see what thesaurus.com had to recommend. This is what it said.

1. Synonyms for 'boyfriend'
admirer, beau, companion, confidant, date, escort, fiancé, flame*, follower, friend, intimate, partner, soul mate, steady, suitor, swain, sweetheart, young man

I like ''admirer,'' because it's kind of funny, though it doesn't really convey that the feelings are a two-way street. Confidant works, but it also works for like, Rachel. Suitor! I like that. My suitor, Caleb. I'd crack myself up every time.

2. Synonyms for 'beloved'
baby*, beau, boyfriend, darling, dear, dearest, fiancé, first and last, flame, girlfriend, heartbeat, heartthrob, honey, idol, inamorato, love, love of my life, lover, number one, numero uno, object of affection, one and only, pet*, prize, rave*, significant other, steady, sugar*, sweetheart, tootsie, treasure, true love

Most of these words gross me out. "Beau"...ew. And "lover?" EW. (One time, Caleb and I were at this fancy party, serving drinks for the host. No one was around, and so Caleb put his arms around me and hugged me. Then someone came up with her friend and joked, "Well, I guess the bartenders are lovers!" and I was like wow, that's...gross.) "Idol?" "Pet?" These terms all make me feel dirty on the inside.

But the cutest group of synonyms goes to--

3. Synonyms for "darling."
Definition: sweetheart, favorite person (awwwww!)

angel*, apple of one's eye, baby*, beloved, boyfriend, dear, dear one, dearest, dearie, fair-haired boy, flame, friend, girlfriend, heart's desire, honeybunch, lamb, light of my life, love, lover, one and only, pet*, precious, sugar*, sweetie, treasure*, truelove

Wowza. Since when are "honeybunch" and "lamb" not informal, creepy slang? "Precious"? "Sugar"? Am I the stereotype of a large black woman?

Well, whatever. None of these really appeal to my sensibilities. Plus, you can't really use "heart's desire" in a casual way. The term that I didn't see anywhere but I think I like the best is "gentleman caller." "My gentlemen caller came over and we watched The Office re-runs all night."

Hmm. Except it kind of makes me sound like a prostitute, doesn't it.
Image: Hello, gentleman caller. I love you. And hello, awkward self on a boat.

Dear Fake Diary: My Name Is Gertrude Stein, and I Was Just Drunk Dialed

2009-10-09T14:34:00.001-07:00

Note: This is my first attempt at some kind of fiction writing in a very long time. I got the idea at lunch today, though, so here we go. I now present to you an entry from Gertrude Stein's fake diary, in which which the famous lesbian is drunk-dialed by three of the most important authors of the 20th century.

February 17, 1922

Dear diary,

Another day, and hardly any progress made in my work. But today, it wasn't a simple lack of a muse, but a rather unexpected situation that perhaps shouldn't be quite so unexpected by now.

I was sitting at my desk, trying to work, when I received a call on the telephone. Now, we hardly ever use ours, and know few others in the city with access, so I thought it may have been a mistake.

"Hello?" I said, wondering who else in Paris I could possibly know with a telephone.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" said the deep voice on the other end of the line. It took me but a few seconds to realize who was calling. That Hemingway boy has a propensity for inebriated swearing like no other I have ever met in Paris.

"Hello, Ern."

"STEINY!" said Ernie, but before I could explain, yet again, that I despise the nickname "Steiny," and that really Gertrude is a fine name for me, he shouted to someone who must have been with him, "Steiny's on!" I heard loud cheers of others in the background.

"HOW DID YOU KNOW IT WAS ME!?!?" he screamed.

"Please stop shouting," I yelled, before I realized I was shouting myself. Alice wandered by the room, a look of concern on her face.

"Where are you and who are you with? You really must be--"

"Oh shit," said Ernie, his swear betrayed by the tone of pure glee it contained. "You have got to see Scotty right now. Oh man, you would not believe how much whiskey he just totally downed. You have got to get out here, Steiny," and when he said "Steiny," again, I heard it echo back in a joyful chorus, then start to repeat--"STEINY, STEINY, STEINY!"

A new voice came on the phone. "Steiny!" cried a voice that could only belong to Scott. "I just shot like fourteen million whiskeys and I had this idea for this story I'd write, and like, it'd be so great,""Hmm," I said noncommittally. Alice looked concerned. I mimicked tossing back a drink and mouthed "The boys," and she nodded and went back to her book.

"No, seriously. I HAVE PUBLISHED STORIES, STEINY. YOU NEED TO TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!"

I didn't bother explaining that of course I did take him seriously, just not while he was inebriated--not because I disapprove entirely, but usually conversations like these end up being a way to one-up Ernie, and then they start pointing at each other and yelling and it almost always ends in a scuffle.

"You listen! You. Listen. Tah ME."

"Scott, I'm listening, I--"

Scott started babbling on, something about the corruption and disintegration of the American dream, then going on and on about the vapidity of relentless materialism, and how some "bitch" he knew was going to "pay big" in the form of seeing herself in one of the main, sardonic, unlikable characters, and before I knew it he abruptly stopped and I heard a terrible retching noise. "Ohhhh!" I heard the others taunt. "Scott's down for the count!"

Another voice came on the phone."Steiny," Ernie said, "You need to get out here! Joyce stole a funnel from the kitchen of this bar and is now we're all pouring liquor into the funnel so that he can drink large amounts of alcohol at once! This is better than that time he wrote Dubliners!" Then he burst into laughter.

"Joyce? Joyce!? You're out with him? Put him on the phone."

"Gertrude!"

"Honestly, James."

"Gertruuuuude. Gertruuuuuuude. Oh, what a fun word to say," he blabbered.

"It's one thing for these young kids to be out making fools of themselves. But, you? Come on."

"Listen, give me a break," he said. "I just fucking wrote Ulysses." Then he belched, long and loud. I rolled my eyes at Alice, who was by this point looking quizzical again. She shrugged, then whispered, "It's probably best just to hang up,"

"Listen, I'm going to go. I'll see you tomorrow at the salon, I'm sure,"

"Nooooo!" yelled Joyce. "She's hanging up!" he told the others, directly after which I heard a few saddened, "Noooo"s, but then...slowly...a jubilant chant arose among the drunken fools.

"STEINY! STEINY! STEINY!"

List: Jobs I Both Want and Could Actually Do

2009-10-07T20:25:00.000-07:00

Look, I'm glad I have the job I have. But, as is the case for many 23-year-olds, I'm working in a job for which I'm way overqualified. Like, way overqualified. But that's okay! (Oh please job gods I'm not saying anything bad about the job please don't take it away) But then I started thinking about it, and the thing is, what kind of job am I qualified for that would also be fufilling and somewhat challenging? Like most people, I have my list of jobs I'd love to do but have no discernible talent/qualifications for (photojournalist, renowned chef, music writer, be Ruth Reichl), but are there any jobs that I could actually perform well that I'd like?

YES. There are! Here is my list of jobs I both want really bad, and am currently qualified for, if we define "qualified" as "able to perform the job well," even if I wouldn't have enough job experience to actually get this job in the real world.

1. Personal Assistant at Chronicle

Do you know what Chronicle is? DO YOU!? It's AMAZING. Chronicle is this show which basically just takes the reporters to all over New England, to look at all the interesting things. They look at main streets and back roads and interview interesting people and see awesome things. DO YOU KNOW HOW COOL IT WOULD BE TO HELP ORGANIZE THINGS AND PERSONALLY ASSIST THESE PEOPLE AS THEY TRAVEL!?

Qualifications: Totally unorganized at home but super organized when other people are depending on me, really, really enjoy traveling throughout weird New England, would be really excited all the time about it, plus have dual bachelor's degrees and I mean COME ON how hard is it to assist a camera crew and a couple of local reporters?

2. "Relationships" Columnist for early 20-somethings

People could write in with their early 20-something problems. And all I'd have to do is think back to my college experience, and then advise my people to do the complete opposite of what I did. Snap. Bam. Done. I'd be hailed as brilliant and a personal relationships genius.

Qualifications: I might be in a pretty awesome relationship now, but did you know me in college? If so, did you ever actively watch me make a huge mistake in a relationship situation? Oh come on, yes you did. Oh yeah, you remember that one time? Yeah, I thought so. Look, I might not be overly qualified for this, but I'm pretty sure when that many stupid things happen to you, you learn something.

(I should note that this is on my list because the year that UD got a sex columnist, my friend Kristin wanted me to apply for the job. I didn't, because I hadn't worked for the paper that much and I was studying abroad in the spring, but I totally should have because OH MY GOODNESS that columnist sucked! And so has every single UnDressed columnist (Yes. That's the name of the column...) since that first one. They've only gotten worse since that first girl. It used to make me actively angry at how terribly written it was, and ever since then I've really wanted to write some kind of column to show how much better I'd be at it. I recognize that that's a terrible driving force to have.)

3. Editor at some kind of thing like "This I Believe"**

I am a wicked fast reader, generally crazy about grammar, and adore reading other people's stories. So if I had some kind of job where all I had to do was read people's stories and determine whether or not they were good enough to publish...I'd be good at it.

**does this job even exist?

4. Tour Guide for Awesome Tours I Design Myself
If this actually paid, I'd be all over it. I'd get to organize trips, find awesome things to do, and then talk to people all the time, even though I'd probably start of really awkward, like "And this is the estate of Edith Wharton...hey, it's set upon a big hill. Don't pull an Ethan Frome, har har!" and then everyone would look at me in a weird way, and I'd be like "Oh no, I mean, I'm just kidding" and they'd all quietly wander to the giftshop.

Qualifications: Enjoy talking, showing people around, would think of awesome tours around different themes, makes bad jokes A LOT

Does anyone else have this list? This list of jobs that while you're doing working at your real job, you go over it in your head, like, I could be doing ______ instead...You should. I think it might actually make me feel better about myself.

Kaitlin and the Colectivo, Part 2

2009-10-04T07:20:00.001-07:00

So as we recall from part one, it took a whole lot of shittiness to get to the top of this mountain to see the waterfall.

But, we got up there, and there we were at Agua Azul. It's Easter weekend, which means that pretty much the entire country has the week off, which means that this enormous natural waterfall is overrun with people and crying toddlers and garbage. It looks like this.

I mean, it's pretty. I guess.

So after we had wondered around Agua Azul for a couple hours, we decided to get going, because we had a thirteen-hour bus ride home to catch, and it took like two hours to get to the top of the mountain. "Hey," said Lindsay. "Do we even know if there are any colectivos around?" And then, all at once, all four of us had the exact same thought:

Wait a second. How the fuck are we getting out of here!?

which was immediately followed by:

WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THIS BEFORE!?!

The colectivo that had brought us there was obviously long gone. And there were no others around. There were those huge tourist buses, everywhere, and a few cars. We split up and started running around, looking for some kind of vehicle that could bring us back. There was nothing. Or nada, as the Mexicans would say.

Lindsay came running over, and pointed to a small, dilapitated pickup truck that was parked near some trees. I saw two guys near it, staring at us. "He says he'll drive all of us down," she said, and we both did that thing for a minute where we weigh our options and it's like "Okay, on one hand, we have no other way to get to the bottom of this mountain. On the other, we could very easily end up robbed/sexually violated/ditched somewhere near the Mexico/Guatemala border." I stared at the guys. There were four of us, and two of them. Plus, I was exhausted.

"Whatever," I said. "I'm just not riding in the back of the truck."

Fifteen minutes later, with me in the backseat and the others in the bed of the truck, we were careening down the side of the mountain. Again.

Then the guy started slamming on the gas. I started swearing inaudibly. My friends in the backseat rapped on the glass, presumably wanting to know what the hell was going on.

I asked the guy, and he pointed to a white dot in the distance. "I'm going to catch that colectivo for you guys. The colectivo will bring you where you want to go," he explained.

Oh.

We weren't going to get raped. We weren't going to get robbed. We weren't even going to get dropped off in the middle of nowhere. This guy was just going to be a more than decent human being. Were my cheeks red!

The guy caught the colectivo, and we tipped him a lot, because I think we all felt bad for being so freaked out, and then we got in the big white van with eleven other people already in it. And suddenly, like that, I no longer was freaking out about being on the side of a mountain with no discernible protection. I was free, and sure I'd be okay. I stopped listening to the my favorite song over and over again, and started listening to songs I liked and songs I thought were only okay. Then I sat back, cushioned comfortably between two enormous Mexican men, and relaxed all the way back to Palenque.

EXCITING FRIDAY NEWS!

2009-10-02T18:24:00.001-07:00

1. WBUR, Boston's NPR news station, answered my question! Straight from Twitter, which is why the answer came out backwards...

@kissmekait We really do love our listeners because they support us financially, have good taste in radio, and are really smart!

@kissmekait Where in the neighborhood do you work?

@kissmekait We have joked around the station that we're really acknowledging our biggest donor, Hugh R. Listeners! :)

@kissmekait so the first word out of Maryanne or John's mouth is always, "We're supported by you, our listeners and by....

StevenEBrown @kissmekait Not really my dept., but I'll take a shot at it. I think the intent is to acknowledge we are primarily listener supported.

Thank you Steven E. Brown of NPR! I really love NPR because you support my stupid questions, are the basis of my good taste in radio, and force me to be up on my current events!

2. I've been told AGAIN that I look like Rachel Weisz. AGAIN! SUCCESS.

I....definitely don't see the resemblance.

(But I wish I did.)

3. I CAN USE THE BU LIBRARY.

AND IT'S DIRECTLY NEXT TO MY PLACE OF WORK.

After things like "friendships" and "being with a 15 minute walk of where I need to be," having a college library is probably the thing I miss most about college. My town libraries just aren't cutting it. So. That's good.

Now I am at my sick boyfriend's house and am ignoring him, so I uh...should go.

Audrey Tatou just makes me want to stop trying.

2009-09-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Commuter Tales, and Why I Had To Ask My Favorite Radio Station A Totally Stupid Question

2009-09-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

This is how I deal with riding the T every day for an hour:

1. Entertainment
Look, the Metro sucks. It's a crappy 10-page newspaper that takes like five minutes to read, and besides that, it's just not fun. Or easy to use when in T-stance (more on that later.)

Solution: iPod

(Problem: I don't have an iPod.)

Solution: Caleb, in an extra awesome move, lent me his iPod. But not only that, he ALSO loaded it up with chill rap and tons of This American Life podcasts. Because he is wonderful. I've found that if I start a TAL before I leave, I can get through an entire one by the time I reach my office.

I also enjoy putting chill rap on random and then sort of snickering to myself when something like "Big Poppa" comes on because really it's a train, and who am I to be listening to chill rap anyway and then I start thinking about how I've slowly become Michael Bolton from Office Space. Maybe some day I, too, will beat the crap out of a fax machine.

Solution #2: If I get a seat on the train, I've been doing Russian. This is fun, and that way I don't have to stare at things on the train listlessly. I do, however, sometimes get enormous black women speaking Russian to me, which will be far more fun and awesome if I ever become able to speak it.

The thing about getting a seat on the train is that it's usually more stressful than anything, because then I get all "I'm 23, and who am I to take a seat when there are pregnant women and old guys out there" and then I start looking for pregnant women and old guys. So now when I'm buried in a textbook, I can...ignore pregnant women needing my seat? ...what am I saying?

2. Stance

Sometimes, I get on the train and it's already like wicked filled up and awful. I can't even get to the handlebars or anything.

Solution: Squeeze myself in between people. Pretend I am a sardine. Stare angrily at people until they lock eyes with me and, now uncomfortable, move over and let me grab the handlebar. I then assume T stance (feet wide apart, bored look, staring at ceiling) until the car empties out a little.

3. Observe

Sometimes, awesome/terrible/grotesque things happen on the train, and you'll want to see them. Oh yes, you will.

Awesome (but untrustworthy)

There is a man with a long white beard and top hat who gets onto my B train every morning. I would like him if it wasn't in direct violation of Life Rule #57 "Never trust a man in a top hat."

Terrible

So one day I was going home and I saw this girl standing on the train with her hood up. And I soon realized she was crying. She was doing that awful, silent cry when you're trying not to cry but you're totally messed up by something. She'd cry, and then would stop, and her face would clear, and then about five seconds later--I could see it about to happen and it was awful--her face scrunched up and she was just sobbing. And it would repeat. I felt so, so bad. It just about broke my heart, seeing that, because this girl was so totally messed up by whatever had happened to her.

I had no idea what to do. Do I saunter up and ask her if she needs a hug? No, too weird, plus she might be embarrassed that I saw her. So uh, do I pretend I didn't see her? Cause that's what I did and now I feel bad about it and aw geez. What were my other choices? That poor girl.

The thing is, though, I have totally been that girl. It sucks. It's really bad, the point at which you get on the T and then you're like "Fuck it, I'm on the T and I'm sad," and then you start crying. Because now, now that I'm not sad, thinking about showing that naked emotion would be really embarrassing. But when you're so upset, the other people around you don't even matter, even if your face is all scrunched up and there are awful liquids coming out of the orifaces in your face.

I just hope that it was a boy that broke her heart or something, and not something more serious. Because if that's the case, then one day she'll be like "Oh man, remember that douchebag Ryan? I cried on the T cause of him!" and the her friends will be like "Oh my gosh I totally cried on the T after Jared" or whatever and then they'll all laugh.

Grotesque

The scene: It's 8: 30 AM. I'm on the Green Line, a line known for being a jerk to its customers. I'm standing. Next to me is a couple, probably my age, and another guy. The guy in the couple is talking to the other guy. The girl starts kissing the guys neck, just like pecking it. Which, I don't know, I thought was maybe a little inappropriate but who was I to judge, right?

What happens next is...I need to carefully write this, just to make sure I have it right. The boyfriend is talking to the guy. Okay. Then. As soon as the last word is out of his mouth, he turns to his girlfriend and they start making out with such intensity that I thought they were pretending to be that skit from SNL with Jimmy Fallon and Rachel Dratch. You know, that skit where they're a couple from Boston and they're like "Yah wicked retahded!" "No, YOU ahh!" and then they make out wildly? They weren't doing that, though. I mean, it was really 0 to 60 with these kids. So then they stopped, and went right back to talking to the guy, who was just standing there, hanging out while they finished making out. This wasn't someone he knew well, by the way--it was apparent from their conversation that they had maybe grown up in the same town but hadn't seen each other in a long time. It was...weird.

Which is fine and whatever*, I guess, but we were on the Green Line, a line that has literally thrown me from one end of the train to the other. And that guy was just standing there, the ultimate third wheel.

And it was 8:30 AM. Did I mention that? It was 8:30 in the fucking morning.

*No, actually, it wasn't fine. It made me feel vaguely dirty on the inside. Not cool, random 20 year old commuters.
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Anyway, I should also mention that I just asked WBUR, my local Boston NPR news station, via Twitter, an inane question. If you guys listen to it, you know how they are like "WBUR, brought to us by you, our listeners." Okay, so, "WBUR...you, our" sounds like a play on the WBUR part, doesn't it? It's an echo! I need to know if it was on purpose. I need to. Caleb and I will listen to NPR like every day and at least once a week I'm like "I JUST NEED TO KNOW IF IT'S ON PURPOSE." It had to be asked. I guess.

Mannnn. I should have just asked what Diane Rehm looks like.

Why don't I just MARRY languages if I love them so much

2009-09-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

So as it turns out, I've been super busy/exhausted every day this week, so part 2 of my colectivo story will have to wait.

But guess what!?

On Tuesday I went from my major university in Boston to Caleb's major university in Boston, and met up with him to hang out while he edited the paper. And it was there, on the way out, that I found the key to constant entertainment for my commute, on my lunch hour, when I'm random bored in the middle of the day...all the time.

An instructor's version Russian I textbook from 1996.

Okay, so I, uh, enjoy learning languages. And looking through beginner language textbooks. (I know. I feel you judging my hobbies.) And this Russian textbook was sitting with a bunch of old textbooks and Paris Reviews from 1982. So I took it! And Caleb grabbed a textbook from the early 1970s on how to learn shorthand* so as we walked, books in hand, I thought about how if we switched books (so I had the shorthand and he had the Russian), we'd be a really perfect, typical couple from the 1950s, since back then both those subjects were actually timely and important for young political go-getters/wannabe secretaries like ourselves.

BUT ANYWAY has anyone ever told you that Russian is the funnest language ever? Because I'm doing that now. It's awesome.** I'm not used to the Cyrillic alphabet and it's totally insane to try to read, because half are symbols I've never seen before, and the other half are letters I recognize but with the exception of like four letters they all mean different sounds. So trying to read is like this crazy mind puzzle and OH MY GOSH IT'S SO FUN. I look forward to it when I'm at work. It's sad.

So, that being said, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone when I say that a few days ago when I decided to look for language classes held at the university--I just wanted to see what times they were being held so I could see if I could take a class in the spring.

And guess what!?

My university offers two things for people who don't have time to take classes but want to:

1. A "language link" group, so I could join a small group of speakers to speak with them and learn and hang out in whatever language. (I'd obviously do Spanish, cause that shit's going to go away if I don't practice it more). But they have it in like every language and ASL, which I think is a great resource.
AND
2. They offer a series of free classes in the evenings for staff and students! They are offering Turkish, Chinese, Arabic, Wolof and Hausa.

I'm not sure if I'm going to do the language link this semester, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to do the class in Hausa, because that fits my schedule the best and seriously how did I not know that this language existed? Like 24 million people speak it. It starts next week, and while I'm excited, I wonder if it could ever get me more excited than Russian has.

Okay. That's all for now. I'm going to go "study" while Caleb actually studies.

*have you ever given a four year old a pencil and asked him to write what he thinks words are? That's what shorthand looks like. When you see a textbook of it, with page upon page of nonsensical squiggles, it's a little disconcerting.
**Said like Kevin from "The Office."

Stories from the past: Kaitlin and the Colectivo of Horror, Part One

2009-09-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

As I went through college, I discovered that many people are super annoying about their study abroad program. The word "amazing" is used all the time, and they're all "I TOTALLY suffered from reverse culture shock on the way back I mean when you're in France/Italy/Japan/Australia it's just such a different, more awesome way of life blah blah blah oh my gosh I LOVED it so much it was AMAZING blah blah blah." I have no doubt that for some people, it really was an eye-opening, amazing experience. But, come on.

I suppose this is just me being bitter, because my study abroad experience was a little less than stellar. It was no fault of anyone's, of course--but I was in a suburb instead of a city, and there were packs of wild dogs everywhere that made me feel sad in my heart, and I missed my boyfriend and friends from Delaware, and I didn't like the unsafe driving methods because I am a freak, and I just couldn't get comfortable living in another family's house (though my host family was--yes, I'll go there--amazing), and I spent a large majority of the time feeling uneasy, like something was going to go wrong any second--which was a direct result of when I had been there about a week and something went terribly, tragically wrong which I'd rather not get into. Wow, that was a really long sentence.

For the record, there were great parts of my time spent down in Mexico, and I'm really glad I went. Not all of it sucked--far from it. I saw a bunch of beautiful places and things, and my Spanish got marginally better, and the food was cool, and it was very interesting. It just never got great. (Which is okay, because now I'm not one of those study abroad jerks. Everyone wins.)

On the brightside, going to Mexico did leave me a bunch of stories that I think I'll share. So here's one--Kaitlin and the Colectivo of Horror.

So for our spring break, a couple of us decided to go from Puebla to Merida, which is on the Gulf of Mexico, and then from there to Tulum (about fifty miles south of Cancun, and beautiful but without all the terrible drunk people), and then from there, we'd take a 13 hour bus ride into Palenque, which is right near the border of Guatemala.

The first half of the vacation looked like this:

And this:

Then the second half of the vacation happened.

To go from Tulum (above photos) to Palenque, one needs to take a thirteen hour bus ride. One would assume that because you are going to southern Mexico in the middle of March, one would not need to bring too many sweatshirts. One would be wrong, because when one is on a thirteen hour overnight bus ride, one underestimates how quickly the bus can become forty-five freaking degrees. And stay that way. For hours.

That was pretty bad. But at least it wasn't terrifying. A few days later, while in Palenque, we decided to go see Agua Azul. This was a pretty big tourist destination for Mexicans, so we figured we'd go and see this enormous waterfall. In order to do that, though, we had to take a colectivo, which are these enormous, 10-seater vans that have additional benches put in to fit as many people as possible into them. So we found one that was going up to Agua Azul, and piled in.

I should have realized that I was going to freak out in this colectivo right away, because 1. There were no seat belts, and 2. There were like, 20 people in this one van, and 3. we were traveling way faster than I thought was possible for an enormous van with a ton of people in it. But I kept thinking that we'd be there at any moment, so I put on my iPod and tried not to worry.

The van began then hurtling itself around hairpin turns at about 70 mph. The van was wobbling. I looked to see if anyone else was freaking out like I was on the inside.

"Hey," said my friend Lindsey. "We, uh, we might die."

I looked out the window at the cliff we were traveling dangerously close to. I started to reason with myself. If we accidentally went off the edge, we could maybe live if the van stayed in an upright position and we went off of one of the parts that was, say, an 80 degree angle as opposed to an 85 degree one. Maybe. But if we started to tip over and roll, or landed on the sharp rocks, it would probably not be good news.

"Seriously," said Lindsey.

I should mention that at this point I actually began to play my favorite song on my iPod on repeat so that if I died, I would go out listening to my favorite song. And then I worried that if I died no one would know what songs I wanted them to play at my funeral. I was starting to picture Grace, sobbing, telling my parents that I had told her I wanted them to play Sinatra's "My Way." No, Grace! I thought. That song's wicked cliche! I was 19 and didn't know what I was talking about! My tastes have changed!

I began to seriously panic when I realized that this trip was going to be a solid hour and a half of driving dangerously close to edges of cliffs, at which point I decided to pray. Dear Jesus Christ, I prayed. I'm sure you probably hate when people only come around to ask you for a favor, but I, um, would really like it if--I stopped. I didn't really want to be That Guy who only comes around to ask for a favor, especially because Jesus is probably wicked used to it. So I just sat in horror for an hour and a half, and eventually arrived safe, though exhausted. Because there's a resaon why adrenaline rushes are only supposed to be a minute long! Being all adrenalined-out for an hour and half is exhausting!

Unbelievably, I'm only halfway through with this story. I'll have to finish up The Colectivo of Horror tomorrow, because this is extra-long, and I'm about to go to a cookout.

What Not To Do On My Birthday: A Cautionary Tale

2009-09-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

That day, he showed up, looking ragged. "Hey," he said. "Hi!!!!" I said. "I'M 23 NOWWWW!" He gave me a hug and a card, and then he said, "Do you want to take a nap?" It was 9:30 AM.

I looked at him and decided that he should probably sleep. So I made breakfast for myself. Okay, not that bad. Could get much better.

So I forgave, and then we went home and watched When Harry Met Sally, because I adore it, and he made me delicious quesadillas, and then I drank margaritas until I passed out in my bed.

Whatever. All I know is, I turn 24 on Friday, and if baking a ton of cupcakes to bring to work and wearing an extra-special outfit is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Envelopes of ineptitude, and the letter writing campaign

2009-09-14T15:45:00.001-07:00

Well, I had my first day of work today. It was fine. (har, har. And thus begins the routine of answering "Fine," to questions about how my day was.....oh, no. I can't do start doing that.) But really, it was fine. I like my office. It's full of young people, I have a desk with a nice view, I get a lot of contact with students, and I spent the boring parts day dreaming about what kind of graduate classes I'll be taking. (Most of my co-workers are grad students too; it's a pretty hard deal to resist.) Plus, I saw Amy at lunch, which was nice and unexpected, even though I knew she'd be on campus. And though I kind of messed something up, the thing I screwed up may end up being something that is super fun for me! Which brings me to this--

SO.

Would you like a letter? Because as it turns out, I have a bunch of partially ruined, still mailable envelopes. Let me explain.

When I first came in, I noticed there was a typewriter to the side of my desk. "Hmm," I thought. As it turns out, occasionally, when sending out transcripts, we have to address letters to law firms and people and what have you. We need to put them in a typewriter in order to address them, so that we look very important and official. This, as it turns out, is a harder task than originally thought.

First of all, before you get all excited: No, the typewriter does not look like this:

It's not adorable and clunky and retro. It's clunky and retro, but in bad ways. They're the kind of typewriter that everyone had in the early 80s. They are beige and look like printers and the key pad is just like a regular computer keyboard. They're so boring I couldn't even find a suitable image on Google images. And Google images has pictures of everything.

The other thing is, I have no idea how to use a typewriter. I tried to force the paper to stand up in the typewriter, and figured out after an embarrassingly long time that I was supposed to feed the paper in, and then through the machine. Then I kept making typing mistakes. The shift key--I do not think it means what the typewriter thinks it means.I would take out the envelope and start again and then I would get all nervous that I was going to waste MORE paper and then before I knew it I'd be writing lIKE thIS and it was a terrible, vicious circle. Do you know how many envelopes I had to type today? I had to type three envelopes. Do you know how many envelopes ended up half-typed in a pile on my desk? SIXTEEN. Typewriters are terrible.

Then my co-worker looked over, and told me how to correct mistakes. Apparently typewriters have a button that covers up your mistake! Typewriters are magic.

But then I couldn't correct the mistakes on the envelopes I had taken out. I'm not sure why. I don't think I've mastered it yet. So now I have a bunch of envelopes with messed up addresses on them without a home! (Typewriters are probably just okay.)

So, here's the thing. I now have sixteen envelopes that are half-typed on that I can totally send to people...the envelopes are still good, just not usable in work. They're not official-looking enough for law schools. And I really, really don't want to waste so much paper and throw them away. So tell me if you want a letter. I'm a good letter writer. (just ask Scott!). Contact me in some way, and then I'll get your address. And then in three to five days I'll send a letter. (Well, some of you will be getting them whether you like it or not.) Lots of letters! With all my envelopes of ineptitude.

vitamin C + noodle soup + tea = I'M A BAMF

2009-09-11T16:50:00.000-07:00

Today is day three of the cold attack on my body. You know what, Cold? The first two days I was just playing. Hey, sometimes I need to get sick, too. (I hear that, Body.) But when I woke up today and was still sick, the jig was up. I now realize that if I have to go into work sick on my first day, it will be a terrible mess.

That's why I ingested 9,500 milligrams of Vitamin C. Do you know what the daily need of Vitamin C is? It's 60 milligrams a day. I have now taken 15,833% of my daily need of Vitamin C. And I'll just keep going, Cold. I can do this all night. And now, I'm going to go out with Caleb, and I'm going to eat some noodle soup. And then I'm gonna drink some tea. Some green tea, with antioxidants or something I don't understand but is widely thought to be "healthy." And then I'm going to have a sleep over with new best friend NyQuil for good measure.

You have no idea who you're messing with, Cold. I'm finally BAMF-ing out over you. And it feels 15,833% percent better than before.

The land of milk and honey...and NyQuil!

2009-09-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

How is it possible that I have never taken NyQuil?

I guess maybe I was Charlie Brown-ing a little too much all over the place, because on Tuesday night, I got a terrible cold. This probably wouldn't be a big deal to anyone else, but I very rarely get sick. I was that kid in school who always had perfect attendance. And about two years ago when I got really sick at UD with a fever and a cough and they couldn't treat me because it was a Sunday and the university's health care is terrible, I cried into the nurse's shoulder about it. Really. Nothing is more over-dramatic than a sick Kaitlin.

So--as you can see--I can be kind of an idiot about getting sick. I usually just take a lot of Vitamin C until a cold goes away, or Ibuprofen if it gets any worse. Which I guess explains how I've never taken NyQuil. Or as I will hereby refer to it: NyQuil, Wonder Drug.

Last night, I had been feeling a little better, so I went over to Caleb's to help him plan a meeting. This was a mistake, because about an hour later I began to feel shaky, and like my head was going to explode.

"Whyyyyyyyy," I moaned.

Caleb, who was also a little sick but not nearly as whiny about it as I am, peered over at me from his notebook, and determined that we should probably be taking NyQuil. So we got NyQuil, Wonder Drug, and he gave me some. It was gross. But he followed it by this wonderful elixir in a mug! It was the most wonderful thing I ever could have been given at that moment, besides the NyQuil. It was so wonderful and warm and delicious, and I can't even explain how wondeful it felt on my throat. If I ever needed proof that Caleb truly loved me, it would be that he made this for me. It was warm milk and honey, which brings me to more italics:

How have I never had warm milk and honey before?

I don't know, but while it's a mistake that has taken 23 years to fix, I am glad he's set me straight. Hot milk always seemed like a phrase that should never be said together. "Hot milk." It sounds awful. But it's not! Mmmmm. Milk and honey.

Anyway, with that NyQuil in me and the warm milk and honey having soothed my sore throat, I slept like a log and had a series of insane dreams involving Oprah, and the mall. I woke up pretty decongested and feeling much better, even though this cold is far from gone. But it's okay, NyQuil. Our relationship may only exist when I need to be decongested and have to stop sneezing while sleeping, but you have proven yourself to me, and for that, I love you.

Get ready to blast the Charlie Brown Dance song

2009-09-08T20:44:00.001-07:00

....because I GOT THE JOB!

This is what I feel like doing:

Specifically, I'd like to dance like the little twin girls. I like their insane dancing the best.

I'm entering into the world of taking the T every morning and wearing business casual clothing and bagged lunches, and....I am legitimately excited about this. Because I'll also have a salary and benefits and I'll be able to take classes for free and the office is full of younger people to get to know! Yes yes yes. I'm excited to enter into the world of higher education administration.

So, for all of you who have been on this terrible journey with me--thank you. Seriously. Now you get to embark on the next journey, which is Kait Enters The Office World.

It'll be awesome. Or at least, better than unemployment.

another weekend

2009-09-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

Ughhh. I have to start doing yoga instead of drinking.

For the past four days I've done nothing but take people from out of town around sightseeing in Boston, eating, and then drinking a lot. There was pleasant, fun drinking, like buying a couple of bottles of wine in the North End and then drinking them outside on the Boston Harbor and watching the boats, and then there was the unpleasant drinking, which is being stuck in some preppy bar at 2 AM, watching all of the guys in collared shirts and stupid-looking girls dance around. Caleb's friend Adam brought us there, and I knew it was going to be retarded. My heavily tattooed boyfriend and my messy, not put-together self stuck out, but at that point I just decided to chug a beer and then scream that Journey song into his face. (I hate bars.)

The low point, however, was probably after that terrible bar, when I came home, sat around for a couple hours, and then realized I was going to throw up everywhere. So I sat there for a while, throwing up, while Caleb sat outside that bathroom and feasted on canolis. Yeah, I don't know. It was gross.

And with that, Happy Labor Day!

So close, yet so far, or: how HR made me cry today

2009-09-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

So, as anyone can tell you (but I will tell you now,) unemployment is a nightmare. It's awful. After being busy--constantly, full-time-school-plus-two-part-time-jobs, barely-have-time-to-eat-dinner busy for years and years, it's awful. I just do better when I'm busy and have a set schedule of things I need to do. Some days, it's okay--after all, I do feel like I'm doing things when I'm filling out applications and writing cover letters. But even if the day itself is okay, there's the money thing, and I hate worrying about student loans, and the 1950s, kept-woman feeling that comes with watching my boyfriend pay for every single thing we do. I hate feeling helpless, and dependent on people, and broke as shit. I even hate meeting new people--because every time I do, they ask me what I do for a living, and I have to explain that I am mostly-unemployed. It's bad. It's really, really bad.

That being said, I realize that I am young and can, if I need to, switch career direction at the drop of a hat, and to be an entry-level worker with terrible wages is not something I worry about, because I expect that and whatever, I'm 23. But to be an adult with serious responsibilities, and to be laid off and not be able to provide for your family...I imagine that would be a million times worse than what I'm feeling. Um, this is literally the only thing that keeps me from having a near-constant pity party (instead of the sporadic ones that I write about on my blog, like now!). Someone always has the problem I'm going through, and they have it a lot worse. I just need to keep saying that.

So, anyway. Remember when I went to interview for that job a week or so ago? The job with the sick benefits and free grad school? I went out for a run today, and when I got back, I realized I had a missed call.

From their HR office.

I freaked out. I mean, no one would call and then leave a cheerful message about calling the HR Office back if they were going to reject me, would they? They might email me, or leave an awkward message, but there's no way they'd actually have me call back. And they definitely wouldn't be cheerful about it. (For the record, I'm right--this story doesn't end up that they do reject me after all, if that's the direction you think this is heading in.) And what could be left? I came in for the interview, they have my paperwork and resume, I interviewed with like three different people.

So anyway, I call the office. It's busy. I call again. I keep telling myself not to freak out, but I can't help it--I have a mental image in my head of me, rushing down the stairs and screaming "I got the job!!!!" to anyone who is in my house. I am picturing the conversation I will have with my extra-proud boyfriend. I am beyond excited.

I call, and the HR woman cheerfully answers, and asks me if I'm still interested in the job. "Yes! Yes. YES." I say, pretty much as soon as she stops speaking. Then she says, "Great! Can you just send in a list of your references?" My references. Of course. That's the one thing they don't have. Motherfucker.

The whole sending in a list of references is not that big of a deal. (Though, I am a little worried--one of my bosses left the same year I left, and another retired. I'm hoping the references I have right now are good enough.) But that's not even the problem. It's just that I got myself so psyched up, so happy after having a string of bad days, and it was such a disappointment to not have this unemployment nightmare over with, that after I agreed and hung up, I burst into tears.

Yeah, I know. It was really pathetic.

But really, this has been a fucking mess. I've tried it, but I'm not cut out for unemployment. I need to switch careers.

Berrying

2009-09-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

So on Friday, C and I decided to go pick some berries. I learned some facts!

Fact #1: did you guys know that the mass.gov website is really, really good for finding farms in MA? They have a list of every pick-your-own farm in the state and it's organized by fruit and then which county you want to go to. Which brings me to fact #2: Were you aware that even fairly close to Boston, farms are everywhere? They're everywhere! Like an invisible plague. Just kidding, farms are awesome, and not plague-like at all. (Fact #3: I am not funny.)

So anyway, we picked out a farm that's about a half an hour away in Bridgewater, and drove there. We started driving through this city, which was full of things like antique shops and ice cream parlors. Anyway, we got to the farm and went blueberry picking first.

So.

I had never gone blueberry picking before, but it was fun. They grew from trees! Or very tree-like bushes! (Fact #4) Caleb and I started getting into a groove. We barely talked. An hour later, we picked almost six pounds of blueberries, which is a lot of fucking blueberries, and approximately another pound was in my stomach. When we did talk, I would be like, "Hey, want some blueberries?" and he'd politely decline. This happened like, eight times. Kept offering, he kept declining. Finally, as we were almost done, this happened:

K: Here, eat these.
C: No....I...I'm not really that into blueberries.
K: WHAT?! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?!
C: I did. Like, a lot.
K: WHAT!?
C: It's okay, I don't mind picking, it's fun...
K: When did you tell me this!?
C: A couple times today. Before we left.

Fact #5: I am terrible.

I really have absolutely no recollection of it. I must have been so single-minded, so intense in my quest for blueberries, that I blocked out any voices of dissident. I remember now, a couple of months ago, Caleb refusing to drink some pomegranate-blueberry juice I offered. And I just figured he didn't like pomegranate. I can see now, yesterday as I went on the mass.gov website, Caleb sitting in the background somewhere calling out, "I don't really like blueberries..." and me only hearing "I...really like blueberries." It's interesting, because where he was continually polite, I would have gone totally bitchy on him, like COOL IT ON THE BERRIES, BERRY FREAK. I DON'T LIKE THEM. Differences between him and I, I suppose.

By the way, since I don't have any way of getting my real pictures from the camera to my computer, I have created a piece representing our day at the farm. Image below.

30 seconds in Paint well-spent.

Well, anyway, Caleb does like raspberries, so we picked those next. Raspberry season is pretty much over--most farms didn't even have it anymore--so it was harder to get a bunch of raspberries, but we still picked like three pounds.

We decided to bake a bunch of things. I made two blueberry buckles, which is like a blueberry cake-muffin thing, and Caleb made a bunch of raspberry tarts. Everything is delicious. And now--the raspberries are gone, but I still have several pints of blueberries left. Guess I know who I won't be offering them to.

What should I be when I grow up? Part 3,817

2009-08-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

I recently decided that I should become a carpenter. This goal may impeded by the fact that I have the upper-body strength of a daisy, don't know how to use any kind of saw, and hate wearing boots. And sweating. And lifting things. But I do like hammers, and cedar, and job security. So...there's that.

It's just that I keep thinking about how much it's going to suck to be stuck behind a desk with no discernible ability to do anything of real use. I should probably learn how to actually do something.

So, you know. If anyone would like to teach me how to "actually do something," I'm up for it.

These days

2009-08-27T07:59:00.001-07:00

1. Differences between my boyfriend and I:

Oh, man. While I spent the past four days in business casual clothing, my boyfriend spent it being totally bad ass. There are many different ways to be a bad ass, but I'm talking about the old-fashioned, let-me-carve-my-own-path-in-the-woods, scare-off-wild-animals, building-things kind of bad ass. Listen, I shouldn't even tell you what happened to him this weekend in the wilds of Maine with his brothers and dad, because it's just not my story to tell. You'll have to ask him. But suffice it to say, the father-and-brothers Nelson are impressive. And if I should ever get lost in the woods and have to construct things and avoid bear traps, I would want to be with the Nelson family for it.

That's all I'll say about that.

2. To further my un-badassery, last night I:

had a very girly time. I ventured over to Dorchester to visit with Danielle, who's getting married in nine days. Together with our friend Sarah, we stamped dandelions on programs and decorated..and then I learned how to emboss! It was really cool--you sprinkle this crazy powder over the ink, and then you use this mini-hair dryer that gets really hot and it turns the ink dark and raises it up. It was fun, and we made the "In lieu of a favor" cards and programs look really sweet.

There is something about a good girl's night, and I'll admit that it's harder to get girlier than last night. Sarah's getting married about six weeks after Danielle, so there was a lot of talking about weddings and our respective loves and flowers and their engagement stories. Plus, we were crafting during the whole thing. We just needed fruit-flavored alcohol, and we would have been all set.

So, it was awesome. And I know how to emboss now. So there's that.

3. I want to pick fruit soon.
Peaches or blueberries, if it's still possible to do that. And then I want to make a pie! I'm boring.

So, that's all for now. Since Caleb's back I'll probably spend the evening with him, re-integrating him into the world of technology and civilization.

The job interview

2009-08-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

It has been decided that should I get this job I just applied for, I'm going to dress a la Joan Halloway in Mad Men. Granted, in this office, the literal man won't be keeping me down, just the metaphorical one, but it will be funner to be kept down in a lovely red dress than a Pam Beesly-esque blue button-up (which, I should note, is pretty much the exact same thing I wore today to the interview, just short-sleeved and pin striped.)

As I was walking to my interview, I saw a bunch of law students milling around, getting ready for their interviews in their grey tweed suits in the 85 degree weather. Wow. What a miserable fucking profession to want to get into. You know, I thought maybe at first I'd just think that because of what Scott wrote a little bit ago. (I once got the pleasure of reading a really angry Scott-post about law schools--about how they breed jealousy, lying, and cheating into their students simply by virtue of being law school, where competition is the main motivating factor in almost every move the student makes. I believe Scott also used the terms "high levels of self-importance" and "ego-fueled pedantry," which really didn't help my view of law students.) This was, of course, written by a guy who spent the past year working with lawyers, both pre and current, and he was pretty damn sick of his job by that point. So I thought maybe that that just could apply to DC lawyers. But, you know, I think he may be right. Law school, and the students produced from it, look like THE WORST.

Anyway, the interview process was the longest of any I had before. It took like three hours, because I kept having to meet people and talk about the job. The HR woman interviewed me first, and then described to me all of the benefits of working there, which was borderline cruel, because I could almost feel my eyes brightening, then narrowing in intensity as the words tuition remission echoed through my head. It was a little sad.

Anyway, then I shook her hand, and promptly walked into a wall.

The artless, terrifying awesomness of the Miss Universe Pageant.

2009-08-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

Like Mary, there is something about the Miss Universe pageant.

I grew up watching pageants on television. My mother is extremely traditional in her girly interests, and (I think) likes pageants because of the evening gowns, but I'm not totally sure. I can't really say what it is I liked about watching them, either, but I definitely enjoyed them as a child. In my adult years it's been slightly tainted by the realization that (at least in American pageants, and I think even more so in many Central and South American countries), in all likelihood, these women were groomed from a very early age to be pageant queens. Well, and also by the fact that often times these women are awful people in real life--but for the Miss Universe pageant, I can put it all behind me.

The things that are creepy about the Miss Universe pageant are the same things that are creepy in any pageant: the usual percentage of rich, old man judges, the fact that these women win a ton of money and, ahem, "prestige" (though, seriously, the opportunities a Miss America or Miss Universe are offered are pretty amazing) for being judged on how they look in a swim suit, the stereotype of jealousy and possible betrayal that apparently accompanies pageant ladies.

Actually, there is a weird thing about the Miss Universe pageant that is unique to this one pageant, and it is the physical similarity of all the contestants. I mean, obviously, there has to be one standard of "beauty" for these women. And it's not weird in a Miss America pageant or anything. But--this is a pageant for women from all over the world, and they all looked the same. They were all absolutely gorgeous, tall, thin, and had the kind of face that looked like maybe they could have been the model for Barbie. All of them. Regardless of which area of the world they came from. Same beautiful faces, just different color hair and skin tone. It was...disconcerting.

But I digress. The pageant itself was entertaining. The phrase "I'm a big believer in hair" was said, and it was fun to watch Miss Kosovo, who looks a whole lot like Audrey Hepburn and clearly speaks little to no English, have absolutely no idea what was going on during the entire thing. The top five were Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Australia, Kosovo, and Puerto Rico. During the evening gown part of the evening one of the contestants was asked why they chose that dress and she was like "I like how flowy it is!" The answers to the questions, as usual, were frustrating. Miss Venezuela, who won the whole thing, was asked about gender equality and basically answered that women are on the same level as men. Wait, what? That's not true! That's not true anywhere! Eh, she's 18. But still, she won with that answer. Whatever.

So why would I like these pageants when they're clearly an exercise in vapidity and frustration? The answer lies in the National Costume part of the pageant. How do I explain this. People like musicals, right? Many musicals appeal to a camp sensibility. Something that is camp provides amusement as by virtue of its being "artlessly mannered or stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant, or teasingly ingenuous and sentimental." In other words, camp could also be defined as the National Costume part of the Miss Universe pageant. Everything about this is awesome, tacky, and is the reason why, year after year, I will continue to hold an interest in this stupid pageant.

Okay, in the defense of some countries, the National Costume was actually a national costume. It was, historically, possibly what women wore back in the day. Because this is by far my favorite part of the pageant, I have done my own judging! Awards as follows. You can find corresponding pictures here.

Least tacky: Greece, India, Iceland and Norway. Greece and Italy and Cyprus are all basically the same costume of a Meditteranean goddess, which I guess is actually a little tacky, but really, they're among the best with what I've been given. They are all pretty dresses, anyway. I think Rachel wore Miss Greece's costume for Halloween 2007. India is beautiful, and I don't think the costume is a mockery of a culture, so that's good. Norway and Iceland's costumes are unflattering and boring enough to think that it probably is a legitimate national costume. Good for them.

Most tacky: USA (USA! USA! US...sigh, I can't do it), Ireland, France. USA went as a Nascar flag holder, Ireland had a top hat with a four-left clover emblazoned on it, and France was a can-can, which could have been cute, except that it was red, white, and blue, which makes everything look tacky.

Most bad ass: China, Indonesia, Panama, Bahamas. Bad assssssss.

I like you better now award: Puerto Rico. PR went as a sexy, sparkly boxer. And Kaitlin just got her Halloween costume for next year.

Most inexplicable: Canada, Germany. Can someone explain this to me? WTF is going on with Germany's roman columns attached to the back of her dress? Also, how much more awesome would it have been if Miss Germany went as a punk circa 1989? And why is Canada wearing a purple leotard? So many questions...not enough answers.

Most LOLs: Netherlands. Listen, she went as a windmill. It's hard to explain. Just look at it.

I have no idea what's going on, but I like it: Mauritius went as a woodland fairy holding a parasol. Hey, why not? Also totally inexplainable is New Zealand. But hey, if I was competing in Miss Universe and my handlers made me wear a Nascar outfit I would definitely point at Miss New Zealand and whine "But look at her costuuume! I want thaaaaaaaaat."

And thus ends my dissection of a pageant no one ever watches except for Donald Trump and myself. It's been real.

The Greatest Commercial on Earth?

2009-08-21T08:24:00.001-07:00

Every time the opportunity arises to say the number "one" or "two" or "one or two" in response to a question, I always answer the same way: "Ah-one, two-hoooo, ah-three. Crunch. Ah-three." Do you know what I'm referring to? Why, is it The Greatest Commercial On Earth, you ask? Yes, that is what I'm quoting.

One of the funner things about having a boyfriend who didn't grow up with television is quoting things, and then realizing he has no idea what I'm talking about, and then having to show him. I showed him the Tootsie Roll Pop commercial after I quoted it one day. I think he liked it. What's not to like? After all, Tootsie Pops are delicious and have cool urban legends concerning the wrapper that I always believed, growing up. And the commercial reflects that awesomeness. The 1970 animation, the depressed tortoise, the douchebag Mr. Owl, the super mysterious way in which the creepy voice at the end asks, 'How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop? The world may never know." It's all great. Especially when it stands in contrast with the Charms Blow Pop commercial of the early 90s. Ugh.

These were two very successful commercials, despite the terribleness of the latter.

I can only imagine the differences in ad agencies when thinking up the commercial--if, you know, ad agencies are anything like they are in the movies, because that's the only time I've ever seen them. With the Tootsie Roll Pop, everyone is sitting around a table, dressed in awesome suits and looking at the lollipops in the middle of the table. "My kid likes those," says one guy slowly, lighting a cigarette. "He keeps trying to get to the middle without biting it. But he always bites it." And then everyone goes crazy and thinks up the commercial. And now, it's one of the longest running commercials ever.

Oh man! I just found the original, longer one. It's awesome! In addition to the depressed turtle and douchebag owl, there is a flamboyant cow and awkward, beatnik fox.

And then...the Blow Pops commercial. It's the late 80s, and they've all spent too much time looking at neon things all day to look at another sour apple Blow Pop. "Uh, this is pretty much the same thing as a Tootsie Pop....so let's get away from that," says Bob. "This is a younger, newer product. Funner." Nancy adjusts her shoulder pads and sighs. She needs to get home to the kids. "Fuck it," she says. "Let's just put a bunch of kids in a room with some fruit-shaped props and call it a day." The room agrees. And then, the world agreed.

the weekend, in...a lot of words

2009-08-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

Thursday: Accidental Date Night

This past Thursday Caleb and I ended up in Brookline. We originally went to Cambridge so that he could get a wireless router or something at Microcenter, this geeky store that had everything you could possibly want having to do with technology, as well as those shirts that have pictures of molecules of caffeine and jokes about computers I will hopefully never really understand. Anyway, once we were in the area we took the wrong way home and ended up in Brookline. That was okay. Trying to go back to Quincy and ending up in Brookline is kind of like buying a plane ticket to go to St. Louis and then getting rerouted to San Francisco. You don't know how it happened, but you're in no rush to correct the mistake.

So, since we were there and hungry, we got some Indian food at the Rani Bistro on Beacon Street. Every time Caleb and I eat Indian food, it's always the result of not having eaten all day, and so we order way more than we need and start devouring it, only to realize (every time) that there is really only so much Indian food one person can eat at a time. It was really, really good though, and there were these really beautiful, modern Indian paintings everywhere and Caleb got this weird light beer that went really well with the food. It was a success, overall.

Anyway, then we went to the Coolidge Corner Theater to see 500 Days of Summer, which was great and fun and everything, but there was a part that really bothered me, because it happens in every single romantic comedy ever, yet never anywhere else. It's when the guy is talking to his best friend or whatever, and out of nowhere they're like, "I don't know, man. I think I really love her!" And then they elaborate on why they really love the girl in question. I know, it's to move the plot forward or something, but it's weird and I always think about if any guy I have ever met would ever speak to any of his friends like that voluntarily/without getting totally ostracized from his group of friends. Anyway, they did that in 500 Days of Summer, but it's okay because there's also a fantasy musical sequence, which more than made up for it.

So it was a traditional dinner and a movie date, complete with make-out in car. It was fun.

Friday: The License Test

Remember how I kept talking about how I was going to finally get my license? Guess what I didn't do on Friday?

It wasn't my fault. We drove there, got in the car, everything was all set...and then.

The guy pulled up the e-brake. Then he frowned. "Is this loose?" he asked. "Um. Yes?" I said, which was the wrong answer. Well, it was the right answer, but I probably shouldn't have said yes. So before the test started, he had me check the e-brake. Which was utterly, totally useless. You could tell the guy almost was going to go, but he eventually was like "Look, I really can't take you out. It's a liability..." I understood. I didn't even care that much, because I knew that something like that was going to happen: I wasn't going to fail, per se, but I wouldn't get my license that day. It's just how it works with me.

Caleb felt really bad though, because (though I didn't know this at the time), he knew the e-brake didn't work. He knew! He just figured they weren't going to check it. Which brings me to this story:

When I went to get my permit, I didn't have a proof of address. I didn't even check before I went, I totally forgot that I'd need one. After all, the last time I went, I was a minor, so I just brought my passport and SS card, and figured that would be enough. It wasn't. So, a couple weeks later, I brought a proof of address. But uh, the particular bill I chose was not from 2009. So that didn't work, either. When I walked back out five minutes after going in, Caleb was a little annoyed. "You have to stop being so careless, Kait," he said. To which I NOW say--

OH REALLY, CALEB?

Saturday: Andrew comes to visit

My friend Andrew was visiting a bunch of friends in New York and New England, and he made a trip out to Boston to visit me. It was exciting, because I have fun with Andrew. We went on a tour of Quincy, har har, and then met up with Caleb to drive into Boston. We got food at Fire and Ice, and then we tried to go to the North End for a comedy show. So, um, Saturday night on a nice night in the middle of the summer in North End, is, as it turns out, not conducive to driving through. Which was something I knew already, but...not thinking ahead.

So instead of going to see a show, we just drank. And that, as it turns out, is not conducive to feeling well on Sunday morning. Which is another thing I knew already.

Sunday: Picnics and Shakespeare on the Common

Andrew left, and then Caleb and I got a bunch of food to make for a picnic, and took it to Shakespeare on the Common. We met up with his childhood friend Perry, along with his girlfriend and brother and parents, and then Caleb's brothers and mom and brother's girlfriend came along. We had an enormous group, and we were directly in front of the stage, because they are ruthless about getting good seats. And there was a lot of food.

The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company shows are always really good, I think, but this one had a bad pre-show. They performed a few scenes about love, which was fine...but then they came out and started singing songs that may or may not have had Shakespeare lines in it. It filled me with rage. If the songs had been any good, maybe it wouldn't have. But as it was it was awkward and cloying and ugh. Rage.

Comedy of Errors was great, though. They had it set in the 30s, and they inserted their own jokes and made Shakespeare as witty as he probably was back then, and the costumes and set were really great. They would also bring out the ensemble to dance to mambo music in between scenes, but instead of being cutesy about it, it was mostly just enjoyable. I imagine it's difficult to make Shakespeare appealing to a huge audience that are there for free, but it worked.

And uh, that's about it.

he's so dreamy.

2009-08-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

Watch the slow freak out in the following gmail chat!

Me: you should comment on it!

Caleb: i did womans
u shut up
um...i'm sorry
girls
that was a big mistake
by me
i love you

What C doesn't know is that after I told him he should comment (on my friend's poem), I got up and walked away and that was why I didn't respond. Hee. I like watching him online-sweat.

Investments, or, how I learned to sincerely love driving school

2009-08-10T18:26:00.000-07:00

When you walk to the nearest T station to me, you end up on a sidewalk down a fairly steep hill. It's a busy street, and the store fronts that line it are among the more depressing-looking--there's a Chinese massage parlor and a couple of small Asian stores, and then, the most depressing place of all, a tiny driving school. Everything in the driving school makes it look like it's constantly on the verge of shutting down--the sign hanging half-heartedly in the plexiglass window telling when the next classes will start, the office with its bare metal desk and lineoleum floors, the driving school room that is, from ceiling to floor, eggshell white with those terrible metal chairs--it looks awful. The driving school isn't struggling, and the company has been in business for as long as I can remember. It looks terrible for a very simple reason: they don't have to give a fuck. Everything about this place tells the student, "We don't care. And we don't have to. Because you have to come here if you want to drive, and we don't owe you anything." Whew. Touche, student driving place.

Anyway, I was seventeen when I went to driving school there, and--hey, it was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, making it exactly six years ago now--and I remember very little about the actual school. I got a 100 percent on the written test, I remember that. But I never did the important part and finish my actual driving hours, and so I never did get my certificate. In Massachusetts, if you want to get your license before you turn 18, you need that certificate, but I didn't particularly care, even if I had paid for the stupid school out of my own stupid pocket. I didn't really care because I live insanely close to the T, and my parents had made it clear that I wasn't getting a car unless I was buying it with my own money, and that wasn't going to happen because in those days I still actually had a "college fund" (seriously) that I contributed to on a biweekly basis with my earnings from the gourmet grocery store in the rich neighboring town that everyone from my blue-collar city despised.

Okay, time out: does High School Me sound like a character in a country song? I do, don't I? "Yes, back in those days I worked at the grocery store servin' the rich folk to save money!" "Warring towns between rich and poor!" I'm sorry. It wasn't really like that. My life is nothing like a country song. It just sounds that way in writing/retrospect.

Anyway, six years later, I still don't have my license, though that may or may not change on Friday. And driving school would have just been a meaningless bloop during which I watched some movies from the 1970s about not drinking and driving and lost a ton of money for no discernible reason, except that it wasn't. See, I was pretty gregarious then, more so than I am now, and so I became friends with the tall shy kid that was sitting next to me, too.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

So Caleb (because of course that's who the tall, shy guy was) and me and two other kids--a friend of mine from high school and my best friend's younger brother--we of us would goof around the way you're supposed to at driving school. Afterward, with the exception of Justin, I very rarely saw any of them. And even that wouldn't be that important, except that six years after that, through a fairly straightforward but extremely random set of coincidences, I would be in love with that tall shy guy sitting next to me. I could talk about how that driving school is sort of a metaphor for the not-so-lovely backdrops of where we live now and how something nice came out of it anyway, but I'm not going to.

So as it turns out--that terrible, eggshell-white, metal-desk-laden hole in the wall I never learned to drive at? I love that place. And that couple hundred dollars (I think it was $315) I spent when I was seventeen to not learn how to drive may have been one of the best investments I've ever made.

the next painting

2009-08-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Caleb and I added to the on-going series, "Terrible Art My Boyfriend and I Make Together." Unlike the last time we painted, I did not get (that) bitchy this time, because it was four o'clock in the morning, and he was kind of drunk, and there were allowances to be made.

We finger painted, for the same reasons I just enumerated.

Love, I get so lost sometimes

2009-08-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Man, Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" really makes me want to go make out with my misfit boyfriend in the backseat of a car by the ocean, and then come home to find out that my loving-but-misguided father is going to jail for tax fraud, and then go conquer my fear of flying by accepting a scholarship in London.

Stories from the Past: Cake and Fortresses Night

2009-07-27T11:35:00.001-07:00

I don't smoke weed now, but in college I did a little. It was usually just the result of being bored and then being told that everyone was gathering at my friend's house, and then I'd go, and everyone would smoke and talk about whatever or watch a movie, and I'd go home and go to bed. My high times were, for the most part, totally uneventful. I think I went home one day and did homework afterward; it never really affected anything I did in any real way I can think of now. I stopped when I realized I was, more than anything, pretty bored most of the time when I was high, and stuck to drinking. Which was far more destructive, but slightly more interesting.

But anyway, back when I lived in my shitty townhouse that got flooded, sometime after it got flooded and repaired, I decided I would have another party there. It would be something more chill, and it would involve two things that are great on their own, but amazing when put together:

Cake and couch fortresses.

That's what I called the party, anyway. We had two rooms with, between them, five couches and a table in them, so there would be some awesome fortress-making. So we could make the fortresses with cushions and sheets and whatnot, and then eat cake in them. In preparation for the day, I made a big chocolate layer cake and another layer cake that was either lemon with strawberry icing, or strawberry with lemon icing. I don't really remember.

The reason why I don't remember is kind of confusing at this point. It's either because it was almost a year ago, or because right before the party started, a few friends came over, and I took the worst bong hit of my life, and literally every moment of that party afterward is fuzzy.

I wasn't even going to smoke. At that point I was pretty much over it, though not really opposed to doing it occasionally, but my pothead work friends had come and he had brought it over and then insisted on me taking the first hit because I was hosting, and also giving him a place to sleep that night. So I did. It was a terrible, terrible idea.

I think other people brought cakes over, and as I was looking at the table I just started to feel really uneasy. And I knew then. I was going to be irrationally scared of nothing for a while. It's the worst feeling--I wasn't paranoid about anything, I knew that the police wouldn't show up (and if they did, they'd only find pillows and cake), but I just had this feeling of dread overcome me. I sat in the corner of my couch and freaked out. I called my Hipster Pseudo-Boyfriend, and made him come earlier to be with me. He did, but then he had to leave to pick someone up, and I freaked out then. He came back, and then I freaked out more. "Aren't you going to eat?" my friend Billy asked. "Aren't we going to make fortresses?" He had taken the same hit as me, but was fine. "Billy," I stage whispered. "I'm kind of freaking out." Billy looked worried, and then, in the infinite wisdom of someone who has smoked many a joint, put his arm on my shoulder and told me I'd be fine. He got some cake and I told him to go take people and build a fort, which he did. I was not hungry, and the last thing I would do would be fort-building. What I wanted to do was sit in the corner of the couch and silently freak out while pretending to be fine. So I did that.

A couple of friends came over and suddenly the party became, through my bloodshot eyes, absolutely enormous. "Oh, hey, how's it going?" I tried to say nonchalantly to that group, my voice shaky and eyes betraying the total paranoia I was currently feeling. James admitted that he wasn't having the best day, that he had broken up with his girlfriend. "I'm really sorry," I said, trying to act cool. It lasted about four seconds, and then I gave up. "Um, oh man, I'm like, so so high, I'm so sorry, am I going to be okay? I'm going to be like this forever, oh shit, where's Hipster Pseudo-Boyfriend?" James was really nice about it (I'm guessing here, but James is extremely nice all the time, so it's a pretty good guess) and tried to make me feel better, and I sat back down in the corner of my couch. I was sure I'd be like this forever.

Eventually the terrible high began to wear off. I knew I was okay when I decided to try some cake. And then more cake. Pretty soon, I was fine, and crawling into the Girls Only fortress Billy and Friends had made in my front living room.

There are lessons here.

The cakes lasted until the next day, when the leftovers were given away or thrown out. The fortresses lasted almost four days after the party--I left the big one in the middle of my living room for a while. The knowledge of knowing that I should never, ever, take a huge hash hit before having people over to build fortresses in my living room? That one, my friends--that one will stay with me forever.

Rachel/Licenses/Awesome

2009-07-21T09:52:00.001-07:00

See this? This is Rachel.

I recently received a card from Rachel that detailed, in really pretty loopy handwriting, that she will be in town from October 16-19. (Hey, wouldn't it have been awesome if that was the only way she alerted me to her visit? Like, if she randomly decided to stick to only handwritten cards/letters to give me news about her life? That would be awesome and old-fashioned. When I get engaged I'm going to send her a letter saying something like "Father has informed me that I am engaged to be married to a boy from a respectable family here in town...")

Anyway, as anyone worth their salt knows, Rachel's birthday is October 18th, which means for her 24th birthday she will be giving herself the greatest gift of all: A visit to me. Hooray! This means I get to hang out with Rachel in my hometown and we will have fun and I'm so excited. On October 15th this is what I will feel like. (I'll be too excited to sleep!)

Rachel is very unlike me (extremely athletic, is an elementary education teacher and likes children, on top of everything, from a military family, likes country music), but it's probably because of that that we get along so well. We first bonded during the first days of UD, before classes started. She randomly started telling me about how her Mormon friend (age 18) had just gotten married. I displayed the level of shock and disgust that she also had, and from then on we were tight. Two rooms down the hall freshman year, lived on the same floor sophomore year, lived the floor below me junior year, and senior year we lived together. When I was in Mexico, it was her that I called with updates(it was easier than trying to call all of the girls, and I knew she'd be most reliable with keeping her phone on), and when she needed someone to drive out from Colorado to Delaware, I jumped on that shit. And when my lovely roommate needed some time alone with John, I slept over in Rachel and Kristin's room and we read all the hilarious sex parts from romance novels and looked at bridal magazines. (Yes. We do a slumber party right.)

And she's still one of my closest friends, though now instead of coming into her room and flopping on her bed to watch her be crazy with elementary education work, it's now more of a gchat/phone thing. Whatever, it works, though we occasionally try to bribe each other to live in the same area (Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that she will never move to New England, but I can't really blame her.)

AND THAT'S HOW YOU DO A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP.

Hey, maybe by the time she visits I'll have my license. But as I've been on hold for the past thirty minutes trying to schedule a road test, this is unlikely. They have music play for about a minute, and then it's interrupted and there's an automated British woman's voice telling me they'll be back shortly. But then they play music for another minute, and a guy who is clearly from Southie comes on and actually sounds contrite for making me wait. I don't know, I just think that's interesting. That they have two voices, that is, not that I'm on hold.

HOLY CRAP THEY JUST ANSWERED AFTER FORTY THREE MINUTES ON HOLD

On August 14th at 2PM, I have a license test.

On August 14th at 4PM we (and by "we," I mean, any and all who are in the Metro Boston area), will begin drinking heavily. Either because I just passed my license test, or because I didn't. Just an FYI.

But anyway, the point is, Rachel is coming to visit. And maybe I'll have a driver's license by that point. Awesome.

Image: FRIENDS ARE AWESOME