Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th of July weekend! The other day, my cousin mentioned that her manicurist was sworn in as a United States citizen yesterday. Talk about excellent timing. Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday weekend. Mine will be spent poolside tomorrow (and apparently celebrating my birthday, which I’m not happy about but whatever).

A note to myself

If I have ever children in the future (insert raucous laughter here), I'm stocking up on enough Enfamil and Similac to last until the kid starts kindergarten. And none of that soy formula crap either-- I've babysat enough kids over the years to know that the smell of soy formula instantly makes me dry-heave.

And you can quote me on that.

Did I ever mention that I can be quite contrary sometimes? Seriously, the person in this blog entry could be me, because I would so totally do the exact same thing.

Gotta keep movin' on and fly away

So now I can finally announce it: I got a new job. My last day at my current position is July 10. Starting July 13, I will be an administrative assistant for two (or more) faculty members at an East Coast medical school (it’s the same medical school I’ve been working at since 2006-- just a different area). I’m very excited about the position. I’ve already met some of my new coworkers and one of my new supervisors. All in all, it seems like a wonderful opportunity and I’m very much looking forward to it.

To commemorate this very happy occasion, I’ve thrown together a little iTunes playlist titled (appropriately enough), “New Job 2009.” Here are some of the songs that made the cut:

1. Don't Stop Believin' (Glee): you can’t be sad after listening to this song or watching the video
2. LA Song (Beth Hart): Okay, so there’s a story behind this song because it’s an odd choice. I first heard it on MTV or something in like, 2000 and it would periodically pop into my head throughout the years. But I could never remember the title, artist, etc. Then like, last week, I remembered that this is 2009 and we have Google and iTunes and crap, and finally found the song! Oh, and the other reason the song makes it onto the playlist is solely for the lines, “she laughed... because she knew she was never coming back.” But otherwise, it’s an odd choice and I freely admit that.
3. Breakaway (Kelly Clarkson): Actually, the entire reason this playlist was created. This song has been on constant rotation on my iPod for like, the past six weeks. And how can you not love The Princess Diaries 2?
4. Lonely Ghosts (O+S): from this episode of Dollhouse. “We stay because we don’t know where else to go,” indeed.

So that's the news for this week. This is the happiest I’ve been in 10 months.

Some site maintenance

So I updated the “Sites I Like” section off to the side there. You’ll notice that it contains two new links:
1. My first-ever blog, which ran from September 2002 to July 2005
2. My second blog, which was updated from July 2003 to June 2008 (oh God, I feel old now).

I put the links up there because occasionally, I do like to go back and revisit those entries, which are from the “college” (and post-college) years. Please note that the “Info” page on the second link is woefully outdated. I’d update it for the fourth or fifth time, but then I’d be crying bitterly into a pint of Guinness for the rest of the day and then where would we be?

Some caveats though: college is kind of like an extension of high school so reading some of those entries is like reading an annoying teenager’s high school diary, with the bad poems, and angsty melodrama, and pretentious babble. So don’t go reading between the lines, is what I’m saying. I’d like to think I’ve evolved since high school and college, in terms of writing. (Thank God blogs weren’t really around when I was in high school and that I have no plans to digitize my paper diaries anyway. Tough luck, suckers!)

Oh, and on another note: let’s just say that things are going to start getting a lot better around here (please God, I hope so). Details to come, possibly, but if you’re ultra-curious, contact me back-channel.

2009 marks some other milestones to come: the warranty for my second-generation iPod nano expires in July, and the warranty for my MacBook expires in December. (Look, once you hit 25, the important milestones are less about the fun and more about the crushing responsibilities of adulthood. So I have to make my own fun in this life and if that means getting jazzed up over warranty expirations, then so be it).

Life as an annoying house

This entry was inspired by an email conversation between my sister and me, about Life as a House (behold the power of Netflix). It started with me asking her why Hayden Christensen looks better in eyeshadow in this movie than I do, and progressed from there..
Baby sister: I don’t think anybody actually likes Kevin Kline; I think they just tolerate him because he’s in a substantial amount of movies.
Me: So Kevin Kline is the Sam Raimi of actors, then? He’s not actually good anymore, but reviewers are compelled to sing his praises because...I don’t know, they’re blinded by his earlier, legitimately-good pieces. What’s interesting is that I’m about 2/3 through the movie and as HC’s character straightens out (he starts out as a drug-doing, s*x-for-money, Goth teenage brat), he gets more likable (particularly when no longer under girly makeup). But yeah, I have about 45? minutes left of the movie and I don’t know if I can get through all of it. It reminded me that I really can’t stand Jena Malone either, regardless of what she’s in. Why does she keep getting work? And why does Kristen Scott Thomas keep slipping in and out of a slight British accent when there’s no indication that her character is British?

This exchange had me yelling at the movie even though it’s probably the funniest bit (unintentionally, of course). “George” is Kevin Kline and “Sam” is played by Christensen:

Sam: What’s wrong with your back? Do you have to have surgery on it or
what? Because those pills you are taking are for a lot of pain. And
you seem to be going though them pretty quick, that’s all
George: You’re not still taking any, are you?
Sam: No. But I count them. In a sock isn’t exactly new, you know.
George: I’m having a problem with cancer.
Sam: ...I don’t know what that means. What kind of problem?
George: The kind where there isn’t any answer.
Sam: ...I still don’t know what it means.

Me: It means HE’S DYING OF CANCER, YOU MORON! IT SEEMS THAT HUFFING ALL THAT GLUE EARLIER IN THE MOVIE KILLED THE BRAIN CELLS YOU NEEDED FOR DEDUCTIVE REASONING!

Actually, the whole “Kevin Kline is diagnosed with terminal cancer and only has a few months to live” plot is BS even though it’s the driving force of the movie. He collapses at work after being fired, then he’s in the hospital, then he tells his nurse he has cancer and “no one’s even mentioned ‘treatment.’” So he goes home, starts building the house and makes his son live with him for the summer to work on it his son needs direction and God knows Kristen Scott Thomas and her current husband won’t man up to do it. But dude-- if he was so sick that his cancer can’t be treated, wouldn’t there have been other signs besides everyone saying “you’ve lost weight recently, Kevin Kline” during the first 10 minutes? And even with the most terminal of cancers, show me one doctor who wouldn’t still say, “okay, first we’re going to do this,” before they decide it’s really not treatable. Doctors are nothing if not insistent that DEATH WILL NOT BEST THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE DOCTORS, GOSH DARN IT! So I call BS on that whole thing. Fool needed a second opinion and a damn haircut. I mean, it wasn’t like he started the movie knowing he had cancer and tried every other option. If I’m diagnosed with cancer, given a 4-month end-of-life prognosis and “no one says anything about ‘treatment,’” I’m damn well hopping a train to [insert better hospital here] to see what they say, rather than taking it at face value all, “oh, okay, let me go finally build a stupid house on a stupid cliff.”

I also tend to confuse Kevin Kline with Kenneth Branaugh at first glance which does nothing to temper my dislike of him.

A birthday of sorts

It's been exactly one year since I moved into this apartment. My roommate's cat is celebrating by trying to nip my arm as I type this (she doesn't so much "sit" in laps as she does, "stand on laps and nuzzle desk edges for 20 damn minutes").

Sometimes I forget that the only working phone jack is in the bathroom. Or that that one window is jacked up. Or that turning on the microwave at the same time my A/C unit causes a power outage. Wearing hats on my feet has been pretty fun though.

Happy birthday, strange apartment!

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Now playing on iTunes: The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
via FoxyTunes

A spring tradition

My allergies have been trying to kill me all weekend. I don't much appreciate it. I would say that allergy medicine and cough drops have accounted for 60 percent of my diet this weekend, with ice cream and water ice making the remaining 35 percent.

The final five percent was oxygen, of course.