Vers l'absurde

Sweet delights.

I am finally back from DC. Everyone may commence cheering! This does not mean that the posts are going to get any better though. Hahaha. What expectations you have.

No, nothing happened between me and shithead. Actually, I ended up staying with one of my friends in Bethesda my last night because I could NOT take the state of shithead's apartment anymore. He's been there for nearly a year, and has NO FURNITURE aside from an easy chair, a bed, and bookshelves, he does NOT have trash cans, and worst of all, he does NOT have a bathmat. Do you know HOW GROSS that is? Thankfully, I brought flipflops. I just want to tell him that there is no way he's ever going to get a girl if he doesn't tidy up some more - and especially his bathroom. So as soon as my meetings were over, I decided to hightail it to the decidedly more feminine sanctuary of my friend's apartment (teehee, I was so close to not telling him I was leaving and just leaving a note Wednesday morning with the keys, because it would have been so funny), where there was actually food in the fridge and furniture and trash cans and BATHMATS.

Anyway. One day, my friends (the other dingbats) and I had lunch at this lovely Spanish restaurant called Taberna del Alabardero. It's a little stuffy and fussy in atmosphere, but service was excellent and damn was the food good (I got the veal sweetbreads, by the way. I love me my sweetbreads). The highlight of the lunch, however, was when the radiator over one of my friend's heads started seriously leaking. We were offered another table, but we were almost done with lunch and the water didn't bother us that much. So they brought us three desserts, on the house, for being so gracious about the whole matter. FREE DESSERT. I don't know if there's a more beautiful juxtaposition of words in the English language.

This is a warm almond pastry with lemon custard. Just look at how pretty it is. It was hard to destroy such loveliness, but it was well worth it.

This is a flan with caramel ice cream. Words cannot describe how great the caramel ice cream was, the depth and complexity of the flavours.

This, however, while deceptively simple, was actually my favourite dessert. It's golden pineapple in spiced syrup and lemon sorbet. The little dark things are pink peppercorns. Generally, I don't like pineapple, but this one was lush and sweet, and the syrup was also sweet yet had some underlying complex flavours that I couldn't quite identify.

This was only one of many outstanding meals we had over the course of the four days. Unfortunately, this was also the only one I photographed. Screw continuing my education; I wanna be a food critic.

Lost in DC.

Setting: Three girls standing on the corner of 14th and F, in the NW quadrant.

Dingbat #1: Where do you think the National Press Club is?

Dingbat #2: I don't know. Why don't we walk around until we find it?

Dingbat #3: But it's supposed to be at this intersection, and besides, we're already late and my feet hurt.

Dingbat #2: It's gotta be one of these buildings. Do we have a building number?

Dingbat #1: No, the stupid school didn't give it to us.

Dingbat #3: Yeah, remember, they just said it was at the corner of 14th and F, northwest.

Dingbat #2: Hey, that street sign says "NW", it must be that building.

Dingbat #3: ALL the street signs say "NW", we're in the northwest quadrant.

Dingbat #1: We're all getting our masters and we can't figure out which building we have to go to?

Dingbat #3: [pointing to a tall building] I think it's that one, it's the tallest and the National Press Club is on the 13th floor.

Dingbat #2: We only had one drink apiece, why is this hard? And since when do buildings have 13 floors? Isn't that bad luck?

Dingbat #1: [Turning to some guy to ask for directions]. Excuse me, do you know where the National Press Club is?

Man from DC: [Points to the building that Dingbat #3 pointed to. He's sorta smirking, and he has good reason.] Yes, it's that one right there. You'll want to take that entrance to get up to the 13th floor.

Dingbat #2: Hey, that building actually says "National Press Building".

Dingbat #3: Oh, and that Corner Bakery says "National Press" under it.

Dingbat #1: That guy must've thought we were morons. It was in front of our faces and we didn't even see it.

Dingbat #3: Oh well. I hope they have food, I'm hungry again.

A whole new light.

Let's do a little exercise. Think of your best friend of the opposite sex (or same sex, if that's how you swing). For purposes of this post, we'll just assume he's a male (why? Because I'm the one writing, that's why). This person you're thinking of, is he someone you would implicitly trust? Do you tell him everything that's going on in your life? Does he tell you everything that's going on in his? Is he the Harry to your Sally? Yes? Good. That's the person we want.

Now think of your senior year in college. Was it as filled with alcohol as mine was? Did your weekend start on Wednesday afternoons after your French seminar where a group of you would sit on your front porch drinking wine? Yes? Good. That's the setting we want.

Okay. Moving onward. Now, imagine that one of those drunken nights, you slept with this best friend of yours. You two were utterly drunk, it was perhaps two years in the coming, ever since you met in Paris, but you'd just never gotten around to it yet even though everyone else already thought you had, but you were FRIENDS AND JUST FRIENDS DAMMIT, but it happens anyway, and when you wake up, you say to him, "Okay, Nick can't know about this because it would kill him" (not that you're interested in Nick, but you don't want to unnecessarily hurt feelings and it's a very complicated situation). And that's the LAST you talk about it. For THREE YEARS. You talk about everything else that's going on in your lives, romantically and otherwise, but NEVER ABOUT THIS. It's like it NEVER happened.

Are you with me still? Awesome. Now, fast forward to the present day (ie, three years later). You're out drinking with friends. You go outside to keep a mutual friend company while he smokes. The two of you talk about your best friend's utterly failed love life in large part because the two of you want him to be happy and are concerned about what will happen when you both leave Boston and in small part (and on a more personal level) you've harbored a more off-than-on crush for him but value his friendship so much more that you've never done anything about it). But let's get back to his love life. After all, he is an educated French-speaking ex-pro soccer player. A total catch. He could get any girl he wanted, even though he remarkably has little game. And facetiously, you throw out, "Gosh, when was the last time he got laid?" Now imagine that the answer is:

"You were the last one. Oh, and the first one."

That first tidbit is surprising, but not shocking - after all, you talk about EVERYTHING, and you'd gotten the sense that he hadn't been so lucky recently although you didn't realise exactly how unlucky. But the latter tidbit. The latter of which you did NOT have even the faintest idea. IMAGINE YOUR SHOCK THEN, especially as you've always said that you didn't ever want to be anyone's first, and have in fact, conscientiously stayed away from such guys because you don't want to be burdened with such responsibility. And you both were really drunk that night - oh shit, it couldn't have been that good for him, could it now? I mean, just the morning after - the first thing you did was tell him the two of you could never let Nick know, And you just assumed that he did this stuff all the time - hell, he was the one with a condom. (And what's this guilt about feeling bad that his first time wasn't that great? What's up with that? He made his own bed, so to say.)

And now, what do you do with this new information? You're not supposed to know, sworn to secrecy by the other guy who accidentally blabbed. Perhaps you should ignore it, because dammit, ignorance is bliss. But you know, there are all these complicating factors (and while it would be lovely to think that perhaps it means that you're the only girl for him, at the same time that's so not the case and if it were you'd have very little respect for his doing nothing about it for the last three years nevermind the fact that you were in a relationship for two of those) and it's like ohMYgod firstAND last and you know, maybe he is gay after all and hasn't come to terms with it (does this seem to be a theme recently?) but you can't help him talk through it because you're not supposed to know this very pertinent bit of information and - oh, just take a breath - but really. Everything he's said has been cast in a whole new light and yeah. It's good you're out of town for a couple of days.


PS. There are 4 eggs remaining. The others fell not of their own accord, but because they are on the floor of my friend's living room and we keep knocking them over.

Obviously not right in the head.

Because I'm staying with an ex - okay, not so much an ex as someone I hooked up with for 3 years before I got tired of him and actually started a healthy normal relationship - next week.

Because I need to be in DC for part of next week, and all my friends there live in Bethesda, which is actually just outside DC. But you see, shithead lives in Dupont Circle, which if you know anything about DC geography, is actually located WITHIN DC. And we all know how I hate being on the outskirts of anything and how I need to be in the centre of things because otherwise I'm not a happy camper. It's all about me, you know.

Really, it made more sense to stay with shithead (yes, he's a different guy than fuckhead. Get the nicknames straight). I'm going to have to be running all over the Hill and whatnot, and he's so much more conveniently located. But obviously, I have a few screws loose (it's the croup), as I'm staying with him for 4 nights. FOUR NIGHTS. This is the guy whom I have seen only twice in the last three years because spending more than 15 minutes with his wannabe pretentious ass makes me want to smack him. So to answer that question, no, there will be no hooking up, unless he has miraculously changed overnight, which so is not the case. I am completely convinced that he was a virgin while we were "dating" - the proof, you ask? He did not attempt to have sex even ONCE in THREE years. And any guy, no matter how afraid of commitment he is (as shithead used to claim), would never go three years without trying to get into my pants in that way.

Why did I put up with him for so long, you ask? Ah, but he rowed crew, was 6'4 with lovely lovely arm muscles, had blue eyes and was an art history and classics major (read: the oxymoronical smart jock). It perhaps shouldn't be that much of a coincidence, however, that after he quit crew (and put on some weight), I started to toy with his head more and not with his body. I am nothing if not shallow.

My friends here think I'm just slightly nuts (again, blame the croup) to be staying with him. My friends from undergrad, however, were they to find out where I'm staying, would kidnap me and beat me senseless, for my own good.

Anyway, we've come to some sort of truce since graduation. And really, I don't wanna stay in Bethesda. However, I will be drunk most of the week in order to cope. So if I don't remember anything or my posting gets really bizarre, you'll know why.

Just know that I do have it.

Ever since my party just over a week ago, I've had this cough. No, backtrack. I completely lost my voice the day after my party, then this cough started to develop. At first, it was a very persistent yet polite cough - polite, in that it was very quiet even though I was constantly coughing. It's like I was a heroine out of an old Victorian novel with consumption. I started to feel like I should've started carrying around a white handkerchief, so that I could politely cough into it. So I blamed the cough on the weather. Stupid East coast, continually attacking my immune system. It was especially attractive when I went out drinking, and spent the whole night coughing and hoping that I wouldn't take a sip of drink and be overcome by another coughing spell and have to spew my drink all over whoever I was talking to (although some of them definitely deserved it).

I thought that going home would cure it. Oh no. Instead, the cough got more violent, and I really wouldn't have been so surprised if I had coughed up a lung. It was horrendous, and seriously unattractive. It would've been better classified as a hacking cough. So I started telling people that I had the plague. It was great fun to watch them edge away slowly. As if I'd share if I really had the plague - no, I'd just infect the unknowing masses.

Then it slowly got better - or so I started to believe. No, somehow the cough developed in such a manner that now I'm generally fine throughout the day, but as soon as the sun sets it's coughcoughcoughcough all over again. And I now know what I have.

I so have croup.

I do NOT care that it is generally limited to children under 6 years of age. As I have often stated, I have the maturity level of a three-year-old (albeit one who is allowed to drink and stay up past midnight). Therefore, it's entirely possible that I have the disease. Please note that one of the symptoms is that the coughing attacks happen at night.

I'm okay with it, really. And nothing is going to sway me from my (definitely incorrect) diagnosis (good thing I left med school, mm?). I did rather enjoy saying I had the plague, though. But this croup is almost just as good.

Sunday procrastination.

You learn something new every day. While over at my friend's apartment for brunch after she picked me up from the airport yesterday, she took out cartons of eggs, saying that it was the vernal equinox and that this was the only time in the year where you can stand an egg on it's little side. Of course we had to try this while watching Miss Congeniality, because, I mean, homework, what's that?


Here is a picture of me having successfully balanced one egg, working on my second. I look like I'm about three in this picture. Maybe that's because often I am, at least mentally.


Here are two eggs balanced, one mine, one my friend's.

Then we started picking up the pace.


Here are five eggs. FIVE EGGS!


NINE EGGS!


A BAKER'S DOZEN! And this is where we stopped, because the rest of our eggs were "defective" and wouldn't balance properly.


Don't these eggs look like they belong in a Magritte painting?



These also. There's something surreal about them. Or they look like alien pods.

After all of that was done, I did a google search to find out when the vernal equinox was over (as my friend swore up and down that when she used to do this in high school, that as soon as the equinox was over all the eggs would fall over on their sides), only to find out that this was an urban legend! You can do this at other times of the year! C'est impossible! Upon further examination, however, please note that we have balanced the eggs on their SMALLEST end whereas all the other websites show the eggs balanced on their LARGER end. So there. We did not waste 4 hours balancing eggs, no siree.


Just look at what you can do with a Hahvahd degree. If we don't graduate this year, it's because we're doing stupid things like this on a Sunday instead of work.


PS. As of midnight last night, when I last talked to my friend - the eggs are all still standing. Apparently, she plans on leaving them in the centre of her living room until they fall over of their own accord. This could be really, really interesting.

Truer words have never been read.

Yes, I read my horoscope daily, even though I realise that it is highly unproductive and rarely ever true. It's not that I don't believe that you can't read things in stars - because I think that you can - I just think the interpretation thereof is generally inaccurate, especially if you're not getting them read specifically for yourself. Yet given all those caveats - yes, I read my horoscope. Daily. And I sometimes send my friends their's.

But really, the summary for my horoscope today is spot on.

Ask yourself: Do you really want this, or are you just in it for the chase?

I should be asking myself this daily, not just today.

La peste.

My sore throat on Friday developed into me totally losing my voice Saturday. Luckily, I have my voice back, but then there was this weak little persistent cough on Sunday, which has just further developed into waves of medium-sized partially-hacking coughs. I feel like I'm slowly dying, like those ailing heroines in Victorian novels, and any day now I expect to cough up a lung. My only explanation is that I'm carrying the plague, and now I'm supposed to get on an airplane in a couple of hours (to fly home! Hey - the PhD program found funds to fly me back to visit, and I'm not one to turn down a free plane trip). So I am going to spread my germs all over the country, yippee! Boy, those people sitting near me on the airplane are going to love me.

Seeing that I'm too hungover to pack, I decided to muse upon the whole slew of happy hours that've been occurring between the ed school and other schools in Cambridge. Because, you know, spring is here, the other schools have realised that the ed school is 75% female, and HELLO, 75% female, that's plenty of girls for the pickin'.

So last night there was a happy hour with the law school. Y'all know my opinion on law students, that the majority of them are wretched soulless selfish creatures, a generalisation I'm happy to cast seeing that I dated one for two years, slept with another couple, and have (had? hee!) a whole bunch as friends. I only went because my friends were going, and seeing that if I don't talk to them every day we go into withdrawal, I went. Everytime I met a guy who proudly proclaimed he was from the law school, my instinctive reaction was to tilt my head sympathetically and say, "Oh, I'm sorry."

And I think that that's my problem, why I'm not meeting more guys. Here are all these guys with massive egos (especially if they go to Hahvahd), chests puffed with pride at their profession (this is not limited to lawyers; it also extends to med students), just waiting for me, obviously a addlebrained easily-impressionable girl in the ed school, to fall into their waiting arms. So the last reaction they ever expect to get is:

"Oh, I'm sorry."

It's just that I'm not impressed. You need more than a big flashy professional school to get my attention. Getting into law school only requires good grades, good LSAT scores, and a good essay. They do not interview you; they base their acceptances purely on how good you look on paper. Getting into med school is admittedly harder, but since I had to go through it I have no awe for those in it. Additionally, I don't want to get involved with anyone in either profession because I know firsthand how little personal time people in either school - and career - have, and I'm not willing to go through that again.

And thusly, with three little words and a small head movement, I totally kill their game. Don't get me wrong, it's all sorts of fun (for me), but it also means it's that much harder for me to meet guys. But I take my joy where I get it - and I think, unfortunately, that I have a far better time puncturing egos than I have coddling them. It takes a rare guy to appreciate this humour. But I have hope that he's out there. He's just not gonna be a lawyer or a doctor.

School? What school?

Maybe this website is on its way to becoming a site about food. But that wouldn't be a terrible thing, would it.

Before my party, a small select group of people had to be fed, of course. I love cooking for other people, because then I don't have massive amounts of leftovers, and it's just fun. In another life, I'd throw weekly dinner parties with elaborate menus and lots of booze. Maybe it'll happen in this life someday.


Yes, this is the same roasted beet salad from my friend's birthday party a couple of weeks back. I am such a fan of this salad that I begged my friend to make it again. Even better with some Hawaiian goat cheese (a gift from a friend who went there recently - who knew they had goats in Hawaii?) crumbled on top.


Ah, daube de boeuf, a Julia Child recipe taken from my Amanda Hesser cookbook. You know you're using a Julia Child recipe when you let chunks of beef marinate overnight in a white wine and gin mixture. Then you let it simmer for half a day, so the beef is positively falling apart. There are also onions, carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes, and bacon in the stew. It was served with some boiled new potatoes. I had friends just drinking the marinade straight. And maybe that's how they got drunk.

For dessert, we had angel food cake with strawberries and ample whipped cream. Mmm, angel food cake.

Then, of course, the party itself needed its own proper foodstuffs.

Sadly, this strawberry salsa is the only thing I took pictures of. Remember, once I'm drunk, I don't really remember that I have a camera anymore, even though it might be dangling from my arm. I also made:
*Spicy toasted garbanzo beans and pistachios
*Marinated picholine olives
*Tomato salsa

I think the most creative aspect of the night is when my friends and I decided to write conversation starters on the cups before everyone else got there. You see, we had this "no-talking-about-academics" rule (which of course I was the first one to break within 15 minutes, dammit - at least I didn't have to follow through with the punishment of having to stand out on my freezing cold balcony for 10 minutes), so we had the cups instead. And I leave you with a picture of the aftermath from the party, and one of the burning questions we asked on one of the cups: You know what sesame seeds are. But what exactly is a sesame?

Yeah, you've never thought about what a sesame is before, have you. It's just so fascinating.

Fun foods.

Seriously, Japanese descriptions of things in English are sometimes so damn funny.



This is for a gummy muscat candy. In case you can't read the description of the candy, it is described as follows:

It's translucent color so alluring and taste and aroma so gentle and mellow offer admiring feelings of a graceful lady. Enjoy soft and juicy.

I mean, there are so many jokes that can be made, but I won't go there (namely because I am sick, as in I have the flu and might die any moment I hate being sick, and therefore not creative, and I am trying to get better because some 30-odd people are descending upon my apartment tonight for my party and I BETTER NOT BE SICK ANYMORE BY THEN DAMMIT as I have a daube de boeuf and many different kinds of salsa to make.)

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Think of the most annoying person you know. It shouldn't be that hard, I mean, think of the one person, anytime s/he opens her/his mouth, you want to rip out her/his vocal cords. For me, it's this girl who means well, I suppose (or so people keep telling me), but she is utterly useless yet completely attention-seeking and can't handle her job and OHMYGOD she talks ALL the damn time and JUST STICK A CORK IN IT ALREADY. To top it off, she can't dress, she has utterly no sense of style, and she's short and very disproportionately large-chested and OHMYGOD the voice, MAKE IT STOP. STOP TALKING NOW.

Then imagine how it would be, when you found out she had A PORN SITE.

Ohmygodsonottotallysafeforworkican'tevenbegintotellyou

I admit, I am fairly well-endowed, but OH MY HOLY SHIT. I am NOWHERE near that. NOWHERE. I mean, ACK! She is a DOUBLE G. THAT'S RIGHT. I swear, she's big in person, but DOUBLE G?! I didn't even know they made bras that large.

How in the hell am I going to be able to look her in the face again? I mean, honestly.

(You want to know how I found this? She told one of my friends. And now I'm telling you, to pass on the utter pain and agony.)

Wedding bells are a-ringin'.

Apparently, the best thing about getting a PhD in education is - guess what - I WILL BE ABLE TO EASILY FIND MYSELF A RICH HUSBAND.

You heard that right.

How do I know this? Because this friend - okay, Nick, which if you've read this site, or more specificially, my old site, for any length of time. Nick who's in love with me, and has been for the past 7 years, and we drunkenly hoooked up for four of those seven years, but note that I was drunk when it happened. Never sober. And that should be a sign to all of you out there - if you're only attracted to someone when drunk, it's not necessarily a good thing. And we really only steadily hooked up for two years - the last two years, it was like once every six months because I was in a series of dysfunctional relationships with other people. And he had a girlfriend. If he thinks that I'd ever date him now, seeing that he cheated on his girlfriend, well, he has another thing coming. Anyway, you'd think that having someone so in love with you would be pleasant and fun, but I've come to realise that it's only good when you're in love with them too, or at least don't think that they've become annoying as all hell. He's now a consultant in New York, which has definitely changed him for the worse. While he's always been a big talker, he's gotten to the point where he's definitely too big for his britches, and sometimes obnoxiously so.

So while Nick was in town over the weekend, we went to brunch, and caught up on stuff since I haven't seen him in about six months or so because even though he has a girlfriend, it doesn't stop him from trying to get me to date him (he would also try this when I was dating fuckhead. No shame, none. And the thing is, he's not even suave enough to pull it off; rather, he just comes off as pathetic. Gosh, why am I friends with him again?). Of course, he asked what I was going to do next year. Upon finding out that I plan to pursue graduate studies in education, he said, and I kid you not, what I'm sure he thought was a compliment but was really grossly offensive: "You'll be in the perfect situation to get married."

Pardon?

To further expound on what would turn out to be a very misogynistic theory, he explained that rich guys, guys in banking and consulting (and who he fancies himself to be) do want to marry girls who work, but they don't want these girls competing with them in their field. Therefore, my getting a PhD in educational psychology, or whatever the program is called, I never know, is good for the Mrs.-degree-seeking resumé, as it will show that I'm very highly educated, but I won't be a threat to the male ego because I will be working in a completely non-business-oriented field.

I'm not describing it in its full offensiveness, because it would all I could do to keep myself from sitting there gaping at him, as he dug himself deeper and deeper into this hole, whereby he ascribed to females the age-old stereotype that women should be subservient, at least mentally, to the male, and that they should not compete on the same level because it would threaten the male and heavens forbid we do that. Huh, he was an econ major at this lovely Cambridge intitution, maybe Larry Summers really did get to him somehow.

Of course, after he realised that I was deeply offended at all of this, namely when I said, "well, perhaps I don't want to get married to such a jackass who can't handle female competition," he then backtracked, saying that this wasn't his personal belief but rather that this is what a certain small group of men thought. Men he obviously identifies with. Ergh. He's going to be back in town tomorrow, and seriously, if he brings this up again he might not walk away this time physically unscathed.

Maybe it's a sign.

Last week was a very exhausting one. Pity my liver; I daresay I was out drinking every single night. No real reason in particular, most of the time. Just out. Drinking. Lots. Not doing schoolwork. I did see Watch Boy one night, and I am continually fascinated by the way that he doesn't follow the standard male-female progression of dialogue. In other words, you do not say to a girl with whom you're just sleeping that you two should go away to the Caribbean together. No, because that's just weird given that you've seen each other perhaps 5 times, and remember, You Two Aren't Even Dating In The First Place. It seems as though we've magically jumped to month six of a relationship, where it's okay to invite a girl over while you're doing laundry, and ask her for $1.75 in quarters because you don't have any. But the funny thing is, we're not dating, we're not in a situation that can be termed as anything other than a liaison, which is just a pretty way of saying booty call. To say I'm confused doesn't even begin to describe matters. What happened to good ol' plain and simple hookups, the ones where you just sleep together and part ways without discussions of postmodernism in literature and past dating history?

But that's not the big news. No, not at all. Darlings, darlings, you don't understand how excited I am.

Because apparently, I MIGHT BE RETURNING TO LA.

Do you not get it? Wasn't the link enough for you? Do you need me to spell it out?

MY LAZY VERY-PROCRASTINATORY ASS GOT ACCEPTED INTO A PhD PROGRAM.

That's right, I'll officially be a doctor in many-years time. Perhaps not a medical one, but hey, can I wear my white coat anyway?

Perhaps the fates are telling me that it's high time I returned to the glorious warmth that is Los Angeles. Who knows what I'd do with my lovely fur coat, but OH MY GOD I COULD GO BACK TO WEARING FLIPFLOPS THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME AND I WOULD NEVER HAVE TO SHOVEL OUT MY CAR AGAIN!

Incidentally, do we want to know the bitter irony of the situation? The primary reason, or so he claimed, that fuckhead broke up with me is that he was all, I don't know where I'm going to be next year. He was applying to clerkships all over the country, and seriously, I'd have happily followed him anywhere, even if it were Montana. Me in Montana. Try to picture it. It's really funny. And apparently it wasn't fair that I'd have to sacrifice myself, even if I didn't perceive it as such, as I saw it as an interesting experience, having to live somewhere I never would have chosen. Anyhow, someone didn't get his clerkship (no, I felt no wicked glee at having had found that out), and he'll be in LA next year working. Odds are high that I'll accept this PhD spot. And there we'll be, in Los Angeles, together but separate. Did I mention that I'd be working with his mother's best friend from her doctorate years? Oh yes, we'll always be in each others' lives, even if it's just super-tangentially.

But enough of stupid fuckhead. Let's go over the perks to returning to LA (because if I get into a school on the East coast, I'm going to have a really damn hard time deciding where to go, because for all my complaining, I do like it here and almost all of my friends are here):

-I can finally join the Junior League (yes, I can join it anywhere, but I want to join it with friends who are at home)
-I can wear flipflops almost all of the time
-I won't have to consciously diet, since being in the sun makes me not hungry (not that I really do diet, unless you call eating everything you love a diet)
-I will resume having a year-round tan
-People in LA are prettier to look at
-Craigslist personals are so much funnier in LA
-Beaches
-NO FUCKING SNOW
-People know how to drive
-Parking is abundant
-Good shopping
-No humidity
-There are no evil bloodsucking monsters (read: mosquitos) who will bite the everlasting hell out of me and leave me with gross red welts for weeks (so that only happens when I'm in the South or Midwest and not really in the Northeast. It still counts though)
-Cute little fluffy dogs are everywhere

Give me time, I'm sure I can come up with further advantages to living in LA again.

Dreaming of summer.

I am having a party next week (what, you say I'm in grad school? Really?), and I need help with the playlist. I need suggestions for songs that would go with the "I am sick of winter and all this snow shit and wish I were in the tropics" theme that I have decided upon. So far, I have downloaded a bunch of songs by Brazilian artists, and the classic Jimmy Buffet "I'm-drunk-on-the-beach" songs, but I need more.

I need songs that conjure up tropical climes and vacations in warm places and sleeping in hammocks and general laziness along those lines, but with a good beat to keep the party upbeat.

Suggestions please?

It's just that I can't remember.

You know what. I was going to write this entire big recap of the party, but then when looking at pictures, I realised that I didn't even remember taking half of them, which led me to realise that I was a far sight drunker than I thought I was. So all efforts of describing how great the party was would be futile. Obviously it was great. There was drinking. There was dancing. There was laughter and hilarity and drunken drama and good times. And I really need to get my hearing checked, because I hate finding out the name of the guy I was dancing (read: really damn close to leaving the club with) with the next day from my friends. And really, that's why I've recently stayed away from many one-night stands when ordinarily I'd have indulged - because for the life of me, I can't remember the guy's name at the moment, and my one rule with one-night stands is at the very least, I know the first name of the guy with whom I'm thinking of going home*.

And so I leave you with my favourite two quotes (not necessarily said by me, although they might have been) from the night, which should provide a taste of the hijinks that happened:

"Don't worry, I kissed him so your kiss doesn't count, and your numbers won't go up."

"I was so drunk that my hair is dehydrated today."


*I lied, I have two rules. One is that I know his name. Two is that he is connected to me by no more than two degrees of separation, because I'm not going to go home with just any stranger, unless he's Brad Pitt or Jude Law, of course, in which case I read about them in the gossip rags so much it's like we're friends.