home is where my stuff is

at least that's how i've been categorizing it. whenever i'm at temple, harrisburg is home. whenever i'm back in the 717, temple is home. this is a picture of my last dinner home this summer (or the last supper as my mother decided to call it.) beef stroganoff, fresh tomatoes from our garden, and new blue placemats that i forced my mom to buy since all of our other ones are from 1995.

coming back to school this year felt like i was just picking up where i left off. there wasn't that awkward 'making friends' stage or even the 'getting to know you' stage that follows. i have friends and i know my way around the city. and as much as i love that i can skip that stuff and just start back up again, i kind of wish it was still like freshman year. i liked that you could just talk to anyone and it wasn't a huge deal because you were all pretty much in the same boat. now i feel like everyone already has their set group of friends and there's not a lot of wiggle room for people like me who still want to expand. i think i'm the kind of person who always needs to be meeting people. even in high school i constantly needed stimulation in the form of the company i kept. sure, i have my close circle and my best friends, but i like to keep a variety of people around. makes it interesting. i'm just getting nervous that everyone is locked in now.

i'm also getting nervous about some of my lifestyle choices. part of me wants to pursue those random party make-outs and play freshman fifteen and the alphabet game. the other part tells me to take a break and not be 'that girl.' the second part of me sounds boring. but right. and if it doesn't work out, i can always go back and listen to the first part of me right? right.

tea you, round two

sophomore year is going swimmingly. i forgot how much i am in love with the people here. specific things i'm in love with:
- singing elo
- danny jacobs hitting on freshman
- going back to see my old room and making friends with the girls who live there now
- making friends with freshmen in general
- my specific freshmen from scavenger hunt and how much i love them. so much.
- mouse spottings
- kitchen skanking
- sneaking into temple towers
- alphabet game and freshman fifteen
- creeping people out
- rooming with miss gibson
- making my own food
- knowing my way around campus
- keiren wiping out gracefully on the sidewalk
- strangers giving her band-aids
- freebies for freshman that we steal
- meeting new people

oh tu. you know.

so it can stay like this forever

i love my parents. i leave for school tomorrow and i feel like i'm in a really weird place. i can actually feel the transition happening- from the 717 being my 'main' life to temple being home. it was obviously going to happen but for some reason i just thought it would be smooth and i wouldn't really notice it. but it's clunky and i can feel it happening. the same with friends. i can actually see them drifting and getting fainter. it's weird. i don't like being aware of it. it makes me feel alienated. i don't like being in the in-between either. where half of me wants to go out and travel and get internships everywhere and try a bunch of new things but the other half doesn't want to let go of my family and my family life that soon. the part that wants to stay in the 717 forever having sunday dinners and going to target with my mom. again, it's not a smooth transition. it's a tug of war deal. and i can feel it physically manifesting itself in my stomach.

on a happier note:
i move in tomorrow! the van is packed to maximum capacity (and yet my room looks fuller than ever. weird.) i can't wait to see everyone and get back into the swing of things. i still need to find a job ( i never heard back from either place) so keep your fingers crossed. i'm excited to set my apartment up (NEW BOOKSHELF! PICTURES!) and catch up with people. gaahhhhhh. only a few more hours!

holy guacamole!

i've been busy! i leave for school in a week so i'm just trying to get everything in before i go!

i've been silkscreening a lot- i just did my third design (jimmy helped!) and i'm hoping to get a fourth (or fifth?) in before i leave for school. i'm just worried about the emulsion expiring while i'm away. i want to make the most of it while i still have it homie!

i've also been trying to find a job in philly. i went to philly on tuesday with tyler and jimmy for a couple interviews. we found some hot guys on the turnpike and decided they were our turnpike boyfriends so we kept trying to drive in sync with them.

then i had my interview at temple's jazz and classical radio station. it's only two blocks from where i'm living and it's super nice and the lady i'd be working for is awesome. after the interview we went to lunch at noshery (i missed it) then headed to center city. we showed black warrior around philly then went to get some incredible gelato. i got thai coconut milk.

then i had my second interview at naked chocolate. i interviewed with drew, who was so nice (and pretty cute). he posted about the job on craigslist and apparently he got 290 responses! from that he picked 35 to interview and they're only selecting five to hire. i never thought all my previous chocolate experience would come in handy but he was really impressed. the interview went really well ( i felt like i was just talking to him- he was super friendly and enthusiastic about the company and it sounds like such a sweet place to work. i ended up talking to him for 45 minutes!) and i'm supposed to hear back on friday so keep your fingers crossed. my mom is having a millino heartattacks about me working off campus and the whole subway/bike riding thing. hopefully i'll figure that out. all in good time.

after the interview, i met up with james and tyler in rittenhouse square (which i really need to go to more often- it's so pretty!) and we headed back to brielle's. we were supposed to go to the beach for a little boardwalk action but it was apocolypsing outside so we just ordered some ballin' pizza (4 cheese + feta + ricotta + spinach + garlic sauce + onion) and sat around with brielle. good day overall.

i have so much i want to squeeze into the next five days.
you might get neglected some more dear blog.
lo siento.

but me i'm a single cell

i've been a'thriftin' a lot lately!
i've also been drawn to zooey deschanel-esque items. ben gibbard better watch out. my girl-crush is getting serious. it's slipping into my freaking subconscience.
i'll have to get better pictures of all my goodies- and believe me they are good. but right now these will have to do. the middle dress is technically anna's- we found it tuesday night but wanted to wait until wednesday (when it's half off) to buy it. so we hid it and i went back the next morning to buy it. it's wrong i know. but it's $8 compared to $4! and we couldn't risk it not being there the next day! and doesn't the bottom dress look like it's anthropology? it feels like anthrophology.

in other news: i've applied for eighty-five thousand jobs. i have an interview on tuesday to be a filing/errand girl at the financial aid office. joy! i also made a new screen (which you will get to see tomorrow!) and have been screening my brains out. i'm beginning to really enjoy the process. alex and jill and i are getting all our apartment stuff together. i got summer heights high on netflix- hilarious. makes me think of mercahdaize and keiran. matt and i met so many nice people on our adventure! we talked to a lady who was new to salvation army about the joys of thrifting and the thrift community as well as goodwill vs. salvation army (huge price difference.) we also discussed the accuracy of marker colors with the cashier in dick blick and season 2 of flight of the conchords with the burrito maker at neato. i love talking to people. i forgot how much i enjoy that connection.

and look at this baby

i babysat him today. so precious. you should hear this one giggle. it's friggin adorable.

ladies it ain't easy being independent

*spoiler alert homies

i just got back from seeing 500 days of summer. and while the rational, slightly feminist side of me enjoyed it and thought it had a lot of good messages, the corny, loves a good rom-com following it's formulaic plot, side, was highly dissappointed. hurt might actually be a better word. i literally felt like zooey deschanel was breaking up with me. i was so emotionally in tune with that movie. i just wanted them to be together! but beyond that, there were several other things of note:
1. summer moves on pretty friggin fast. and gets engaged pretty friggin fast. 500 days is like, a year and a half. and she got married in that time? in like two or three months? jesus. that's crazy shit.
2. if joseph gorden-levitt wasn't so good-looking, i would have totally hated him. so emotional! so cheesey! sounds like a seventh grade girl! or some stupid kid who's memorized lines from sitcoms and is just saying them when he feels appropriate! and the way he talked about music? seriously. if he wasn't so friggin handsome, he couldn't say shit like that. he would just sound lame. and there would be no adorableness to balance it out. the more i think about it, if i was summer i would have broken up with him too.
3. i enjoyed the general message that you should learn from you relationships, even if they don't end up 'happily ever after' or in the way you envisioned. very important and not seen in enough movies.

seeing a movie with an independent woman on display also happens to coincendentally coincide with my recent obsession with the song 'independent women' by destiny's child. funny.

"will you pay me $35 a week?"

my cousin ethan is hilarious. he's going to work in the kitchen of my cupcake shop as an offical cupcake maker. he told me i could pay him $35 a week. he also told me to hurry up and open it because he wants to start working when he's 14. tonight at dinner he told me he was wearing his football pants. underneath his regular pants. kid is obsessed- seriously. he talks about football at the time. he let me try on his helmet today and taught me how to breakdown. which is pretty much just crouching and growling. he's playing varisty football this year with the 13-year-olds. (he's only twelve.) i feel like he's going to do realy well. i love watching him talk about games and different players just because of the way he lights up. its absolutely inspiring to see someone so optimistic. he wants to play for the nfl but also "get really good grades and be smart." i can't remember the last time i heard someone tell me something like that. i forget at what age we start slipping into 'reality' and give up our dreams of being genius nfl players. it's sad to think about, especially when i think of it on a personal level. when i was five i wanted to be a movie star. by fifteen, it was just a screenwriter or playwright. at nineteen, i just want a job. when did i start to suck so much? seriously. it's like i've mistaken ambition for idealism. like settling is the most realistic option. i've lowered the bar way too much. and even more than just the normal fear of failure, which i think holds everyone back, i think the fear of getting into a field and finding out everyone is way better than me scares me the most and is the root of my settling. especially if it's a creative field. in an intelligence related position, i could just learn more- take more classes, read more, work harder. but with creativity, if you don't have it, you just don't have it. i saw a kid at chocolate world last week with a shirt that said, "right now there is someone out there practicing and when you meet them, they will beat you." it sounds a little harsh, but i really like it. it's been stuck in my head, pushing me, making me feel bad when i think about just watching a movie, telling me i could be using my time in so many other ways, working towards goals and actually doing things. and with a voice like that urging me to get stuff done and cross things off my list, i feel like i can want more for myself.

i'd rob a quik-e mart for you

tuna pasta with peas and ranch dressing followed up with banana choco-chip pancakes with peanut butter in between. impromptu feast with anna, liz junior, and matt.

helen and kevin arrived home late- kevin, sans shoes, and helen, feeling a little tipsy. highlights of tipsy mom:
- mom playing with liz's hair
- telling everyone they were pretty
- throwing cheese at anna and telling her to eat it
- claiming she danced in steerage and the quains danced on the lido deck ( they went to see a swing band at a vineyard)
- telling us the cheese was 'the shit'
- claiming 'these little frickers are good!' (in reference to cookies)
- "tell your father he's a fat ass. not really. i just made that up."
- "there are pros and there are amatuers."
- tap dance demos in the kitchen

i love my parents. they are hilarious.

batteries in the mail

i got muh batteries for my 330 land camera in the mail today! and i found the full 330 manual online in pdf for! and i took this picture of my baby brother! it's a super cool process. the rollers in the camera squeeze out the chemicals between the negative and the film paper as you pull out the film. and then you have to wait for it to develop then peel it apart. i know nothing about cameras but i love the whole process involved with this one. technology and digital things really freak me out because i can't see where any of it is coming from. it's just little metal things sending messages and transmitting pictures and flying through space. i like tangible things. they're much easier to understand.

i also bought tickets to the monsters of folk show at the academy of music. i'm going with christine and i think we got good seats (parquet box? which is kind of like the floor judging by the diagram. eleventh row? seems good to me.) i'm getting excited to go back to school! so many good things coming up! including lebowski fest, busdriver, and brand new!

going back home to the west coast

the grand new england tour was a blast, as expected. chrissy is the best hostess. it was full of inside jokes, and traffic, and skee ball, and bug bites, and food, and sleeping three to a bed, and boobs, and peeing on the lawn, and sweet potato fries, and dollar a pound thrifting, and TU pride. absolutely marvelous.

sorry i've been neglecting you blog- work is consuming me. seriously. i need to just stick it to the man and stop working. i have other things to do! (ironically enough, one of those other things is to find a job in philly). imma hafta put my foot down. i don't need money this bad. actually i do. but i'm saying screw it. i like ramen noodles.