five feet of sass

wait, didn't i just do this?

2006-11-30T16:13:00.000-05:00

yep, i'm moving. again. i've decided to say bye-bye to manhattan and hop over the river to brooklyn and my lovely new apartment in carroll gardens.

in case you were wondering...

2006-11-17T02:50:00.000-05:00

logan is a man with a plan (a canal, panama! anyone else remember that besides me? no? ok, FINE, i'm old. shut it.) at aguynamedlogan which you see on the right. i had a massive crush on logan a few years ago, back before i left the wilds of boston for nyc. he's a smart cookie who taught me about being a bike messenger, being vegan, consuming a shitload of calories to make up for those expended while being said bike messenger, and drinking lots of guinness.
danny is agreatmetaphorforsomething. he's also a great writer for everything. i've known him for the past two years that i've lived in nyc, and i miss him terribly. also, he lived thorough the 2005 thanksgiving extravaganza with la famille fivefeetofsass, which is really quite impressive. have you lived through a thanksgiving extravaganza with la famille fivefeetofsass? i didn't think so. now go read his blog and feel mightily humbled.
farcicaldilettente.com is a friend i've known since the day i was born, or close enough. again, he's another smart cookie who i've known forever and who taught me that hockey is, without a doubt, a very very important sport, second only to baseball (and seriously, can you blame us? we're from boston, for chrissakes!)
dr.thinky: my sister's ex who taught me the importance of speaking with s pseudo-southern accent. try it, you'll see.
a picture of me: caryn undertands the difficulty and joy that comes with falling right at 60 inches.
cafeaulait: xtina is short and smart and funny and likes to drink. so we are friends. the end.
ok. go read the new york times or something far more important than this.

check this shit bitches

2006-11-17T02:40:00.000-05:00

hello, dear fivefeetofsass disciples!

i have been gone a long time. a very, very inexcusable amount of time. i could say that i'm sorry and issue apologies ad nauseum...

but i'm not--i'm not sorry for my lack of posting (or general laziness: have you seen thefarcicaldillettente.com? he is a close personal friend of mine (sort of). this should clear up any confusion).

so: it is thursday, and i am wasted. hello, thursday! tomorrow i go to clinic and talk to all of my kids in end-stage liver failure. oh yes, it's a good day!

have you missed me? i thought so. i've missed you too.
xoxoxFFOSxoxox

one hell of a milestone

2006-04-19T19:41:00.000-04:00

this saturday, my little sister will turn 25. how in the world did she get so freaking old? i still think of her sometimes as being sixteen. but then there are moments when she’ll be talking and say something so utterly profound, i’ll wonder how a knucklehead like me could possibly be related to her.

in any case, she is truly my greatest comrade in life. little did i know, at the young age of three and a half, of the enormous favor my parents had done for me by bringing this little blonde thing into the world. and i hope i’ve done my duty as a big sister by turning her on to obscure music and dispensing good advice and all the things older sisters are supposed to do.

my sister knows this blog exists, but she doesn’t know the url, nor does she want to know it, and i kind of prefer that; it’s good for us to have our own things. and besides, i tell her everything that’s in this damn thing anyway. so even though she won’t read my little homage to her, i’m going to write this here and wish her a happy birthday anyway, because i love her tremendously and she will always be the coolest person i know.

that's right, kids, i'm still here

2006-04-18T22:10:00.000-04:00

well i'll be damned! miss cutie pie herself ctina tagged me! which is probably a good thing, seeing as how it's high time i dusted off this thing and actually posted. it's been how long??? my goodness. between the hell that is grad school and having a mr. fivefeetofsass (more like mr. sixfeetoneinchofsass, but whatevs) i've been a busy girl. but here you go:

six strange facts you probably didn't know about me, but now you do.
1. i can put both of my feet behind my head. (shut it, pervs.)
2. i have no wisdom teeth. i never had 'em, never will.
3. i used to ride horses competitively in high school. you know, stupid-ass hat, boots, funny-looking pants, the whole deal.
4. the first time i saw "star wars" was when i was nineteen and it was re-released in theaters.
5. in my first car, an '83 volvo station wagon, i had to sit on a pillow to see over the hood.
6. when i was fifteen, i managed to land an audition for an indie movie, in which i had to have a killer boston accent. i practiced for days, but lost the part to the sister of joey mcintyre, one of the guys from new kids on the block.

so now i'm supposed to tag six people to post six random facts about themselves on their blogs, but none of those bastards on my blogroll update anymore, except for dear ctina. so i tag, uh, nobody.

we may be massholes, but we're awesome

2006-04-04T19:44:00.000-04:00

further evidence that my homestate totally fucking rules:
Massachusetts Set to Offer Universal Health Insurance

first state to legalize gay marriage, and now this! my heart just bursts with massachusetts pride.

don't ever send your children to me

2006-03-24T17:25:00.000-05:00

right now, as i write this, i am sitting on my futon having just downed a beer. by myself. in like five minutes. why? because i fucking hate my clinic on fridays. i spent an hour and a half explaining to a patient via interpreter when to start her birth control pills, i shit you not. i mean, seriously, how many times can i say "start the pills the sunday after your next period"? and then, of course, after all this is done and the patient is gone and i have a shred of confidence that this girl might actually follow my instructions, my instructor tells me i could have "quick-started" her on the pills.

ok. there's absolutely zero evidence backing up the quick-starting thing, but there's a bigger problem here. i neglected to discuss my plans for this patient with my instructor before letting her go, and this is bad. this is very bad. in all of the chaos of giving this patient her test results and her necessary vaccines (which my instructor and i drew up together) and explaining how to use the damn oral contraceptives, i forgot to actually confirm that my plans for this patient were ok.

now i know that despite my neglecting to consult my instructor before dismissing my patient i haven't put my patient's life at risk, but it's instances such as this one that absolutely paralyze me with fear that one day i may make a mistake with a patient that results in very serious consequences. after all, i'm a mere mortal, and mere mortals make mistakes. and when you're in medicine, you can't make mistakes.

oh lordy, i would give anything to have another career path right now.

yes, it's true

2006-03-22T19:33:00.000-05:00

i've been a bad blogger. it's been almost two weeks since i updated this thing, and what do i have to show for it? not much, other than a swift blow to the head by the proverbial 2x4 piece of infatuation plywood.

that's right: i've got the fever, kids. i've said it before and been wrong, but this time i mean it: this guy is different. i'm hesitant to say much more than that for fear of jinxing what seems to be the start of a very good thing. but as the three or so people who actually read this blog (hello darlings!) already know, i have a freakish obsession with friendster, and i am proud to say that when you look at my damn profile i am no longer "single." for the first time in a very very very long time, i am "in a relationship." good lord, it's about freaking time.

thank you for not barfing on the A train

2006-03-10T13:53:00.000-05:00

yesterday at school i ate a sandwich for lunch, and almost as soon as i had finished it, i began to realize that something was very, very wrong in my stomach. was it a bad batch of smoked turkey? i wondered. but the waves of nausea kept coming, and after a while i realized that i wasn't going to be feeling better anytime soon and decided to go home. now, i go to school at the medical center at 168th street. i live at west 4th. this was not going to be a fun ride.

once on the subway i found a seat facing forward and held onto my can on ginger ale for dear life. i did some deep breathing exercises, even though i've never believed that those things actually work. i tried to not think about smoked turkey sandwiches and instead think about all the nice things in my life: my family, my dog, my friends, the new york city skyline--anything that woundn't make the nausea worse.

after what seemed like the longest subway ride in the history of the universe i was back at west fourth, still grasping my ginger ale. and standing on the corner of bleecker and carmine, waiting for the light to change, i felt the nausea rising in my chest and into my throat. now, it wouldn't be so terrible if i threw up on the street; after all, this is new york, and crazier things happen every day. but i was determined to make it back to my apartment before having to resort to finding the nearest trash can.

and then, once i made it home, i was more sick than i've been in ages. but i didn't throw up on the A train, and for that i am immensely proud of myself. talk about doing my civic duty! i'd like to think that i spared a lot of new yorkers a seriously nasty sight yesterday.

an instruction manual would be helpful

2006-03-02T23:47:00.000-05:00

when i like a guy, i know i like him because i feel like i got hit over the head with the proverbial 2x4 piece of infatuation plywood. thinking about him fills me with simultaneous feelings of utter dread and complete elation, imagining his face makes me want to throw up (in a good way, people!), i obsess over every last detail of our encounters, i talk about him constantly. i truly become the most annoying version of myself.

and there's something to be said for "the chase." it seems to me that in the crazy world of relationships there are two groups: the chasers and the chasees. i, for one, fall squarely in the chasee camp. it's a cycle i've managed to break down into seven simple steps:

1. find boy who is available but slightly out of reach, for whatever reason
2. become completely infatuated with said boy
3. hope boy likes me back and strategize how to make this happen
4. eventually realize the feelings aren't mutual
5. feel sad
6. feel better
7. repeat!

i've met someone recently who, like me, is a chasee, and for once, i am the one being chased. he's kind and smart and attractive and generous, and i am completely unsure of my feelings for him. i can think of a million good reasons why i should like this guy back, so why all the confusion? is it because i'm suddenly and involuntarily on the other side of the chase fence? tonight, while watching american idol at n's apartment, n went so far as to actually pause american idol (thank you, tivo!) to inform me that i have, in fact, become a certifiable crazy lady for feeling so ambivalent about this guy, and she's right. but this is some unfamiliar territory for me here, being the object of someone else's infatuation.

it really does get easier

2006-02-22T00:22:00.000-05:00

today at the clinic one of my patients, a teenager, told me she was sexually attracted to guys and girls. "how do you feel about that?" i asked her. she looked at me and in a tiny voice said, "i'm confused." lord knows i had a hard enough time not feeling like a freak when i was a straight teenager and painfully shy around boys but desperately wishing one would like me.

sometimes i see patients like this one, where i have to do everything i can to stop myself from telling them that being a teenager sucks but that things get better and that they're going to be ok because i felt like a total freak in high school too and somehow managed to end up somewhere in the vicinity of normal.

so i try to say something along those lines, although a bit more professional-sounding and not self-referential, but it's hard to find the right words. i wish i could fast-forward them through the next eight years or so; being in your twenties isn't exactly a walk in the park, but it's a hell of a lot better than being fourteen and feeling like the biggest, most hopeless freak on the planet. i feel for those kiddos, i really do.

and just like that...

2006-02-17T00:05:00.000-05:00

...poof, blows up in your face, it's over.

tonight, out with b and a, in the midst of discussing my situation with the boy/man, i turned around, only to see the boy man standing right next to me. there are hundreds of bars in manhattan, and there's the boy/man standing right fucking next to me. seriously, what are the odds of that?

in talking with the him, i sensed that things were weird. and so we went outside to talk, at which point he said that hanging out this weekend might not happen, and probably wouldn't be a good idea. ultimately, what this means or might mean to me is different from what it means to him.

so why the hell did he send me the stupid valentine text message? "because i meant it," he said. and that while us hanging out and getting to know each other could happen, it would have to be "on his schedule." and then he asks me, in utter seriousness, how do i feel about that?

ok. no fucking way am i going to work my schedule around some guy who may or may not be interested in getting to know me. and by the look on my face, he could tell. so i said, ok, i'm cutting my losses now, i'm not going to see you again, goodbye. and when he said we'd hang out sometime later, i told him to not do me any favors. and then i said, ok, this is it, bye, and walked away as he pulled open the door to the bar.

as i walked toward the subway, i turned around a couple of times, hoping i might see him coming after me to tell me he was sorry and that he'd made a mistake. but he didn't.

hey cupid

2006-02-15T23:35:00.000-05:00

i've never been a big fan of valentine's day. i'm not one of those people who goes around ranting about it being a stupid holiday created by hallmark, but mostly i just don't get what all the fuss is about.

this year, however, i had an ever-so-slight change of heart about it. truth be told, i've never received a valentine or been wished a happy valentine's day by anyone besides my family or friends. certainly never from anyone i had a bit of romantic interest in.

but on tuesday afternoon, skipping clinical and hanging around in my living room thinking about the test i should have been studying for, i got a text message from the boy/man, wishing me a happy valentine's day. yes, it was just a text message, which is hardly intimate. it was a small, brief gesture. but thinking that perhaps the boy/man thought that such a gesture might matter to me made me realize why people make such a fuss after all. isn't it nice to know that even on a silly fake holiday, one that was created by hallmark for the purpose of selling lame cards and bad chocolate, someone's thinking of you? yes, it is.

darlings of the west village

2006-01-31T23:59:00.000-05:00

so the roomie and i decided to hit up the neighborhood and drink ourselves silly tonight. she professed her undying love for her ex, while i divulged my complete and total ambivalence of the boy du jour. we had a lot of beer, a couple smokes, and discussed our crazy days in college driving around in a car with a stuffed giraffe and selling pot to professors.

then we came home and started watching the state of the union on cspan, because really, the only way i can watch that dipshit president of ours is when i'm intoxicated and slightly numb to the fact that this douchebag is, in fact, the elected leader of this country. eventually i had to shut it off because i just couldn't stand it anymore, all the talk of spreading democracy and peace and how the road to that inevitably means thousands of dead iraqi civilians.

so the end result of tonight: roomie and i are a good match, for sure. boys are still an absolute mystery. bush sucks. beer is good.

it's just my poker face

2006-01-30T23:54:00.000-05:00

friday:
saw a patient at the clinic who was, without a doubt, one of the saddest patients i've seen. it's not that the patient was sad, but her story was just heartbreaking. it was as though every horrible thing that could possibly happen to someone happened to this patient. and as she recounted the terrifying and wrenching details of her short life, sitting across from me absolutely stonefaced, i did everything i could to maintain my "professional face."

here's a little secret: when you tell your doctor or nurse something shocking, and they maintain a straight face, and you're wondering why they don't seem surprised by what you've just said, don't be alarmed, because actually, we are freaking the fuck out. i shit you not.

this is what happens when you deprive your children of junk food

2006-01-22T13:34:00.000-05:00

yesterday i had a very upset stomach. actually, my stomach was more than upset; it was fucking pissed at me. friday night at rudy's, after countless pitchers of rolling rock and yuengling, i did the unthinkable:

i ate three hot dogs.

now, when i was young, hot dogs were an extremely rare commodity in my house. my father had worked in a meat-packing factory in his early twenties and, after witnessing the horror that is the hot dog-making process, swore up and down he would never let his children eat such vile, processed crap. the only hot dogs we were allowed to eat were these very strange-looking brown ones from the health food store that, according to my parents, "had no nitrites." when my sister and i would ask my mom why we couldn't get the regular oscar meyer hot dogs like all the normal kids, she would reply, "because they have nitrites," and that would be the end of the discussion. only creepy brown hot dogs for her children! at six years old, i was mystified be these evil "nitrites" my parents spoke of and why they were so horribly bad for us. plenty of my friends ate lots of hot dogs and hadn't developed any sort of bizarre ailments. and most importantly, these non-nitrite hot dogs that my parents bought tasted like crap, and i wanted the real deal, nitrites and all.

throughout my childhood and adolescence, i did, on the rare occasion, get to have a "real" hot dog ("real hot dog" is quite the contradictory phrase, no?), but those events were few and far between. when i swore off red meat at eighteen, i had reached the age where i realized just how disgusting hot dogs actually are, so giving them up was no hardship.

but friday night they tempted me in their nitrite-rich, highly-processed glory. they smelled soooooo good, and were the perfect shade of pink, in a nice fluffy white bun, with lots of brown mustard and ketchup. and they were free, and it is a universally-known fact that nothing tastes better than hot, salty, preservative-laden free food when you're wasted.

bye-bye trees, see you next year

2006-01-17T20:51:00.000-05:00

in the interest of full non-disclosure, i will say that i saw the boy/man this weekend, and his number is still in my cell phone. there was lovely snow falling in the west village, and drinking and singing and guitar-playing, and that's about all i'm going to say here. while i'm not entirely sure that there's much more in store for us, i'm going to leave it at that and let the rest unfold without too much blogging about it, as some things are better left unsaid (or unblogged, as the case may be). i would, however, like to take this opportunity to ask why the hell it is that nearly every resident of the west village decided to put their christmas trees out on the sidewalk this weekend. is this like some fucked-up neighborhood ritual or something? enlighten me, please.

it makes me a bit sad, actually. one of my favorite things about living in new york is how, at christmastime, pine trees for sale line the street. i love walking past them and inhaling and being automatically transported to memories of decorating the tree with my family in the living room of my parents' house. seeing the trees with a light blanket of snow lying on the sidewalk this weekend reminded me that it will be another year until i get to walk around and inhale memories of christmases past.

from fucking mars

2006-01-14T00:02:00.000-05:00

so. the boy (actually, i suppose "man" is really more appropriate, seeing as how he was born in the sixties) from last friday night/saturday morning texted me today. a very brief three-word text, which n and i proceeded to discuss for the next hour, which (we think) was his way of asking me how i was doing. the hour following that we composed my reply, which ended with "what's up with you?" which we all know is everyone's favorite don't-assume-i'm-interested-in-you-even-though-i-totally-am question.

that was at five o'clock today. i haven't heard a thing from him since.

i'll admit, my ego's a bit deflated. i'm also disappointed that i didn't get to debut my fabulous new undereye concealer that i bought today, but i'll survive. as for the boy, who is slowly working his way up the fivefeetofsass shit list, we'll see if i hear from him tomorrow. if not, his number is officially out of my cell phone. don't think i won't do it!

small girl, big city

2006-01-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

sarah hepola has an essay in the morning news about her first four months living in new york after moving from dallas. she's a great writer--when is someone gonna give this girl a book deal? her essay made me think about my first months living here, getting used to the pace/smell/everything of this city.

i moved here for a lot of reasons. first, and most obviously, grad school. but it was the only grad school i applied to because new york was the only place i wanted to live. i felt like i had overstayed my welcome in boston; i was tired of riding the same subway i'd been riding since i was eleven, and i felt like boston was a freakishly incestuous city, where every person i met seemingly knew someone i knew, and every guy i dated had dated one of my friends, or vice versa. bars that i frequented were now "off limits" for fear of running into an ex, certain friends of mine no longer wanted to hang out due to my having engaged in some objectionable activities when dating a mutual friend, etc. i figured that moving to new york would give me something of a blank slate. by moving, i wasn't trying to re-write my history, but i knew that staying in boston meant i'd always have to deal with it.

i also felt like people who moved to boston were people who wanted to live in a city but were too scared to move to new york, and i wanted to differentiate myself from them. and most of all, i wanted to prove to myself, and my family, that i could move to new york and make a life for myself without them being a fifteen-minute drive away.

in the end, though, i moved here because i've always loved new york. i was awestruck by its utter vastness, the frenetic pace, the zillions of people. when i would visit, i would look at people on the street with complete admiration that they could live in a city as intimidating as this one. i wanted to be one of these impressive beings who could hack it in this city. i know, i know, it's very "working girl"-esque, with melanie griffith and her humongous hair on the staten island ferry and carly simon singing let the river run and whatever, but what can i say? i wanted to be the tiny girl who conquered new york.

everyone's fair game

2006-01-08T13:04:00.000-05:00

here's a little known fact about me: in my past life, before i moved to new york, back when i was living in boston in a pre-med haze, i spent a year working at a world-renowned cancer institute doing research on tobacco. the project i was working on involved seaching through the vast respoitory of r.j. reynolds and phillip morris internal company documents. these documents had once been confidential, but one of the terms of the tobacco settlement in 1998 was that the tobacco companies make such documents available to the public. (learn something new everyday, huh?) anyway, i was researching the development of a particular cigarette brand and how it had been marketed toward blue-collar women. and in doing this research, my job was essentially to run one internet search after another in an attempt to find any and every email/release/proposal etc. that had ever been written about this particular brand. the end result of all of this? i left the job in a huff under some very questionable circumstances, but i managed to get my research published in a respected public health journal. and i also became, in my humble opinion, an internet-searching force to be reckoned with. the upshot of all of this is that when i meet someone there's a good chance i'll google-search the crap out of them, and occasionally uncover some stuff about them that they'd probably rather i didn't know. or, maybe, stuff about them i'd rather i didn't know.

every guy i've ever had the slightest bit of interest in i've googled. i can be sure i'm definitely not interested in someone when i don't have the slightest inclination to google them, i.e. new year's guy--not even the tiniest bit of desire to google him.

sometimes my googling powers even surprise me. case in point: the guy i met (and subsequently went home with) on friday night. at some point over the course of the evening, this guy tells me his mom is in congress. as in the u.s. congress. so i'm all impressed and shit and ask him what his mom's name is. here's another thing: i have an amazing talent for remembering names. i'm really fucking good at it, and i have no idea why. and since i can remember just about anyone's name, i can go home and google them. which is exactly what i did when i finally went home on saturday afternoon and began my adventures in googling. i found the guy's profile on myspace, and in reading it, i thought to myself, this little name of his on his profile sounds an awful lot like one of those handles on a nerve profile. so i google the handle, and sure enough, dude's got personal ads all over the internet. it was right around this time that i realized i was officially scaring myself and bordering on psycho stalker behavior, so i decided to cool it for a bit with the googling. a few hours later, however, i was back at it, googling his mom this time. well! turns out his mom is a republican and drafted the no child left behind act.

(let's just file that under things i'd rather i didn't know.)

bleecker street princess

2006-01-02T11:22:00.000-05:00

in true fivefeetofsass style, i showed up to a new year's party at five minutes before midnight, proceeded to get good and drunk and hook up with a guy i met there, and kicked him out of my apartment at nine in the morning for fear my new roomie would come home to discover that her new roommate is a big floozy. i tried to not think too much about that being any sort of indication as to what this new year has in store for me (can i really handle another year of drinking too much and hooking up with random guys? i think i'm getting a little old for that.) but i suppose that will be discovered in due time. in any event, i have tossed my UWS membership card and am now a proud (yet constantly lost) citizen of the darling west village. i love it here, and i think i will love it even more when i'm not perpetually wandering in circles trying to find sixth avenue in a futile attempt to re-orient myself.

how i managed to get through this fucking move

2005-12-30T23:41:00.000-05:00

that's right, biatches. oh yes. there's nothing packing up all your shit when you're wasted! makes the whole ordeal a lot more fun, even though i have no idea what's in any of these damn boxes.

gives new meaning to the "big dig"

2005-12-28T20:56:00.000-05:00

i truly believe i now know the meaning of hell: moving out of a new york city studio apartment.

(ok, ok. it's not quite as bad as the big dig; really, it doesn't even come close to what has become the most expensive public-works project in history. fine. but as a bostonian with more hometown pride than you can shake a stick at, it sure feels like it.)

we all know how much moving sucks. packing up an apartment is about as much fun as, say, waiting in line at the DMV or getting a root canal. but moving out of a regular apartment is like a fucking walk in the park compared to moving out of a studio. for one thing, moving out of a regular apartment allows for being able to push boxes that have been packed into the kitchen or living room to make room for more unpacked boxes eagerly awaiting to be crammed full of shoes and sweaters and books and other assorted shit. not so in a studio! as i write this, my studio apartment looks like some sort of u.n. care package drop site, littered with boxes of blankets and clothes and random kitchen utensils. (all joking aside, this is hardly a disaster area; i'm grateful that my biggest concern is getting this all packed up by saturday and not when FEMA is going to show up with water and supplies. i know all too well that things could be much, much worse. just had to say that.) in order for me to walk the twenty feet from my bed to my bathroom i have to jump over two boxes, my microwave, and my toaster. this does not bode well for any middle-of-the-night peeing trips to the bathroom.

i'm also at the point now where i've been packing for a good part of yesterday and today, but the more stuff i pack, the messier my apartment becomes. can anyone explain this phenomenon to me? i mean, seriously, i think it's time to get stephen hawking on the horn and figure this thing out once and for all.

another thing: in the midst of all my packing, it seems i've been channeling imelda marcos in the past year and a half. where in the world did i get so many shoes? i wear the same shoes every fucking day! i've got to put an end to this. what started out as just a big packing job has become something of an archaeological dig through my apartment, and along the way i've discovered that besides my shoe fetish i have an obscene amount of jackets, despite the fact that i honestly only need about four.

once i had crawled out from under my shoes i spent a good half an hour trying to yank apart my baker's rack. now that was fun. i managed to pull apart most of it, but i forget sometimes that being five feet tall and weighing in right around the century mark does not lend itself to having brute strength. after much pulling and swearing and fearing that i might throw my back out, i had to concede defeat and let the stupid last shelf on the baker's rack win; as hard as i tried i just couldn't tear that damn thing off.

ok. break's over, kiddos. back to the dig.

get me the f out of here

2005-12-21T23:14:00.000-05:00

fortunately for me, this mta strike hasn't been too much of an inconvience. it threw a bit of a wrench in my plans to go to boston, but that was easily remedied by a lovely round-trip amtrak ticket courtesey of my parents. and the only thing i've had to do these past few days is pack up my apartment, so it wasn't like i really needed to go anywhere. (naturally, despite the lack of public transportation, i've still done almost no packing whatsoever.) i hope that by the time i get back the strike is over and that the union has their demands met, because lord knows these people work damn hard at what is hardly an easy job. for christ's sake, give them a raise! don't screw them out of their pensions! and i'm kinda gonna need to be able to get around when i'm back in the city.

so i've done almost all of my christmas shopping and just have to pick up a few things when i'm in boston. i also ate one of my dad's presents tonight, so i'll have to get another one tomorrow before i leave. (who can resist turkish delight? certainly not me.)

this whole moving-to-the-west village thing still doesn't feel entirely real, although i'm sure it will when i get back and find myself in a packing/moving frenzy. i absolutely hate moving, and i just have to accept the fact that it's going to be a ridiculously expensive and stressful day. there's no doubt in my mind that making this move is a good thing, so at least i have that on my side. not like when i moved to new york and all i could think was "what the fuck am i doing?"

yeah, glad i won't be going through that again.

it'll break your heart, but in a good way

2005-12-20T22:16:00.000-05:00

to celebrate the MTA strike, n and i went to see the "brokeback mountain" matinee. that film is gorgeous and tragic and wrenching all at once, and when it was over we were a MESS. i'm not talking about misty eyes here, i mean honest-to-god tears running down our faces, messing up our makeup, the whole bit. it's rare that a movie gets me all worked up, but it's well worth the $10.75 admission. (apparently, matinee prices don't exist in this borough. i mean, seriously! the hell is that about?) but go see it anyway. you can thank me later.

home of the fig newton, i kid you not

2005-12-19T11:29:00.000-05:00

there are two high schools in the town where i grew up. the one on the north side is considerably larger than the one on the south side and has a more diverse student body. my high school, the one on the south side, is primarily comprised of affluent white kids with some serious entitlement issues who drive fancier cars than the teachers. (they're a lovely bunch.) in the interest of complete disclosure, however, i can't entirely exclude myself from them; after all, my parents' annual income is a nice chunk of change. and i did have a car in high school, but it was hardly fancy--who looks cool driving around in an '83 volvo wagon with no a/c and a busted stereo?

in any case, we were kids in the suburbs who hung out at dunkin donuts and were perpetually trying to find the elusive party somewhere off parker street or commonwealth avenue. but leave it to the class of 2002 to gain national recognition as a bunch of badasses: those kids made it onto the smoking gun.

go lions!

that's a wrap

2005-12-18T23:01:00.000-05:00

poor n, who has had the misfortune of listening to my constant obsessing and analysis of the z situation, informed me that z has found a new girl, someone he's actually known for a while and is jewish. and thus ends that saga. i have to admit that i was a little bummed when n told me; somewhere in the back of my head i still had a little glimmer of hope that z would eventually come around and realize that despite my shiksa status, i'm a cool girl that he'd want to date. i knew i was kidding myself thinking that, but as hard as i tried i couldn't manage to snuff it out. i suppose it's better this way, rather than if we'd engaged in some quasi-we're-not-really-dating-but-kinda thing, which only makes me even more insecure and neurotic and obsessive, if you can believe it.

so the beat goes on. i'm moving to the west village in a couple of weeks--on new year's eve, no less--and i'm hoping that my move proves to be something of new phase in my new york residency. new year, new neighborhood, new living situation: it has the makings for a good change, right? and i'm not sad about leaving my neighborhood. i'll miss the fantastic turkish deli across the street and the awesome little independent bookstore, but that's about it.

but i try to remind myself not to get too caught up in the whole "starting a new chapter thing" because really, i think it's kind of bullshit. when i made the Awful Trip to phoenix two and a half years ago, thinking that it was the beginning of the rest of my life with that boy, i really believed i was starting a new chapter. it turned out quite differently than i'd expected, and ever since then i've tried to be a little more realistic about making changes, because nothing's a given, especially when you're in your twenties. shit changes all the time, and i've had to learn to roll with the punches and make sure i go into things with a healthy amount of skepticism. i've tried to learn to be optimistic but not deluded, and skeptical without being jaded. still haven't quite managed to figure it out, though.

one-woman revolution

2005-12-08T00:14:00.000-05:00

it's the beginning of winter, and i'm already getting restless. when i was in college and we got bored (as will happen when you are in the middle of a small town in indiana) we used to come up with projects to amuse ourselves. sophomore year, my friend eden decided to take the next semester off and go to guatemala. so for fun, she and i and a few of our friends decided start a rumor that eden was actually taking the semester off because she was pregnant to see how long it took for people to start staring at her a little too long in the student union and wondering who the father was. so in that vein, i need some projects to keep me occupied for the next few month, and here are my ideas.

first: revolutionizing the vernacular
there are certain words that i absolutely love and feel are grossly underutilized. i've found that in the past my vocubulary has often been influenced by the people i hang around with; for example, i hold the hot-as-hell vegan punk i dated for three weeks in college entirely responsible for my use of the term "rad." (it's embarrassing, i know. please don't judge. he was really really hot.) maybe i'm just easily influenced by others, but i started to think that maybe if i began dropping a particular word here and there that isn't used much nowadays that perhaps my friends would start using the word too.
ok. i really like the word "foxy," because it's implies both sexiness and feisty-ness. it's a fabulous adjective that's been neglected for far too long. i'm going to make a conscious attempt to use it more frequently; we'll see how long it takes for it to catch on.

another word i love: twilight. what a fucking gorgeous word. if i could, i would totally name my kid twilight, but lord knows that kid would hate me forever. and i know what it's like to have a crazy name (thank you, hippie parents!) and i really don't think i could inflict that on one of my kids.

second: the mix tape/cd/chip
i also really want to bring back the mix tape/mix cd, but make it a cool thing to do when you're in your twenties and not seen as just a silly by-product of adolescence. in "high fidelity" john cusack's character makes mix tapes for whatever girl he's dating, and while we're meant to see it as a sweet gesture, we're also meant to think of it as slighty immature and silly. but i think it's kind of sad that we don't make them for each other like we used to, putting forth so much thought and effort into those little art projects. i had this thought when i was on the train going to boston for thanksgiving. scrolling through my ipod, i started thinking about this ridiculous boy i have a stupid crush on right now and what music i would put on a tape for him if i made one. obviously, making someone a mix tape now is just stupid, because who the hell owns a boombox anymore? so then i had the awesome idea that someone should make a little chip that you can stick in your ipod and put music on, like fifteen songs or so, that you can then give to someone else to stick in their ipod and listen to. i think this is fucking genius, and i can't wait to get a patent and pay off all my student loans.

and with any luck, six months from now everyone will be swapping their foxy mix chips, and i won't be in debt!

nakuwaza

2005-12-04T23:25:00.000-05:00

(i am thinking of you)

today marks the day eight years ago that my semester in kenya ended. after four months of living there (well, three months actually, because the first month was in zanzibar) i got on an airplane in nairobi at night and watched out the window as the twinkling lights of the city grew fainter and fainter until i couldn't see them anymore. how quickly those four months passed as i attempted to communicate in my halting swahili and wild hand gestures, suffered from one strange skin problem to another, realized that i wanted to go into medicine, and quite literally discovered a part of the world entirely different from here. it was confusing and stressful and exhilarating and frightening, and even now, i would still give almost anything to have had one more day there.

ugliest. medals. ever.

2005-12-01T00:15:00.000-05:00

i would be so fucking pissed if i won the olympics and they gave me one of these pieces of crap. they remind me of these weird necklaces my friends and i made in the eighth grade with a piece of leather and some random coins we found at a head shop. maybe it's because i'm greek or something, but there's a hole in it. no thank you, olympic committee!

i have a problem

2005-11-29T23:48:00.000-05:00

i need more friends.

to the (select) friends of mine who actually read this stupid thing: don't be offended! you are wonderful and great and i love you all. but it's a small group, and i think it would be good for me to try to expand the circle a bit. and i'm sure they're all a bit tired of my relentless boy-griping and over-analysis, i.e. "ok, so then? at the end of the email? he wrote, 'take it easy.' what the hell does that mean? i hate 'take it easy.' i feel like 'take it easy' really means 'go fuck yourself.' right?"

so here's the problem: how the hell does someone make new friends in new york?

ok. we live in a city of, like, a gazillion people. i could google the actual number, but whatever. so given that we're surrounded by people all the time, and that, really, the only time most of us are truly alone is when we're in the shower or on the toilet, meeting people shouldn't be so hard, right? but it is, at least for me.

i had something of a shyness problem when i was younger. it took me a while to overcome it, and despite my ability to make friends pretty easily now, i still sometimes catch myself feeling, well, really shy. and it's true, making friends was easier in boston. it's smaller, i knew the place well, i knew which bars to go to, and i had a fairly large extended network of friends and acquaintances. and i had my sister, who seemingly knew everyone under the age of 25 in the city.

an obvious way to make new friends is through pre-existing friends. and my friends' friends are cool, but i feel sometimes like i'm encroaching on what's theirs. like, they're not really my friends, i'm kind of borrowing them. so i think it's high time i struck out on my own, but i have no idea where to begin.

another obvious way to meet new people is to join a team of some sort, but the problem is that i hate sports. no, i despise them. i've toyed with the idea of going to a "drinking liberally" meet-up sometime, but i'm not sure that getting wasted is really the best way to make new friends, even if we all hate the president. also, i have a tendency to act like an ass when i get wasted, as evidenced here.

basically, i need a hobby. preferably a hobby that involves other people, because lord knows that as much as i love writing, it's pretty damn solitary.

maybe i'll create a big intramural writing team. we could have write-offs!

a few things

2005-11-21T22:53:00.000-05:00

i have, maybe, perhaps, managed to patch things up after the debauchery i vaguely explained in the previous post. while i'm not sure that said person will want to date me after the way i acted, the fact of the matter is that it was never really in the cards for us in the first place. and in a strange way, i guess i'm ok with that. for now, at least. ask me tomorrow and i may dissolve into tears, who knows.

i did learn a few important lessons this weekend:

1. i am not 23 anymore. try as i might, i am a real live adult now. it's time for me to stop trying to live the life i wish i'd had at that age, when i was otherwise occupied with organic chem and physics and all things post bac pre-med. those days are over and i'm not getting them back, and pretending to be 23 when you're actually 28 really isn't so great when all is said and done.

2. time cafe sucks. seriously, don't ever eat there. and if you do, don't say i didn't warn you.

3. once you've hit the bottom, the only place to go is up. once you completely feel like absolute and utter shit, you can only start to feel better sooner or later. i realized that in a fleeting moment of clarity on the subway this morning. i kinda looked at the day and said, "ok, day, hit me with everything you've got, because i couldn't possibly feel any crappier today than i did last night."

and wouldn't you know, today i started to feel better.

z, i'm sorry

2005-11-19T09:25:00.000-05:00

i fucked up. two weeks ago, i did something really stupid when i was wasted, and now i owe someone a ginormous apology. granted, i fucked up in part because this person had already sort of fucked up too, which kinda fucked me up, so i was very confused and nervous upon seeing this person and proceeded to get quite inebriated and act like an ass. not that that's an excuse. i freaked out, got drunk, was an asshole. the end.

sometimes, there are mistakes we make that we simply cannot undo or make right. i don't think that this was one of those kinds of mistakes, but it's not really up to me to make that decision.

time and time again i've had to learn this lesson the hard way. it occurs with less frequency than it used to, which is good, i suppose. but it kind of sucks even more now, because i'm old enough to know better.

shiksa goddess

2005-11-18T16:24:00.000-05:00

in the town where i grew up, i was one of the few non-jews. in my town we had days off from school on jewish holidays, and my poor father spent nearly every weekend while i was in junior high shuttling me from one bar mitzvah to another. my mother, who is half-jewish, and my father, who is greek orthodox, were never big on the whole "organized religion" thing and decided that they would leave it up to my sister and i to decide for ourselves what, if any, kind of spritual life we wanted. the extent of our religiousness was a christmas tree on christmas, egg hunts on easter, very lax celebrations of orthodox easter, and the occasional passover seder.

while i was in junior high and bouncing around from one bar or bat mitzvah to another, i started to get annoyed: why did all of my friends get to have these big extravagant parties but not me? i implored my family to get in touch with our jewish background, hopefully before the end of eighth grade so i could have a bat mitzvah too, but my family wasn't interested. my mother said it reminded her of when her sister desperately pleaded with my grandparents to let her have a debutante ball. her family lived in connecticut--clearly, this was not happening. but i resented the comparison. i wanted to be a jew.

recently i've met someone who i like very much. it's rare that i meet a guy with whom i can laugh and talk about politics and also dance idiotically. but there's a problem--i'm not jewish, and he doesn't want to date someone who isn't. so here i am again, just like i was in seventh grade, all frustrated over missing out on what i could have had if i was one of god's chosen people.

those friendster bastards are at it again

2005-11-05T01:49:00.000-05:00

i was shocked (and panicked) to have recently discovered that friendster had completely blown my cover as a stalker of my ex-boyfriends/hookups. right away i changed my settings so as to view others' profiles anonymously so that said ex-boyfriends/hookups would NOT know that i am far too interested in who they're currently dating/hooking up with. i was also able to see the choice individuals who had looked at my profile, and was then able to look at their profiles to see if they were total freaks without them knowing i had done so.

apparently, friendster is onto me. those bastards have decided that if i'm too chickenshit to let other people see that i've looked at their profile, then i shouldn't have the luxury of seeing who's viewed my profile. damn you and your evil ways, friendster! don't you know that the advent of the internet has allowed us to see who the people who once took our hearts and smushed them through the meat grinder are currently fucking? don't you understand how crucial this is to the art of procrastination? don't you realize that, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we are the stalker generation, and that you are completely disallowing us to do what is so rightfully ours as a generation of pissed-off, disillusioned, over-educated, over-stimulated, dumb-job-holding, stella artois-drinking bunch of twenty somethings?

i mean, seriously? there's no justice in this world.

occupational hazards

2005-10-20T23:37:00.000-04:00

being a pediatric nurse practitioner student, as i am, i've come to realize that there are a number of occupational hazards i need to be aware of. there are the general run-of-the-mill hazards that come with the territory: getting barfed/peed/pooped on, sticking yourself with a needle, little kids sneezing directly into your face, etc. lovely stuff. but then there's a whole other type of occupational hazard that doesn't take place in the hospital or clinic: people asking you for medical advice.

i like it when people ask me for medical advice. granted, most of the time i have no idea what i'm talking about, but it's nice to feel like i can solve my friends' mysterious rashes and fainting episodes. last week, when my friend chris asked me about something that happened to his friend that i was quite sure was an absence seizure, chris exclaimed, "it's like you can do magic tricks!" which is kind how i think of it, too.

but then there are times when people ask for medical advice and something is seriously wrong. case in point:

i met a cute guy when i went to the beer gardens in astoria this summer. his name was B, and i wrote about our little makeout session here. i told him i was an n.p. student, and over the course of our conversation and footsie-playing he mentioned that he had recently developed a strange rash that kind of hurt. ok, this was the first red flag. most rashes don't hurt. some itch, some don't, but very few actually hurt. but i was feeling bold and was pretty wasted and offered to take a look at his rash, although i wasn't all that interested in the rash and really just wanted to see this hot guy's torso. so B stood up, lifted his shirt (revealing a ridiculously toned abdomen, mind you), and as my nurse friends and i watched in utter horror, showed us a rash in a line that stretched from the side of his back to just below his nipple.

motherfucker.

we knew exactly what we were looking at, and there was no mistaking it: this guy had shingles.

i asked him a little about what was going on. was he in any way immunocompromised? yes, he'd had his spleen removed when he was a child. was he stressed out? yes, he was planning his wedding and had just had a huge fight with his fiancee.

for the sweet love of christ, i had just met the textbook case of shingles at the fucking beer gardens. what the hell was i supposed to say to this guy?

i told B that it was probably nothing but that he should see his doctor in the next few days to rule out shingles. my friends looked at me, nodding. yes, that's right. "rule out" shingles.

of course, there is a certain benefit to being able to recognize people's ailments. shingles, fortunately, is not contagious, so while i couldn't bring myself to tell B the true nature of his rash, i felt no reservations whatsoever about making out with him outside the beer gardens.

edit: i'm a moron. much to my surprise, i found out two days ago that shingles is, in fact, quite contagious. score one for this brilliant n.p. student!

lather for 30 seconds

2005-10-18T22:55:00.000-04:00

here's what i did today: i learned how to wash my hands for the 8743772323982347th time. no, really. that's what hospital orientations are all about: don't talk about your patients with other people, wash your fucking hands, pull the damn fire alarm if there's a fire, don't hit on your co-workers. not exactly rocket science, people.

in other exciting news, i am beyond thrilled at the possibility that karl rove might get indicted. and what better way to celebrate the shit finally hitting the fan for karl and scooter and cheney than playing indictment bingo!

my pups

2005-10-17T22:07:00.000-04:00

i mean, seriously. how cute are they? that's cammie on the left and toby on the right. they cuddled like this all the time. and nobody posed them for this picture, i swear.

the long ride home

2005-10-17T15:41:00.000-04:00

(patty griffin)

there's a woman who sometimes plays her guitar and sings on the subway platform at 96th street. she's really quite good, and she's got a weathered face and this absolutely incredible voice, the kind of voice that sounds like it belongs to someone who's spent too much time in dark smoky bars and lived a life that's been a little rough around the edges. i hadn't seen her in a while--until today, when i got off the train at 72nd street, and there she was, playing one of my favorite patty griffin songs. i've heard her play that song when i've been waiting for the subway at 96th, and everytime i hear her sing it i feel like something's digging inside me.

macs hate me

2005-10-06T16:35:00.000-04:00

the poor 'puter is back in the shop AGAIN. meaning i won't be posting much in the next week or so until the mac gods decide to grace me with a computer that does not completely freak out every three months. i'm posting from school right now, which is kinda weirding me out.

regularly unscheduled blogging will resume soon, i promise!

so much for stalking

2005-09-30T14:04:00.000-04:00

i went to my friendster homepage today, and to my utter horror, discovered that there is button you can click to see the last 100 people who viewed your profile. people, this is BAD!!! now all my exes will know that i stalk them obsessively via friendster! shit shit shit! there is no justice in this world!

on the other hand, it was kinda fun to scroll through the last 100 people who viewed my profile. i suppose that just as my secret identity as an ex-boyfriend stalker has now been blown, any guy who is secretly stalking me will have is cover blown as well. that's assuming such a guy even exists... which is doubtful.

edit: i went back to friendster and realized there's a way to change your settings so that you can view profiles anonymously. this still means that all the boys i've been stalking over the past couple of weeks (here's lookin' at you, z) will see that i've looked at their profile, at least i don't have to stop the friendster stalking cold turkey. that was a close one!

dispatches from the homefront

2005-09-29T17:11:00.000-04:00

my mom tells me that toby (my parents' other dog; cammie was his sister from a different litter) is doing well. he's been a bit subdued lately, but still very affectionate and happy-seeming. you'd be quite amazed at how much information there is on the internet about how dogs grieve: a quick google search on "dog bereavement" reveals thousands of hits.

toby is a fairly even-keeled dog, minus his extreme fear of thunder and plastic and paper bags. at six years old he still resembles a puppy in that he has yet to grow into his large paws. while i'm aware that dogs have rather limited brain activity, i wonder how aware he is that cammie is gone. the two of them had a relationship much like human siblings: they played together, fought over toys, and cuddled. one time, i let them out in the yard to play and they ran through the yard and behind the garage. when they still hadn't come out from behind the garage after a couple of minutes, i poked my head out the door and heard some faint dog cries. i went behind the garage, and there was toby, whimpering, standing on three legs with one bloody paw in the air that he had hit on a large stone. next to him, cammie whimpered in solidarity with her older brother. toby seemed unable to walk (or else he just didn't want to), so i scooped up all fifty some-odd pounds of him (bear in mind that he weighs about half of what i weigh) and carried him into the house with cammie running next to me, anxiously looking up at her wounded brother.

it seems that my parents are taking cammie's death harder than toby is. on the phone, my mother's voice sounds tired and sad, my father's weary. it's no coincidence that they decided to get the dogs right around the time that my sister left for college, leaving them without any children in the house. they're not planning on getting another dog, but i know they miss cammie terribly. they want me to come home in a couple of weeks to bury cammie's ashes in our backyard, which is already something of a pet cemetary that over the years has been the site of solemn funerals for our dog lucy and countless goldfish and hamsters.

bye-bye, woof woof

2005-09-27T17:25:00.000-04:00

my dog cammie died this morning. when i looked at my phone during class and saw that i had four missed calls--mom, dad, sis, mom--i knew that something had happened to cam. so i called my sister, who told me that cammie had died around 10. she was lying down in the bathroom as my dad shaved, which she did every morning, and when he was done he went to pat her and realized she had stopped breathing. and that was it.

i had this odd feeling of relief when i found out. cammie was diagnosed with congestive heart failure a year ago, and over the past year we watched her decline fairly quickly. she had decompensated a lot in the past couple of weeks, and i was beginning to wonder if my family and i would have to start thinking about putting her down. and this was a conversation i absolutely did not want to have. so in a weird way it was kind of good that she died the way she did, quickly and painlessly, without us having to make a decision about what was best for her.

the last time i saw her was last weekend when i went to boston to see my family for the weekend. when i left my parents house i gave her a lot of hugs and pats and told her i might not see her again. it was nice to have been able to do that.

anyway. she was a sweet little dog who barely left my side when i was home over the summer recovering from surgery. i'll miss her.

ashes 'round the yard

2005-09-26T23:42:00.000-04:00

i was walking through the upper west side today when a bus suddenly rounded the corner right up next to a guy on a bike. and without even thinking about it, i exclaimed "oh my god," covered my eyes, and looked away. standing there in the middle of amsterdam ave. at 73rd, watching this series of events transpire, i was no longer seeing what was in front of me and instead suddenly envisioned jess on her bike, on a rural road in wisconsin, getting hit from behind, on the last bike ride of her life.

the guy on the bike narrowly missed getting hit by the bus, but he was fine. i, on the other hand, couldn't shake the image of jess getting hit by a car while riding her bike for the rest of the day.

because it's never too early

2005-09-25T19:12:00.000-04:00

i'm already thinking about possible halloween costumes. as always, it's important to remember that i live in nyc, and by the time halloween rolls around, it's pretty fucking cold in these parts. ideally, the costume is clever, inexpensive, a bit sexy, and won't give me hypothermia. here are my ideas thus far:

1. margot tenenbaum. for the past three halloweens i've really really wanted to go as margo, but didn't get around to planning until it was like, two days before, and i've always had to ditch the idea last-minute and go with something easier.
pros: cute and clever. also, i won't have to worry about freezing because i get to wear a gigantic coat.
cons: blonde hair.

2. madonna circa 1984-ish. remember when madonna had baby fat and sang lucky star and wore shitloads of lace and fake pearls and heels with socks? that's what i'm talkin' about!
pros: like margot, totally cute and clever.
cons: freezing my ass off.

3. jennifer beals circa flashdance. this one is the easiest--cut up a gray swatshirt, get some red heels, and voila!
pros: ridiculously easy, kinda sexy.
cons: again, freezing my ass off.

time to get over it

2005-09-21T00:09:00.000-04:00

ever since i decided not to apply to medical school i've felt a tiny bit sad, in the way way back part of my mind. in truth, there were two things that really appealed to me about going to medical school: 1. having the prestige that goes along with being able to say "i'm in med school" and "i'm a doctor" and 2. getting to dissect a cadaver. seriously, i think dissecting a cadaver would be frickin' awesome, and i feel like i've missed out.

but the status/prestige thing is hard to accept sometimes. i work really hard at being a good PNP, but i know that i'll never be regarded in quite the same esteem that one regards a doctor. and i could go on about the studies that have been published that say a patient recieves just as good, if not better, primary care from an NP than he or she would from a doctor, but there is this constant feeling i have of not being good enough or smart enough that i really struggle with. i remind myself time and time again of the enormous sacrifies i would have made if i'd decided to go to med school, and i know that med school and residency would have probably resulted in me losing whatever confidence i have in my abilities to hack it in the world of medicine, but still...

anyway. i'll get over it eventually, once i really stop giving a shit about what everyone else thinks.

holy fucking shit

2005-09-10T00:46:00.000-04:00

zadie smith's new book has been shortlisted for the booker prize. zadie is twenty fucking nine and has already written a bestselling novel. i feel horrifically inferior.

2005-08-23T22:46:00.000-04:00

logan is an old pal of mine from boston. i met him through my friend amy, who was also my t.a. for organic chem, and logan's roommate. it was a weird time for both of us: i was really struggling with trying to decide whether or not i was cut out for med school, and logan, who had been a bike messenger for a few years, was getting antsy about doing something else. we were friends for a while, but we lost touch.

but thanks to the wonder of friendster, i managed to track him down. he races bikes now and keeps a videoblog, and one night i came upon this particular entry that really struck a chord with me. it reminded me so much of my life in boston: not really knowing exactly what the night has in store, going from one bar to another (foley's to delux! two of my favorites!), lots of noise and people and confusion and excitement. and then waking up the next day to a peaceful, brilliant, blindingly sunny day, an amazing juxtaposition with the craziness of the night before.

watch it here

i knew it

2005-08-14T17:09:00.000-04:00

so my good buddy r from college called me a few days ago and was like, you need to call e right now because she has big news. e is our good friend from college who has been dating our good friend k (also from college) off and on for ten years. and being that we are at the age when people do these things that i find utterly baffling, like getting married and shit, i'm thinking e's either engaged or pregnant, or both.

i called e, left a message being like, you have to call me and tell me the big news, tried her a couple of times more, and when i r called me today i was like, dude, i don't know what's up with e but she hasn't called me back, so you have to tell me. r didn't need much convincing and divulged that after ten years of near-constant bickering and great love, with a three-year break-up in the middle, these two are engaged and planning to get married in a few months.

it took less than a minute for me to turn the news of my friends' engagement into a crisis about my dating life. imagine that!

now don't get me wrong: i think this is great. these two people are maddening and loving and funny and smart and struggle to do better and are constantly awe-inspiring. and while i'm thrilled for them, this means i will have to go to a wedding in a few months, and i'm already envisioning perpetually single me in a sea of couples at the damn thing. so! i am going to need a date in a huge way. like, a really hot date. preferably one with a good job who can hold a conversation and who will not get wasted and throw up in a garbage can. it would also be an added bonus if he was a good dancer, but i realize that's asking a lot. this list of demands is already far too long!

my fourth 25th birthday

2005-08-13T08:21:00.000-04:00

today is my birthday. i am twenty-eight years old. and this morning i woke up with two gigantic zits on my face. um, excuse me, but what the fuck? i'm not fifteen, dammit!

so why the hell am i up so early on the one day of the year you are allowed to sleep in as late as you want and no one can give you shit? good question. today is my grandfather's 90th birthday party, so in a little while the fam is heading out to CT for the party. which is going to be in a park outside. in august. who the hell plans a birthday party for a ninety year-old man outside in the hottest part of the summer? my lovely aunt. let's just say that the family dynamics of my extended family will be in full effect today, no doubt.

i think i might have to change the sub-heading to this blog... being twenty-eight no longer qualifies be as being in my "mid-twenties," right?

at least i'm still getting carded!

so nice, yet so not

2005-08-07T02:33:00.000-04:00

so tonight was my quasi-"birthday party," except i told everyone i was turning twenty-five, and my birthday isn't until a week from today. went to the mets-cubs game at shea, cheered for the cubs even though nomar didn't play and lee struck out in the eighth. afterwards we went to d's, where everyone suprised me with cupcakes and a nice card, and then we were off to the beer gardens.

ok, ok. i'm a nice girl, really. but there was this guy there tonight, he was nice and cute and smart, and then it turned out he was engaged. actually, his friend "outed" him to me and was like, you know he's engaged, right? and i'm all, fine, whatever, guess this guy's off the market. but then he starts telling me that had had a big fight with his gf/fiancee today, totally played footsie with me, told me he was really doubting this engagement/marriage thing. my advice: don't get freaking married yet, dude! anyhow, when it was time to go, he followed me outside the the beer gardens and around the corner where there was some semblance of privacy, and proceeded to totally make out with me. against a stone wall. it was hot, people. i mean, sometimes you just have to go with it. after all, i'm not the who's engaged here. i don't condone the guy's behavior, but is it my job to say no? he should know better, right?

anyway. when he asked about going home with me, i told him that wasn't going to happen. and then he explained that the "problem" was that i couldn't go home with him because he lives with his fiancee. total douchebag, right? too bad he was so fucking hot.

everybody has one

2005-08-05T18:22:00.000-04:00

my friend k who i used to work with coined the term "LOML." it's pronounced like "lah-mul," and it stands for that much-used phrase "love of my life." nearly everyone has a LOML. you can be in a serious relationship with someone, but that person may not be your LOML. the LOML is usually the one who stole your heart when you weren't looking, the one who got away, the one who you loved and loved you back but lied to you anyway, the one when the timing just wasn't right.

B is my LOML, and i just had yet another fucking dream about him. (not a fucking dream, a talking dream. pervs.) anyway, i haven't seen this guy in three years, but i think about him a hell of a lot. part of it is because he lives in brooklyn and works in midtown, and whenever i find myself navigating through the times square subway station during the evening rush hour i'm filled with a feeling of both complete dread and utter excitement at the possibility that i could run into him. is it any wonder that i almost never leave my apartment without at least a little bit of makeup on? new york is a big city, but it's not that big.

thinking about the LOML makes you want to listen to ben harper or elliott smith or ani, music that makes you feel even shittier. one time, in the midst of my B drama, my friend ras came into my room when i was lying on my bed with the lights off listening to "another lonely day" by ben harper. "oh, like this is going to help," he said.

the last time i saw B was a few new yearses ago. b and i had gone to college together but hadn't spoken since we had graduated. i went down to the city in the south where he was living at the time with his two best friends from college for a big party they were having at their loft. in fact, b didn't even invite me to the party, his best friend did. i went down there with no intention of anything happening between us. my mission on this trip was to have a Big Talk with him, the one we should have had years ago, where we both would acknowledge that our relationship and friendship had been important and that we were sorry that it ended up as bad it did. we had that conversation the first night i was there at a bar over heinekens, and i'll be dammed if my plane ticket didn't just pay for itself right then and there. b finally said what i had wanted him to say for so long, but had resigned myself to the fact that i would probably never hear it. but he said it: "i'm sorry." what a phrase! we say it all the time, we throw it around like it barely has any meaning, but hearing him say that finally gave me some peace. and we both slept alone that night, him in his bed and me on the couch in the living room, and i wasn't sad.

but the next night was new year's eve, and there were almost a hundred people in their loft, and we were drinking champagne, and b and i were being silly and kissed at midnight... and i think we all know where these things go. but the following day, b reverted to the college version of himself, barely speaking to me or even looking at me. when he apologized the day after that, which was also the day i was leaving, he said "what does this mean for us? what's going to happen with us?" while i wanted to tell him how pissed i was that he had been such a jerk to me, i didn't want to get into the same fight we'd always had. so i said that what had happened between us couldn't really mean anything: i lived in boston, he lived in the south. b offered that he might move to new york, but i didn't think that small possibility was enough to go on. so we tried to be friends for a while after that and called each other, but eventually he stopped calling.

b did move to new york a year later. he has a serious girlfriend now, which is actually fine with me. after the new years weekend, i realized that i still loved him a lot but that ultimately we would not be the person who would make the other happy for the rest of our lives. but i still scan the masses of people when i make my way through the times square station, wondering if he might be among them. those LOMLs are hard to shake, aren't they?

but anyway. tomorrow i am celebrating my birthday a week early with some buddies, going to the mets-cubs game and then to the beer gardens in astoria. and wednesday: boston!

here's your fucking update, m

2005-08-02T23:50:00.000-04:00

went out for sushi (and beer, followed by another beer, followed by a margarita) with m tonight, who ragged on me for not updating this thing. and in the midst of our conversation, m posed an interesting question: should he read the blog of the girl he is kinda seeing? good question! i'm sure m is not the first person to be in this situation.

which made me wonder: do blogs destroy our anonymity? two of my pals (m and n, hi!) read this blog, and they both know that andy is, in fact, not a name i go by. years and years ago (we're talking early reagan administration here, people) andy was my nickname, but no one calls me that anymore. i decided to use it as my blog pseudonym so that, in the rare chance that someone i know happened to stumble upon this damn thing, they wouldn't realize that andy was, in fact, me, unless they read the whole thing. which is highly doubtful.

so i told m i would read it and let him know if it was a-ok for him to read it. and it was fine, and she had nice things to say about m. which was good, because how much would it suck if a friend asked you to preview his/her significant other's blog and all they had to say about your friend was mean and nasty, and you had to say to your friend, "um, i think you might not want to read that blog" and things were all weird and awkward?

i was supposed to have dinner with n and her friends tonight, but i backed out at the last minute because i really didn't think i had it in me to go to a celebratory dinner for n's friend who just got engaged. which i really fucking immature, i know. i wanted to go, i wanted to have fun, but the thought of seeing yet another ring and trying to act happy was too much for me. lame excuse, i know, but i couldn't. in all honesty, it's the damn timing: i'm turning 28 in less than two weeks, and this i'm-still-single-i'm-going-to-collect-cats-for-the-rest-of-my-life freak out is right on schedule. it's like fucking clockwork. i have this freak-out before every birthday, half-birthday, christmas and thanksgiving. just like getting my period, but without having to throw out the sacrificial pair of undies and buy tampons.

holy crap

2005-07-23T17:10:00.000-04:00

i passed the fucking test! had to shell out $7.95 to get my results on the web, but damn, i feel like a new woman! the past two days i've been walking around feeling like shit, unable to be cheered up by anything. and everyone who's taken the test says they were convinced that they had failed, but i was sure i had. i was convinced i was going to be the one girl who thought she failed and then actually DID fail. but no! what a freaking relief. so i took myself out to pinky for a mani/pedi to celebrate, and let me tell you, my feet have never looked better. awesome!

around 1 o'clock today i logged into my nclex account to see if my test results had posted, and they had. so i grabbed my snoopy stuffed animal and held him in my lap, and covered my eyes with his arm as i checked the results. yeah, i know, i'm six years old. but lord am i glad that ordeal is behind me.

ok. now i get to write my fifteen-page health policy paper! yessss!

it's over...

2005-07-21T15:55:00.000-04:00

...for now.

the test SUCKED. two hundred and sixteen fucking questions. i was losing my mind. at one point i actually crossed myself. me, who has never even been to church. i kid you not.

i may be able to find out tomorrow whether or not i passed. they say you can find out 48 hours after the test, but i know that some people have gotten their results earlier. thinking about that kinda makes me want to vomit.

thank god the people at the test center were so nice. this one lady who proctored the exam talked to me before i went back in, when i was feeling really shitty, and it was so reassuring to have this nice woman tell me i was going to be ok. "just try your best," she said. "don't get discouraged." she was soft-spoken and so kind, i wanted to hug her. instead, my eyes filled with tears. "are you going to be ok?" she asked me. "yeah, "i'm ok," i said.

so i went in, kept answering one impossible question after another, and finally the test stopped at 216. i profusely thanked judith, the woman who proctored the exam, on my way out.

i need a margarita.

you're not hallucinating

2005-07-20T18:37:00.000-04:00

yeah, i changed the title. seemed more fitting than "a small girl in the big city."

test is tomorrow. i feel like i'm going to barf. also doesn't help that i had a coffee AND a frappuccino at starbucks today--now i'm nauseous and jittery. gross.

no more illegal downloading

2005-07-20T00:03:00.000-04:00

the big test is thursday morning, and everytime i think about it i get a humongous knot in my stomach. sissy is coming down from boston that afternoon, which means that i won't be able to take a nap post-test because my apartment is a complete mess and not in any shape for visitors, even if the visitor is my sister.

after class today went to the apple store yet again to get my 'puter fixed. second time in a year this thing has flipped out on me, but man, the apple store is crazy. i may have said this before, but my god, that place is crawling with hot guys. i mean, holy crap, it's out of control. who knew male mac users were so fucking hot? certainly not me. anyway, 'puter seems better now, not freaking out anymore. it seems that i had downloaded some shitty files and been negligent in updating my software. but really, there's nothing like sitting next to a hot guy to take your mind off your really f-ed up computer.

put your gloves on and wave

2005-07-11T23:57:00.000-04:00

(the halifax pier)

i had a bit of a meltdown in the library today. between the stress of preparing for the nclex, trying to get all the stupid work done for classes, and being in a really dumb fight with my sister, i just couldn't take it. and on top of that, i found out yesterday that jess died last week.

ok. let's back up a second. jess was someone i knew i college, but she wasn't exactly my friend. i suppose it's more fitting to say we were "friendly" rather than friends. she was a year ahead of me and good friends with many of my good friends. she was kind of shy, a little reserved, but always very friendly. and i hadn't thought of her in ages until i was checking out the e.c. website and i saw her obituary. i was like, obituary? for jess? what the fuck? she was riding her bike, was hit by a car from behind, and died three days later.

i didn't know her very well, but something that happens when you go to a college with 1,000 people is that you feel like you know everyone. maybe it's particular to earlham, but being stuck in the middle of indiana with a handful of other people does lend itself to creating a family of sorts.

there were a lot of things that sucked in college, but when i was there i felt safe and shielded from the crappy stuff that happens in life. i'd like to think we carry a special earlham shield with us after we leave that continues to protect us from the crappy stuff of adult life and the outside world, but this is a reminder that that shield is gone. actually, it probably never existed in the first place; we were really just a bunch of lucky, self-involved kids in college who managed to dodge the bad things in life, at least for a little while.

ok. night-night.

lattes and fingernails

2005-07-10T15:18:00.000-04:00

yesterday i was studying in starbucks, and there was a man clipping his fingernails. and i'm not talking about just one pesky hangnail or whatever, i mean ALL of his fingernails. now, i am all for nice trimmed nails, but come on! there's a time and a place for nail-trimming, and it sure as hell isn't in starbucks when i'm trying to read about pediatric hypertension medications and drinking my ridiculously overpriced latte. ugh, so nasty.

hung out with m last night in a shady area of midtown. the grand finale of the night was a coors light at holland's, quite possibly the diviest dive bar i've been to since i left indiana. like any good dive bar, there were a bunch of middle-aged men sitting around talking about the politics, and according to one of these guys, the chinese are taking over the u.s. government. (this is after one guy said that the only reason chinese people move to the u.s. is so that they could open chinese restaurants. riiiight.) well! this is news to me! i am clearly missing the important articles in the times.

ugh. my stress level is alarmingly high. must stop blogging. must do work.

the jig is up!

2005-07-05T18:45:00.000-04:00

so i've mentioned to a few people that i have a blog. i always get the same reaction: the incredulous "you have a blog?" and then, "why?"

granted, i'm not discussing any matters of great importance, but here's a bit of background on why i write this damn thing:

i was an english major in college. i've always enjoyed writing, and for a short while actually considered pursuing writing as a career, but decided that i was far too lazy and undisciplined to do it. also, i figured i'd be frustrated and burnt-out by the time i was thirty-five or so, and that's no good. but i still like to write, as it's a nice creative outlet for me and a bit of a break from all the science i cram into my head on a daily basis. i think of this blog mostly as a way to exercise the writing muscles in my brain, the creative part that so rarely gets used anymore. and while keeping a blog is similar to having a journal, knowing that there's a possibility that someone might actually read this pushes me to be a better writer, and to update it, in the small chance that someone who stumbles upon my blog might actually check back to see if i've posted about any recent misadventures. because i have oh so many!

girl you know it's true

2005-07-05T17:04:00.000-04:00

when i was at the beach on saturday, k and r and i started talking about what we want in a guy (w, being a guy, found this conversation quite amusing). anyway, after going through the usual criteria (tall, funny, smart, blah blah blah) we started talking about who we wouldn't date. while there may be a few exceptions, here's a partial list:

short guys (sorry, fellas)
doctors (pediatricians, family docs, internal medicine ok; specialists NOT ok)
guys in finance
guys in real estate
actors
musicians
drug dealers (obviously)

(a side note: if you are a girl in nyc, specifically manhattan, you know that going by this list basically narrows the field down to like, twelve guys. i mean, seriously, who's left?)

the whole "i want a guy who's funny" thing, while sounding like a total cliche, is actually really true. when i think about it, none of the guys i've ever dated have ever made me really laugh. mostly i've just laughed because i thought i should laugh, because i could tell that they thought they were saying something funny. it's not that these guys didn't have a sense of humor, they just didn't have MY sense of humor. case in point: on my last date with j, he was telling me some seemingly "hilarious" story, and i was trying so hard to pretend like i thought it was funny too, when really i was like, "this is the dumbest story ever." there are a few guys i know who truly make me laugh, like laugh uncontrollably until my stomach hurts and i have tears in my eyes. the select few: j, n, d. all of whom are huge potheads, 24, and while i love them dearly, i could never, ever date them. sigh.

we are f-ed

2005-07-05T00:17:00.000-04:00

oh man, this is bad. it's possible that sometime this week the president will announce who he has chosen to appoint to the supreme court. whoever, it is, i can't imagine it's going to be good. our president is further to the right than any president in history, and has made it entirely clear that social justice is not on the top of his priority list. it's been said that he's looking to appoint a justice similar to scalia or thomas, two men who are not exactly on the fivefeetofsass hit parade.

goodbye, civil liberties! goodbye, reproductive rights! goodbye, affirmative action! it's been nice knowing you. hopefully we'll meet again someday.

vanity hurts like a mother

2005-07-01T00:12:00.000-04:00

ok. has anyone else seen the new ad on tv for coke with g. love and special sauce? oh my god. just TERRIBLE. something about wanting to have a coke and chill for a while. i just looooved g. love when i was in high school. he was from philly, he was tall and handsome and had that sexy voice, and that photo of him on the cover of their big album was just soooo hot. i mean, shit, we really liked him! that was like THE cool cd to have! and now he's doing ads for coke. talk about a step down.

on saturday i'm going to the beach with k and r. w is coming, too, and bringing a bunch of his buddies. at first i was like, no way am i going to parade around in my little two-piece in front of w, i mean, he's a jerk AND knows what i look like naked! and wearing a little two-piece is like, really almost naked! but then i reconsidered and decided to go. last night i paraded around in my bikini which i haven't worn since the Awful Late Summer Trip two years ago, but it still looks good, and i actually thought i looked kind of cute in it. anyway, since i knew i was going to be busting out the little bikini on saturday, that meant that today i had to get the inagural bikini wax of summer 2005. (need a day or so for the redness and generally angry-chach look to subside.) em recommended a place to me on 77th and broadway, so i took myself there early this afternoon. this was by FAR the most i've ever had taken off, and oh my god did it hurt like none other. it was also the best wax i've probably ever had--she was really thorough--but damn that shit hurts.

hung out with n the rest of the day, went on a bit of a shopping extravaganza. lovely. tomorrow: buy a beach towel!

oh jeez

2005-06-26T03:21:00.000-04:00

tonight i went out with m and l and b. ok, so m is my friend who i've known for quite some time. strictly platonic, people! a couple of months ago m had a party at his apartment where i met l (girl) and b (guy) who are his best friends from high school. b is cute, smart, and funny, and says "douchebag" in front of me, which is always a good sign in my book. b tries to get me to do a shot of hot sex. more banter. i refuse. b leaves. later, i tell m that i think b is cute and that we should try to arrange some sort of "outing" with him and l so i can hang out with him without seeming too obvious. in the meantime, m informs me that b is single, looking, and has a propensity toward dating asian girls. i start planning.
so! tonight's the big night. i try on every single thing i own. i meet m, we trek down to union square where we meet l and b at a korean place. b looks cute. i am psyched. ok, so we have dinner, blah blah blah, b and i talk about our shared love of the crunchy rice at the bottom of a bowl of bibimbop, whatever. we move on to a bar. there is a lot of alcohol consumed. kissing, boobs and asses are discussed. more alcohol is consumed. b pays. we leave.
onto the next bar! outside, b comes up to me and rubs my ear. i want to take him right there on the sidewalk. once we're inside the bar, b corners me and asks me about m's relationship with my sister. he further presses me about my few days back in college when i tried to be a cokehead. b and i discuss our respective dry spells. we drink a lot. later, b starts telling me and l and m about this book he is reading (for the second time) called "girls come first" about how to give a girl the most amazing orgasm. he looks at me and says something about going down on a girl, rubbing coke on her clit and making her come. i say that i really need a cigarette. b grins. i bury myself in my vodka tonic.
eventually, b leaves. something about having to go on a run tomorrow morning. i contemplate running after him to plant a big fat one on him but decide against it. more alcohol, please! i am all hot and bothered, going home by myself, AGAIN.

and it's not even noon yet!

2005-06-25T11:07:00.000-04:00

lately i've been sleeping late. as in until three, four, and even five o'clock. i joke that i think that i have mono again, but i know that it's more because i'm not quite right in the head. i have these little spells where i have trouble getting out of bed, but they usually pass after a week or so. and this morning it was as though that cloud of somnolence passed. i was up at 8:30, and went to starbucks to study for my pharm midterm on monday. on my way out of my apartment i remembered that i needed to pay my credit card bill, but then i couldn't find any stamps. so i stuffed it in my backpack and made a mental note to buy some stamps when i was finished studying and put the damn thing in tha mail. as i was heading out of my building, i asked my doorman where i could by stamps nearby and he just pulled one out of his wallet and gave it to me. how nice! and then i went to starbucks where my order got a little messed up, really not a big deal at all, but the dude felt bad so he upgraded me from a tall to a grande. again, how nice!
as i was walking to starbucks i was reminded of why the early-ish morning is my favorite time in new york. granted, i'm not usually too happy about having to be up early, but there's something very special about watching the city waking up and starting it's morning. i mean, i know this is the city that never never sleeps, but there's a time in the early morning when it's still relatively quiet in my neighborhood, and there sideways aren't clogged with people yet, but the shop owners are standing in their doorways drinking coffee and dads are taking their kids to little league games. i just love it.
after i studied i bought some stamps and stopped by ivy's to look at cards and see gus the dog. gus had a little toy he was carrying around in his mouth, and came over to me. i patted him and scratched his ears, and he stayed by me as i looked at the cards.
it makes me realize that i miss out on a lot when i stay in my bed all day. there's a lot of good stuff out there to remind me that things aren't as bad as i may think they are. staying in bed is easy but it only reinforces whatever loneliness i'm already feeling. it's nice to be in bed, but it's better to be out in the world.

i have issues

2005-06-24T02:43:00.000-04:00

yes, i have issues. i have a lot of issues.

first: it was a lot easier to to friendster/nerve searches when i lived in boston. why? because there are few men who are actors or work in finanace. not true in new york! no, you must wade through all the actors/hedge fund-employed men. and even once that's been done, who's to say that these men are quality? case in point: j, the boy i have been dating, is a full-on liberal democrat who wouldn't dream of working in finance. M, the boy i met tonight who is ridiculously well-informed politically and wise beyond his 24 years works for a brokerage firm. moral of the story? they both blew me off. go fucking figure.

so what's our heroine to do? i have no fucking clue. if you do, please let me know. i need all the help i can get.

i'm back

2005-06-07T02:02:00.000-04:00

i know, i know. you thought i was lost and gone forever. and truthfully, so did i.

but i'm back. after a six-week residency at CHONY (that's children's hospital of new york, fyi) and a few blessed weeks of doing fuck-all, i'm back. i skipped my graduation, met a cool boy, got the hell out of nyc and hung around my parents' house for a while, and lord, it was lovely. but i'm back in new york now and back in school, and, amazingly enough, still maybe-kinda-dating the cool boy.

i've been inspired by citibex and offkilter to start blogging again. at the very least it's an opportunity for me to get the mental diarrhea out. sort of a mental colonics, if you will.

cool boy is J. i met him at a lame-ass bar in the village a few weeks ago, but since then we've had two awesome dates and numerous phone calls, the last of which ventured into phone-sex territory. note that i said "ventured," folks. there was no acutal phone-sex, so don't get your undies in a twist.

for those of you reading this for the first time, feel free to go back and read previous posts, but bear in mind that at the time that said posts were written i was still adjusting to living alone and feeling painfully single, thereby making me feel very lonely. i'd like to think that i'm not the drama queen i make myself out to be; on the contrary, i like to go out, i like boys, i like feeling liked, and i love love love the kids i work with. but nevertheless, like most everyone else i have moments/days/weeks of feeling incredibly isolated, wondering how i ever imagined that moving to new york would mean having a far more fabulous life than the one i had in boston. perhaps it's the age or a product of living alone in new york--probably both.

in any case, it's summertime now. i'm still a full-time student in my grad program, but i finally feel like i've made the right decision about my career. it's warm out, i don't feel alienated from my friends, and there's a nice, cute boy on my horizon. things are far from being completely hunky-dory: i have yet to lose those dreaded 5-8 pounds i've been trying to rid myself of for the past eight months, school is, well, school, and i really want to move out of my tiny studio apartment.

so here i am, back and still as short as ever. my board exam is in a month and a half. but i feel ok now, and this is hopefully a good sign for what to expect from this summer. not that i'm already counting my chickens or anything.

operation: sobriety--day 2!

2005-03-23T18:01:00.000-05:00

i officially quit drinking yesterday. i suppose that means that yesterday was day 1 of operation: sobriety, making this day 2. lovely. so far, it's fine, as there's been no temptation whatsoever as it is totally crappy outside and everyone's working. i have already practiced how i'm going to pitch my newfound sobriety to my pals, which i will put to the test on friday night at rachel's party. i'm kind of dreading it, actually. W is going to be there--haven't seen him since halloween when i was trashed and made out with him in rachel's kitchen--as will V, who i now think is actually kind of boring. i don't know what it is about these parties, but i get so stressed out when i'm there, it's no wonder the only way i can deal is to get totally hammered. maybe it's a combination of too many people (many of them hot strangers) packed into a tiny new york apartment with lots of noise and talking and getting smushed into corners with people i've never met. yeah, that sounds about right.

didn't i learn anything in d.a.r.e.?

2005-03-22T17:34:00.000-05:00

last night i went out with the girls (and danny, who might as well be a girl) to tortilla flats. and proceeded to get completely wasted. i honestly have no idea how many margaritas i had, and then we went to gaslight where i had a tequila rose and lime. i somehow managed to avoid getting the spins, but i was pretty wrecked when i woke up this morning, and i've been feeling kinda crappy all day. not like a typical hangover crappy feeling, more like a flu-ish been-consuming-too-much-bad-stuff feeling. and not last thursday, but the thursday before, i basically drank from 4 until midnight, and ended up getting really sick.
so. in light of this, i think it's high time i got serious about cutting down on the drinking. and while i suppose it's fine that i only drink when i go out with friends, i need to really enforce a three-drink maximum. because lately when i go out i get completely trashed, and that is definitely not fine. and then i start rambling about lord knows what--kenya, medicine, writing--and i'm looking at the person i'm talking to thinking "there's no way this person is that interested in what i'm saying" but i can't stop.
a bit of history: a few years ago i was in a similar situation; i was drinking to excess every time i went out, and my mom eventually called me out on it, saying i really needed to cut that shit out, because it's not ok to be getting trashed all the time. and while i was initally really pissed off, i realized she was right. so i toned it down, barely drinking at all for the next four months or so, and when i did i only had one beer. now, let me just say: this was really fucking hard, because when you're twenty-five or whatever, nearly every social interaction centers around drinking. and really, how many people go to bars and order seltzer? but i learned a lot about myself from that experience, because it forced me to examine the reasons why i felt compelled to drink so much. and it also made me feel a lot more in control of my drinking, so that when i did go out, i was able to stop after one beer, instead of relegating myself to a night of drunken excess.
so that's that. i'm really can't be drinking like this anymore.

i luv my sox

2005-03-09T23:05:00.000-05:00

if i'm not mistaken, i just spoke with my mom AND my dad about which bus i'll be taking to boston tomorrow. also, i am completely wasted. am i good? yes. am i very good? you bet your sweet ass.

Link

dollar margaritas

2005-02-04T02:48:00.000-05:00

i came home today after clinical, to my teensy-weensy (as mary would say, god i love that woman) apartment and promptly fell asleep. at 4:30. fast forward five hours later, when emily calls me. i silence the call. fast forward fifteen minutes after that, when emily calls me for the second time. those of you who do not know emily, let me inform you: emily is not one of those people who calls you incessently unless this is some sort of an emergency-esque situation. as in a i-just-had-a-fight-with-my-boyfriend or you-need-to-come-drink-excessive-amounts-of-alcohol kind of situation. so then it's ten o'clock, i'm in my bed in my requisite tank top and undies as it is 800 degrees in this damn apartment, and i call emily back. "where are you?" she asks me. "i'm asleep," i answer, which is obviously a very bad answer as i am certainly not in a state of lovely somnolence. "you need to come out!" she implores. "i'm too tired," i say. "but you finished med-surg, that's a huge accomplishment!" she exclaims. sigh. think. ok, ok, i tell her, give me a half an hour (gotta look good, after all) i tell her, i'll be there.
so. ten-thirty, i get a cab and go to jake's dilemma, where i am met with the most vocal, incredible welcome i have ever received. who knew my friends loved me so much? in all honesty, i was bewildered, as i never imagined that my presence could be so important to my friends. or maybe they were just really drunk. but whatever. it was fun, and i'm glad i went. perhaps one day i won't be so surprised to realize how much me friends want me around. i should work on that, god bless 'em.

because i'm actually fourteen

2005-01-28T17:46:00.000-05:00

the most frequently played song on my itunes playlist is "since u been gone" by kelly clarkson. is that a bad thing? it's just so good!

i hated every day of high school...

2005-01-13T01:08:00.000-05:00

funny, i guess you did too...

this morning, as i was waiting for the elevator, i was suddenly hit with a vivid memory from my senior year of high school. you know how that happens, when you remember something so clearly that you haven't thought about it years, and you feel almost as though you got the wind knocked out of you? that's what this was like.

last night i was looking at the website for this guy D i went to high school with. i always thought he was really strange but was simultaneously obsessed with wanting to know as much as i could about him. anyway, on his website he talks about the role that music has played in his life, and how at a very young age he was a promising cellist; a series of anxiety attacks caused him to abandon it entirely when he was eight. and he went on to say that he's never been able to really play any instrument since, because whatever passion he had to play was literally beaten out of him by his parents.

ok. i always had this weird feeling that something was really really bad in D and his brother J's life. i learned that their parents were really rich but really fucked up. no one seemed to know exactly what was so wrong in their family, but there were rumors about their dad being an alcoholic. and you could just tell by looking at these guys that something was not right with them--they had an identical vacant, depressed affect. i was drawn to them because i saw myself the way i saw them--sad, lost, confused--but i was too shy to ever befriend either them.

anyway. so this is what i remembered today: senior year J and i were in the same english class. it was first period. we had an assignment, some kind of creative writing thing, and our teacher asked if any of us wanted to read our piece in front of the class. i thought it was strange when J volunteered to read his piece because he was so shy. but J got up in front of the class, at 8 in the freaking morning, and read his piece about a father who humiliates, torments and abuses his son. i sat there, stunned: J was talking about his own life, and everybody sitting in that classroom knew it. he read his piece, mumbling the way he always did, punctuating his sentences with curses. he never looked up from him paper, and when he finished reading, he walked back to his chair, never once raising his head. we sat there in a deafening silence. my hands were shaking; i was literally fucking terrified of what jack had just read. after what seemed like an eternity, my teacher got up and said that she felt that J's piece was disturbing and that we should take a few minutes to write down our feelings about it to give to J. i sat with my paper in front of me having no idea what to say. finally, all i wrote was, "holy shit, jack, that scared the crap out of me."

so i was thinking about that today, wondering whatever came of that. did my teacher tell my principal? i think she's legally obligated to. how come, if J and D's dad was beating both of them, did no one ever intervene? was it because their dad was a well-known doctor? or was their family just really good about hiding it?

D lives in l.a. now. sounds like he leads a jaded hipster filmmaker existence. i have no idea what happened to jack.

it's better in the movies

2005-01-11T01:48:00.000-05:00

i have to stop stalking my exes on friendster. i think it's bad for my mental health. case in point: according to B's profile, it sounds like he might have found his girl. as in THE girl. which i knew would not be me, i mean, shit, it's not like we had some great big love or anything back then. but it was very intense and emotional and bizarrely passionate and trauma-inducing. but i survived, and came to the realization a looong time ago that B is most certainly not for me, as he treated me like crap and waited about three YEARS to apologize, and then proceeded to treat me like crap after that. and i had my whole "i want him to be happy but i'm not going to be the one who makes him happy and he's not going to be the one who makes me happy but i can still care about him" blah blah whatever. and yes, that's true, but it's hard to know that he's found someone, and i'm still here drifting in this fucking sea of singledom. oh barf.
i think that we hold onto a little glimmer of hope that the person who broke our heart might realize his mistake and come back to us, that the great love might finally be realized and and the music will swell and so on and so forth and roll the credits etc. i sure as fuck do.

someone's being left behind

2005-01-09T02:35:00.000-05:00

i grow increasingly more frustrated with the bush administration with every day in clinical. there is no doubt in my mind that the past twenty-plus years of white house administration have failed the most helpless of our citizens. it is completely ludicrous to me that my patient on thursday, a man whose skin was literally ulcerating and peeling off due to exposure because he is homeless, is in his present situation while the top 1% of americans are enjoying their gigantic tax break. the skin on his legs felt like tree bark. fortunately (believe it or not) for him, he was admitted with pneumonia and tested positive for a virulent bacteria, rendering him a citizen of the hospital for the next five or so days. and we were there to care for him, to soak his feet and care for his wound and probably give him more attention than he had ever received. he was in an isolation room, and as my preceptor and i were shedding our gowns and gloves and masks, she shook her head and said, "there but for the grace of god..." and despite my agnostic leanings, i nodded in agreement. how anyone ends up in such a situation as that man remains a mystery to me, yet there is no question that thousands of americans are being continuously denied the privleges that i have received and find themselves in the most desperate of situations. so i am glad that i am there to serve such people, yet angry that our country really never has and continues to not give a flying fuck about these people.

you must be joking

2004-12-19T03:11:00.000-05:00

ok. i am 27, in graduate school, and up to my fucking eyeballs in group projects. excuse me, but what the fuck? in high school, group projects were expected and pratically welcomed because you could usually expect at least one person in your group to pick up your slack and get you that A you so totally didn't derserve. a group project in college, ok, that's not so bad, because really, in the entire four years you spent in college you only had two, max three, group projects. but graduate school? since i started in june i have had four--yes, FOUR--group projects. and i'm really beginning to lose my shit, people, because there's only so much one girl can take. and honestly, i think i've had enough.

doggie vertebrae

2004-12-17T18:06:00.000-05:00

ok. so i was walking into the grocery store today and there was this woman walking her little dog, and i had to do a double take because it honestly looked like this dog was hooked up to a rickshaw. he had this metal thing connected around his shoulders that went back to his little doggie bum and then there were a couple of wheels, and his feet were kinda tied together so they didn't touch the ground. so i'm all "the fuck is that?" i mean, it took me a little while to get used to all the dogs in sweaters, but the what the hell is this dog doing all hooked up to some rickshaw thing? so while i'm staring at this crazy thing some guy asked the woman what the deal was. she explained that her dog's hind legs were paralyzed because he ruptured a disc in his back and this thing allowed him to walk around. um, did she just say her dog ruptured a disc in his back? jesus lord. only in new york.

somewhere along the way i seemed to have missed the memo that went out about dating. because i honestly do not know what the fuck to do or what anything means. like: when someone likes you and you like him, and things are starting out, are you supposed to hang out once a week? if you're hanging out every two weeks, does this mean you are just friends? at what point are you actually "dating?" when do you go from "dating" to being in a "relationship?" are these things mutually understood or is it discussed? do you discuss the terms of your relationship, i.e. if you're going to only see each other? does someone take minutes? do you take lunch and re-convene at 1? or is it catered?

i know it's silly, but i wish there were real, legitamite answers to this. i wish it came with an instruction manual or a map. lord knows i already have no fucking sense of direction.

sex ed on acid

2004-12-06T18:45:00.000-05:00

sent the following email to my little sissy today:

Subject:
everybody loves a NOVA special

today in class we watched "the miracle of life." my LORD that is
one tripped-out movie! those filmmakers were definitely on some
some serious mind-altering substances when they made that.
it was like i was watching "the wall" or some shit.

never mind that fact that i am 27 years old, in graduate school at
columbia and watching the fucking miracle of life, a movie that we
watched in SIXTH GRADE SEX ED. the only other time i've seen that
movie was, oh, SIXTEEN YEARS AGO!!!

anyway. now i am off to the undergrad campus library to study for
my pathophys final tomorrow. i must say, one of the perks of going
to an ivy league school is that you can bet it's going to have a
really fucking nice library. it's also closer to my 'partment.
and there is also the remote possibility of bumping into M on
the main campus. oh yes. and you know i didn't wear my black
turtleneck sweater today for nothin'!

xoxox sissy

damn it feels good to be a gangster

2004-12-04T01:54:00.000-05:00

damn. i went to M's show tonight. shit he is cool. far more quality than any other boys whose paths i've crossed. i told R, K and E, who came with me tonight, about B's advice to me, about taking this one slower than any other "situation" i've ever been in, so slow that i'm practically dead. they agreed it was good advice. and then were raving about M, particularly E, who hadn't met him before.

when the show was over, we got up and i really had to go to the bathroom, so i started to head for the little girls' room. and i suddenly noticed K and R and E motioning to me to look behind me. so i turned around, and there was M. so i hugged him, told him i thought he was great and that the ending was creepy, and he agreed and laughed. he said hi to R and K and i introduced him to E, and he thanked us like five times for coming. and then there were all these people who wanted to say hello to him, so E and i stood off to the side, and she was like, just pretend like you're talking to me! when there was finally a break in all the people wanting to talk to M i went up to him and told him we were leaving, and he said, we should hang out, like, i two weeks, and i was like, yeah... and then we left.

according to R and K and E, as we were walking out, M spotted me and called my name and was like, A, wait! but i didn't realize until the girls motioned to me to turn around. they said he was running after to me and calling my name, although i'm inclined to think they might be exaggerating. but it's a lovely image, isn't it?

it's hard. everyone tells me to take this slow, but i think "right, take this one slow, because if you do, it'll turn out exactly the way you want it to, and this will be IT." there always has to be a fucking endgame for me. i can't take something slow unless it will somehow ensure an ending that's desirable. i want whatever feelings to develop to be organic and natural, and not hasty, but there i fucking go again, thinking of how i want it to develop! jesus christ! maybe i'll take this one slow and i'll end up with fucking nothing! is that so bad?

oh this is really fucking annoying

2004-12-01T21:56:00.000-05:00

ok. as you know, i spend far more time on friendster than anyone in their right mind should. but it's hard not to when it's such a fabulous too for stalking ex-flings!

anyway. i check MD's profile today, as i hadn't in a while and was wondering if he'd finally changed his "location" and admitted to the world that he lives in a town far less cool than the one in which he claims to live. but i didn't even get that far, because according to his profile, he is "in a relationship." what the fuck??? this is a relatively new development and i am PISSED. not because i'm still harboring some (completely baseless) feelings for him, oh no. i just can't believe that yet AGAIN, another fuckwad who i wasn't all that into at the beginning but who expressed some interest in me, causing me to like him A LOT despite knowing he was a bit of a tool, who then decided that although he "really liked hanging out" with me and thought i was "cute," had a bunch of problems with committment and just "couldn't be in anything serious," therefore leaving me feeling A. sad B. duped C. like a moron D. all of the above (answer: D!), has seemingly had a miraculous recovery from said "committment issues" and decided that, lo and behold, he wants to be "in a relationship."

i am currently contemplating writing the following testimonial for him:

apparently, M is in a relationship. i don't know who this girl is, but if she doesn't already know it, she's about to have the worst sex of her life.

but i won't ACTUALLY write it because, unfortunately, i am too nice for that. but oh man do i want to.

whoops, wrong door

2004-11-22T01:13:00.000-05:00

i'm feeling kind of creepy because i just read M's entire blog. and it's not that the content was creepy--quite the opposite, in fact--but i feel like a snoop, like i opened some door into his brain that i wasn't given access to. and it also makes me feel like a stalker extraordinaire, and that's pretty damn creepy too.
i find when i'm talking to M that i'm so conscious of how totally fucking smart he is that i feel this need to prove myself to him, like i am of worthy intellect or something. so i'll casually mention some article in harper's or the new yorker or some shit, constantly engage him in political dialogue in an attempt to impress him with how astute i am. i mean, why the hell do i do this? i already know he thinks i'm smart and DAMMIT i know i'm smart. and if anything, trying to prove that i'm smart and such the intellectual only makes me look insecure.
on friday i called M and invited him over to R's that night to play flip cup with some people. so he showed up around 10 looking cute as shit and carrying a six-pack of brooklyn ale. i mean, jesus christ! apparently, an invitiation to play flip cup is quite enticing, as M told me about how he ran into some people he knew on the subway on his way over and informed them with great pride that he was going to play flip cup. oh yes. points for me!
so we played many rounds of flip cup, finally calling it quits when we ran out of beer. i was pretty buzzed at this point and it was decided that we would head out to some bar in the meatpacking. once we arrived M and i got beers, and then we were kind of standing off to the side together. and then we were kissing. i'm not entirely sure how it happened or who initiated it, but i recall there was some sustained eye-contact, and shit, everyone who is over the age of 12 knows what that means. and then we wandered over to where everyone else was, and i blurted to R and K that i had just kissed M. i went to the bathroom, and when i came back, M was talking to some random girls and MAN was i pissed. i mean, really, i know i shouldn't be jealous, but give me a break! that's just crappy. so i was mad and out of beer so i made K get a vodka tonic for me which i drank in about five seconds, and then i really needed a cigarette so i bummed one off of someone and went outside to smoke it. when i came back in M was STILL talking to the random girls and i was like, fuck this, so i told him i needed some air and he was like, i'll come with you.
M and i ended up walking around these two blocks, literally in circles, for at least half an hour. but that was punctuated with much kissing, me doing my little kiss-kiss-pull away move, trying to be the seductress. after a while we got into a cab, where there was more kissing, and eventually, we both fell asleep. when we got to my apartment i asked M if he wanted to come over and his reply was that he really wanted to but was "totally useless" at that point. and surprisingly, i wasn't the least bit upset or offended by that. i guess i really do think that he wanted to make out but was literally too exhausted and intoxicated. and honestly, i was kind of relieved as i was far too tired for any sort of bedroom gymnastics. so he said he would call me, and that was that.
it was fun to have such a great second date. i'm feeling ambivalent about M, but i'm not sure if it's ambivalence about him as a person or ambivalence about the prospect of liking him. but it was cool to have fun with him, for him to meet my friends and to be cute and silly. so we'll see.

it's not always how it seems

2004-11-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

so i finally called MN on monday night, left a message, the "just wanted to say hi wondering what you're up to and maybe you wanna get a drink sometime?" kinda message. you know. he called me back today when i was at the hospital, said he'd "love to get together at some point," has been really busy etc. etc. which is fine and all because i've been crazy busy too, and truth be told, am scared shitless of having quasi-date number two with him. tomorrow night R wants to play flip cup, at which i am frighteningly gifted, at her place. so i'm going to call M tomorrow night to see if he wants to hang out, play flip cup and pretend like we're back in college. goddamn he is one cute motherfucker. and yes i will be disappointed if he says no.
i think the thing that makes me scared of persuing anything with him is that i'm terrified of being rejected by a boy i actually think is cool and smart and cute. it's easier, in some ways, to be into someone who's totally flaky and immature, like W, because when you're inevitably rejected you can write it off to his basically being not good enough for you. but you can't say the same for someone you actually respect, who makes you think and who, when you sit across from him, you think "damn this guy is fucking smart," instead of "damn this guy is hot, too bad he's such a moron."
so we'll see what happens, i guess. good lord i'm hungry.

operation: get MN

2004-11-17T01:15:00.000-05:00

ok. so i went out with M, the ex-upstairs neighbor from back in the day when i still lived in cambridge, a couple of weeks ago. and when the time came where it was blatantly obvious that he wanted to kiss me, i wimped out and jumped in a cab. i finally called him yesterday and left a message asking if he wanted to get a drink sometime this week. of course, he hasn't called me back, and now i'm comvinced that i blew my chances. i checked his friendster profile tonight and he changed it and now it says he's interested in "dating women" and i want to be like, well shit, i'm interested in dating men, so let's fucking date each other!

i kissed W at R's halloween party, which i now realize was stupid and fueled entirely by alcohol and my ridiculous need for physical affirmation. and A called me on saturday night and left a long-winded message about how sorry he was that he hadn't called me for a while and how he's "been thinking about you a lot lately, seriously." um, what? i cannot deal i with W's idiocy and immaturity and A's utter wackness. and more than anything else, i cannot deal with my own craziness when it comes to trying to navigate this bullshit. where are the normal, stable men who are funny and smart? why can't i just be myself? why do i get caught up in trying to make boys--who i don't like and i know aren't right for me--like me? where's the fucking point in that?

i'm old enough to know better than to get entangled in situations that ultimately leave me unhappy and feeling stupid. so why the hell do i keep doing it?

ok, now what?

2004-11-01T01:47:00.000-05:00

when out with M tonight. not entirely sure if it was a "date" exactly, but we kept ordering rounds, and then he invited me to a Columbia party, and made a point of introducing me to everyone... and when we were waiting for a cab i was cold so he put his jacket around me, and we kinda shared a "moment," you know, the kind where you look at each other and maintain eye contact and then you kinda look at each other's mouths and shit, like you're thinking about kissing. but we didn't kiss, we hugged and he said "we should hang out again" and i was like, yeah, we should. and then i got into my cab.

it's strange: i didn't feel nervous tonight, but i felt really self-conscious, like i was watching myself or something, and carefully choosing my words. it didn't feel natural at all, although things did get easier as more alcohol was consumed. it was almost easier at the party because there were other people to talk to and distractions. so who knows. i'm too tired to think about this anymore.

also, kissed W in the kitchen last night at R's party. once that was done i was like, ok, let's go! and then i left.

scary pizza

2004-10-29T23:49:00.000-04:00

i think i ate some bad pizza today. R and i went to kmart at 34th street to get stuff for halloween costumes and decorations for R's halloween party tomorrow. we were in penn station and really hungry so we decided to grab a slice, and as i was eating it, i knew it didn't taste right. i thought that it might be because it wasn't very hot, but after a while i realized that something was just off, and get this: i didn't finish it. crazy! i mean, anyone who knows me knows that something is seriously NOT RIGHT for me to throw away the rest of a slice of pizza. i am of the "eat-it-all-and-don't-look-back" school of food comsumption, mostly because i actually CAN eat a whole bunch and stay very little. anyway, that pizza is really not sitting too well with me right now. ick.

in other news, operation: margot tenenbaum halloween costume was officially abandoned this afternoon. i finally came to my senses in class and realized there was no way in hell i would be able to find the dress and coat by tomorrow night. so i wil be going as mrs. mia wallace instead which is HOT. R and i got me a wig and a white button-down shirt (how can i be 27 and not own a white button-down shirt?) and a pair of stilettos. oh yes. this is gonna be good, folks.

reversed, finally!

2004-10-28T23:56:00.000-04:00

friday night: k's party, although i may skip this, because this weekend is going to be very full and boy-laden:
saturday night: R's party. W will be there. also, S will be there, this guy E met on the subway who she is determined to set me up with, and truthfully, sounds perfect.
sunday night: drinks with M, the ex-upstairs neighbor.

so i've decided to go back on the ring. seriously, folks, working on the AB floor at PPNYC is the best form of birth control like, EVER. as far as going on BC again, i'm not getting action on a continual basis now, but when i do, i somehow manage to become stupid. it's as though getting lucky causes a precipitious drop in my levels of common sense. and while i certainly think that i'll be smarter now after having been at PPNYC, mistakes can still happen, and i never ever want to find myself in that situation. i'm just too fucking fragile to go through something like that, and i'd much rather fork over a hundred bucks a year for the ring so that i can have two forms of BC than run the risk of being careless, having an accident and winding up spending more on the procedure than i would in three years for the ring, not to mention the huge emotional toll. not worth it, people. every aspect of an AB is just so fucking tragic. i realize now just how lucky i've been because i've been so careless, and sooner or later, my luck's gonna run out if i continue to be lazy about tearing open a you-know-what.

i am so in love with my beloved red sox! when it got to the ninth inning last night i was so excited but so nervous that they would blow it (because they kinda have a tendency to do that) i felt like i was gonna throw up. N and i went to harrison's which was PACKED and when they won everyone was jumping up and down and screaming and hugging and dumping champagne on each other. i mean, these fans were not fucking around! N and i were completely drenched in champagne, and i had no voice this morning when i woke up from screaming so much last night. SO. FUCKING. GREAT.

bye-bye, curse!

last night i told a stranger all about you

2004-10-26T01:16:00.000-04:00

i can't stop listening to morphine. holy shit, they are so fucking good! i was obsessed with "you look like rain" (which, in fact, may be the sexiest song ever written in the history of all time and space) for a few hours, but that was before i heard "in spite of me" which is just break-your-fucking-heart beautiful. it is beautiful like rothko paintings and like the way tree branches covered in ice sparke when the sun hits them. beautiful like the first day after winter when it's sunny and you can go outside with just your sweater but your face is chilly and flushed.

so M emailed me back. told me he had thought it was me on the subway. mentioned that he had been thinking about me the other day. gave me his number. asked me if i wanted to go to a party in brooklyn that night. said that he would love to catch up and have a drink if i couldn't make it to brooklyn. so yeah, i guess we're gonna hang out or something.

why can't i just be like, ok, me and M are going to hang out and be friends again? why do i automatically start imagining what it would be like to introduce him to my friends? why do i wonder what our wedding would be like? why do i give a shit? what is my fucking problem??? i swear i am not this kind of girl!

35 brookline st.

2004-10-23T02:04:00.000-04:00

MN, you really ought to email me back. why? because i'm cute and saw you on the subway today and had the guts to email you about it later even though i was too shy to talk to you when it happened, and because i'm your type (supposedly) and you're single (according to friendster) and i'm single (for sure). and despite the single-or-not stuff, we had some good times together back in the day as friends, and shit, who doesn't want more friends?

anyway, i'm pretty sure you're a red sox fan. wouldn't you like to have a few beers and cheer for your team with a cute girl? if i were a single guy, i sure would. no, i'm not desperate, but i know a good guy when i see him, even if i'm seeing him again for the first time in four years.

a 9.5 from the russian judge ain't bad

2004-10-23T01:50:00.000-04:00

why must A have such a sexy deep voice? i called him tonight on my way home (after being pulled over by the nypd, thankyouverymuch) and he called me back a few minutes later. but i missed the call, and he didn't leave a message (which is stupid, because who doesn't have caller id in this day and age? but whatever). so i've called him a few times since then, but his voicemail picks up right away. so either i've completely fucked myself and he'll see that i've called him eight hundred times tonight, or i'm left to listen to his sexy, deep-voiced outgoing message eight hundred times. oooh, he is one hot boy. i hope i haven't completely wrecked my chances of having another go-round of bedroom gymnastics with him, even though he kinda sucked in the prelimanaries. you never know how they'll turn out in the all-around...

i'm not from around here

2004-10-23T01:02:00.000-04:00

which is what i told the cop when i got pulled over by the nypd tonight on my way home from V and S's tonight. "D'ya see that red hand?" he asked me. "That means 'Don't walk.'" so i nodded and explained, "I'm sorry, I'm from st. louis.'" st. louis?? where the hell did that come from? girl, your team is going to the world series after eighteen long years! you gotta represent! but that was the first thing that came to mind, so i said it. who's gonna mess with a (seemingly) nice girl from the midwest?

on a totally unreleated note, i saw M on the subway this morning on my way to class. good lord that boy is attractive. i was too shy and too uncaffienated to say hello, so i friendstered him this afternoon. is that lame? do i really care? is is so bad to want to reconnect with an old neighbor, even if he was dating your friend at the time and with whom you almost hooked up one night? you could do worse... right?

what can you do? it's hard to be cute and a smartass in the big city.

even an ass-kicking feminist needs her beauty sleep

2004-10-21T00:56:00.000-04:00

holy crap. what the fuck happened to this blog? sweet christ, re-reading the last few entries makes me want to vomit. what's with all the drama? sometimes i think i need to turn my brain off. i sound like a total GIRL in these vague, pseudo-intellectual ramblings about boys and sex. all work and no play surely makes me a dull girl, but not enough work and too much sex makes me an obsessive, morose freak.

sox won tonight! i am beyond excited. i will surely be taking my sweet ass to harrison's on saturday to drink beer, meet boys, and cheer for my beloved sox.

um. was in barnes and nobles last night, feeling guilty for cheating on ivy's, wandering through the magazine section on my way to checkout. do you know what magazines are in the section titled "women's interests"? i'll tell you: all the bridal, fitness, and fashion/beauty magazines. um, hello? where the fuck is ms.? bitch? bust? i'll be the first to admit that looking hot is on my agenda, but i want to look hot while simultaneously subverting the dominant paradigm and TAKING DOWN THE MAN. that is my interest, and the interest of many other women, thankyouverymuch.

ok. i am really loving "sundown" by gordon lightfoot. does this mean i am getting old and lame? on the other hand, i am officially in love with the donnas. i want to be their fifth member. maybe they'll let me bang a tambourine or something. so maybe i am not that old and lame. yet.

R told me that W called her last friday night at like 2 in the morning wondering if we were out and wanted to meet up. R thinks this is W's way of booty calling me. and while i found W's drug-induced state at his birthday party to be wholly unattractive, i'd get with him again in a second. which means 1. i really need to get crackin' on my margot tennenbaum costume for when i see him at R's halloween party and 2. am i on drugs? i really need to get my priorities in order and stop hooking with lame boys like W.

i love you new york, but the red sox made you their bitch tonight.

now that's attractive

2004-10-11T01:23:00.000-04:00

so last night was W's birthday party in williamsburg, sponsored by brooklyn brewery. i was kinda nervous about seeing him, because i hadn't seen him since i spent the night with him two weeks ago. little did i know that i had nothing to worry about, because dear little W was shrooming his ass off. and he was high, and and drunk, and coked up, leaving him entirely inarticulate. ok, news flash: it's one thing to be on eight hundred illegal substances when you're 19, but 26? not so cool. he was completely incoherent, and needless to say, i was pretty disappointed. everything about W that bothered me before was magnified by 100 times. yeah, ok, i'll admit: i had hoped that when i showed up at his party that he would have been completely thrilled to see me. fine. is it so bad to have expectations? i had hoped that at least he would have sought me out to talk, but no. instead, he sat in his room talking about art, while i got intoxicated in the living room.

2004-10-07T01:12:00.000-04:00

today at clinic V wasn't there. i assumed it was because she had gone home, but when i asked after her i was told that she coded sometime on friday, was intubated, and has been in the PICU since then and remains intubated. no wonder i couldn't stop fucking thinking about her on friday! i knew something was wrong. her blood pressure just kept going up on thursday, even after we gave her lasix. something was seriously not right with her. and over the weekend i had been thinking about maybe bringing my camera in so that i could get a picture with her. today on the subway i tried to think of all the possible things her doctors might have missed. surely they've done an endocrine workup, because it could be that her ADH is all jacked up, and someone else has already thought of that. right?

it makes me sad, thinking about walking around with A on saturday, because it's been such a pretty fall so far. five year-olds shouldn't be spending autumn in a hospital, they shoud be going to school and playing with their friends.

but tomorrow's the last day of my peds rotation. so i'm going to stop by the PICU to see V, even though she'll be hooked up to a bazillion machines and not able to play or talk, if she's even awake. poor little V.

i'm just so fucking glad that i skipped lunch last thursday to play go fish with her. she just breaks my heart, that girl.

really, you should have been there.

2004-09-27T23:25:00.000-04:00

lord. am i still updating this shit? amazing.

so. i forgot to mention the best part of yesterday. after waking up in W's bed and realizing that it was ELEVEN FUCKING THIRTY, i climbed over him and found my clothes that were strewn on the floor. i woke up R, who was in bed with M, and said, "R, we gotta go." we stumbed out of their apartment onto the sidewalk and suddenly realized that we had NO IDEA where the fuck we were. no idea where the closest subway station was, and much to our dismay, not a cab in sight. oh, manhattan! how spoiled we are to live here!

eventually, we managed to find a convienence store, where we got some much-needed gatorade. and then it was time to figure out how the hell we were going to get out of brooklyn. after standing on some random street corner, looking rather slutty in our clothes from the previous night, we finally managed to hail what was apparently the only cab in all of williamsburg and settled in for our ride back to this fabulous island.

and this was the best part: we were driving over the williamsburg bridge, and it was this absolutely fucking gorgeous day, and we could see all of lower manhattan, and it was just brilliant. i don't think i have ever loved new york as much as i did then, sitting in the back of the cab with the windows down. oh man. you should have seen it.

so what's gonna happen with W? good question. i have no idea. i'm not even sure that i like him, but then again, i really don't know him. and while i suppose it might be nice to get to know him better, i'm not sure that i really want to venture into that territory. it's just too scary right now for me. i don't think i'm up for that. his birthday is in two weeks, so it's not like i'm never going to see him again... here's the thing: i don't really think W is my kind of guy. something's just not there. but i know that if i were to hang out with him i would get into that weird mentality of "i have to make this guy like me and be the kind of girl he wants me to be" which is ultimately completely pointless and kind of self-destructive. because sooner or later, i can't pretend to be someone i'm not, and the jig is up. i eventually blow my cover, and then get pissed at myself, and then whatever self-esteem i've managed to acquire goes right out the window. i can't keep pulling this shit.

ok. i'm learning. i'm getting better at this.

it's raining men

2004-09-26T17:00:00.000-04:00

i hooked up with W last night. yeah. he's very kind and attractive but i'm just not feeling the zing. i feel bizarrely indifferent about the whole thing, which is quite a deviation from my usual post-hook up obsessiveness. maybe i'm getting smarter, like recognizing that the lack of a zing is sometimes just a fact of life, and that there's not a whole lot that can be done to change that, and that ultimately the best thing to do with the lack of a zing hookup is to just let it go and not pursue it, hoping that maybe the zing will reveal itself.
but W racked up some huge points last night when, in the middle of making out, he asked me if i was voting for kerry, wanting to make sure that i was a democrat. maybe i'm a huge geek, but i thought that was really fucking cool.

friendster schmiendster

2004-09-18T03:10:00.000-04:00

ok, fine, i'll admit it: i need a date. like, in a huge way. depsite my over-inflated ego i am not too proud to admit that it is about fucking time that i had a date, or at least a night out with someone who was maybe a teensy bit interested in me. i blame this entirely on B for having emailed me back last week, claiming that he did not know that i had moved to nyc. of course i am going to read way too far into that statement so that it means "i had no idea that you moved to nyc because if i had i would have broken up with my friendster 'in-a-relationship' person because you are the love of my life" or something to that extent. you dig?
tonight kat's friends had a party at their apartment on west end ave. ok, these guys obviously make a shitload, because this apartment was seriously out of fucking control--way too nice for anyone our age to be living in. it was fun, but i kind of felt like i was at a party with a bunch of people i had gone to high school with; very white, affluent, etc. etc.
i feel like i really need a date, but for the first time in my life, i also really feel like i don't want to have to deal with that shit. i have a nice apartment all to myself, with no roommates with boyfriends to feel jealous of. and i also feel that the dating shit is over, and that the next boys i date are not going to be some boys who are good in the sack but not much else. so much of my dating life has been taken up with trying to be someone that i'm not, trying to please someone who is in many ways fundamentally different from myself. here's what i know: be cute, preferably over 5'11." for the love of god, please be a democrat. please be opinionated. please be judgmental, but recognize that as a possible shortcoming. please have goals, please be real, please don't freak out and run away if you get scared.
oh my. it's late. goodnight.

illegal broadbanding is not cool

2004-09-15T01:38:00.000-04:00

why is it that i can only get my fucking internet to work at 12:30, exactly six hours before i have to be at the PICU trying to keep it together in front of the really sick kiddos while simultaneously stalking D the cute med student? why why why?
oh, i know. it's my karma for taking full advantage of being in a hotspot and slowing down someone else's internet connection, for which they are paying and i am not.
i swear, the day i get my fucking earthlink hooked up i will most surely be the happiest girl in the 212 area code. i will glow. i will look like i just got laid. my glow will cause permanent retinal damage should you look directly at me.
speaking of getting laid, A is coming to town in a few weeks for what may be the strangest pseudo-date ever. i must be careful to not get too intoxicated, as i will certainly become overwhelmed by A's ridiculously good looks and try to make out with him. no one as nice as A should be allowed to be that hot. it's really not fair. i mean, all self-restraint just goes right out the window with someone as hot as that.
R's friend W is also very hot, albeit a bit strange. saw him over the weekend. i do find him quite appealing, though. he's also quite tall, which is always a good thing.
ok, time for bed. must look cute tomorrow in my horrendous outfit.

i'm back

2004-09-07T23:31:00.000-04:00

yes, that's right. after a week on the vineyard, a bunch of days in boston packing up the apartment, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes with B on her porch, a few days in nyc, and then five days in san francisco, i'm finally back, at least for a while.

i was in SF for A and C's wedding. blame it on the hormones or whatever, but i was a wreck at the ceremony. i think it's because A and C seem so simple in their lives, so completely devoted to one another and so completely real that suddenly, it seemed to me that real, honest love CAN happen to us mere mortals. it didn't seem out of reach or improbable. the entire thing was so honest and i think i realized that love can happen to people like me, people who struggle and feel lost and doubt themselves, that it's not something reserved for a different breed of mortals. looking at A and C, they didn't seem that different from me or my sister. and while that's lovely and beautiful and certainly worth making a mess of your eye makeup over, it was also extremely sad for me. because there is no one to wear a picture of me as a child over his heart, as C did for A. and it's remarkable to think that when that picture was taken, when A was a young girl, that there was a boy in the world who would one day wear that picture over his heart and promise to take care of himself and stay well so that he can be around to live out his life with her.

anyway. my peds rotation starts tomorrow. i'm worried that i might start crying in front of the kiddos. i seem to have become something of a faucet these past few weeks. i inherited that from my mom.

i love that dirty water

2004-08-11T22:50:00.000-04:00

so i'm back in boston now chez the parents' on their fucking DIAL-UP so i won't be blogging for the next couple of weeks. not that anyone will miss me, but you never now who might stumble upon these words that are nothing short of pure genius and wonder where i've gone. don't fret, i'll be back soon.

so H and his band of merry men have set off on their adventure. i'm sad to report that i've been spending far too much time on their website reading their blog and streaming their videos. watching H rhapsodize about his favorite place to get fish and chips was cute at first, but then i watched it again, and realized that this guy is just not me. he doesn't get me, and i don't get him. there's something about him--his speech, his mannerisms--that seem a little too guarded and rehearsed, not self-effacing enough for me. shit, that boy always took himself so seriously.

ok. i'm off to go watch something on one of the eight thousand channels my parents get and raid their refridgerator.

five feet of sass

wait, didn't i just do this?

in case you were wondering...

check this shit bitches

one hell of a milestone

that's right, kids, i'm still here

we may be massholes, but we're awesome

don't ever send your children to me

yes, it's true

thank you for not barfing on the A train

an instruction manual would be helpful

it really does get easier

and just like that...

hey cupid

darlings of the west village

it's just my poker face

this is what happens when you deprive your children of junk food

bye-bye trees, see you next year

from fucking mars

small girl, big city

everyone's fair game

bleecker street princess

how i managed to get through this fucking move

gives new meaning to the "big dig"

get me the f out of here

it'll break your heart, but in a good way

home of the fig newton, i kid you not

that's a wrap

one-woman revolution

nakuwaza

ugliest. medals. ever.

i have a problem

a few things

z, i'm sorry

shiksa goddess

those friendster bastards are at it again

occupational hazards

lather for 30 seconds

my pups

the long ride home

macs hate me

so much for stalking

dispatches from the homefront

bye-bye, woof woof

ashes 'round the yard

because it's never too early

time to get over it

holy fucking shit

i knew it

my fourth 25th birthday

so nice, yet so not

everybody has one

here's your fucking update, m

holy crap

it's over...

you're not hallucinating

no more illegal downloading

put your gloves on and wave

lattes and fingernails

the jig is up!

girl you know it's true

we are f-ed

vanity hurts like a mother

oh jeez

and it's not even noon yet!

i have issues

i'm back

operation: sobriety--day 2!

didn't i learn anything in d.a.r.e.?

i luv my sox

dollar margaritas

because i'm actually fourteen

i hated every day of high school...

it's better in the movies

someone's being left behind

you must be joking

doggie vertebrae

you are here

sex ed on acid

damn it feels good to be a gangster