Hi, it's me.

Three weeks in Blog Land is like a lifetime. Do you know what kinds of Things can happen in three weeks? Big Things. New Job Things. Tiger Blood Things. Tsunami Things. Supermoon Things.

It feels like the world's gone all tilty and fisheye since my last post. Suddenly everyone is worshipping Charlie Sheen and there's been a horrible natural disaster and a song like this has gone so viral that I've willingly watched it at least ten times to date.

And also I've been thinking more and more about 

gulp

writing a book.

It all started when I re-discovered some of my old writing from college. Most of it made me cringe, but I happened upon this super-short story I wrote back in sophomore year, and... I don't know. This crazy thing happened where I was able to read the piece outside of myself, see the potential in it. Hm. There's an actual voice here, I thought. There's a story in here somewhere, too. Hm.

Something was ignited in me that day. Something that I've been trying to shake as I've been struggling to balance work and school and the rest of my life over the past few weeks. Because I can't want this right now. I have another dream, another life goal that's even more important to me and almost in reach: becoming a librarian. I should be focusing on finishing school, developing professionally, and finding a job. But I'm sitting here right now, consumed by the notion of writing a YA novel.

For the first time in several months, I'm really, really confused. Am I just looking for a distraction from school, which sucks (sometimes)? Is this the final phase of my quarter-life crisis? Or is it just residual effects from the Supermoon?

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS.

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.

fridays are for filling blanks in

(I am seriously loving the chevron in this graphic, not to mention how well it matches my blog design 0_0)

1. I am currently obsessed with engagement rings. It's sick. I stalk the diamond stock at Blue Nile at least twice a day, and I've built my own ring more times than I care to mention. At the library where I work, I literally STARE at female patrons' engagement rings trying to see what they look like. I realize how creepy this is but I can't stop. I JUST WANT A DIAMOND RING IT'S A LIFELONG DREAM!

2. Today I am impatient  because Matt is waiting to hear back about a job offer (it's down to him and one other person AHH) and I know that as soon as he finds out, he'll call me. So instead of doing work or getting dressed I have just been sitting and staring at my phone, WILLING it to ring.

3. The age I am is 23 (24 in 2 months) and the age I feel is directly related to who I'm with and what I'm doing. When I'm with my younger sister and we're carsinging Taylor Swift songs, I feel about 15. When I'm at work answering reference questions and ordering around the teen volunteers, I feel much older than I am. When I'm with my friends and we're talking about our lives I feel like I'm exactly as old as I should be. But as soon as I hear about some distant friend getting engaged, I get anxious about moving forward to the Next Level.

4. My favorite place is Disney World. Yes. You read that correctly. I've been to Disney five times and I'm going again with Matt this May, when our cruise stops in Port Canaveral, FL. It's gonna be awesome because he hasn't been since he was like, 11, and the only thing better than going back to Disney is going back to Disney with a n00b.

5. Something I have been procrastinating on is um, everything? Grad school work, getting my eyebrows done, getting my ends/bangs trimmed, depositing my paycheck, writing an encounter for the Serenity RPG I'm running, putting together my costume for my Oscars watch party. I really am an expert procrastinator.

6. The last thing I purchased must've not been very exciting, because I can't even remember. OH. Yes I do. It was my mom's birthday present. Her birthday's on Tuesday!

7. The thing I love most about my home is that I get to live here for free. That's not to say that I don't love many other things about my home (my family is here, my doggie is here, it's 10 minutes away from my workplace, it's situated in between Philly and NYC, etc.), but the thing I love MOST about my home is definitely that I do not pay bills.

Wanna play? Pay Lauren a visit and link up.

a quick note about ZOMBIES (and charity)

A few of you mentioned that you were interested in reading Zombicorns, esteemed YA author John Green's NaNoWriMo project. I just wanted to let you know that you can actually read it for free by downloading it from EffYeahNerdfighters.

However, the book was originally only available for download with a donation of $25 to the Harry Potter Alliance, which is this amazing charity that "fights the Dark Arts in the real world" by teaming up with non-profits that promote human rights and literacy. I care deeply about both of those two things, so I encourage you to donate if you can. But in either case, you still get the book :)

what i'd rather be doing besides schoolwork

learning how to make jewelry

watching Futurama

reading Anna and the French Kiss or John Green's zombie novella

baking brownies in a muffin tin (BRUFFINS)

browsing/choosing shore excursions for the cruise that Matt and I are taking in May

playing with Huxley the hedgehog

taking Pilates classes (or maybe yoga!)

playing The Sims 3

daydreaming about having a literary-themed wedding 

DIY-ing details for my Oscars Watch Party on Sunday

(sorry, IRL friends... my party isn't going to be as cute as Twig and Thistle's)

ANYTHING!

Alas, I am floating in a sea in post-graduate assignments. And I must tend to them. Sad face.

Indulge me: what would you rather be doing right now?

ecky-ecky-ptang-zoo-boing-zow-ZING!

The following exchange occurred on Gchat yesterday:

Matt: friendly's is open until 11
me: :-\
i can't control myself around a friendly's
i'm all like OM NOM MINI MOZZO STICKS
OM NOM NOM WAFFLE FRIES
Matt: well
let me be in control then
single scoop
one topping
me: D:
me: NOT THE ONE SCOOP
NO
NUUUUUUUUU
Matt: no no, you're doing it improperly
it's NIIII
me: ... nu?
Matt: ni
me: ... nu?
Matt: no no no
its ni
ni ni ni
me: ni!
NI!
NI!
NI! NI!
Matt: excuse me!
are you saying "ni" to that woman?
me: NI!
Matt: oh what dark times are these
me: LOL

Can I just say how lucky I am to be with someone with whom I can quote entire scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail? If you'd told 17-year-old me that this would be my future, I probably would have laughed in your face (and then gone and watched some toons on Homestar Runner. I wasn't a very cool 17-year-old).

P.S. My IRL best friend, Linds, just resurrected her old blog -- you should all go check her out and leave her some welcome-back love. AND Matt started one too (but his computer died recently so he hasn't posted much.) Still, go check him out as well.

rapid-fire meme completion!

I'm feeling pretty productive tonight, so I decided to bang out two memes that the wickedly awesome Angie tagged me in. To start: A Penmanship Quiz Survey. Gah. I have terrible handwriting and this felt a lot like a second-grade handwriting test. I think knowing that this was going on the blog made me self-conscious, which translated into me adding all these weird underlines for emphasis. Blerg.

But! I did use a fun green pen, so you get to enjoy that. Anyway, here are the rules:

Answer the following questions using regular old pen (or other writing implement) and paper:
1. What's your name/your Blogger name?
2. What's your blog's name/URL?
3. Write "the quick fox jumps over the lazy dog" [I may have taken creative liberties with this one]
4. Favorite quote?
5. Your favorite song?
6. Your favorite band/singers?
7. Anything else you want to say?
8. Tag 3-5 other people

Here's how it went for me:

Bahhh I hate my handwriting!

PART THE SECOND

I got an award! 

The Honest Scrap award! Angie says getting this award means that you don't hold back and you tell the truth, which may or may not mean that you guys think I'm oversharing and need to stop the TMI. That's entirely possible. Regardless, I get to share 10 absolutely honest things about myself now!

1) When I daydream about my future kids, I hope for girls. This is more than likely because girl names are SO MUCH MORE FUN to pick out than boy names.

2) I have tried on three separate occasions to learn how to knit, and it's never gone well. I tried to crochet a couple times, too, and I sort of learned, but all I can do is make rows and rows of double stitches. Not very impressive.

3) I'm not really a picky eater, but there are few relatively innocuous foods that I just don't understand: capers, pickled ginger (the pink stuff you get with sushi), and olives. 

4) I have an unhealthy addiction to overpriced beauty products. (Philosophy, I AM LOOKING AT YOU.)

5) If I could eat macaroni and cheese for the rest of my life and never gain weight, I would already be eating it right now. At 12:46 AM. 

6) Even though I haven't written creatively since college, I still hold onto the hope that I'll be a famous author one day. It was my dream growing up! Some things are hard to let go of.

7) Once I left a bag of strawberries in my work tote for over a week and then it exploded rotted berry pulp all over my library books. 

8) By "once," maybe I mean "last week." Err.

9) I am a closet fan of Nicki Minaj. Wow, did I really just admit to that in a public forum?

10) What do you think I should do about the library books? I should probably offer to replace them, right? I mean, I hate when people just leave their damaged books in the book drop and run. Own up to your sins! 

OK, clearly I'm getting tired. I should wrap this up. Instead of tagging people, I though I'd just link to some of my favorite bloggers that embody the spirit of "Honest Scrap":

Smile Big and Pretty

Jas is trying to break into SHOW BUSINESS and she shares every sordid detail of her rise to the top-ish area.

So Lovely

Heather's old blog has been reborn into this cozy den of self-affirmation and self-actualization. Reading her blog reminds me that you should be your own biggest supporter.

All & Sundry

To fully understand me as a blogger, you MUST READ this blog. I discovered Linda back when I was a pimple-faced thirteen year old who had just started up an "online journal" on Diaryland, the now-essentially-defunct hosting platform. She's hilarious, an amazing writer, and a pretty cool mom to boot.