old age: discount auto insurance and hsn
it's official. i'm old. i just got my new auto insurance policy and they've discounted me for being 25. alas. what have i to live for now?

last night, i bought something of home shopping network. it was a ring, it wasn't very expensive and it's the end of the semester and i have all this money (something to do with retroactive pay since we've just unionized at school) and i thought i'd splurge on a ring. it was very funny. home shopping network. ooh boy.

shut up hap
i don't really care what people think about me. if i'm myself and people, say, are turned off by my straightforwardness and loudness (i like to call it exuberance) i'm okay with that. it's me and i don't care what you think.

what gets my goat and makes me insecure, though, is being misunderstood. i hate it when i'm trying to be nice or am just sort of dazed and maybe not totally with it and i come across as self-centered or mean or whatever. because that's not really the way i am, i don't think. sometimes i am but when i mean it i'm okay with that. i just hate being misunderstood or misinterpreted.

i'm not controlling. i just know what i want. ;)

i hear vancouver is nice
do you know what scares me? i read on a tucked away page of the new york times today that the house (republicans) wants to vote to officially, fully, as a body, AS MY ELECTED OFFICIALS, resolve to show "solidarity" with israel and condemn arafat. ARE THEY KIDDING ME? who are these IDIOTS?!

one of the thoughts that crossed my mind after i read this was that such an act by my government is putting my life in danger. taking such a vote, to me, is tantamount to calling out all the al qaeda cells in this country to suicide bomb all over the place. i'm not saying that we should bend our wills to the acts of terrorists, BUT WHAT THE F***?! these are the same morons as the "critics" who thought colin powell shouldn't visit arafat.

i'm moving to canada. i'm going to be a canadian.

paint fumes
"they" (the mysterious people who sometimes appear outside my window to do work) are painting the fire escape. i'm getting high on the paint fumes and i've been talking to myself a lot more. like, i'm having full-on conversations and confessions and everything as if all that comes out of my mouth is news to me. i think even right now as i type, what is being written on the screen is news to my head. like the independent thinking-organ in my hands is communicating with my eyes.

maybe i should go outside.

oy vey
when it stops raining, here i will go: new york botanical garden. i hear it's nice.

so can we discuss crushes? there's something about spring that makes me crush on boys. i once made up a joke when i was a kid:

what did the boulder say to the boy when she fell on him?
i've got a crush on you.

i used to think that was so funny and witty of me.
but back to crushes. i'm finding that i'm opting into one, whereas when i was younger they used to sneak up on me and take over my emotions. this is healthier but weirder and makes me want to chalk it up to old age.

e-voodoo
good morning sunshine. where art thou?

it's monday and it's rainy out. a great april day. if you're feeling a bit under the weather and would like to anonymously vent your frustrations on your coworkers or friends or complete strangers, click here. chances are, if you know me, i've sent you one. e-voodoo. that's great. so go at it kids.

pretty
again with the not-too-much-like-a-diary feel: click me! astronomy picture of the day. you too can come to appreciate the infinite wonder and beauty and amazement that is the cosmos. the space program *is* worth funding. astronauts are heros, not monkeys, no matter what some people say.

one day, i think we may find god in a telescope. or have we already? (that sounds really deep but i'm really tired. hee hee.)

addict
coffee. the problem with coffee sometimes is that you drink it when you are already tired and it takes some time to process, gastronomically speaking. and then you're done with your work sooner than you think but it's still there coursing through your veins.

but man it's great s***.

moby
lest this become too much like my diary rather than a blog, check this out. it's moby's web page. yeah, the musician. he has his own version of a blog (moby updates). he's inherently more interesting than i based solely on the fact that he's famous. but on even ground, i bet i'd give him a run for his more limited wealth.

moving on
i returned to the home that was my home for 8 years and then a second home for 7 years more. my parents have moved out and gone to townhouse hell. (at least it's a nice place to jog, except for the patches of missing sidewalk -- dangerous in the dark.) in my old home, where i lived longer than any other place on this planet earth, the carpet upstairs was torn out. it was like that when we moved in. it was very much a full-circle type of experience.

moving probably wouldn't be such a big deal if i wasn't having such a hard time with birthdays. there's just this sense that life is careening out of control. the relative comfort and ease of youth (ignoring the blaring miseries of teenagedom) are giving way to responsibility and electricity bills. love, marriage and kids are reasonable things now. meanwhile, i just want to play with my legos.

poor liver, no regret
what a week. i haven't been this drunk so many times in a week since senior week in college. oy. my liver needs a break.

the middle of long island is a scary place. not quite country, not quite nyc suburb, as a friend put it. scary scary. should i regret that night? i don't think so; i should try not to have regrets. i should just learn from my experience and move on. regret is wallowing in the past and not learning from it and doing better.

twenty five here i am
i do not remember walking the last block to my apartment or getting into my pajamas last night. what a nice night.

i was getting on the bus to go to work earlier today and the bus driver didn't have the brake on completely. as i'm stepping up, the bus starts to roll forward. i didn't really register it -- I wasn't sure if I was still drunk or if the bus was actually moving. but it was the bus.

:)
one redemption: birthday gifts in the mail make me happy. it's nice to be thought of. (dangling participle. bad me.)

etc
i know i'm a scary girl. i know sometimes i intentionally intimidate people. i'm a bad person.

but what am i to do about my upstairs neighbors? they clunk around up there like they're holding a bowling tournament at all hours of the night and i think they have a loft bed and when they have sex it's rather disturbing. how do i go up there and tell them to shut the heck up! they drop things ALL the time and they're big things and it makes my apartment shake. they make my blood pressure boil.

and at my age (TWENTY-FIVE) i can't risk the damage to my heart.

click here for one of my favorite places in the city. i wish they had job openings in the media department. i don't even know if they have a media department; i just wish they could hire me!

bye bye youth
my last thirty minutes of being twenty-four. i never thought i'd have a hard time aging, but i am. this is tough. urgh. help.

maybe i'll go rent a car. the last milestone before depends and dentures. urgh.

irony or just a drawer full of spoons when you need a fork?
i was walking in the city today along e. houston and there's a community garden there...named after some woman whose last name is christy or something like that. something christy garden.

looking to my right, there was this serene garden with people sitting around and talking and enjoying the warm weather on chairs and benches. the flowers were blooming, the greenery was very green. i thought i could have been in a rural place.

to my left was houston street, a major thoroughfare downtown and there was bumper-to-bumper traffic and this huge truck rumbled down that was so loud and dirty.

this city is so funny. it amazes me that people can enjoy the greenery and nature of the garden alongside the dirty cars. maybe it's adaptation to city life and taking what you can get, but when i get my nature, i like it all natural.

kick ass
one of my hobbies is taekwondo. i got into it basically to get into shape, but since moving to nyc i've started to fight competitively, in the style you would see in the olympics. at first it really freaked me out because i wasn't very good and i have really bad stage fright and i've traditionally been into team sports. but now, 7 months later, i'm really into it!

sparring is so gritty. you really get to go all out and kick and punch your opponents. it's real and it's visceral, if that's the appropriate use of the word. dedicating time to the sport has made me really disciplined and has had a significant impact (in the negative direction) on my social life because going out for drinks before going to practice is just a plain stupid idea. but to me it's way more real than the social/dating scene here. matching my handbag to my shoes, or my lipstick to my nail polish seems so durn silly after knowing that silly ol' me, the yellow belt can go out there and beat brown belts. so maybe i don't make a lot of money and live in a great apartment and have FABULOUS shoes. but i bet i could beat the s*** out of any prissy girl in any bar. so hmph.

i'm not bitter. really. you should try taekwondo and maybe you'll understand.

aging?
i hate when i pass out from shear exhaustion in the evening and wake up at like 11pm never to sleep again.

i'm going to be 25 in two days. i'm not dealing very well with this. urgh.

hello out there!
i've got to give props to another brooklynite who's an aspiring musician. not that i'm either. and not that he knows i exist. (i.e. he's not my personal friend.)

check it out. his name is steve.
he used to be on blue's clues. he's not dead.
even if you're not interested in him, perhaps you are interested in squirrels.

wish we all were...
it's almost bedtime. i'm very excited.

it may come as a surprise to my friends, but i have these friends. maybe they don't know they're all my friends. but they have a band. they are cool. they live in brooklyn and sometimes they say they're from brooklyn but they met in los angeles so sometimes they say they're from los angeles but they didn't even meet in los angeles. they met 45 miles east of the city in the "inland empire" at the claremont colleges. and after they were from their mommies, i know that one of them was from texas so they're not even from the inland empire. www.wearescientists.com

the original
i'm still trying to figure this out. but heck. blogs are cool. blogs are hip. i'm trying to be cool and hip but not so much in that cool and hip way. but maybe i'm just looking for a place to share my thoughts and *believe* that other people are reading them.