Kim blogging? No way...

Hello all!!!

It's been approx. forever since I've blogged and I wanted to give you all an update on my life!

I don't normally blog unless something interesting has happened in my life, and since nothing fascinating has happened recently, I decided I just need to write about my boring life.

So...since I last posted...(which btw was June 10)...the following things have happened:

1. My friend Michael came to visit! Which was absolutely amazing. I'm so glad that I still keep in touch with him, since everyone else in my grad program has decided to completely ignore me. (whatever...I don't do the best job keeping in touch with them either...)

2. We went to NYC to visit Brizzle and Oh Henry David Not Thoreau. Jenny and I had a blasty in New York and I want to go back...like tomorrow. Unfortunately I won't have the money to go back until probably next July. The 4S reunion was amazing. I absolutely love spending time with everyone and I am very much looking forward to Thanksgiving.



3. Maggie had a birthday! I went up for bowling and dinner for Maggie's 25th and had a great time! I played as Huebert, in honor of the that song Cambria and I finished for H&P The Musical while in NY.



4. Book Club. We read "The Corrections", which is an amazing book. You all should read it if you get the chance. And after bookclub, Maggie and I went and saw The X-Files movie, which was also good.

5. Work, work, and more work.

6. Eric came to visit Jenny! And I luckily got to see him as well.

7. Colorado! Dani and I went to visit Shannon in CO!



8. Work, work, and more work.

That's about it!

Work has been stressful (to put it gently). A lot of my fun coworkers have left (and the rest that I'm close with will probably be gone by my birthday), which makes going to work painful. But, the students start next week (in fact, today was the first day of Panhellenic Recruitment Counselor training!) so I'm glad to have them back! Our grad took a full time job at USD, which means I am also doing her job currently as well. I was at work until 8pm tonight, the first of many late nights!

I'm looking forward to it being my birthday, because it means that recruitment will be over, and Thanksgiving will only be two months away!

On a personal note: I'm doing Weight Watchers again and I've lost 12 pounds! I'm hoping to keep going! Here's to 10% by November 1! :) (that's my goal)

Miss you all terribly. (Except Jenny, who I see regularly...)

PS. I'm glad that Joe Biden has helped Bri realize that Delaware actually DOES exist.

This is why we're hot

I post this only because A. it's really funny and B. mine is BY FAR the ugliest.

Dr. Crentist

Michael: Where were you?
Dwight: At the dentist.
Michael: What's your dentist's name?
Dwight: ...Dr. Crentist...
Michael: Your dentist's name is Crentist?
Dwight: Maybe that's why he became a dentist.

Well...I visited my own Dr. Crentist yesterday, whose name is not actually crentist...and who drilled and filled seven of my teeth! AH! And I have two more.

Let me tell you ladies (and Scott- who I am convinced doesn't actually read this) flossing your teeth and seeing a dentist regularly PAY OFF! It had only been a year since I had been to the dentist, but I am not a good flosser and it really came back to bite me in the ass.

And...going to the dentist is NOT a cheap experience.

On a lighter note- I have new tires! Because I popped one the first time I went to the dentist. Haha! :)

Also note about Kim's trip to the dentist- I'm going into work late today- not because my teeth hurt, but because my stomach hurts from all the weird food I ate yesterday because I couldn't chew!

Arg.

Also- THREE WEEKS UNTIL JENNY AND I GO TO NYC! AH! :) ::jumping up and down::

PS- I've decided to start using my blog again. Just a head's up.

Drama for your mama

It's been a rough week for me. I wanted to thank you all for being so supportive in this crazy time for me.

This situation has actually been really tough on me. This is the third issue with drugs that I've seen with my students in the past year. It's just so hard for me to understand. It's probably because of the way I grew up and the values that my parents taught me, but I just don't understand why anyone would want to get so involved with that of lifestyle. What kills me though is that this situation has taught me that my students learned nothing from the two deaths in the last year. I truly hope they take this situation and learn from it that they are NOT invincible and they need to take care of each other and hold each other accountable. ::sigh::

The hardest part of me is seeing the students not directly involved being so affected. We all just have to take it one day at a time.

This situation has just made me miss you all more and more! I am really truly excited to come to New York in July! :) Looking forward to it!

State of the 4S Nation Part 2: Kim

1. What is your name?
Kim

2. Where do you live?
Normal Heights/North Park area of San Diego, CA (greatest city in the world- discovered in 1904 by the Germans

3. Of what type is your domicile?
I live in a medium size one bedroom apartment on the first floor of a small apartment complex. I park about 20 feet from my front door and the laundry room is in between my car and my apartment. I have some seriously crazy neighbors too. Like, whoa.

4. Do you like where you live? (City, neighborhood, domicile, etc.) If not, where would you rather live?
I love where I live. My apartment is the perfect size for me and a great location! I wish my landlord wasn't so weird though. I mean, I would love to live in some ritzy apt complex with a bigger place, but you can't win 'em all!

5. What do you do for a living?
I am the Assistant Coordinator for Fraternity & Sorority Life at San Diego State. I absolutely adore my job! I get to work with college students every day, encourage them to make the most out of their organizations and become better men and women.

6. Do you think you'll be doing this forever?
Probably not. I really love my job, but it's extremely time consuming. I work a 45 hours on an average week and up to 90 during really hectic times (aka sorority recruitment!). I really want to own my own flower shop some day. I think it would be pretty amazing!

7. Describe a perfect day.
I get to sleep in- with no alarm! I spend time on myself, relaxing, taking a bath, getting a pedicure, going shopping, browsing a farmer's market, and just hanging out (doing some fb stalking, etc.) I get this day about once every three months or so, but I wish I had one every week!

8. Pirates or ninjas?
Pirates. Duh.

9. What's the best book you've read lately?
Well I don't get to read more, really just my books for book club. This last month we read The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It was quite interesting. This months book is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. It's good so far.

10. What's the best movie you've seen lately?
Um, I haven't seen a movie in ages. To be honest I think the last time I saw a movie was when we watched Superbad at the Greek Week BBQ.

11. If you were a cliche, which cliche would you be?
I absolutely adore Anna's answer! But for me... "Everyday is a miracle"

12. What's your least favorite part of every day?
Dragging myself out of bed in the morning. HOW TRUE ANNA!

NEW QUESTION
13. What's your favorite part of every day?
Getting home at night, checking my facebook and the blog, and going to bed. :)

14. Cheese or chocolate?
BOTH! I LOVE BOTH!

15. What was your first concert?
That I remember? Because I know I went to a bunch at the fair with my 'rents. But that I paid for, N'sync at the Oakland Coliseum.

16. Would you prefer invisibility or time travel?
Probably time travel. I do have a degree in history!

17. What's your favorite part of your life?
My job. I love it.

18. What are you looking forward to?
SUMMER! Finals are in two weeks and things are going to get really quiet! My mom is coming, I may go to Vegas with Shannon, and Jenny and I are going to NYC in JULY! (I really wish tomorrow was July 1 and not May 1, but alas)

19. What are you not looking forward to?
The rest of this week and next week. Orientations during the summer.

20. What cool stuff has happened recently?
Not a lot. I got to see my mom in San Francisco a few weeks ago. That was awesome.

21. What crappy stuff happened recently?
Lots of drama at work. I had a really bad day today, it was just awful.

22. Who is your favorite Spice Girl?
Sporty. Plus she has an awesome solo album. Haha.


I added an additional question and finished numbering the questions! :)

I have been flagging in my duties

Sorry Carrie! I totally hear your call to arms, but I have to say that not much has been going on lately and I feel like I have nothing to post about. But let me try and think of something...

Well, it's snowing. That sucks. Not in theory, but in practice. I really don't like trudging through the precip. and though snow isn't as bad as rain, it can be pretty nasty, like now, esp. when you didn't expect it and are wearing cheap, ancient Old Navy flats instead of the warm, snuggly UGG boots you wish you were wearing. In any case, it's quite a change from last week.



It's not much, I'll grant you. I don't know how long it'll end up sticking around, either, but let the record show that, as the New York Times so helpfully pointed out, while it's only really snowed (meaning that some of it actually stayed for longer than than the nanosecond it takes to melt) once this winter in New York, two years ago today there was a HUGE blizzard, with a record 27 inches of snowfall, so...who knows? More could be on the way? I hope not, because my aunt Kika and cousin Emma are coming to visit for the three-day weekend and we're going to see The Lion King on Broadway!!!111ONE



I don't know what else we're going to do. They were here a few years ago and did the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building, etc. I know that Emma wants to do some shopping, but other than that I guess it's sort of open to spontaneity. If anyone has any suggestions from their various forays to NY, let me know.

(Have you noticed I include photos to make this very boring post more interesting?)

Hmmm, what else? Trying to entertain, trying to entertain...Oh! Wanna see something funny?



"...and pick up all that shit!" is my favorite line.

In blogosphere news, I'm sort of a newbie fan of The Anti-9-to-5 Guide, which promises tips and tricks to help you "flee the cube farm." It's probably the best resource for aspiring freelancers, and I'm not sure any of us are, but sometimes there are helpful little hints about other industries as well. Maybe you want to be a freelancer! Well, find out why it's worth it (or not).

Going along with the linkage, if you're not reading Jezebel, you should be (except Scott--it is very lady-focused). You should also be reading my friend Kate's undeniable style, and commenting--then maybe she'll post more!



Okay, and maybe this makes me a bit of a freak, but I'm really enjoying these morbid Barbie murder photos that I found for sale on Etsy. I mean, I don't want to own any of them, but I have to say that I think they're sort of brilliant. I might be inferring, but I see a sort of feminist commentary in them, on the role of the woman and the oppressiveness of the Madonna/whore dichotomy that, in part, is helping to inspire self-hating women to write alarmist essays about how settling is better than being alone. Please don't read the whole article; you'll only feel shitty about yourself, and then you'll feel shitty about letting Lori Gottlieb make you feel shitty about yourself for being single and childless--completely normal things for women our age!

Ugh, seriously, that article assumes so many ridiculous things: (1) That your ultimate goal in life is to get married, (2) that if you concentrate on your career and don't settle that you'll regret it, but that if you concentrate on finding a man and do settle that you won't regret that, (3) that any fucking man will do which he won't, (4) that women fall into two categories--the ones that settle and the ones that have ridiculously unrealistic fairy tale fantasies when it comes to men--which is patently false, and (5) that the women Lori Gottlieb knows represent any statistically significant cross section of women that deserve being written about as if they represent the majority of women, WHICH THEY DO NOT. "Marry Him!" just goes to show that projecting your regrets onto people can result in unwarranted, specious fear mongering. I'm personally of the belief that, barring any chemical imbalance, the way to be happy is to go through life trying to be happy and not sink under the pressure of always wanting more. That doesn't mean you won't want more, or that you shouldn't embrace those desires and strive to fulfill them, but we as human beings can never be perfectly happy and we shouldn't want to be because then we would stop existing and fade away because human nature? Thrives on the struggle. And that's all I have to say about that.

Wow. Very philosophical for a post that started with some "um"s and some blather about the weather. Sorry! But, ooh, check out my pic on my work website...it's my facebook photo but the McDonald's sign in the background is gone!

Okay, I'm tapped. Somebody else grab the baton...I'm Audi.

Kim won't care, but for the rest of you

The Sex and the City trailer. I'm not going to go all too cool for school on y'all and pretend I'm not excited for the movie to come out in May. Speaking of movies, my review of Juno is up at my blog. Sneak peak: I loved it!

Post more people! (Thanks go out to you, Carrie, though, for being awesome.)

Wanna see Harry Potter naked?

As if that's even a question! Well, if you do, come visit Cambria and I and maybe we'll scalp $500 tickets to see Equus, starring the boy wizard and his, um, wand? J/k, the tickets might not be that expensive, although if you factor in all the injuries you'll get when you're trampled by a mob of crazed tweens and way-too-old-for-this adults it might amount to that:

In London, fans regularly mobbed the stage door. A phalanx of London bobbies always escorted Radcliffe to his car. He'd pause on the way to sign "Equus" posters and playbills but refused to sign any "Harry Potter" memorabilia.

Actually, replace "Radcliffe" with "Anderson", "Equus" with "What the Night Is For", and "Harry Potter" with "X-Files" in that statement and it's a pretty accurate description of that time Kim, Cambria and I went to London. [New York Post]

Tea Leoni and David Duchovny are SOOOOO copying me!

Uh, Cambria? David Duchovny and Tea Leoni are probably moving down the street from you, or something. Maybe we'll bump into them at the Buck of Stars and get to be lifelong besties!

Don't be "So Jealous"

I love New York. Last night, completely unplanned, I went to a concert. The main performers were Tegan and Sara, who I of course know of and whose music I thought I was familiar with, but it turns out--I wasn't! I know about four songs, almost all of which got played ("Superstar", from one of their earlier albums, wasn't; oh, and I don't think they played "I Know I Know I Know", either, which seems weird to me because that song was on Grey's Anatomy, if not more shows, so...maybe I missed it? I don't know). Anyway, contrary to my friend Katie's very nature, we got to the venue (Webster Hall) in time to wait in the long-ass line that wrapped itself around two blocks. Randoms kept coming up to us and asking, "What's this line for?", like they thought we might say, "Free iPods--join in on the fun, the more the merrier!" or something. We got inside early enough to peruse the merch table (Katie bought a t-shirt; I bought a set of three Tegan and Sara buttons, one of which is for Cambria) and get a pretty good position about ten feet from the stage.

At just after 9:00, the opening band (Northern State) came on. I'd never heard of them, and according to Katie her friend Pat said, "You'll either hate them, or sort of like them." So obviously we had high hopes. But I thought they were really super fun! They were basically the female version of a poor man's Beastie Boys, which is not to say they weren't energetic and funny and fairly fantastic. I mean, come on: three white Long Island girls in their mid- to late-twenties rapping and jumping around like three-year-olds high on birthday cake? Bound to be entertaining. The rapping was quite ridiculous--I mean, they aren't LFO or anything, rapping about "ruby red slippers and a bunch of trees", but their songs are sort of silly. Yet, they played two songs that were featured on Grey's Anatomy ("Better Already" and "iluvitwhenya") that were actually quite good, and I'm also partial to "Away Away" as well. That said, however, they were far better live than they are on their CD, because I downloaded the music this morning and was much less enthused by the energy they brought. Still, probably the best opening act I'd ever seen, because they were highly entertaining and their songs were fun, and that's basically all I ask for in an opening act. Also, they had t-shirts that I thought were pretty awesome: see right. I totally want one and might actually order it online.

Katie is just so into Tegan and Sara; it's so much fun to see a band you like with someone who's SO INTO THEM, and I'm so glad she brought me. Tegan and Sara are a great act live. I mean, first of all, their music is fantastic, and their voices are so uniquely melodic that they can kind of lull you into a particular deep state of consciousness...or some crap like that. They also tell funny stories on stage throughout the set, which is apparently a throwback to when they didn't have enough material for a full show but wanted to give the crowd one anyway. They also do this adorable thing where they say "Thank you", very sweetly, after the applause after each song. But they don't take no shit--Tegan good-naturedly gave this heckler in the back a tongue-lashing when he kept saying obnoxious things between songs. I hate hecklers; why they come is totally beyond me. Don't you have something better to do with $25? Also a great thing about Tegan and Sara is that if you get bored (which is difficult, but not impossible, especially when you don't know all the songs) you can always occupy yourself with trying to figure out which one is which. Apparently they're identical, technically, but they do look different, so while differentiating them is not hard--like, if they switched sides of the stage between songs, you would notice--if you don't know which is which to start off with, you can spend hours trying to decide. I was wrong with my guesses, but whatever; I still enjoyed the show very much.

At the end of the show they did this thing where they announced the last song, then admitted they'd be back for an encore, and asked us not to clap after the last song or before the encore, but just be absolutely silent and then when they came back out for the encore we would be super loud. Well, of course some drunk assholes forgot, and some purposefully tried to ruin it, but for the most part people were pretty quiet and when they came back on stage it was really loud. Good times.

God, it was so packed. There were times when people were jumping up and down so much I really thought the floor was going to cave in to the basement below; I could feel the hardwood floor bending under the weight. For the most part the other people in the crowd were cool, but every once and a while you'd get some really obnoxious girls who would push forward and stand in front of me, like they had every right to be there, and then they would kind of lean back so that not only were their heads in my way, but they were also sort of pushing me backwards. One couple in particular I wanted to just smack; this blond girl and her girlfriend, I think, who was really skinny and had a strange Joey Lawrence (WHOA!) haircut and smelled terribly like B.O., pushed in front of me and then the smelly girlfriend was all bopping around to the music and kept hitting me with her elbows. I kept exchanging "WTF?" glances with this girl standing next to them, who was very sympathetic, and with Katie. It really ruined a bit of my Northern State experience, but eventually they left and never came back. (I didn't mean for that to sound so sinister; I never saw them again, but I'm sure they were still there somewhere.)

Katie wrote down all the songs they played throughout the entire concert, which I didn't really understand, but I asked her to send it to me so if she is eventually able to decipher her own handwriting I'll add it to this post. They played "Walking With a Ghost" during the encore, though, that I know. I'm rambling and digressing because I can't think of a good way to end this post, so maybe I'll just say TEGAN AND SARA RAWK! and leave it at that.

ETA: Oh my God, I totally forgot--pretty much the funniest part of the concert was when they started playing this song that you could tell everybody recognized but nobody could really place it. Finally, I shouted to Katie, "It's 'Umbrella'!" What is it with artists and "Umbrella"? Rhianna did it, it was a hit, fine (I totally loved it, I'm not going to lie; still do, in fact). Then that chick whose name I don't know (maybe she was French? Or had a French name?) covered it, but made it really slow. And then Mandy Moore covered that slow cover! And now Tegan and Sara are playing it at their concert (BTW, it was the best version I'd heard, better than the original even, which is so catchy)...I just don't get it. Is it like some big music industry in-joke, that everybody's going to keep covering "Umbrella" because it's funny? I'm confused, but amused. (God, maybe that should be the new title of my personal blog.)

ETA some more: Katie emailed me the set list from the concert (which, curiously, I don't think has a name--"The Con", I guess). She doesn't think she got it all right, but it's probably pretty close.

1. Dark Come Soon (The Con)
2. Like O, Like H (The Con)
3. Nineteen (The Con)
4. Hop A Plane (The Con)
5. Speak Slow (So Jealous)
6. So Jealous (So Jealous)
7. "Your House" (she can't remember)
8, Where Does the Good Go (So Jealous)
9. Soil, Soil (The Con)
10. "Don't Need You" (again, can't remember)
11. Relief Next to Me (The Con)
12. Are You 10 Years Ago (The Con)
13. Back In Your Head (The Con)
14. The Con (The Con)
15. Call It Off (The Con)

Encore

1. You Wouldn't Like Me (So Jealous)
2. Take Me Anywhere (So Jealous)
3. Umbrella
4. Walking With a Ghost (So Jealous)
5. Living Room (If It Was You)

New fake boyfriend alert!

Guys. I have a new fake boyfriend. His name is...hold on, let me check how old he is...okay, nineteen, not illegal. Anyway! His name is Michael Cera. You might know him from his work on Arrested Development, on which he played the hilariously awkward George Michael Bluth.



Needless to say, Cambria's roommate, Jessica, and her boyfriend, Shaun, are either fake creeped out or really creeped out by Cambria's insistence that I like the young ones. And while it's true I'm not hot for the ridiculously old frauds like Rob Lowe, I would not actually date somebody younger than me, if only because they'd be really immature. I mean, men mature at vastly a different (and slower) rate than girls, so dating a nineteen-year-old boy (there's really no other word for them) would be like dating an, um, fourteen-year-old boy? I don't know. I can't do math well.

Anyways, in lieu of that, I'm going to pimp wicked MC's blog and Internet video series, Clark and Michael, which he cowrites, produces, directs, what have you, with his BFF Clark Duke, who virtually no one but Kim will recognize from the ABC Family original series "Greek." It's funny to me, at least! So watch it or don't watch it or whatever, but now you know it's there!



P.S. I've moved to New York and found an apartment. Details to come.

New York, New York

Sorry I've been out of touch for a little while, but I spent all last week in New York City, and I didn't really have the time or the energy or the desire to blog. God, moving to such a scary city, and for the first time being in complete control of my own life, and having to take responsibility for my own choices, is so overwhelming. I don't know where to start explaining the ups and downs of my emotional state over the past seven or eight days. First of all, I was really excited to hang out with Bri, so that was a good thing. And I really do like New York for a lot of reasons, not least is that subway, which I found much easier to navigate than I did last November. I saw a lot of things I hadn't seen before (Central Park, for instance) and went to places I'd never been before (the Village, Queens, Jersey). Sadly, a lot of the plans Cambria and I made before I came (see her cousin's play, see Legally Blonde: The Musical, go back to Vol de Nuit and steal a Delirium Tremens glass) did not materialize, but there is plenty of time for that when I move there. WHEN I move there. It's going to happen. I've decided. It might take me a month or so, but I promise, Kim--by Thanksgiving, I will be there! I'll be living with a total stranger and temping, most likely, but I will be there!

I accomplished a few things while I was out there. Firstly, I had lunch with Julie from Random House, who promised to give my resume and cover letter to the woman who is hiring an assistant at Three Rivers Press, which is an imprint of the division (Crown) where Julie works (I think for the Publisher). She gave me a lot of great insight into the job, the company, and the industry in general, and she was really funny and kind to me. I really hope I get to interview for the job, and I plan on staying in touch with her, because she seems like a great person to hang out with and learn from. So maybe I'll get an interview for that job--they haven't called yet, but I'm sure that has little to do with anything. My experience working for a publishing house is that when an assistant leaves, they really do need to fill the position right away, but instead of doing so immediately they instead pile tons and tons of work upon the remaining assistants and take their sweet time hiring. There are many reasons for this, probably one of which is that hiring people is time consuming and annoying, especially with the turnover rate in these positions, which practically guarantees that even the lowest-rung editor is hiring a new assistant at least once every year and a half, if not more often. That's how it was at Thomson, that's how it probably is everywhere else. So I'm not freaking out yet--if I have any chance at all of getting an interview for a position, it's this one. If I don't get a call from them, I just don't know what I'm going to do.

I also meet with Jessica, who works for Penguin. She didn't have a lot of helpful leads, but she did weigh in on Mary-Kate Olsen's appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brian and Britney's disastrous VMA performance (which, way to stop being either relevant or respectable, MTV). She also told me a lot of stories about her time in the industry that are interesting to almost nobody but me, and she told me about a lot of the books she's been working on and acquiring, all of which sound really great. There's this whole book about body image written by a former Miss USA/America (?) pageant winner that has pictures of real women's bodies in an attempt to show young girls that they don't have to look like porn stars or supermodels to be beautiful. It sounds trite, but the way that Jessica described it to me made me thing it's going to be really awesome--maybe a bit controversial, but awesome. She said she'd keep an eye out for positions I can apply to. It's getting to be that, while I'd still like to work in fiction, I think I'd be perfectly fine with working with nonfiction, and even more than that I think I'd probably enjoy it better in the long run because I only read selected nonfiction, so I wouldn't feel as though my entire life was consumed by the same thing--and I wouldn't run the risk of losing my taste for fiction just because I sit around editing it for a living. So, in other words, this RH position is perfect for me. I hope they take my experience and enthusiasm into account, because I would die to work there.

Um, what else? Oh, I kind of, after much tooling around the metro area looking at apartments, decided that I'm going to have to live with a roommate (makes it less likely I'd have to take any responsibility for fulfilling a lease--I can just pay my rent and utilities and have that be that), and I only want to live in Astoria (Queens) or Manhattan. Also, I only want to live with women in their twenties, and hopefully only one of them. So that should give me someplace to start when I go back at the end of the month. I overheard this girl talking on her cell phone over by the Bloomingdale's where Bri works, telling her friend that she applied to about forty places (looking for roommates, I'm assuming), heard back from about four of them, and only about two were acceptable to her. So it looks like if I want to find the right living situation, I'm going to have to really widen my net (within my set parameters) and hope I get lucky. It'll probably take time, but while I'm there looking for a place I can also be applying to/visiting temp agencies, and hopefully something will come of that as well. I'm actually pretty upbeat about it right now--I wasn't a few days ago, when I cried practically every time I got on the subway. But on Tuesday I didn't want to go home, which was a good sign that I'm ready to stay, and now that I have a plan I can get things underway as soon as I go back. Poor Bri and Jessica (her roommate, not the girl who works at Penguin)--they're going to have to put up with me for at least another week sometime in the future.

Messages

Kim! You took the time to write a blog post and you didn't even tell us what you thought about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? For shame. Did you notice that thing I told you that I didn't like about how they changed shit around? Inquiring minds want to know!

Okay, so I was thinking long and hard about when I was going to start applying for New York jobs, and people keep asking me, and I keep saying, "Oh, you know, like four to six weeks before I plan on moving there," which is . . . now, interestingly enough. So tomorrow on my day off I plan on going downtown to scam free WiFi off the Chicago Public Library (Dale's just isn't sufficient) to apply for jobs, and also going to Borders and Sephora to purch birthday gifts for Sandra and Nickie, whose birthdays inconveniently fall on the day Hairspray comes out (July 20) and the day Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out (July 21). I'm pretty much going to be off the grid that weekend, so I hope they don't mind delaying the gratification of spending time with me until the next weekend. I am also going to see Harry Potter while I'm downtown, because I love that AMC East theatre and I'd like to see it again with all the special effects.

Oh, and also? Add Harry Potter and Netflix to the List of Things I Love That My Grandmother Disapproves Of. I need to get out of that house so she'll stop trying to improve me.

Happy birthday Maggie!