on strange obsessions and the best friends who fuel them

Last night, at 10:53 PM, I submitted my final assignment for the spring 2011 semester.

I'M DONE!!!

I've never been so relieved to be finished with a semester of school in my life. This finals week was pure agony, right up until the last second -- and I really mean the last second. The biggest thing that motivated me to get through it was the fact that I am going to New York City today with my very best friend Lindsay, to see a Broadway show and roam Times Square and be unabashedly touristy (one of my favorite things to do in the whole world)!

We're seeing Wonderland, a modern-day musical adaptation of Alice In Wonderland set in New York City. I'm not sure if those who read this blog know that Alice in Wonderland is basically my favorite things of all time. Before I was a Joss Whedon geek or a Star Wars geek or a LOTR geek, I was an Alice geek. First of all, I take the book way, way too seriously and consider it my own personal property (so much that I'm hostile towards almost everyone who says they also "love" the book). I have been collecting Alice-y things since I was 13 (especially White Rabbit stuff, Red Queen stuff, anything with the original Tenniel illustrations, and reinterpreted illustrations). I read The Annotated Alice at least once a year. I make it a point to try and write a paper on Alice every semester. And I've seen almost every single adaptation of Alice on the big screen, small screen, and now, the stage.

I'm super lucky to have a best friend who feeds my strange obsession, so much as to gift me with the opportunity to see the only version of Alice that has existed on Broadway to my knowledge. And she'll be here in about 10 minutes, so I'd better get my act together. 

I wouldn't want to be late. For a very important date.*

Hee hee!

*From the song "I'm Late" sung by the White Rabbit in the 1951 Disney adaptation. The White Rabbit never says this in Carroll's book. He does, however, say, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" which does not rhyme.**

            **I told you I was an Alice geek. It's insufferable, I know.

how i learned to stop worrying and love the oscars

So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to throw an Oscars costume party. I made the Facebook event and promptly never thought about it again. Until Sunday morning, when I realized I AM HAVING A PARTY IN 7 HOURS AND I HAVEN'T DONE SHIT. So here's what my Sunday was like. I:

1) played the piano at an 11:30 AM Catholic mass that ran late.
2) went to AMC movie theater to buy two $10 gift cards (these were prizes.. more on that later)
3) went to the supermarket to buy $25 worth of snacks plus popcorn and movie candy (for prizes).
4) went to PetSmart to buy food and bedding for Huxley the hedgie.
5) waited in the car listening to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson while Matt went into the liquor store to buy beer.
6) cleaned Huxley's whole cage (which was really overdue for a cleaning, so it took FOREVER).
7) haphazardly wrapped up the prizes
8) de-cluttered, dusted, slightly re-arranged, and vacuumed the family room (OK fine, Matt vacuumed while I took a shower).
9) had a crisis when the super cute Oscar ballots I was going to use turned out to be printed in the faintest of gray inks (WTF were they thinking?) and so I had to use a less cute (but highly readable) ballot from Moviefone.com.
10) scrambled to put together my costume at 6:00, which ended up being comprised completely of garments that were either too small or too big for me.
11) ordered the pizza at 6:30, only to find that Matt had called the wrong restaurant branch (the right one is 4 minutes from my house, the wrong one is ...50 minutes away) and so the pizza didn't actually show up until like 7:30.
12) started to get really nervous that the party would bomb and we would all be sitting in awkward silence and my friends would pelt me with M&Ms at me at the end for wasting their time

But that didn't happen, fortunately. The point of this complain-fest is that all of that stress was negated by pretty great night. The ballots provided us (or at least me) with more of a reason to be invested in the winners, and we talked about movies almost the whole time, which is one of my favorite things to do. I'm so grateful to have friends who are willing to debate the distinction between sound editing and sound mixing.

Oh, shut up and just show us the costumes, you are saying. Happy to oblige, my friends. Happy to oblige.

Matt as R.P. McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Best Picture Winner 1975). Or MAYBE as Joe Pesci in Home Alone. The jury's still out on that.

Me, looking FLY as Frodo from LOTR: Return of the King (Best Picture 2003). Do you see THE PRECIOUS? That's my sister's earring.

Linds as Maria von Trapp from The Sound of Music (Best Picture 1965). She also brought crisp apple strudel, a brown paper package tied up with string, and some fake edelweiss-looking flowers. Unsurprisingly, she won the prize for best costume. (Do you read her blog? You should probably be reading her blog.)

Hey! It's Cait of Finding My Balance as one of the six merry murderesses from Chicago (Best Picture 2002). She also pwned all the rest of us in the Oscar ballot with 14 CORRECT PREDICTIONS. What the how does that even.

Cait's boyfriend E as Sargeant Sean Dignam from The Departed (Best Picture 2006). A very merry Sgt Dignam, if I may say!

Scotty as William Wallace from Braveheart (Best Picture 1995). This party MAY have been an elaborate set-up designed to get him to wear his kilt again. Kilts are awesome.

Jewel as Arwen from LOTR: Return of the King. Her costume is so rad. She has the Evenstar (which you can kind of see here) and a cool hooded cloak (which she took off for this picture) and everything.

Mara as Maggie Fitzgerald from Million Dollar Baby (Best Picture 2004). I have a few pictures of her pretending to punch things but I didn't think she'd appreciate me posting them for all of the Internetz to see.

And finally, my friends Katie and Kevin came dressed in all green in a satisfyingly meta if somewhat literal interpretation of How Green Was My Valley (Best Picture 1941). Unfortunately I don't have blog-worthy picture of them :(

So the moral of the story is: parties are a lot of work, but you should still have them because they're almost always worth it. Especially if you get to see your friends dressed up in funny outfits.

risky business

Oh, my friends. Oh, my friends.

Here's the gist of what happened last week:

My parents went away for four days, foolishly leaving me, a frustrated and bored  23-year-old, alone in the house.

You can bet your bottom dollar that I threw a party.

So here I am, recovering from a hectic four-day extravaganza, definitely wanting to share it with you -- and, of course, I have no pictures. But to be honest, I think the pictures would sort of lie. It'd lend a sort of timeline to the whole experience, a deceptively neat-and-tidy visual representation of what, at some points, felt like a huge clusterfuck.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Where do I even start?

I guess the first thing you need to know is that my parents' three-story home in the South Jersey suburbs became a boarding house from Thursday to Sunday -- some people, like the BFF and Matt, stayed all four days, some, like April and Dru, stayed just one night. But either way I don't think I really realized how intense and exhausting it was going to be.

Everything culminated in a boozy party on Saturday night, which I was hoping would be raucous and full of debauchery, but it was actually pretty tame, and I'm glad that it was, because I had enough of a mess to clean up on Sunday morning without having to mop up vomit. I mean, people got drunk. I'd say that many were buzzed and some were inebriated, but no one was trashed. I certainly wasn't. I was too stressed out about whether people were having fun, or whether we had enough food to go around, to do more than nurse my drink.

When the night was over my mind was buzzing and I felt pretty insecure about how much of a success the whole endeavor had been. I'm still sort of on the fence about it.

Some parts were fabulous like,

1. the mornings -- when Matt and I stayed in bed chatting and flirting before we'd go downstairs and make breakfast for everyone.
2. doing party prep with the BFF  -- baking/icing cupcakes, juicing a million lemons and limes for the atrociously bad margaritas, throwing on makeup at the last minute before everyone got there -- it's a little taste of what it would have been like to be roommates.
3. when my sister semi-ironically iced Matt by hiding a Smirnoff Ice in an oven mitt and basically forcing him to look inside.
4. Sunday morning, when me, Matt, my sister, her friend, the BFF, April, and Dru all miraculously woke up around the same time and proceeded to spend the next four hours lounging around, eating bagels, and watching 16 and Pregnant. 

And some parts were decidedly unfabulous, like 

1. when I got woken up in the middle of the night because my sister's friend thought she was having a medical emergency. It freaked me right the hell out for about 11 seconds before Matt jumped in and defused the situation much better than I would have.
2. when I realized that I didn't have any idea where I would hide the trash and empty bottles, which resulted in me and Matt fighting over whether or not he should have to drive around my town and find a dumpster to hide them in.
3. the moment that I suddenly remembered that I'd completely forgotten that I was supposed to register for Spring 2011 classes this weekend. I was so upset that it almost ruined my whole weekend.  

But we didn't have to go to the ER (thank god, because not a single adult that stayed in the house this past week has health insurance). And I didn't have to make Matt go on a dumpster-hunt, because we figured out a legal (well, more legal) solution to the problem. And it turns out that registration started late Sunday night, so I hadn't even missed it at all, and I was able to get into all the classes I wanted to get into. And although I was still cleaning the house right up until my parents came home today at 5:45 PM, I managed to get the house back in working order. 

I don't want to jinx anything yet (my parents have only been home for a couple of hours, so it's too soon to tell), but I think I might have pulled this off. I'm exhausted and I'm going to sleep for the entire day tomorrow, but I think I pulled this off.

Freakin' sweet.

Welcome to the Hellmouth

But once a year on All Hallow's Eve, Joss Whedon's creations gather for libations and merriment. Vampires, space cowboys, and toys that come to life whenever humans aren't around.... oh my.

Two Big Damn Heroes, and two Big Damn Bad Guys

Two Willows showed up, and neither of them were Regular One.

They day needed his saving expertise.

Someone POISONED the WATERHOLE.

Captions left to right:

1.  Though Reavers are cannibals, I took the night off from flesh-eating and settled for some Jello-whiskey BRAAAIIINS instead. 
2. Reavers aren't very good at playing Kings. River made up a rule that saying the name of anyone in the room meant you had to put your forehead on the table until someone else said a name. She thinks she's so clever.
3. River and I took a break from trying to destroy one another to enjoy a shot of horrible tequila taken out of a shot glass made of ice. Classy.

I quite enjoyed being a futuristic flesh-eating nightmare barbarian for the night, but it was very exhausting. I think I need to go lie down. And maybe take a couple of Excedrins.

Weekend Recap!

Friday:
Errands (BOO)
Dinner @ Bertucci's with Linds, Dru, and K.
Late-night chatting at my place

Saturday:
Work (BOO)
The Kibitz Room with Matt (I briefly broke my meat fast for a couple bites of their glorious overstuffed reuben!)
Short trip to the mall in search of Halloween costume components
Bowling and game night! (see pictures)

Sunday:
Whole Foods with Mumsie and Pop-sicle for lunch and groceries
D&D FEST at Scotty and Jewel's YES

I knew it was going to be a crazy weekend when K told me she was coming home for the weekend. As the only member of our posse who doesn't live in the area, a visit home from her always means people tend to come out of the woodwork to see her. Maybe also because she is an amazing photographer and always takes these great candids that make all of us look like models. Maybe not. Anyway, she hasn't posted her pics to Facebook yet, so you'll have to settle for mine.

Linds and Dru.

Me and K and a carafe of sangria in the foreground.

This is our favorite game. It's called "Watch K Do Charades."

That's April (not her real name, but she'd approve) on the left and Dru on the right. We were really playing Cranium, but the whole reason we even play that game is to -- wait for it -- Watch K Do Charades.

I managed to completely leave Scotty, Jewel, Matt, and my friend Mara out of the pictures, but that's cause I was too busy hysterically laughing. 

Also, we played our second favorite game, Eat Poop You Cat! It's like Whisper Down the Lane, but a billion times more amazing. If you feel like laughing I recommend you visit the website (NSFW in some cases).

How was your weekend?

Sundry Summer 2010

Pictures from my first summer out in the Real World:

John Mayer concert at the Camden Waterfront with my sister, BFF, and Matt (not pictured).

Lots of D&D with Scotty and Jewel and their kitty:

Kitty liked my Homestar Runner messenger bag:

First Phillies game since 5th grade: 

Fun and games in Hilton Head, SC:

And one last hurrah in Ocean City, NJ:

Ah, summer. I shall miss you. 

sometimes i write haiku.

I just got back from my annual family vacation in South Carolina and I can't believe how much energy I have. I unpacked all of my bags, a task I usually drag out for an entire month. Matt's coming over later on, but that's not for several hours and so I have plenty of time to kill.

So I thought I'd write a recap of the four weeks that I went MIA in the blog world.

In the form of several haiku.

So.

Week One - in which I entertain visiting relatives, and see the Phillies play for the first time ever.

Baseball games are fun
but there isn't much to eat
if you are vegan.

So many things to
do in Philly area.
Aunt just wants to shop.

Where are we going
today? Oh, what a shocker.
Shopping. Stab stab stab.

Hm, aunt just gave me
two hundred dollars to spend.
Shopping not so bad.

Week Two - in which I remedy a certain technological issue, and Jewel and I attempt a Buffy season 1 and 2 marathon.

WHOA A NEW LAPTOP.
WOW THE SCREEN IS SO SHINY.
OMG SO COOL.

Oh, Angel. You are
such a creeper. In some states,
this is harassment.

JAMES MARSTERS JAMES MAR
STERS JAMES MARSTERS JAMES MARSTERS
JAMES MARSTERS EEEE SQUEEEEE

[As you can see, that was a very exciting week for me.]

Week Three: in which I help my sister prep for college, and can't stop playing Sid Meier's Civilization 4.

Just one more turn. Then
I'll go to bed. Just one more
turn. SHIT IT'S SUNRISE.

(Why am I)
unexpectedly
nostalgic over shower
caddies and whiteboards?

[OK, had to cheat on that one a little bit.]

Week Four: in which I play D&D, help Linds house sit, and attempt to make my dad a cake for his birthday.

90 percent sure
we're playing this game wrong, but
damn, is this game fun.

Adorable house
makes me want to buy a house.
What magic is this?!

Well, dad, I made you
this nice cake, BUT NOW IT'S GOT
ANTS ALL OVER IT.

[True story. I left it on the counter and the next morning it was completely crawling with tiny, tiny ants. Nice.]

If you decide to leave a comment, feel totally free to haiku. That's right, haiku's a verb now. I just decided.

back in the saddle

Urghh... I've been away from the Internet for exactly a week, and there are currently 44, count'em 44 unread blog posts in my Google reader right now. I'm going to work on chipping away at that unreal number until 12:45, when I have to go to work. But for now, here's my week in a nutshell.

- My sister graduated high school. She gave a speech. And I was like, MY BABY'S ALL GROWN UP AND SAVING CHINA!

- I went to see Toy Story 3, which we all know is officially The Greatest Movie Ever Made (no seriously, I don't know if there have been any negative reviews of it except for these two douchebags). The experience was so uniquely Pixar. Half of the time I was laughing unabashedly and obnoxiously. The other half of the time I was a whimpering, moist-eyed mess (I don't let myself cry in movie theaters anymore because I cause a real scene). Those of you who have seen it can probably relate. I had to think about all sorts of inappropriately hilarious things and fan my face vigorously to keep myself from bursting into tears.

- Remember when I got all excited about finding people to play D&D with? Well, on Saturday we started creating our characters and we had maybe a little too much fun with it. Matt's character is an eladrin wizard who wears a prosthetic beard loaded with razor blades (because eladrin can't grow beards, what's up with that?), Jewel's character is an elf ranger with "ginormous knockers," and my character is a halfling rogue with a Napoleon complex. Also, that was officially the nerdiest sentence I have ever typed. Scotty gets off a little too much on being Dungeon Master, I think, as he kept on saying things like GOD DIDN'T SAY YOU COULD CHOOSE YOUR AT-WILL POWERS YET, DID HE? I think we may have created a monster.

- We celebrated Father's Day lounging around the house, doing nothing, as per my dad's request. He wanted Father's Day to be about conserving money and resources, and so we didn't go out to eat or go shopping or anything like that. We all just went about our normal Sunday, which for me meant attempting to clean my room but then just falling asleep for several hours instead.

- I have successfully made it through another week of being incidentally vegan, and I've learned one very important thing:

don't stop me now: the best weekend ever

This is K. She took every single picture you will see in this blog post today. Mine sucked and hers are gorgeous, and plagiarism is for chumps, so I just wanted to give her credit.

Part the First: My best friend graduates. She throws a party. It rocks.

 

Me and my friend Dru (not her real name, but she'd approve) Top Modeling it up. Note how Dru actually knows how to pose for pictures where as I can only flail about like a fish on the shore.

The scene: picturesque South Jersey backyard.

A freakishly normal picture of my sister and Matt.

An impromptu campfire for impromptu s'mores.

Me and my best friends of seven years. So much love here.

Part the Second: We go to Scotty and Jewel's wedding and we all look so freaking good. Seriously.

Centerpieces, three of which I now have in my house. 

That handsome Scotsman my friends and I are standing with is LW (stands for Legitimate Wizard, and honestly I don't know if he'd approve of that name). All of the groomsmen wore kilts to reflect Scotty's heritage, but LW is especially legit in his because he's from Glasgow. 

Also, LW does card tricks and for the life of me I couldn't figure them out. The only explanation is that he is Actually Magic (hence the name). Shortly after this picture was taken, he turned that 2 of spades into an ace.

Believe it or not, this cake tasted even better than it looks.

This band completely changed my perspective on the whole band-vs.-DJ thing. They were so, so badass.

Me, Matt, Scotty and Jewel, aka the best-looking geeks in the Tri-State area. Seriously.

Part the Third: The weekend continues at the afterparty and at the afterparty to the afterparty, but I didn't take any pictures because sometimes you want to live life and enjoy the moment without pressuring yourself to document it. 

la la life is wonderful

[image source: http://tinyurl.com/2ayfw8k]

This weekend was fucking epic. It was a maelstrom of activity, the center of which was the beautiful wedding of my friends Scotty and Jewel. Currently, I'm catching up on my reader, then uploading pictures, then writing emails to/posting on the walls of/answering texts from the new friends I made and the old ones I caught up with and the current ones that I love more than ever right now. 

I'll post about it later, after I recover. But this is just to say: Hey, guys! It's been a crazy couple of days, but watching your blog posts rack up in my reader made me smile. Guess what? I made a friend who can do card tricks that are so impressive that I'm pretty much convinced that he's a wizard. How was your Memorial Day weekend? 

Wordless Wednesday

the final verdict

So, how did my weekend turn out? I know you've all been waiting for the answer with bated breath. Let's take a gander:

CONS

The cons list can be distilled into one huge con: It was 90 degrees this weekend, which is an affront to all that is natural and right. It shouldn't be 90 degrees in New Jersey during the first weekend of May. It just shouldn't.

Some of the ways this detail affected my weekend negatively:

1, We couldn't turn the A/C on because it's not supposed to be this hot like ever again, so I had to try to sleep in the sweltering heat, which resulted in me waking up completely naked on top of my covers. Sometimes I take my clothes off in my sleep. It's something you should know about me.

2. I could not fully enjoy my walk-about-college-campus with my friends because it felt less like a carefree frolick through the fields of memory and more like the last leg of Sam and Frodo's journey into Mount Doom. It was hot and exhausting and my belongings seemed to get heavier and heavier the further we walked. And nobody was like, "I can't carry [your camera]...but I can carry you!" 

3. Cuddling with Matt on the leather couch in my living room is more hot-and-sticky than cozy. And not hot-and-sticky in a good way, don't you get any ideas. 

4. All hot food is completely unpalatable in this weather. For dinner my mom had made fried tilapia and though I like fish, I could think of nothing more disgusting than fried food. I was like, how about watermelon? How about blueberries with cinnamon ice cream? No? Oh right, because it's THE FIRST FUCKING WEEKEND OF MAY.

PROS

Likewise, the pros can be boiled down to one Amazing Super Pro: 

Matt and I finally found people to play D&D with!!

On Sunday night Matt and I hung out with our friends who happen to be engaged, let's call them Scotty and Jewel. And it was a huge success because not only did we play LOTR Trivial Pursuit (in which we came up with kick-ass theme song for the Nazgûl which basically amounts to "IT'S CHAAASING YOUUU" and "RUN AWAAAAY") and get to cuddle with their adorable kittens, but we also discovered that we all want to try Dungeons and Dragons -- like, old-school, tabletop, Monster Manual, Funyuns-and-Mountain-Dew D&D. I'm ridiculously excited, despite the fact that I'm not really sure how this is gonna work.  

We have the tools: Jewel's dad has an original game set from the 70's, complete with a 12-sided die and a Dungeonmaster's Guide. 

We have a DM: Scotty, chosen by the very official process of me suddenly blurting out, "I VOTE SCOTTY FOR DUNGEONMASTER." 

We have the experience: most of us have done some form of roleplaying or strategy gaming. 

And I have a cloak! I do have a cloak. So that should come in handy.

But none of us has actually played D&D before. We're all firmly footed in other aspects of geekery -- Scotty plays war games with tiny metal figurines, Jewel is completely obsessed with writing Stargate fanfiction, Matt would probably rather play video games than anything else in the world, and I'm... well, I'm kind of a well-rounded, anything-goes geek -- but never have we delved so deep into True Geek Culture. It's sort of intimidating. But also really exciting.

So! I'll let you know how that goes.

And as for the final verdict on the weekend: Awesome. Hot, but awesome. How was yours?