hearing - 11.22.10

It's a song for remembering when things weren't so lovely in my parts of the world, for capturing the weird intersection of "I'll never forgive you" and "please come back to me."

...And please don't kill me, but lately every time I hear it I think of Ron and Hermione. DON'T SHOOT PLEASE.

***

The sky looks pissed
The wind talks back
My bones are shifting in my skin
And you, my love, are gone

My room seems wrong
The bed won't fit
I cannot seem to operate
And you, my love, are gone

So glide away on soapy heels
And promise not to promise anymore
And if you come around again
Then I will take, then I will take the chain from off the door

I'll never say I'll never love
But I don't say a lot of things
And you, my love, are gone

So glide away on soapy heels

And promise not to promise anymore
And if you come around again
Then I will take, then I will take the chain from off the door

goin' back to hogwarts

My life literally revolves around the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows premiere today. It's my friend Dru's birthday -- so, naturally, we're all going to see HP7 at the midnight showing and most of us are getting our costume on (that's my Hogwarts uniform in the picture up there!). To top it all off, I'm running a Harry Potter-palooza Party at the library today, and let me just tell you about what we've got going on: Quidditch tryouts. Wand-making at Ollivander's Wand Shop. Potion-brewing in Snape's Potions class. Getting sorted by the Sorting hat. Every Flavor Beans. Chocolate Frogs. Butterbeer. DIVINATION FOR REALS. 

I'm just saying, if I were a 4th grader, I think my mind would be blown. I'm just saying. 

Here's a sign I made for Sorting station:

I sorted myself just to be sure the Sorting activity worked, but I didn't need to. I get the same result every time:

The first few times, I was really mad because I thought Ravenclaw was super lame and I wanted to be in Slytherin. But I finally accepted my fate. Ravenclaws get shit done, okay? Check out what the Sorting Hat says about us:

And SUPER MODEST too xD

You can bet that if I were in Gryffindor, none of this Harry Potter Party would even be happening, because instead of busting my butt getting everything organized and set up, I'd be running recklessly into dangerous situations just because Dumbledore asked me to. BURN.

And thus ends the dorkiest post I've ever written. 

Exeunt!

the success bullseye

About a month ago, I digressed from my usual list-y weekend updates to make a (relatively) serious list of small improvements that I hoped to make to my life. Today, let's take a step back and see how I fared.

So, goal #1:

...re-vamp my resumé so I can apply for a Youth Services internship that opened up at another library.

Check and check. I re-wrote my resumé and submitted it for that position. The weeks went by and I didn't hear anything, so I figured they hadn't been too impressed. But last Monday, after a super hectic weekend, I got a phone call from that library, asking me to set up an interview. You guys. I don't want to jinx it, cause don't even know what my chances are, but you guys. If I get another job, this changes everything. I'd have to reassess my path to graduation, my living situation, the state of my finances. Like I said, I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch. But that doesn't mean I can't want them. A lot.

Goal #2:

...re-brand my blog.

Yes, well. You all remember when that happened. It's pretty hard to believe that I had any other blog design besides this one. It just feels right, for whatever reason. Thanks again, Tawni :)

Goal #3:

 ...make eating healthfully, living healthfully, a priority.

I addressed this goal fabulously -- for about two weeks. Then things got crazy. Then my ability to be mindful of my eating habits kind of went away. Then it came back again for a couple days. And at this moment, I'm probably right back to where I was when I wrote that first post. As evidenced by the fact that I am eating a warm chocolate chip cookie from Wawa as I write this. Aheh.

No seriously, though, I have been tearing my hair out about my weight and my health lately. It seems like nothing can motivate me to be sensible about food and exercise for longer than 2 weeks -- not the fast-approaching date of my 7-day cruise with Matt, not the fact that my pants seem to keep getting smaller every time I wash them, not even the possibility that I may be a bride in 2 or 3 years. Something's got to give at some point. But with all of the things I'm dealing with right now -- work, school, my relationship, my social life, my money woes -- I can't imagine how I'd even begin to deal with something as deep-seated as my body image/weight issues. Bleh!

AND Goal #4:

...go back to strictly reading before I turn out the light.

Total success! Well, there was a week-and-a-half long period where I reverted back to my old ways, but I'm happy to report that I no longer need my computer in bed with me like some sort of weird electronic security blanket.

So with the exception of an issue with which I have struggled my whole life, it looks like I actually kinda did what I set out to do! Apparently I'm a go-getter! Damn, I should have put that on my new resumé.

Like Barney Stinson, I averted mediocrity and hit the Success Bullseye. Nailed it!

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.

this is halloween this is halloween

I probably won't have time for a post before Halloween, so I decided to pre-emptively say:

Happy Haunting! Hope you get to show off a sweet costume and eat way too much candy!

If you were curious, here's my game plan for Halloween weekend:

Friday:

Buy some stage makeup and liquid latex and make some fake blood

Hair test run

Fake bloody gashes test run

Make Fruity Oaty Bars to bring to the party on Saturday (which, if you will recall, is a Whedonverse party)

Saturday:

Work (I'm dressing up as Cho Chang) (Shame on you if you don't know who that is. SHAME.)

Reaver Costume Suit-up Montage 

Get trashed @ Jewel's

Sunday:

Recovering with scary movie marathon
Trick-or-treat patrol! AKA the best part of Halloween.

And, finally, here's a costume update. I was using this actual movie costume as a reference:

Since then I've been basically obsessed with replicated this costume piece-by-piece. I wasn't having much luck until my friend who is into lolita and morigirl (both are Japanese fashion subcultures) talked me into looking for some stuff online. 

I picked this black skirt on eBay because it has an asymmetrical, rumpled look that matches the picture pretty well:

I'm wearing it high on my natural waist with a cinch belt that has some metal details to give it a bad-ass corseted feel. I'm a little worried about this skirt, actually, because I ordered it in a rush and failed to notice that though it's a size 8, the waist measurement is about 2 inches smaller than my measurements. AND the seller's comments say, "NO stretch in waist. Do NOT exceed waist measurements." Oooops. Guess I'm gonna have to suck it in.

And to then I found this awesome gray capelet:

I just got it yesterday and it is so awesome. I am really tempted to take some pictures of me wearing it with the hood up, wielding a bloody weapon... but I'll wait until after Halloween so you can get the full effect. I will say that the picture was misleading because it looks like it would have bluey-brown taupe tones, but it's basically sweatshirt gray. And it's actually way too big (because it was made for a person who is 6'0'' and 50 lbs heavier than me). But I knew that when I ordered it. And it looks pretty damn cool regardless. 

So excited. 

Big listy re-cap to come sometime next week.

See you on the other side!

'tis the season for terrifying luminaries

Time for another listy-type weekend update! You know you love these. Don't lie.

Friday:
Fancy steakhouse dinner with Matt
Final installment of Incredibly Depressing Movie Night (we watched Requiem for a Dream and then I cried hysterically, so we agreed to stop watching Incredibly Depressing Movies for a little while.)

Saturday:
Work. Meh.
Out to dinner at this Lebanese restaurant we like
Drank a salted caramel mocha at Starbucks and had a facial tic for the rest of the night.
Sudden burst of productivity due to caffeine rush. Cleaned Huxley the hedgehog's cage SO HARD.

Sunday:
Pumpkin picking hayride at Springdale Farms. It was awesome, but I have no pictures because I forgot to put my memory card back into my camera! Sad face.
Unsuccessful Reaver costume hunt that ended in frustration. Came back home and promptly went on an eBay buying spree. Now 3/4 of my costume is on its way to my house via expedited shipping. Pictures when they arrive!
Pumpkin carving with Matt!

First, Matt cut open and cleaned out the pumpkins. AKA the hard, less fun part. Thanks Matt!

Always such a good sport. Also, sigh. So dreamy. 

Next, I applied the pattern. 

Err. I kind of lost patience with it after a while and just Scotch-taped it into submission. 

Then I used a dangerous little spiky wheel to trace the pattern onto the pumpkin:

This was kind of annoying. But also kind of ingenious.

Then I sprained my wrist and forearm muscles by using a tiny little knife to saw through the pumpkin's very touch and thick skin.

Please ignore my disgusting cuticles. I have never been known for having healthy nail beds.

I might look happy here, but on second glance you will notice that I have THE CRAZY EYES because of how frustrated I am with the dumb little saw.

And then I broke it. Oooops.

Meanwhile, Matt, who has much more upper body strength than I do, had already finished his pumpkin.

I like it! 

And here's mine, halfway through the carving process:

BOO! A GHOST!

So it took a lot of physical labor, but I eventually finished... and you know what? I think it was worth the frustration, maybe even worth the soreness in my right arm today! They look pretty damn cool. Check it:

Yay! Terrifying luminaries depicting faces squealing in agony and spirits from the beyond!

Then there was the small matter of what to do with all this:

Pie was out because Just No, and I felt bad throwing it all out, so I decided to roast some pepitas, yo!

Wash the seeds in a colander and pull out any pulp, then spread 'em out on a baking sheet and let them dry for a couple hours (overnight is best, but whatevs).

Then add a bunch of olive oil, sprinkle with whatever seasonings you want (I did Lawry's seasoned salt and a 1/4 teaspoon of curry powder) and mix around until it's all coated. Then roast at 250 degrees for an hour. 

Then eat them all in one sitting.

OM NOM NOM.

How was your weekend?