Turns Out He Wasn't Actually Acting

I'm not sure about Ellen Page but I'm officially enamored by the x-treme awkwardness of Michael Cera.

(Hide the rest)

A Year in Review

I saw a blog in which someone posted the first sentence (or two) from the first post of every month of the past year. Seems as fitting of a send-off as any.

January
So, I don't know about y'all but I rang in 2007 with a bang. If by 'a bang' you mean 'asleep'. Hi, I'm eighty-years-old, apparently.

February
I was inspired by the RPM Challenge to write, record, and mix a song in less than two days. My musical experience is mostly limited to piano lessons in the first grade and I don't have any instruments but hey why should that stop me?

March


click to see my pretty friends
under pretty lights
against pretty walls

April
Two nights in a row, friends have come over bearing bottles of fantastic red wine.

May
I'm still having weird dreams. My dream a few nights ago had to do with Wesley Snipes narrating a children's animated film in French.

June
I realize that packing up your entire life into the back of a tiny car from your 2nd floor apartment all by yourself in the rain should be fun in theory.

July
The night train from Prague was not entirely awesome.

August
Law school is great, New York is great, my apartment is great, coconut-curry ice cream is great. I can't think of a single reasonable thing to complain about at the moment but I'm sure I'll eventually think of something.

September
Things I have accomplished so far today:

• spilling an enormous amount of chocolate ice cream on my new sweatpants
• spilling an enormous amount of guacamole on my new macbook

October
Lying in my bed last night, as I listened to a chorus line of mice grapevine across my floor and watched spooky shadows make hieroglyphs on my ceiling, I fell into a minor panic regarding the fact that if I drop out of law school, I will undeniably end up like that woman with no legs who I saw begging on the street the other day or, worse, like that girl from high school who is still working at House of Wings.

November
In further Laurie is Slowly Dying of Some Mysterious Illness news, I woke up a few nights ago with a horrible burning rash on my back that disappeared within an hour, I threw up last night for the second time in as many weeks, and I think I have pink eye.

December
I officially crossed the 60 Job Applications mile marker today. I've had six rejections, two follow-up tests (one of which resulted in a rejection), and zero interviews.

(Hide the rest)

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please.

Tonight, I bought myself a two-week extension at the end of which I must have a real job and a real apartment or else this city will politely show me the door.

I'll be spending my stay of execution in a little place called Queens. I visited Astoria for the first time on Tuesday and promptly fell in love and now I'm going to live there for two weeks with a sixty-year-old orchestra conductor and all of my worldly belongings in boxes on the floor.

I'm tired, y'all.

Anna wrote to me in a Christmas card, "If 2008 is as eventful as 2007, you will be: (a) married, (b) living in Canada, (c) the president of something."

I fell flat on my face in 2007 and not just once but over and over again. I've spent a lot of this year facing unflattering truths about myself that I wasn't prepared to see and it's been amazingly painful but I feel like I've learned a hell of a lot. In the past year, I've been turned upside down and shaken like a coin purse so that nearly every single thing that I thought mattered to me or defined me has fallen out and shattered on the floor. I wholeheartedly lost myself this year and it might have been the best thing that ever happened to me.

Here's to 2008 and whatever the hell it's going to bring. I'm ready.

(Hide the rest)

That Night We All Wore Wigs

I put on some make-up
Turn on the tape deck
And put the wig back on my head
Suddenly I'm Miss Midwest Midnight Checkout Queen
Until I head home
And I put myself to bed

(Hide the rest)

Ah, the Eternal Question.

What is A?


image courtesy of indexed

(Hide the rest)

They've Got My Number

Apparently 70 is my lucky number.

I say this because it was after 70 job applications that I finally scored an interview. The job was a two-week, part-time gig selling friendship bracelets in the lobby of a theater-- my references were relevant, my experience was impressive, and the interview was by far the best I've ever had. The job was scheduled to begin the next night and my interviewer suggested that I clear my calendar.

I never heard from him again.

I've also applied to at least a dozen roommate ads-- most never respond at all but several have gone so far as to ask me to come by that evening to see the place, only to reply half an hour later that the apartment is no longer available.

As much as I love New York, I have to admit that I am beginning to re-examine my loyalty.

Tonight I was complaining to my mother that I don't know what to do with myself when my lease runs out on January 5th. She rightfully informed me that the world's smallest violin was playing just for me which inspired me to channel my inner fourteen-year-old and brat, "What are you saying I should do? Just put a bunch of a city names in a hat and draw one out and then just, like, move there?"

"Sure."

I opened my mouth to say something snotty... and then closed it again.

p.s. I'm currently taking recommendations. Thinking west/southwest...

(Hide the rest)

Turning Point

We're always at turning points, I guess. Wherever you are on the great highway of life, there are always exits and opportunities for u-turns even if there is a daunting lack of rest stops. Nevertheless, I feel like I am at a particularly major intersection at the moment and am unsure where to direct my vehicle although I finally feel like I've regained the emotional stability required for map-reading.

Ok, this metaphor is getting obnoxious.

I've had a few wake-up calls the past month or so and they really hurt. I'm not comfortable talking about them because, frankly, I'm embarrassed. I'm almost never too embarrassed about something to tell people about it so that might give you some idea of the intensity of these slaps in the face. But consider me officially woken up.

For several months, I've been desperately searching for someone to forgive me. Forgive me for fucking up law school, forgive me for running away, forgive me for falling apart in Europe, forgive me for making horrendous financial decisions that will haunt me for the next ten years, forgive me for turning into the hot mess that I've become in the past six months. And the thing is: Everyone forgives me. Everyone is so fucking kind and understanding but the more understanding people were, the more desperate I felt.

And then there was a morning this week, while walking to work, when that forgiveness suddenly came. And when it hit me, the relief literally knocked the wind from my lungs. It turns out that all this time, the only person I needed to forgive me was myself. I still don't know where I'll be living in a few weeks or where the money will come from but I finally feel like I have me on my side and I think that's all I ever needed.

(Hide the rest)

There is actually a difference.

I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love right now and the beginning was mostly lovely but now I'm in the chapter on India and I find myself hunting around for a fat red pen so that I can scrawl in the margins, "Citations please?"

If you want to write some hippie-dippy love poem to our inner goddess-chakra-happy-trees, I will be the first in line to lap it up like fruit loops. But when people try to pull in bullshit science-- even social science!-- without even the vaguest suggestion of citations, sample sizes, or data... it kind of makes me want to punch them in the face. It's not that I'm a cynic, I'm just not an idiot. There is actually a difference.

Note to all New Agers: You don't have to try to prove the existence of God/god/gods/etc. with science. That's actually kind of the point?

(Hide the rest)

It's a Teaparty on Your Ceiling

Madeleine Boulesteix makes chandeliers from old teacups.



Reduce, REUSE, recycle. Amazing.

Found via Haute Nature.
Image courtesy of Madeleine Boulesteix.

(Hide the rest)

Manic Panic

I'm in one of my "The world is my oyster" moods right now when I can't stop moving and everything seems exciting and manageable and I have so much energy to "GO GO GO". When I'm in these moods, I can't imagine ever being down about anything again. I'm so pleasant and productive in this phase that it almost makes up for later when I crash into Crazytown.

In related news, I had a dream a few nights ago that told me to start sleeping the other way on my bed. I don't remember the dream but I do remember waking up in the middle of the night and obediently moving my pillows to the foot of the bed. I have been sleeping awesomely and feeling much more balanced ever since. Feng shui maybe?

(Hide the rest)

The Grass, It Is So Green

Wow, there's nothing like a crappy job to make you realize that, yes, there is something more depressing than unemployment.

(Hide the rest)

Job Applications

My cousin works for a university and part of her job involves going through piles and piles of resumes and sorting them into 'Yes' and 'No'. She told me once that she is instructed to literally scan cover letters for keywords from the job advertisement-- words like "detail-oriented" and "team player". Any cover letters that don't mention those words (as well as meet minimum criteria such as education, experience, and software expertise) and thrown in the trash.

Despite having heard this cautionary tale, I find it so silly that I still refuse to do it. My perspective is that anyone can say that they're "detail-oriented" or a "team player" and it doesn't really mean anything. If the experience described in my cover letter demonstrates that I'm a detail-oriented team player, shouldn't that be enough?

Apparently not. I have applied for sixty-five jobs so far in this search and many of those cover letters were absolutely lovely-- I could frame them. I could publish them. I could forward them to my grandma. However, I have had exactly two responses to my sixty-five job applications and both of them came in response to very silly cover letters in which I basically regurgitated the contents of the job ad.

So there you go.

(Hide the rest)

Field Goal

Guess what, y'all? I got a job! It's only a temp job but it starts tomorrow, it's near my house, and it pays enough that when the recruiter told me how much, it took all of my years-ago theater training to say composedly, "Oh, I'm sure that will be fine."

Hollah!

Unfortunately, the job requires me to dress all fancy-like (because it's "on the 39th floor" she says, as though that means something) and I have no fancy clothes so I had to go shopping after my interview. I was a little worried since my shopping excursions tend to end with me curled in a ball on the dressing room floor, rocking back and forth and sobbing, but it was actually the most painless shopping experience of maybe my entire life. I found everything I needed, everything fit perfectly, and nothing was too expensive.

Oh, AND I saw Parker Posey today!

But before you get too jealous, just remember that tomorrow I have to be at work at 9:00am in a suit. Ouch.

EDIT: AND I just got an email in response to one of my 65 (!) job applications. She says they are "very interested" in meeting me and want to interview me this week! Too bad I have a full-time job now! Ack!

(Hide the rest)