who am i?

i have found myself recently carrying around a notebook with me for blogging ideas and things that i want to rant about. I find this kind of sad, like i'm trying to pretend i'm a real writer when i'm really not. Also i usually go back and read my notes and don't have the same ferver i had when i first wrote them so i scrap the whole idea.

So anyways one of the notes i wrote to myself was that i should write about my move. I moved...i moved 4 houses down but it was a move nonetheless. moves suck balls. Especially when you are a single girl with lots of shit. I always hate asking people to help me so i only let my few really really close friends participate. I do this because moving other people's stuff sucks but also because when i ask random people to help me move i always get comments like "you have so much shit!" and "do you really need this many shoes." I don't need that kind of judgment! yes i need 9 pairs of boots!

So anyways all the big guys i know are out of town. In fact everyone i know is out of town so it was just me and Nishi left here to move all of my shit. Let me tell you why moving is especially hard for me. I have really short arms. I have really short everything but my short arms prevent me from being able to fully grasp boxes and makes gripping things really difficult. So anyways that was not the point of this post. I moved, it's done, onto move interesting topics.

I went to ikea this weekend. does everyone hate going to ikea as much as i do? I hate that people go there and think they are buying really classy, stylish furniture. It's ikea for fucks sake! If you have style you can make anything work from the most expensive to the cheapest store but if you have no style prefab swedish furniture isn't gonna suddenly give you good taste. we traversed the masses, i bought a red dresser (red, i decided, will be my new accent color against my green bed spread) and a red chair, my stomach started bothering me and i had to rush to the bathroom, we ate 50 cent hot dogs. all in all it was your typical trip to ikea. I have this theory that we are all given gifts, and that we can be good at a lot of things but we can only be great at a few things. I am GREAT at putting together ikea furniture. furniture in general but especially ikea furniture. it is like my gift. i will say now that i can put together any piece in 20 minutes or less. true story. so anyway i had this realization as i was trying to find an end table that i really hate paying for cheap things. Dont' get me wrong, i love paying under $10 for an awesome dress at forever 21 but paying over 100 dollars for something that is cheaply made and that i will have to replace in a couple of years really bugs me. I love love love buying expensive things for cheap but cheap things ugh. And that is exactly what i hate about ikea. Nonetheless, my current (and eternal) financial slump leaves me in the position where if i need furniture i have to go to ikea. this is my life.

I am using this as my computer chair only it has dark wooden legs
my dresser only it's a more bright red in person
I went to ikea with my gay and his fiance, eric. For some reason eric was like "what is your ideal wedding dress" mainly because they were talking about their wedding. I think what makes this funny is that eric is this huge black guy with dreadlocks so it sounds odd having someone like that ask you what your ideal wedding dress is. I'd never really thought about it so much mainly because i never thought that the cut of wedding dresses suited my figure. i don't look good in long dresses and it kind of annoys me that this is the norm. To be honest i had this idea of just fucking the whole wedding dress concept and buying a couture gown for the same price in some awesome color like gold or something. well he had an idea and we both added to it, so here it is. My ideal wedding dress: strapless, maybe raw silk, knee length (fuck the long dress), shoes we are not sure about but something manolo blahnik esque. and then to top it off have a really cute bun or something and have a short veil that hits at the nose, liek those old hats from the 40's. nice huh! now i just have to find the husband. but i figure i'll just have someone make this dress for me. I bet it will cost less than buying one.

So anyways onto my new place. where i was living before they had everythign so i really didin't have to buy anything. But now we all have been roomates and none of us own anything liek plates and shit liek that. so i've been shopping at teh salvation army and varoius consignment stores to try to built up our kitchen collection. I got a 20 piece pier 1 set of dinnerware for 20 bucks. I grew up in a world of pottery barn and z gallery and now i'm buying plates at teh salvation army. What would my mother say. That being said my mom's used to and still buys glasses from the 99 cent store so i guess that's where i got it from. I bought 2 nice frying pans at the macy's home sale for 50% off and a wustoff chefs knife. As my father and anthony bourdain always say, you really only need one good chefs knife, not that whole block of knives you will never use.

I have always had this fantasy of owning mix n match china patterned plates. The idea of just having one pattern (or china at all) seems very limiting but owning lots of different plates from various collections seems very cool indeed. Actually i never grew up with china so i don't know anything about it. So i found this antique/consignment/used store around the corner form me that sells awesome stuff called the treasure chest and i have begun to build up an awesome plate collection. if i hadn't lost my camera in puerto rico i'd take pictures, but alas.

my room: oh man. I always knew i loved ethnic art and bright colors but i never realized that i was basically venturing into the world of urban outfitter type home stylings. it's true, i am a hipster. evidence: on my red dresser i put a gold framed square mirror (salvation army 17 bucks), a teal blue lamp with a shade that has little birds on it (urban outfitters, hate myself),
a tree for hangingmy necklaces (also urban outfitters but also totally necessary), this in brass
an antique wooden tray (treasure chest $9), on top of tray are various glass canistars of different sizes holding all of my vitamins. Instead of putting the vitamin bottles up there i decided to put them in pretty glass containers to make them more aesthetically pleasing, and then a picture of me and my mom in the 80's. it kind of looks awesome but i also judge myself.

i also bought glass hooks for my purses and scarves that have the virgin mary and jesus on them and i have 2 shelves where i have pictures of my parents and my virgin mary candles and other wierd religious stuff. I also have a wall of crosses. these curtains. thye have red flowers and gold accents

judge me!! but we have an indian, a turk and a frenchman all living in one house so i really think it will just be brimming with ethnic flare all over the walls.

so that is about it for now. I think i'm gonna have an R. Kelly trapped in the closet party on thursday once my roomies movie in. i hope...

oh suggestions: so i want a cool shower curtain. If i could find one that had little birds like the lamp shade i'd buy it. know anywhere i can find a cool one? i also need an earing rack. and more art. I was thinking of framign these old posters my dad gave me that he had of pancho villa and che and zapata. they are sepia and black and white and also kind of awesome. thoughts?

barbra streisand

oh i forgot to mention that i went to jen's house before to help her warm up a dish for the bbq/pot luck (really peopel just brought beer so we were drunk sans food but still) and jen has this awesome record player with lots of old albums of jazz singers and such. being at her place is like being in a very loungey environment and i love it. very relaxing. So i told her taht my parents had all these old records that they never use and i would bring them back when i went to LA. So while i was home i went through all of their old albums and i felt like i got a glimpse of why i am the way i am, namely a homosexual man trapped in teh body of a woman. htere were lots of old spanish albums but there were also LOTS of carpenters and LOTS of barbra streisand and EVERY musical from the 70's like a chorus line and the sound of music and sergio mendez and lots of beatles and i realized that my parents might have been slightly cool. Anyways i brought the cool ones back that i thougth jen would like and it turned out she secretly also loved barbra streisand and the carpenters so she was glad to add these to her collection. So anyways while at her place we decided to listen to my mom's "the way we were" album. If you have nto seen this movie you need to go rent it right now and if you have not heard the album you need to email me right now and i will send it to you. Sure we all have heard "the way we were" but have you really HEARD "the way we were"??

Memories, may be beautiful and yet Whats too painful to remember We simply choose to forget So its the laughter We will remember Whenever we remember... The way we were...

seriously that is some goods shit. I also highly recommend "the best thing you've ever done" where she says.

Aren't you glad its finally over
Don't you feel a whole lot better
Isn't it a joy to lie alone at night
Aren't people more exciting
Doesn't music have more meaning
Don't you close your eyes
The moment you close the light
To be rid of all the feeling
How it cluttered up the morning
To be free of all the memories
Every one
Take a bow then take another
Isn't loneliness a winner
Wasn't leaving me
The best thing you've ever done

Now i know loving barbra is kind of comical but all my life it's been one of those secret things i keep on the sly and dont 'tell anyone because it's mildly shameful. but she is barbra for a reason, people!! and she's awesome! and so here i am saying out loud that i love barbra streisand! i loved her in the way we were, i loved her in funny girl and funny lady. i love her songs! i cannot help myself!

grad school prom

I went to a bbq tonight which was good times. I even got (am) a little drunk. But point being 2 very awesome things happened.

1. i met dental students who said that YES i do indeed have a bad case of tmd jaw issues and htat i need to get it fixed and most of my sinus issues are due to that. i mean i knew this but it was nice to get a free second opinion. I also got invited to a dental school frat party, whatever that means. i meant it sounds wicked fun.

2. it was decided among 3 of us (mainly me) that in order to help me deal wiht my issues of never being asked to prom we need to throw a grad student prom. chances are i won't get asked this time but i think i can elect myself prom planning committee chair which i'm sure will be equally awesome and we can wear pretty dresses and dance to songs i want to dance to and maybe just maybe this will help me progress beyond teh age of 18. you think?? what should oru theme be? "made for each other: famous couples throughout history"

malls gays and high school

Well I'm back in ann arbor after a world wind week in LA. Ok it wasn't really world wind but i relived my high school days and i had fun in the process. I came to realize that i think my post sickness blues may have actually been a real funk and in the end i really just needed to go shopping at a good quality mall and hang out with the gays. It's so amazing to me how gays have such regenerative powers. I have been months without them and it makes me feel like my goal this fall should be to wrangle up some awesome homosexxxxxuals from the incoming class of students. Seriously, it's most necessary for my livelihood. It also makes me wonder if the gays feel the same way about a good hag.

So Thursday Ivan and i went to the southcoast plaza, the bombest mall within a 60 mile radius of us. We ended up having to leave super late because his mom was using the car so he had no means of getting to me. High school moment 1. We discussed many things on the way to the mall, like how fire crotch isn't quite fire crotch but rather the "color of sunburnt leaves" and we listened to "big girls don't cry" etc etc. My goal at the mall was to find ankle boots. but after trying a few on i realized that my ankles are kind of skinny and this would not be an easy thing to do much like finding pants can be an epic journey to morgdoor.

So anyways some of the things i bought over a 2 day period.
- along cardigan from club monacco
- 2 pairs of tights, one wool, one very mall fish nets. I decidd this season i'm exploring the world of dresses and tights which is why i needed teh ankle boots
- a couple of sweaters from zara which has totally awesome stuff this season.
- this totally awesome belted black wool coat from zara that has all kinds of buttons and things and look very russian military. I cant' find a pic because zara's website sucks, as do all european clothing websites (read H&M)
- a knock off missoni dress from H&M. Knit, crazy shapes and colors = awesome
- and then i bought these boots! i am kind of excited about them. they are kidskin! but i'm also really insecure about them because i feel like they are a bit much for where i live. the part that folds over kind of cinches more so they look slouchy. Imagine them with dresses...can you? Would they look ok?? will i look ridiculous? make me feel better about my purchase, leave a comment
- i also bought new bras and my cup size shrank which is like yay i lost weight but also like..oh shit i have small tits.

We had to head home because i had to be home for dinner (high school moment 2). Then on Friday night Cathy decided we should go bowling since i never really got to go bowling in high school with cool people. I told her i had gone with my church youth group but she said that didn't count so we went bowling. I still suck at bowling. It was kind of retro but not on purpose type bowling alley with regular and women named lavern and a karaoke bar and a really mean racist bar tender and so after we lost we drive around teh corner to this place called the Bull Pen. wow that was a trip! we walked in and were literally the youngest people there by like 20 years!! It was all these 40 year old cougars getting wild on the dancefloor to this 60's cover band and i mean they were getting down! like slutty style dancing and everyone was trashed and i saw my freshman year religion teacher!! The one who taught my bff ryan that transubstantiation literally meant eating the body and drinking the blood of christ. literally! Anyways cathy and i were cracking up but the boys couldn't hang so then we decided to head to in n out to truly end our high school night. At about midnight all the kids started rustling out of in n out and we realized....curfew. Then we discussed high school experiences and how mine sucked and how i may never fully recover.

Saturday my parents decided they wanted to plant trees in the yard. They are on this tree kick like they swear we live in the middle of nowhere where you can plant tons of trees. Liek hello! we live in the suburbs of la!! But anyways they kept making up excuses to plant trees liek "oh this is to commemorate your health, and oh this is to commemorate your graduation from college" which ps was 3 years ago. so anyways we bought some awesome trees. Something called a silver dollar and a palo alto tree (get it!) and something called a hong kong orchid tree. As we were digging the hole for the hong kong orchid my dad found an old bone that my childhood dog must have buried. It got me a bit eeemotional missing good old Q-tip Hernandez and so i decided to throw the bone back in for good measure and that tree would be in honor of Q-Tip. Then i went to a family party which was fun. the babies are walking! so crazy. And then a 13 year old girl asked what grade i was in...in high school!! yes, she thought i was 15. Refer to bra size change above. My aunt wanted to make these cupcakes from a famous bakery called sprinkles here in LA but she ran out of time. But she had been talking up these cupcakes so much that i was like, oh hell no, we are definitely making these cupcakes. So somehow i ended up making cupcakes. Adn i gotta say, i have not baked in like 10 years. I'm not bad! they were pretty good. Light, fluffy, airy, derrricious.

Sunday Cathy took Ivan and I to try some korean delicacies at an all you can eat korean bbq. so many ssssspiced meatsssssssss. so many pickled things. It was quite good i must say. We sat in the corner and talked about all sorts of things over stinky meats and bim bom bi bop sauce. How i won't have a threesome but everyone else will, how i must be horrible in bed because of all my rules. People think that my strange mannerisms in real life will somehow carry over to the bedroom and i just wanted to tell them that i am quite normal if not awesome in other areas of life! i am not josie grossie anymore!! And just because i dont' like you touchign me wiht your feet doesn't mean i won't let a lover caress me. uughhh.

So then we went to the mall and then the movies. Seriously being in la is liek being in the high school that i never actualy got to experience. The mall and a movie, typical. We saw "becoming jane" which i knw was not going to be the greatest thing since "sense and sensibility" but i knew it would be informative and perhaps make me feel better about my fear that i'm going to end up an old spinster, cast away by her lovers for being too smart and not having enough money. And indeed it was just that. Before the movie even started the previews were those kind that get you relaly eeeemotional with the right kind of music and the plot that just kills you and so we were all crying. One preview that really got to me was for "the jane austen book club." It's all these women who get together to read jane austen and they can relate to various characters like "i'm an emma!!" etc etc. So anyways there is this one character who i think is the emma who falls in love with a high school kid and her husband is yelling at her "high school is over!" and she says back in a really pathetic way "high school is never over..." and it was that moment. Ivan and i looked at each other and we were liek....holy shit that was deep! because i seriously feel like high school isn't over and i knwo that's a really lame thing to say but i have so many unresolved issues from high school. It scarred me and i feel like deep down in side the fat girl wiht braces just wants to be asked to prom!! the prom of life!! and then i started thinking about how this stuntedness could lead me to end up like this character, having an affair with a super hot boy in high school who makes me feel like i never felt when i was younger. How wretched. S

Then we went to pinkberry afterwards because i had seen that they opened one in long beach. Basically it's hip froyo for a very high cost. The store itself had all kind of crazy stuff liek rock carpet, and hanging lights, and lime green everywhere and orange plastic designer chairs and all kinds of harajuku music playing and toppings like black berries or captain crunch. It was utterly ridiculous but pretty tasty. Although cathy claims we still have to try TCBY which i am all about sampling one of these days. Also cathy noted that this over priced froyo was identical to a water based vietnamese soft serve. interesting.

And then we took pictures and ivan and i decided that we are going to continue our brangelinaesque W spread of us in various locations looking unhappy (puerto rico, 2nd street corner, bowling alley, pinkberry) and we will compile all of these pictures and turn it into a calendar that we will send all of our friends. awesome!? i think so!

And thus ended my week in Los Angeles, good times as always. Now i'm back and i have to serioulsy jump into my work week. seriously! but this weekend i'm going to chicago to fly kites and go to the zoo with orges and it will be awestacular.

To quote Angela Chase, this is how I feel.

Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison. And the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while. And admit the truth: that when you really look closely? People are so strange and so complicated that they're actually... beautiful. Possibly even me

And for this reason Ivan has decided it is most important for us to go to a place where we can gather our thoughts and regain our strength! The South Coast Plaza to see the Bloomingdale's fall collection. What kind of damage will i do!!

more musings

my mom just made chicken soup for me!! liek real homestyle mexican chicken soup!! I don't really know if White people or black people or asians make chicken soup the same way (asians definitely don't. they make rice pourage) but it was made by a mexican woman from a recipe originating in mexico so i'm just going to assume it's mexican. and man it was bomb!! truth, i have not eaten my mothers cooking in 5 years. She made a stern decision when i left that she was not going to do that anymore and i forgot how good my mom's food is. And it's not because i'ts all tasty and buttery or anything. My mom's food is really clean and has no grease or fat and it's just delicious natural flavors. And now i'm at the part of say anything when he holds the boom box out side of her window and i hate diane court! She is so not worthy, but she has a lisp too so i guess i should feel a sense of solidarity or something.

so anyways there is this scene that is so awesome in the movie when lloyd's friend Cory is asking him if they had sex and she's like " Lloyd, listen to me. EVERYTHING has changed. You've had sex. No matter what you might think, nothing will ever be the same between you two. You might be sixty. You might be walking down the street, and you'll talk to her about something, whatever. But what you'll really be thinking is 'We had sex'." And this just cracked me up because it's so true. ok, just wanted to share.

Say Anything and Angus

so at the behest of cathy I am watching Say Anything at home in LA. yes I am in LA. I am home recooperating from whatever it is i have. I came home and i said "mom can you make me soup?" and seh said in true Grace fashion, "I can show you how to make soup." My mom has also fired our cleaning lady and taken up cleaning the house so she said "here is your room. clean huh? Do you think you can keep it this way when you leave?" I was like "mom i came to relax ahhhhhh" and then i threw myself on the bed. This is my mom.

So anyways back to say anything. I've seen this movie like a bagillion times and every time i see it, like with all 80's movies, it takes on a new meaning depending on my age. Cathy asked if thsi was like my high school life and in so many ways it was not but i remember wanting it to be. I wanted to be the smart girl that a weird, emo kid would fall in love with and stand outside of my window holding up a boom box blasting peter gabriel. And then graduation day came and i was like...well i guess that whole plan was a bust. It might partially have had to do with the fact that i, unlike diane court did not have the "body of a game show host." I had been chubs most of my life and by the time i lost the weight (and the braces) it was too late. The damage had been done. And now i am 25 and according to a male friend i have really low self confidence and am too self deprecating. REALLY!! I HAD NO IDEA!!

speaking of chubs, i was at this wedding this weekend. I kind of crashed it but not really because i just got invited for the party/reception part of it and i only drank like 4 free vodka crans so really all in all i cost them like 30 bucks which i made up for by bringing the p-a-r-t-y. So anywyas i met this kid who had been introduce to me as "angus" but for some reason peopel were also calling "james." I was liek "dude, what is your name again!" and he goes "james but my nickname is angus." so i ask now, readers, does anyone remember this movie?
because i do and it was AWESOME and i noticed that this kid totally looked like the main character Angus so i took a shot in the dark and said
me: "did you get that nickname cuz you look like that kid from the movie angus????!"
him: "YES!! YOU SAW THAT MOVIE!"
me: "dude yes!! i was fat as a kid! i loved that movie. were you fat!"
him: "yes!!!"
me: "it's sticks with you for life!!!"
him: "yeah but people always said i had a good personality!"
me: "dude my friend ryan and i used to say that because we were so booty looking growing up we had to really develop other aspects of ourselves thus leading us to be waht we considered AWESOME PEOPLE!!"

and then there wa sa mutual high five and a screaming "YEAH!!!" So as usual i don't really know what i'm saying here but Say anything is a really good movie, and Angus is also a really good movie and the latter was more like my life than the former.

apparently no breakthrough, just a breakdown

"your luck will change starting now"

The fortune i received at the chinese restaurant we ate at where Jen claimed i could get "magical chinese healing soup, no msg!" Seriously, jen is chinese so she says things like this all the time about teas and balms and random herbs and foods and it's kind of why i love her. I really thought that this fortune meant my luck would get better since i really seriously think i have terrible terrible luck. But thinking that probably perpetuates the bad luck and so my week of hell continued and i made my best attempt to blaze on.

So there was my first hospital stay which was not very dramatic. Then came 6 more days of a new antibiotic. Then came more wretched back pain, vomiting and fever. Then came my 2nd hospital stay which lasted much longer. Nishi took me and we had a very meta moment as we were sitting in the waiting room after having watched an episode of ER then watching michael moore talk to jay leno about how terrible the american health care system is. I was like...i really don't need to hear this right at this very moment. 5 hours later i was seen by a doctor, given all kinds of tests only to find that my kidney infection had only worstened and they were keeping me over night and the whole next day for 3 treatments of IV antibiotics. The hospital has it's moments of awesome like sleeping and having people take care of you and sassy nurses. but after the 10th hour when your arm starts to get bruised from the needle and you keep having to roll your IV to the bathroom every 10 minutes and you've watched your 4th hour of "a baby story" on tlc and you realize no one is coming to visit you it gets a lot less awesome. It becomes down right depressing. Even more depressing was the meatball stroganoff i was fed. so gross. They discharged me and then jen and fernando picked me up and took me to have this magical soup. i was so tired and worn out. i had literally had every bacteria in my body killed, even the good ones. I got home hoping to just shower, turn on the tivo and just sleep. But of course there happened to be a black out. i took a shower in the dark and sat on the couch naked flashing my yoko ono flashlight crying to myself because seriously it was that sad. Oh and my phone is broken too.

My friends have been really good to me here. Jen and Nishi have let me sleep at their houses in case i need to be rushed to the ER and big O's girlfriend cooked me dinner. So now i'm still on bed rest apparently for the next 2 weeks which totally sucks. being sick and out in the middle of fucking michigan with no family is really depressing so i've decided to screw this bitch and just go home next week and let my parents take care of me for a bit. Besides i think i might be developing a stomach infection. i guess this is pretty common that people who have had this many antibiotics will get a stomach infection. Right now i have really bad cramps and horribly heart burn which is why i'm up blogging instead of sleeping.

Well all this has really made me hope that i never get a real serious illness. They say that people who have good attitudes survive but seriously i can't handle being sick and i'd probably not have a good attitude so i just pray to baby jesus that that never happens to me.

So now i have 1 more day of antibiotics (yay!!! they have been tearing my body apart since i'm on some really strong ones) and i have a friend coming into town on thursday so i am going to try really hard to drink that night. so i am asking the blogosphere, those of you who believe in something or pray to something to please pray that my urine culture comes back negative for infection tomorrow. If it doesn't i'm going to have to go back to the hospital. Pray that i can hold down food. Pray that i GET BETTER!

best of PR!!

as i wallow in kidney failure i figured i'd look on to better times and pick the top PR pics!! no text, because in the end, no words, should have sent a poet. you know. Ok wait maybe just brief text,

Old San Juan, i liked the colors and ivan's pose.

Bobby and i trying to recreate old pictures of my mom and dad when my mom had a jumper. I threw this jumper on in the elevator right before taking this picture. Note bobby's crazy calve muscles. two words, "up stroke!"

the terrible shirt ivan had to buy at walgreens because he needed a collard shirt to get into club Brava. Club totally worth it. Also totally worth it to see ivan throw a hissy fit and scream "i'm wearing armani!! that man is wearing airwalks!! airwalk shoes! fucking heternormative rules! this would never happen at a gay club! never!!"

fraburous... oh. me and ivan with totally awesome rainbow that turned into a double rainbow later

posing for our fake brangelina W type spread where i am the scorned wife who knows she is married to a homosexxxxual but still stays with him for the money.

and finally, my favorite picture, my life's work if you will. The true fabulous transformation of cathy in to Kate Kikoman. Who knew palazzo pants could look so good on a short asian girl. i applaud you.

breakdown....breakthrough

So all week long I had been super excited about the new harry potter. I had also been diagnosed with a UTI which was making me feel like shit (not to mention making me have to pee like every 5 minutes). But i was still going to trudge on and go to the borders pre party to get my early copy. None of my friends here seemed to be as hardcore as me and didn't seem to really care. my plan was to buy the book at midnight and come home and read it all night until i finished. the plan changed. Lucky for me david "the cuban" and his boyfriend decided to come with me to check out all the hocus pocus of the event. Thank god they were there because otherwise i would have had no one to take me to the hospital when i started to have a bad reaction to my antibiotics. I was having terrible back pain, cramps, nausea, clamyness, and chills all down my arms so i kept telling them "just wait till they call my group!! then we can go to the ER but just let me get my copy of the deathly hollows!" Finally it was when i nearly fainted that they made an executive decision to screw the book and go to the ER. ER's are wierd at like 1am. There was no one really there and they saw me right away. They did all kinds of tests and hooked me up to an IV and asked if i was allergic to saline. I had no idea so they went and did it anyways. So there i was, in my hospital gown, with an IV in my arm and 2 very large gay men passed out on my side. At one point they injected this anti nausea medicine directly into my IV drip which shot all through my veins and got my heart pounding like it was going to shoot out of my chest. It was really scary and i thought i was having a heart attack. I wasn't, apparently that is normal and they forgot to tell me. So after making you feel liek you are dying the anti nausea medicine knocks you right out and i started talking like paula abdul. I was liek "wy doen's anone appriciiatef muuu" i was like slurring up a storm and then i just passed the fuck out. Something i didn't know, when saline is being dripped into you it feels like vics vapo rub on your veins and then suddenly you get the chills all up and down your body and you need like 5 blankets to make it go away. Also saline makes you have to pee really bad which is hard to do when they leave you now bedpan and you can't take out your own iv. it was drama. So yeah, my antibiotics were apparently making the infection worse and now i had a full blown kidney infection. They let us out at 7am and gave me a prescription for a new antibiotic which so far has not made me feel liek i am dying. this is a good thing.

so now i've been in my room for 2 days reading harry potter in between 3 hour "naps," peeing every 10 minutes, having spats of nausea and trying to find a comfortable spot where my back doesn't hurt. basically i feel like shit, but i feel less liek shit than i did on the other stuff so it's a welcome vacation from that.

and so now i've been in my basement for 2 days, the only person to relaly call has been my dad and i feel like samantha in sex and the city when she gets sicks and say "without a man you have nothing" or something liek that. Anyways it is in moments of sickness when we sometimes realize how alone we are. And sometime you just want someone to come over and fill your brita and bring you cranberry juice and watch "side order of life" or whatever other fantastic show lifetime has concocted. I feel my lonliness when i am this far from my family and there is no one really to care for you. I think the next time a friend is sick i am going to go to their house and take them soup and crackers and a movie and just spend time with them because sometimes that is all you want. And in the end the only people that i can really count on, are the gays, as always

alright, 200 more pages to go

ridiculous

later i will tell you all how i did NOT actually get to pick up my preordered copy of harry potter last night because i ended up in the ER. It's a good story actually, and it was not due to Potter Mania/Fever. but right now i have more important fish to fry, namely reading the book.

my ailments

god i am such a mess healthwise. for the past 3 months i have had malfunctioning eustacian tubes which basically means my ears don't pop. I had a really bad cold one time and topped with my allergies and sinus problems it caused my ear to clog up and be unable to pop. So for the past 3 months my head feels like it does when an airplane is landing only constant and wretched. It gives me terrible low pressure head aches and makes me all fluffy in the head. This all makes doing research really hard to do since it messes with my concentration and ability to focus. It's really wretched and doctors seem to say "just wait it out" and i want to tell them "do you know what it's liek to have 2 ears that haven't popped for 3 months!! it will drive a person mad!" On top of this i somehow got the idea that i have diabetes because i saw an episode of scrubs and i had teh same symptoms as turk. i am so ridiculous sometimes.

I am going to get acupuncture to get myself right. i have an apointment this week. I was telling emily that i don't knwo what is wrong wiht me but i just feel like something is very very off and that if i fixed it i might somehow have a totally wonderful, happy, ailment free life. could you even eeemagine me without ailments?? And then emily said something that struck a chord with me. she said "I don't know the thing is i kind of always feel weird and out of sorts and i never really know why. so i've just had to assume thats what it's like to be an adult." so maybe all this adulthood is making me feel liek i have diabetes and allergies and anemia and adema in my legs and malfunctioning eustacian tubes. all i have to say is watch out guys, cuz you all aren't even 25 year. just wait.

formal shorts, who knew!

So this weekend i am heading out to chicago and dan and emily are flying in and we are all going to go to the pitchfork music festival with orges. informative segue, pitchfork is this super hipster super elitist music reviewing website that swear like what. Well they are putting on a music festival and it is going to be awesome. For the event emily and i agreed that the outfits we choose to wear are v. crucial to blending and not being the butt of some hipsters joke. "look at that girl. is she wearing...an ironic t shirt! how lame!" That type of thing. So after much discussion we decided that two crucial additions to our wardrobes would have to be a vest and formal shorts.

Now i make the next statement with the full knowledge that there are many many fashion trends throughout my life that have looked absolutely terrible on me. A few examples: tube tops and strapless things in general, long hippie skirts and frocks, bell bottom pants. Having prefaced with this I have to confess i was made to wear mini pleated formal shorts. goddamn i said goddamn!! The mini short is just fantabulous and since i'm only 5 ft tall i don't look like a total whore wearing these types of things.

So i've been trying to channel kate moss and sienna miller as my style icons for this event (yes, i make this statement will a full sense of irony since these two women are mildly ridiculous. But this is a hipster festival and thus must we must go to that level). ths is kind of the look i'm going for on day one
but i'm gonna do a wife beater and possibly a denim mini, mainly because i couldnt' find the rightcolor of shorts to go with the vest. I will also not be wearing the boots because a) my legs are short and b) hello it's like 90 degrees outside! Add to that some aviators and BAM! ridiculous fashion!

Outfit option number 2
linen formal shorts with some kidn of top, not sure yet

outfit number 3:
i have a mini free flowing sleeveless dress that i could wear with leggings. yes, i said it, leggings. I might even wear my silvery sheer ones from american apparel. I"m gonna go try all this on right after i take a shower.

basiclaly i'm treating this like it's a costume party because that is the only way that i can rationalize wearing a vest. but seriously trust me on the mini formal shorts!

Shameful Confession # 55939393

There are moments in life where I feel completely ashamed to be me and these moments tend to happen quite frequently. One such event occurred on Monday night. Confession: I really love Disney original movies like “The Lizzie Maguire Movie” and “The Cheetah girls” parts 1 and 2 and “Gotta kick I up” a movie about a young group of Latina cheerleaders who learn the meaning of “si se puede.” I also love olsen twin movies but that would require a whole other entry to explain.

So I was really bummed out when I missed the showing of “high school musical: the movie" last year. Basically i was really off my game as far as television goes. I decided that I would use this flight back to Michigan as my opportunity to watch the movie so I planned on buying it from best buy on the way to the airport. Of course best buy was sold out, which made me want to see the movie even more. apparently all of those adolescent teenage girls had all got their copies and there i was, 25 and empty handed. tragic really. When I got home I decided to download it, but on the version I got the sound was not synched with the movie. It was 9:45 pm and I made a quick decision. I would jet out to target to see if I could make it before 10 so I could buy the movie. I was really determined to see the movie. I rolled into the lot at 9:55 and ran inside to grab what was the last copy. somewhere in ann arbor a 12 year old girl is crying.
(based on this cover doesn't it look like such good times! Guys, seriouslythought, it was awesome!! Everything I had imagined it would be! Zac Efron is hot! Sad confession number 2, this is not the first time I have lusted over zac since I used to watch him regularly on the show summerland. True story.

yummy. So this movie is like the Lizzie Maguire movie meets Grease (minus all the sexual innuendos). So the plot goes that this guy troy and a girl named Gabriella meet over winter break at a ski lodge where they are forced to sing karaoke together. They realize how much they love singing with each other but then lose contact. What thy don’t realize is that Gabriella has just transferred to Troy’s school! (are you seeing the grease similarities?). But come to find troy is a huge basketball star and Gabriella is a huge nerd. They both want to try out for the high school musical and find the magic they had while singing together. but in the rough world of high school you are relegated to your social circle. So the whole school breaks out into this song about how people should stick to the status quo and not rock the boat by trying to be what they are not. And a few kids gain the courage to confess their true passions. A black basketball player confesses that he also loves to bake. And a fat nerd confesses that she loves to dance hip hop music and seh starts to grind on top of the lunch tables and everyone is like "stick to the statu que!" And Ashley tisdale (suite life of zach and cody anyone?) has this ambiguously gay twin brother who is a drama geek and wears lots of hats and colorful t shirts. But in the end it’s like everyone learns that they can be whoever they want to be! And the star basketball player can also be good at singing! Aside from being suuuuper campy it also had a really nice message and I appreciated that. Seriously can’t wait for high school musical 2: summer break! It’s supposed to be about how they all get a job at a beach resort (a la 90210’s summer season and saved by the bell) and I’m going to hope that there is also singing involved.

"jesus camp"

well shagoodness, it has been ages. i have lots to say about puerto rico, but it is all still a big blur and i'm trying to process it in a succinct way. two words

lies and luxury!!

so anyways i just got back from sf. I flew a stunt kite which was awesome! ok but onto topics i want to discuss. Last night when i got home my mom had rented Jesus Camp and told me to watch it since it might have some relevance in my life. for those of you who don't know despite the fact that my mom is an athiest and my dad a bad catholic they decided to send me to what we now realize was a fundamentalist evangelical christian school. My mom just liked the fact that they taught the bible and had day care. So anyways I became relatively involved in the youth ministry as it was called and even did 1 or 2 week long "christian camps." this experience kind of fucked me up for a good part of my life for various reasons and i'm sure i am still recovering. Obviously i am no longer a fundamentalist evangelical christian but that is not the point. So anyways i had heard lots of terrible things about this movie. Not that the movie was terrible but rather that it depicted some really crazy, scary shit: children being raised to be literal "soldiers for christ" etc etc. The people who told me this had not been raised around such things so what they were describing sounded liek this awful satanic movie about evil people.

About 5 minutes into the film i started to become really disgusted but not for the reasons you would think. What disgusted me was how familiar the whole set up was. The christian flag flying high above the church, pledging allegiance to the bible, physical science books based on creationism, being taught how "logically" evolution cannot be right, people speaking in tongues (i never did and they made me feel bad like i was not close enough to god or some shit like that), the fucked up way that they teach about abortion and make you make "commitments to christ". that was my life!!! and i am totally freaking out!!!!!

what makes it even more strange is that i can see how from teh outside looking in this seems totally creepy and cult like, and i even find it a bit nauseating but at the same time i totally understand what they are saying. I had this flashback of our teachers telling us how despite the fact that darwin had thought up this whole evolution thing, on his deathbed he recanted and was believed to have said "i was wrong" and asked for god's forgiveness. ahh! does this give a little glimpse into why i am so crazy now!

but all of that aside i confess i watched these people and didn't think they were evil or crazy. They were really real to me and they just believed what they believed. They reminded me alot of my friends' parents growing up, and i feel like if you were to show a radical liberal family from berkeley raising their kids it would seem just as foreign as being taught that the bible is the truth. so what is scary is how can you change a persons ideas when they truly in their hearts believe that they are right? what if what i believe isn't right? it was just a truly uncomfortable experience all around for me. so if you all rent this movie, rent it with an open heart. all this stuff may seem weird but it's just as weird as you telling me that you weren't raised learning anything about god or knowing anything about bible stories and such.

we're headed to the island of puerrrrrrto rrrrico tomorrow night! woo!! this trip has been like a year in the making, and although it started as a trip to ibiza for financial reasons it turned into what it is and i'm quite satisfied. I've been researching what kind of street food we can get and it looks like they really like swedish salted cod fish. sounds kind of gross but whatevs! i'll eat it! also turns out it's gonna rain the whoel time we're there, and not just that, the rain is going to follow us around the island. whatevs! as my mom said "it doesn't rain in the casino." true story.

speaking of my mom i've spent the past 2 nights showing her how to use picasa which has seriously been my worst nightmare. Have you ever tried to show your parents how to use teh computer? It's like teaching a child to crawl. awful. now she says i have to show her how to add music and make slideshows because she wants to buy a projector and make peopel come to our house and watch her slideshows. yes, my life is sometimes like a sitcom.

let's see what has been going on. cathy and i went to see the grunion running, but it was just one grunion and it died after being trapped on shore 3 times. stupid fish. here is us with our grunion, respectively.

the one grunion and some kelp
so then we picked it up and took pictures with it because we are all about respecting nature

my dad had this totally awesome flashlight that you could wear on your head like a spelunker.
night fishing
so i will be sans computer for the next 2 weeks as this is our attempt to exxxxcape from the shackles of technology and leave our computers behind (but of course bring our ipods and mini dvd players and such). so peace out as i sway to the boriqueno sounds of reggaeton

Holy cow!! Puerto rico is officially a week away and i have been working on an itinerary and doing some research which is getting me (and the rest of the gang) very excited. Like for instance we are going to see a cockfight at the only arena in Puerto Rico that allows tourists. and cathy is going to throw down bets while smoking a cigar and wearing a panama hat (her fantasy, not mine).

And then cathy and i are going to fly kites from here!!

and then we are going to beach here wiht the gays, because apparenlty this is where the gays kick it.
and then we're driving through the motherfucking cordillera!!
and then we're gonna hike through the rainforest! the only rainforest in the united states! and i am going to wear my north face cool max top that i bought a while ago on sale because i'm all athletic and shit!
seriously!! i am jealous of myself! And i have gotten some really bomb shopping deals like a james perse t shirt for 10 dollars at a consignment store. And a mini jacket for 10 bucks at the macy's 1 day sale, originally $104! And some espandrelle wedges for 40 bucks, 50% off! And some yellow patent leather flats for liek 30 bucks also 50% off. I am so jazzed, i want it to be here. And on friday cahty and i are finally going to watch the "planet earth" series on her parents giant HD tv. unlike asians, mexicans do not buy high tech cool new things like HD tv's so i have yet to watch anything on HD. And tehn we're going to some stanford young alumni 80's mixer thing which should be tons of fun (sarcasm). And then i'm going to see this guy from high school perform at a coffee shop so i can say "look at me now ye, who never asked me to prom! look at me now!"

Will let you know how it all goes.

love and shit

So i saw this movie called "once" today and it was kind of amazing. It's one of those things that while you're watching it you get really lost in the moments. it was all pretty raw footage but it worked. It's about these people, both musicians who meet on a street corner one night while the guy is playing some music. The girl is this Czech immigrant and they spark up a week long friendship where they just play music together and record and album and stuff. It's a really random plot but it totally works and the girl is very...i don't know. She's like what natalie portman tried to be in the garden state only more real. She plays that muse character that makes the guy get up and get his live going, a muse in the true sense of the word. I cried, but not those heavy cries but like the kind of soft, low cries that come from your heart. And the music, it's like damien rice meets josh ritter. Seriously go see it.

Anyways it all made me think about those people that you only know for a short time but who really have a long term effect on you. it also made me think that another thing i should have been, aside from a dancer, was a musician. It's kind of funny to say because it's not liek i dont' have any musical talent. i played piano for 9 years and was really quite good but i didn't have raw talent. my problem was my teacher said i didn't play with passion so i'd always have to feign passion. But that's odd because i really love music and when i listen to it it fills me with passion, but when i tried to play it it never worked that way. So anyways if i coudl express myself in words succinctly i would be a fucking poet/musician and maybe another musician would fall in love with me and maybe we would spend our lives making beautiful music together. But as we know from past experiences poets, while being all romantic and shit, tend to be liars. le fucking sigh. i guess i'll just have to settle for a tenure track professor someday.

britney and fallen heiresses

Ok so anyways for no apparent reason cathy and i are watching old britney spears music videos and trying to see when it all went wrong. First of all "sometimes" might be my favorite britney song of all time second only to "email my heart." Original CD, check that shit out. I had this fond memory of being at my friend gina's house after shcool. Ryan and i used to go and we'd watch trl. And she had this cousin, whose name i cant' remember, but he was a dancer. And he danced in "sometimes"!! and one time we asked him to show us how to do the choreography, which looked super simple. Needless to say it was not and we ended up giving up, sitting on the couch watching the video and eating bagel bites. good times indeed.

Clearly the beginning of the end happened with "slave for u." It was her asserting her sexuality. But you look at her body (or rather i look at her body) in that video and i think "fuck if i had those abs i would wear nothing but chaps all the time." How did she go from that to the britney of the cottage cheese thighs that we see now a days. As i told cathy, perhaps it is all meant to be one big lesson for the world that if it can happen to her it can happen to anyone of us. I guess what i'm saying is, put down the flaming hot cheeto!!

I request that you watch this video and have a fucking moment for yourself!! it can happen to you!



"you'll see THAT
you're the only ONE for me!!"

apparenlty i missed the premier of top chef? how does this happen? seriously when i'm in LA i lose all track of time and can't function without my tivo.

my hagdome runs deep as the sea

Wow so i know i use the phrase "i had a moment" a lot, but seriously when you pay attention to life and just observe sometimes it's hard not to have moments. The past 3 days i've spent trying to find a decent place in LA to study with WiFi. It's been nearly impossible. So i finally decided to go no Yelp and let the people tell me how it is. I don't know why i didn't think to do it earlier. BTdubbs, yelp is fantastic. If you have not used it yet i highly recommend it. So anyways i came upon this place in hermosa beach called "planet earth: Eco Cafe." i was intrigued. A san francisco, hipser organic loving cafe with free wifi and lots of outlets in the heart of beach usa? for reals? So anyways i hopped in our family SUV and made the commute and it was quite ridiculous. It wasn't quite swearage because they weren't trying to be anything other than who they really were. they were this couple from michigan who had lived all over teh US and just wanted to open up a nice local neighborhood coffee shop by the beach. So i had what the owner tommy termed "the best sumatra ethiopian blend fair trade coffee you will ever have" and a health shake made of almond milk, hemp, fruit, and lots of other random sources of protein. I even chatted it up with the locals and now we all know each others names and i'm going back tomorrow maybe to do some leisure reading. Seriously, awesome.

So anyways i'm doing this research for a prof whose writing a book and it's mainly been on racial identity but this week i was doing the section on gender identity and i came across a lot of really interesting stuff like the origins of gender identity and black feminist critical race theory. So critical race theory is basically this way of looking at the word of academia with they refer to as "the academy." And what it says is that the academy should acknowledge that they are a hegemonic system that is not promoting objective knowledge but rather a one sided Eurocentric perspective on learning. It promotes European American male values and presupposed that they are the right way of being. And when women enter these academies they are forced to subconsciously or consciously suppress their femininity. Well Black feminist critical race theory takes it a little further and says that Feminism itself is a hegemonic way of looking at womanhood as it promotes ideals of the upper middle class white woman. But what about other ways of being a good and right woman? so anyways i read this awesome quote that really resonated.

"The price of good education, a euro american education, in short, was, and still is, the denial of one's Black cultural identity. This is the price of entry to the middle class. It is this legacy of education as a double edged sword that creates a similar suspicion towards black teachers on the part of black students as exists on the part of the black community towards black members of the police force. The presence of black faces does not changes the essential nature of an institution, nor does it alter it's ethos

All that talk about suppressing minority women's voices made me wonder how much of who i am has been silenced at one point or another. In many ways i feel that to get to where i am i had to hide a lot of myself growing up. I had to act a certain way to make myself desirable to my teachers. I had to not be mexican and not be loud and prove that i was as good as the guys. All that shit. I kept the real me for my homelife and my family. And when i got to college i made a promise to myself that i would not be someone that i didn't want to be anymore. So i just let myself be, and that was probably where all of my issues started because i had been suppressing all these various aspects of myself for so long. But whatever, it was for the best.

Ok so anyways this got me thinking about the gays, my gays and how they have really made my life better. Initially I was reading some basic gender identity developmet stuff talking about when the concept of "gender" starts to form. At about 7 kids start to have a sense of gender permanance where they realize that it is unchangeable. It is at this age that kids start to hang out with their own gender and all of this start to perpetuate commonly held gender social roles of how to be. So girls will play with other girls and boys with boys and so on. I was thinking about this time period and i remember having female friends and then i remember not having them. And i was thinking of why this happened. My first pre school friend was Ryan, a mo. We were bff and then that whole gender thing hit and i had a few girl friends but at a really young age i realized that hanging out with girls was not fun. I found it to be really limitting. Girls would say things like "we can't do that, that's for boys." And when you hung out with all girls guys treated you a certain way, like they were better than you. And i always thought that was dumb. Thus began my love affair with the gays. I have this distinct memory of one of my first gay friends in 1st grade bringing his my little pony to school. he got so much shit for it from everyone. Other kids would say, "you cant' play with that! that's for girls!" and i remember kind of admiring him because his response was "so waht. i want to play with it." The gays weren't the weird kids to me. They were my friends, the only ones who let me be who i wanted to be. I wasn't "Cristina, a girl.' I was just me, and i loved that about them. And to me they weren't guys, they were just my friends. We acknowledged each others underlying humanity. And i remember as we hit puberty and i started getting crushes on guys it always bugged me how straight men treated me different. I had to act a certain way around them. I couldnt' let them know that i was smart and funny and stuff. I just wanted to be treated like me, and liked for who i was regardless of whether i had boobs or was thin. The gays accepted me and for that i am forever grateful. They made me who i am today. And actually i think my issues with straight men all stem from these early relationships i had with gay men. And this is probably why I am still friends with gay men. They reaffirm who i am, who i really am. And i don't have to be the ideal woman or worry that they won't want me if i talk to much or have an opinion. So some of you have probably heard me talk about my hate for women who claim to be fag hags but really they just use the gays because they want to say they have a gay friend. this little tale i told you tonight is why i hate them! The reality is true hagdome runs deep. A real hag loves her gays because being with them is like being home. Not because they dress well and can dance. So to all you fake hags out there i have 2 words for you.

YOU SWEAR!

So in conclusion, this one is for all you queens out there who through your struggles and unconditional friendships made me who i am today. A hot hot mess of a woman.

Wisconsin or bust

Now i put off this post for various reasons mostly that my internet in michigan is super crappy and constnatly disconnects making it really hard to download pics. But i'm at home now and the internet is a bit more stable so here it is. For memorial weekend orges and i made plans for me to drive out to chicago which we would use as a jumping point for "vol1 of 50: All gone to look for America." We learned many things on this trip but the two main purposes of the trip were revealed to us quite early on. They were 1) find our spirit animals and 2) discover what it really means to live life in miller time.

I drove out of michigan on an early friday evening. My 4 and a half hour drive consisted of this
very dull. a few observations i made:
- michiganders love wendy's the way that californians love jack in teh box. Seriously, it was on every exit. they also love bob evans which is like an unglorified denny's only with a smoking section
- There are 2 waffle houses on the way to chicago, very exciting
- waiting to pee until the very last minute and then getting stuck for 45 minutes in stopped traffic with no air conditioning in humid weather might be up there with child birth. It was teh kind of moment where i looked around, saw some tupperware in my car, and fashoined in my mind how i would go about relieving myself into said plastic ware. Luckily cathy stopped me by letting me know that seh woudl in fact judge me if i did such a thing, so i held it because cathy judges very few things.

So i arrived late and we decided to drink some reisling and watch apocalypto. I confess this movie was unexpectedly awesome. I thought i was gonna get all chicana and start talking about all of the cultural inaccuracies and how natives are always misportrayed but no. you know how there are those moments in life when you know things are happening for a reason adn you are right where you need to be? this whole weekend was like that. it was all very spiritual. Case in point watching jaguar paw get in touch with his inner animal spirit brought on major theme of the weekend: orges and i would travel the midwestern countryside to find our animal spirits.

Our first stop was a farm called "apple holler" orchards. It was very campy.
Golden GOAT bridge! get it! get it! yeah, i know.
Orges touched goats
i acted like a tourist
we procured some apple wine, apple butter, peach honey, apple pie, caramel, and finally cheese curds. Another moment when i knew being at apple holler was fate. As i caught a glimpse of their selection of strawberry wine the song "strawberry wine" started playing. fate? i think so!

anyways to all of my california friends, this is a cheese curd. It kind of tastes liek nacho cheese if nacho cheese were solid but a bit sweaty and kind of squeaked when you ate it. That really is not a good description but seriously it's good, and i don't even like cheese. We later realized that the bag contained 12 servings so in the end we each ingested 6 servings which was liek 10,000 calories.
We continued to drive and ended up in milwaukee. Milwaukee is a really depressing place and i was starting to feel kidn of down when another sign hit us, a literal and figurative sign. Actually this spurs a convo we had where orges said it cracks him up when people misuse the term "literally" like if i were to say "a sign literally hit us!" clealry a sign did not hit us but i'm trying to make a point. So anyways i noticed a sign that said "kite festival, today!" ahhh how fantastic!! So we bought kites (orges a jolly roger and me a ladybug) and made it just in time for the grand kite releasing celebration.
there were signs everywhere that said "danger! stunt kites!" how awesome is that!!

So we flew kites and the speakers in teh park blasted "let's go fly a kite" from mary poppins and i swear to you i started to tear up from sheer joy. It was quite possibly the most magical moment of my life.

You can't see my face but my body language is expressing my euphoria. This was the moment, running with my kite, that i realized what my spirit animal was. I am a ladybug. The rest of teh weekend orges tried to get me to get a lady bug tattoo and for a few seconds i considered it. It was that awesome. I suggest you all go fly a kite this weekend.
We then drove around some hipster part of milwaukee trying to find wifi access which was a bust. Then we it started raining and the microbrewery we were going to visit was sold out. I started to freak out "worst road trip EVER!" But then we reassessed teh sitch and decided to fuck this micro shit and head to the miller brewery. 2 words, "miller time." Seriously miller time truly is a state of mind and i think that is the greatest lesson i learned from wisconsin.

I even bought a shirt that said "milwaukee's best." Seriously, who am i?!
at the end of teh tour they give you 3 pretty hefty sized beers for free. Since i don't really like beer i gave mine to orges and he found that the only way for him to chug it was to hear the clinking of teh glass so he toasted himself. It was all very pavlovian (yes i did just go there)
We drove to madison, hoped to find a white castle, but apparently white castles do not exist in southeastern wisconsin. After checking into our hotel and getting a nice buzz from the apple wine orges had a brilliant idea. We seized the day and crashed the wedding downstairs. When in madison do as teh madisonians do.

Here we are dancing at said wedding to what else but "shout." We also drank free beer from teh open bar.
i was having a really good hair day
Then we drunk dialed everyone we knew and told them how our lives were better than theirs. yes, we are assholes. We met a really cool shuttle driver named Pauli who i kind of wanted to join us for dinner just so i coudl be liek "pauli!!" but alas. We ended up at a couple of very loud undergrad bars and orges was so drunk that he literally lost his train of thought jumping from "Alec was on the jungle gym" straight into "and then he killed everyone!" he later told me he was talking about sara's boyfriend and then accidentally started talking about battlestar galactica. very strange. Anyways we got in a cab with a very nice lady who talked alot about falafals and orges said something about how awesome it would be to have the biggest falafel in teh world, and i was like, seriously how drunk are you, my friend. Then i got sick from the afghani food and vomitted all night in teh toilet while orges passed out.

We woke up and it was like our dreams had been answered because legally blonde and the wedding planner were both on TBS. Thank you, tv gods. then we ended up at some place called lake wingra and went kayaking. Another few key observations. I am extremely out of shape. I rowed for like 5 minutes before my arms gave out. And orges kept yelling that i was getting water in his face because it was very windy and teh water was blowing off of my oars. Realization, had i been alone out there i might have died. I made up for my lack of athletic prowess my serenading him wiht some celine dion "my heart will go on." There is something about being stranded in teh middle of a lake with the wind blowing against your row that is just very moving.
so let's just zoom forward. We stopped at a sex shop and bought salvia. then we went to a museum of modern art, v. cool. then we headed to chocolate city, usa, aka burlington wisconsin.
What happened next was by far the most moving part of the weekend for me at least. We drove through lots of rolling hills an farm country and came upon this old lutheran church that had been built by some norwegian settlers in the 1800's. It had this adjoining cemetery taht you could tell was one of those really local cemeteries where generations of families had been burried. Some of the tomb stones were so old that the words had worn off, and we both wondered if anyone ever came to visit them. Which then prompted a discussion of teh "if a tree falls and no one hears it" variety. if you are burried somewhere but no one ever comes and visits you what does that mean? Orges's answer: you need to do things worthy of building monuments in your name so people will remember you.
someone with my name.
then we kept driving and encountered racial hatred. I was wearing a very ethnic shirt and i stopped at a stop sign and 2 men in a pick up truck yelled "go home!" to me. I wasn't sure if it was because i was not driving an american car or because they thought i was an illegal immigrant. Either way i was shocked. This is me in shock.
we drove by this guys house who collected old gas pumps and had them all in front of his house almost like a gas pump modern sculpture. If this were SF it would have been in the MOMA and tehy would have said it was a statement on modernism (ie oil) and nature (ie gas pumps on his land). We finally made it into burlington and followed the crowd to some place called Fred's. it claimed to have the best burgers but that was questionable cuz clearly these people have never had in n out.

The choclate festival that had been hyped turned out to basically be a local fair with rides and fun houses and shit. there were all of these teenagers running around. We ate corndogs and stuff and it reminded me of being a kid. Isn't it strange how things can remind you of "childhood" in a broad way even if it was not your childhood. Like i never ate corn dogs at fairs in my childhood yet eating that meat on a stick made it feel liek someone's childhood. i don't know
they randomly had tehse white tigers that you could pet or take pictures with or something but anyways here was teh sign in front of their cage. notice anything odd? Oh wisconsin, you slay me.
we rode bumper cars and teh ferris wheel and some crazy rotating machine thing and i found out that orges is afriad of heights which is odd considering his spirit animal might be a parrot.
So then we came back to chicago and i passed out. I woke up early and drove back to michigan, but not before trying my very first white castle. it was really good.

And that was teh end of our journey. It felt liek years but really was only 2 days of sheer bliss and childhood wonder. I feel liek we learned so much about each other and life and most importantly about ourselves (cue end credit music) Next state, ohio.

life and stuff

ugh so i'm in LA which leaves me with lots of mixed feelings. First of all there is a severe dearth of blonde pale skinned people. Now i never thought i would say that but 8 months of the midwest has really made me notice these things. I went to UCLA today to use their library since i have a bunch of research i have to do for a prof and i noticed 2 major things. There were HELLA asians there. And i'm not sure if there actually are hella asians or if i'm just used to not seeing asians anymore. i just dont know. But secondly there appeared to be lots of mexicans students, but i could have been confusing the persian students with latinos. i mean we are both dark skinned and stuff.

so anyways i was at trader joe's with my parents yesterday buying food for the week since our fridge consists of old bananas, diet coke, and 3 kinds of milk and soy milk (seriously my parents live like frat boys). So anyways in the midst of purchasing some secrets of the psyllium and joint vitamins for my mom i ran into this guy i went to high school with. he actually works with my mom and lives with this other guy we went to school with. They kind of looked at me like "oh we are buying wine and she's buying fiber and joint medicine." It made me feel very like...i don't know. I guess it was a twin peaks, because basically i felt like an uncool teenager all over again. And i wanted to be like...seriously i am cool now! i am not a loser! But who knows, maybe i am. So anyways, i asked what they were doing and they were working locally in the south bay and lived down the street. I confess, i judged them a bit. We do not live in a cool part of LA and to be 25 and living in lomita after college is my worst nightmare. so anyways i was having this mixed feelings like "i think they are uncool but do they also think i am uncool?" and then one of them made some comment about michigan being really boring and i was like "actually no it's not." and then the other guy said "well she'd know about fun more than we would. She lived in the big city, San Francisco for a while" And for a moment, the fact that i was in sweats and a hoodie on a sunday afternoon with my parents buying vitamins did not make me feel so bad. As cathy put it, "to them you were this cool hippy chick who ate organic food and lived in san francisco." I know moving to SF doesn't seem like a big deal with seriously peopel from my high school did not do ANYTHING! they all went to school locally and styaed in touch and all still hang out and it' slike...just not my life at all. Anyways all this got me really excited to go to my high school reunion in a few years. I had this image of getting the 2 people i still keep in touch with, and maybe having my parents drop us off. And then i would get wasted and judge people who used to be thin but got fat.

They told me that this girl we knew is getting married to the guy she started dating end of senior year, high school sweet hearts and all that shit. And they had bought a house. And as i was driving back on the 405 today in my parents SUV in rush hour traffic i was feeling like winona ryder in reality bites when she says "people are having babies! babies! i cant' even take care of a chia pet!" Only in my case it was more like, people are buying houses and getting married and i frequently ride my bike home after nights of much drinking to pass out on my 50 dollar mattress in my basement! It's weird how grad school make you seem like you have these very mature qualities like intelligence and wisdom, but it can also make you seem like an irresponsible 19 year old with no real future. I guess what i'm saying is grad school is basically college with a bit more restraint. So anyways point being all of this made me reassess my life and i concluded, I have a pretty good life.

Puerto Rico!!!