ABC's of me

Kindly yanked from

A-Age: 25

B-Bed Size: Full

C-Chore you hate: Dishes

D-Dog's Name: I am pet-less, but the family dog is Munson

[this is not him]

E-Essential start to your day: Diet Coke

F-Favorite colors: violet, silver

G-Gold, Silver or Platinum: platinum. no, silver.

H-Height: 5'1

I-Instruments you play: oh... ALL of them! no, just flute, some piano, and back in the day a little trumpet and horn... some sax... my voice... and PICCOLO!

J-Jewelry you wear everyday: nose ring

K-Kids: kid brother=Sam

L-Living arrangements: college-y apartments in a neighborhood I have seriously outgrown (listening to keggers at 11:00 on a Thursday night gets old fast when you have a real job...)

M-Mom's name: Jane

N-Nicknames: Meggo... Meggie?

O-Overnight Hospital Stay, other than birth: never

P-Pet Peeves: a-holes who call others out on crimes against grammar. unless you teach sixth grade, it's so uncalled for.

Q-Quote: "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you'll start missing everybody" -Holden Caulfield

R-Right or Left Handed: Right

S-Siblings: two cool-as-heck brothers, the best sister-in-law ever, and i'm going to stop there.

T-Time you wake up: usually around 7. even on the weekends (but i'm always napping again by 10!)

U-Underwear: pink polka dots

V-Vegetable you dislike: asparagus

W-Ways you run late: snooze button

X-X-Rays: stomach, both feet, teeth

Y-Yummy food you make: i don't

Z-Zoo Favorite: otters

Go-Go-Go-Go-Goals! A Girl Can Dream.

I'm not moving until August, but it's going to be a major ordeal. I moved into my first apartment, the one upstairs where I live now, in the fall of 2005. Prior to then, I was moving around between dorm rooms and my room at my parents' house. In other words, I had quite a manageable load of stuff, which by necessity had to be combed through often.

It wasn't until nearly a year ago that I decided I needed to find a different apartment. At this point in time I wasn't entirely thrilled with life in general, so I approached the apartment problems the same way I do all others in such a mood: half-assed. I lazily set my sights on the apartment directly below my own and vowed to go through my stuff and purge four years of enthusiastic shopping, throw things away, take things to goodwill, maybe even have a garage sale.

Just when I was beginning to think life could go as planned for once, I lost one of my favorite people in the entire world. Life literally stopped for a week and a half and things like my apartment, my job, my shady friends were completely out of my mind. Needless to say, moving was not as carefully calculated as I had hoped, consisting mostly of heaving stuff down the stairs and piling it up in my new entryway. I had zero time to really organize and decorate as all of my earned time at work was spent planning and attending a funeral. I literally moved empty boxes, which now sit empty in my new apartment begging to either be packed or tossed.

I don't move until August, but I already have some boxes. The changing weather lends itself well to packing away my coats, long-johns and winter accessories. There are only so many books I can read in four months, so I might as well pack up some of those. As much as I wish I do, I will not be needing my skinny clothes by then. It's also not unreasonable to try to finish stuff off - empty the shampoo bottle rather than buy a new scent a month later, use up the free samples, make sure the ibuprofen is gone before picking up another bottle (I am notorious for having lots of doubles in the bathroom). And stay on top of the trash because everything is just that much harder when the whole apartment is buried beneath one solid layer of junk mail.

This is entirely reasonable. If I can carve out a comfortable space within the mess, I can work this through in a weekend. I'll be updating...

I Think I'm Bored

I'm so proud of myself for getting so much done this weekend. I went to the parents' house and did three loads of laundry, got groceries and spent lots of quality time with the little bro. My mom asked me to make it a point to hang out with Sam, but little did she know I was bringing my Planet Earth DVDs precisely so I could hang out with him. There is nothing in the world quite like having a kid who looks up to you.

Tuesday night I'm going back to E-Ville because I have a dentist appointment on Wednesday, and then I come back up Thursday morning (and have the day off Thursday... yaaay!) If only all weeks could be like that - 2.5 days off, work two days, off two more days, work one day, and then another weekend.

So... I'm writing right now to kill time because I think I'm bored... even though I need to put away my clean clothes, pick up my apartment, dust and some other stuff... so much to do!

Hello Spring

On Oprah

Ohhh Oprah, you and your book club.

As I've expressed before, one of my goals for 2010 is to read more. It's not that I feel I need to expand my horizons, absorb more culture or make myself smarter (although those are all good things to do). I don't have degree guilt, thinking I should consume more classics before I truly "deserve" my degree in English literature or devour contemporary works to justify the creative writing emphasis. The bottom line is that I am truly head-over-heals in LOVE with books. My "to-read" list grows at nearly the rate I am able to read synopses, and so making a goal to read more is entirely to catch myself up to the volumes upon volumes unread on my shelf.

Enter Oprah, the woman who singlehandedly turned 864 grueling pages of Tolstoy into mainstream literature. Contrary to my tweet, I don't dislike Oprah. Nor do I dislike what she has done for literature and American literacy. I'm not worried about my lit-cred, I'm not keeping score... I am, however, on Oprah's e-mail list. Every few weeks I get e-mails featuring the latest new titles or the classics that have stood the test of time with tatalizing synopses and beautiful covers and now my wishlist looks like this.

Also my to-do list is about four times as long, I have about a hundred personal goals and I am downright ashamed over the quantity of clothing with which I do not wish to part. It's rough, this "live your best life" business. Easy for you, Oprah, with your army of assistants and your record-shattering paychecks, your magazine and TV show...

Oprah, my heart is in the right place. It really is. But at the end of the day I'm going to go watch my second episode of Jersey Shore before I check to see if my antennae will pick up Idol and harvest some virtual crops. I will also watch Planet Earth segments and read Discover magazine before bed. You win some you lose some.

I Like Mondays

It's true! This is the one day of the week where I feel fresh, motivated and energized enough to take on anything and everything that needs to be done.

I don't get it either - you'd think get-it-all-done time would happen at some point during the weekend... but no.

I'm trying to turn it into some sort of all-encompassing statement about tackling problems and things from the front end rather than letting it all happen and just try to clean up afterward... but I should know better than to try and fit any number of my quirks into some umbrella statement that attempts to explains them. It's like trying to fit every little exception to a loosly-defined rule into its own rigidly-defined rule - if the point is to simplify, then you've missed it entirely.

Without further ado, Happy Monday! I can't wait to get all my groceries, sort through some laundry, vacuum and organize... with one more hour of sunlight, woohoo!

[Quiet Nights via PDR]

Saturday Surprise

Hm. Nothing like going to get the mail only to discover a new neighbor moving in... with the back door propped open while smoking cigarettes. Suddenly I no longer wonder why it is so cold in here or why it smells like someone is smoking... in here. I never thought I'd be disappointed to find out the percussionist moved out.

I'm also bummed about having nothing to do, but in reality there's plenty to do and just nothing I feel like doing at the moment. My whole body is sore from CPR certification yesterday, I have a headache (and a toothache), I haven't been sleeping well, and my dreams have been absolutely disturbing when I do.

I'd better find something creative, productive or entertaining to do because sitting at the computer freezing my ass off and hating life is just not doing it for me. The next time I write will be better, I promise!

Slow-Thursday Thursday

In which I pay homage to my favorite ways to pass the downtime:

• We Heart It: so pretty

  
  
  
  
  

• Apartment Therapy: admit it - you always wanted a pink bathroom

  
  

• Cake Wrecks: it's like engrish.com without the language barrier.

  

• Country Life: because farmville is so last year

• Godzilla Haiku: sheer poetic genius

  

• Time Magazine: particularly the Best & Worst Lists

• Urban Outfitters: because I'm a sucker for free music

• Pop Hangover: because there's nothing wrong with a cheap laugh

  

• Regretsy: nobody does snark better

  

• This: it cannot be unseen and now i have to deal with this for the rest of my life

• ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
  

Quiet Nights 8

Tonight's Quiet Nights prompt was one I could really connect with: "really!" As in, "did that really just happen?" What can I say - complaining comes naturally for me. So... I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm kind of proud of my page tonight...

After a couple of questionable page attempts last week, I begrudgingly promised myself I would follow the tutorial a little more closely (after all, that's what the class is for). Being in sync with the topic helped. Trying to do "be still" while totally wound up bouncing off the walls? Not my best work - pretty sure they call that a learning experience.

I'm actually saving a few blank bubbles for another day because the journaling process dissolved a lot of my reallies and I wound up in too good a mood to channel frustration. Does it get any better than that?

Revenge of the Yarn and Other Stories

Now that I so seriously really need to be studying for my OAT (November, bitches) I am absolutely immersed in the Polka Dot Robot art journal class I'm taking. See? Here's a page from day five, sometimes i feel... (because sometimes I do feel like I have the world at my feet, and most of the time I don't know what to do about it).

Two weeks ago, I was at my mom's house gathering supplies of hers to use until I have a decent collection of my own, and she was giving me all sorts of paper scraps and stuff she wasn't going to use. She tried to hand me this thing of yarn. Not like a ball or skein? or whatever, just... a card, with a bunch of inches of yarn wrapped around it. It was shiny.

I took one look at the yarn and decided I didn't want it. I mean, I was already taking a TON of my mom's stuff (she hasn't scrapbooked in months, but still). Plus I had no idea what I would use it for (this was before I realized how cool stitching on pages actually is). Lucky for me, she tried to give me the yarn again (I guess she really didn't want it) so I took it. I remember taking it, deciding there had to be something I could do with it, and I distinctly remember being glad I had taken it.

The page I made for day six (dreams) has a spot that absolutely needs that yarn. It just HAPPENED that way. And what do you think I found when I looked for the yarn? Nothing. No yarn. No trace of the yarn. No hints as to where I must have stashed that thing. Nothing. My mom checked to see if I left it at her house. I looked through my supplies three times. I cleaned.

When I finally find that yarn, I am SO stiching it right up in my dreams page faster than you can say optometry school. You hear me yarn? It is ON.