My Twenty-Something Quasi-Soap

Ten years. Of growing up gracefully, but with the scars to prove that it has not been easy. Of laughter and adventure. Of tears and frustration. Accomplishments that now seem mundane; victories that are laughably small, defeats that were mere speed bumps. An incredible life lived and captured here in changing style and prose for ten years. So earlier this year I had made all sorts of plans for commemorating ten years of this blog. I promised rants and stories and revisits of posts. However, life got in the way, as usual, and I really didn't follow through with those plans. Whatever. It's my blog. But I had to write today, just for a minute. I won't post tomorrow. I don't think I'm going to do an "obligatory 9/11 post" any more. It's been ten years. We all need to move on. What a crazy summer it's been. Sorority stuff. Rock the Bells 2011. Met a new boy. An earthquake. Hurricane Irene (with Maria potentially on the way). New job...

Those of you who have been following the blog for a decent amount of time know that I am a huge fan of Grey's Anatomy. Huge. Fan. I can honestly say that I've seen every single episode, and I stuck with the show through its several rough patches, despite my several rants and raves throughout the years. Season 7 just wrapped up a few weeks ago, as did all of my regular season shows, and I was left adrift in the wasteland known as Summer Programming. Usually I catch up on my reading and my never-shrinking Netflix queue. One night last week, I was browsing the Instant choices on Netflix... ...and I hit paydirt. Complete TV series. Tons of them. 80's, 90's, and current shows, all there at a mouse click. And of all of the shows I could have picked to enjoy...I went with GA. Because I'm a dork. Things I Have Relearned/Remembered from Revisiting Grey's Anatomy, Seasons 1-2.13: [insert requisite spoiler alert here, just in case] -Ok, so we know why Meredith...

...I started a blog. My first blog post was on September 10, 2001. It was a silly little post - just a quick introspective on what it felt like to be growing up and becoming independent (sort of), and some weird little poem about an ant. (Oh, just go read the silly post. I'll wait.) Of course, we all know what happened the next day. I've mentioned before how what was supposed to be (and eventually became) a digital repository for all of my ranting and rambling ended up being a time capsule of how we felt and how the world changed on and after 9/11. I never wanted the war(s) that followed. I, like everyone else, just wanted justice. From September 13, 2001: W. is saddling up on his star spangled high horse and is ready to blow the middle east to kingdom come. and as much as i want to see justice for this nation and this horrible tragedy, i'm not ready for a war. enough innocent people have died...do really need more? i mean, all of these crazy little countries have e...

Rain. Real rain, as the temperature remains above freezing right now. Not freezing rain, or sleet, or slain, or wintry mix, or that god-awful demon snow. Just rain, washing away the frozen detritus of the past two months. Ahh... Last week, the temperature got up to 65 degrees and it was sunny and beautiful out. At least, that's what everyone's Facebook statuses told me. I, on the other hand, was asleep for the entire day as a result of getting hit with the latest 24 hour stomach virus that's been making the rounds. On Monday, we had snow. But it's been melting away, and the rain is helping, and that's awesome. Otherwise, I guess things have been kind of boring. The job hunt continues, with better feedback this time around than in previous searches. No offers yet, but at least I'm getting calls and interviews. Still hanging out with my friends on the weekends and having fun. (Even when storming out of a club in Atlantic City while throwing up both middle fi...

...you cruel, cruel month. Thank goodness you're the shortest one of the year. Weather-wise, things have only somewhat improved. We have been getting at least one major storm per week. Last week was my official breaking point - my car was completely encased in a coating of ice about a quarter-inch thick. The following fake news story is what I created on my Facebook page while I was at work that day: Somerset Co. Woman Snaps; Torches Yard With Flamethrower After melting the majority of the snow and ice in her front yard, the woman disappeared. Authorities believe she has fled the state for warmer weather, possibly Florida. Reports have come in from beachfront bars in South Florida about a half crazed woman demanding bucket sized margaritas. She is wearing one snow boot, one flip-flop, and is wielding an ice scraper. She does not appear to be dangerous, but is muttering about "making the white stuff go away." Authorities have not been able to determine if she is the...

For realz, y'all, this winter shit is wiggedy-wiggedy-wack. (Yes, that sentence was just composed by a college graduate.) We had The (Other) Blizzard of 2010 the day after Christmas - 18 inches. Then we had a storm last week that added another 6 or so inches. Today we got another 6 to 9 inches. We aren't even halfway through January, and I'm already so sick of snow that I was looking for jobs back in Ft. Lauderdale. (Totally not kidding. South Florida and Atlanta.) I've been dreaming about a shore house down in Wildwood for a week this summer. Or a cruise to the Bahamas. Anything but scraping off my car and risking my life whenever there's a snowstorm because my company does not believe in snow days. They do, however, believe in public shaming tactics and psychological warfare that make one feel guilty for even arriving 45 minutes late for work because her street wasn't plowed yet. If you didn't catch on in that last sentence there, I'm job hunting...

Do not adjust your television set. Yes, the blog looks different. I'm not sure if I like it yet, but I'm trying it out. It may change again soon. But it's still me, and this is still my blog. Have no fear. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming... "Say what? Quiet? You know this year has been anything but quiet!" That's probably what you were saying when you read the title of today's blog. Yes, there was a lot of stuff that went down in 2010. I just didn't talk about it. Think about it. Look at the side bar. This makes post #11 for the entire year. The whole year! That's a far cry from the light years of '03 and '04. Maybe there hasn't been a lot that's happened this year. Maybe I just didn't feel like talking. I know that years from know, I'm going to look back on the 2010 posts and think, "God, what a depressing year!" I spent a lot of time talking about failure. Hell, the first post of the ye...

Don't know why I decided to get on here and type something...there's nothing new or good to report. Winter is finally settling in with its dark and cold, but the tree is lit up here in the house. May the tree remain upright this year. (Long story if you haven't been following along the past few years.) My birthday is in a little more than a month. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, as it just seems to be a reminder of Everything That I Should Have Accomplished By Now, Yet Have Failed To Do So. (Yes, the obnoxious Milne-esque capitalization was done on purpose.) I think I'll stop telling people how old I really am...it's easier to let them think I'm anywhere from 5-10 years younger than I really am. So...yeah...2010. Kind of a crap year, when all is said and done, despite my resolution to just be happy. But then again, things looked a lot different at the beginning of this year than they do at the end. Ugh, I'm just getting more depressed writing...

I hate the feeling that, at nearly 28 years old, I have accomplished little when I have, in fact, accomplished a lot. I hate the fact that accomplished is indeed spelled correctly, when it looks so wrong. I hate that people think that I am successful when I am so blatantly failing. I hate that I am holding myself to a standard that was perfectly understood and expected 30 years ago, but is nearly unattainable now. I hate the fact that I can't allow myself to be happy with my job and that I am so convinced that I will fail, even thought I am truly doing the best that I can with the few tools that I have been given. I hate that I am never happy about my appearance. I'm too skinny, or I look fat. My hair never looks right. I don't work hard enough at taking care of myself, especially that it's more important now than it ever was before. I hate that I feel so overburdened when, at the end of the day, I have so little to worry about. I hate the fact that I'm great at giv...

So where's my t-shirt, dammit? Here I am at 10:30 pm on Labor Day, fully exhausted from an amazing holiday weekend. I mean, I embarked on a 12 destination bar crawl of Asbury Park last night, then spent this afternoon on the beach. It was a great weekend. As I was enjoying the ocean breeze and sunshine today, I realized something: summer is over, and I'm still here. I survived this summer! While there are still things that I'm working out on my own with regards to the breakup with BBE, I didn't spend the summer crying over it. The new job has been nothing short of exhausting, but I'm learning every day and powering through epic interviewing sessions. (I once did 14 interviews in four hours...holy crap) I bar crawled in Asbury Park, saw a show in Atlantic City, partied in the Village, spent some time in Philadelphia, went to a drum corps show up in North Jersey, helped paint a kitchen down in South Jersey, took a half day field trip to downtown Newark, went outlet sh...

So, you know how I was talking about waiting for the other shoe to drop? Wondering what the next big monkey wrench was going to be? BBE and I broke up just about a week after my last post. ::audience gasps in shock:: Yes, it's true. And to be perfectly honest, I don't feel like saying much more about it. My main focus over these past six weeks has been moving on from the whole situation, and not dwelling on the particulars or rehashing everything for the sake of the blog helps me move on. Ok, you say, so BBE is out of the picture. What about PharmaWin? PharmaWin? More like PharmaBore. Booooooooooring. Digging through old files, finding things that pre-date the moon landing (I'm not even kidding), filing files, pulling files, copying files...files, files, files. Dude, it was so gosh-awful boring that I thought I was going to lose my mind! In the midst of my two week "omgwtf-I just broke up with BBE-I hate my new job-my life is a hot mess-and I don't know how to fix ...

Well, it's 8:10 on a Thursday night, which is an unusually strange time for me to blog. I'm usually catching up on my Hulu queue or watching tv or something on Netflix. Or I'm usually catching up on my ever-expanding list of time-sucking websites. Right now, I'm stalling because I need to make another attempt at cleaning my room. Hence, I blog. For once, I have good news! The temp gig that I've been at since February ends tomorrow. No, really - that's good news. I landed a long term contract job (fancy term for "temp gig") at a huge pharmaceutical company. Provided that it doesn't entirely suck (and I doubt that it would suck), I'll have gone from PharmaFail to PharmaWin in 6 months! (btdubs, the new company will be know as PharmaWin going forward unless it warrants a new code name on its own.) So I'll be doing HR file stuff at PharmaWin. BBE will start a new job on Monday too. We had to take a bit of a break from the apartment hunt, but we...

Ok, I get it. Americans have gotten fatter, and that's why the clothes are bigger. Supply and demand, and all that crap. And in order to clothe all of those ever increasing waistlines and bustlines, you have to make the clothes bigger. Well, stop it. NOW. You know why? You are sizing out tiny people like me who truly want to buy your clothes, but can't. I can't buy clothes because the rest of the world is getting bigger, and I'm not. Actually, if we went by my size tags alone in the past ten years, I've been shrinking. Shrinking! And everyone says, "Oh, it must be so nice to be so skinny! You can wear whatever you want to wear and always look fantastic in it!" Riiiiight. Gee, it's nice to have to pay extra money to have my pants re-hemmed because designers think that the only people who can possibly be wearing a size 0 must be at least 5'7". You know what I just love? Trying on pair after pair after pair of pants and having every. last. one. o...

..I'll hear that BBE and I have landed our apartment. Or maybe we'll hear that we just missed our chance again, after losing the most flipping amazing apartment we had ever seen last weekend. Maybe tomorrow I'll get the full time offer from my temp gig, and the offer will be decent money, and I'll have a permanent job with benefits again after nearly 5 months of being in limbo. Or maybe I'll get a call to reschedule the interview that was canceled last week. (The job I mentioned in my last post did not materialize. Eff you, huge investment bank. Eff you and your stupid big shot VP who played with his Blackberry the whole time. It's not my fault that your more important candidate ended up in Chile instead of Peru, and if it was really all that critical, then you should have just rescheduled.) Or maybe nothing will change on that front. It's just so frustrating to be so close to having things right again, but it's still out of reach. We're really so cl...

...and the more things change, the more they stay the same. We've been blessed with beautiful weather this week as a prelude for the season to come. We'll have rain off and on this week, but no one cares because it's not effing snow. Or a torrential nor'easter that destroyed every umbrella in NYC (I saw the carnage...the streets were littered with them the day after the storm). But enough about boring stuff like weather. As the weather has transitioned, so has the potential for very good things. I could possibly (but most likely not) have a new and better job lined up by this time next week. BBE has defected back to Jersey from the hostile environs of Central Harlem (yay!) and we're starting (or not starting) our apartment hunt today. My satellite radio has crapped out on me and must be shipped away for repair/replacement. The cd player in The Ramenmobile almost ate my Maroon 5 disc, resulting in my nearly having a panic attack in a Wendy's drive-thru because I ...

It has been one year and a week since the day that I was laid off from my job at the neighborhood bookstore. I almost just typed, "the day that my life fell apart," but I know that that is hyperbole in its purest form. While at many times over the past year and one week I truly felt that everything had completely unraveled, I know that such is not the case. Yes, my savings accounts are completely wiped out (one is even in the red, thanks to monthly maintenance charges). I do indeed have about $500 worth of unpaid medical bills, courtesy of my brief bout with pneumonia and a few grueling months of dental work. My credit card debt is so disastrous that there is only one other person on the planet besides myself and the credit card companies that know how far in the hole I am, and I hope to keep it that way. My health insurance coverage expired at midnight. Tomorrow I'm wearing pants to work that have been stapled at the hem and expertly colored over with a Sharpie marker. A...

...yeah, that was a pretty lame title. But today's post relates to one of America's favorite pastimes, ranked up there with IRS audits and root canals: air travel. Where to start, where to start... Ok, let's first rewind about a year and revisit the now famous Flight 1549 aka The Miracle on the Hudson, which I briefly reported on here . Nearly a year later, people can not get off of Captain Sully's jock. Seriously. Dude was Grand Marshall of the Tournament of Roses Parade, and TLC is airing an hour-long documentary tomorrow night about the flight. An hour-long documentary - about a 6 minute flight. Seriously. I can sum it all up in like, 45 seconds: Plane takes off from LaGuardia. Two minutes in, geese hit engines. Loud banging noises commence, then engines fall silent. Capt. Sully (to first officer): I got this, dude. My aircraft. Skiles: No prob, dude. Go for it. Capt. Sully (to control tower): Tower, we have a problem. We need to land this sucker immediately. Tower: ...

Hmmm, it's nearly 2 in the morning on a Monday. Of course I'm writing a blog. :) I just wrapped up another weekend with BBE...burgers, True Blood Season 1, and lots of naps. In other words, it was awesome. So since I was temporarily in good spirits, I figured I'd give my year-end wrap-up post another shot. And what better way to wrap things up than by looking at this year's posts and all they had to reveal. What will we remember most from 2009? What did I manage to preserve here for the Internet Archives? A lot of what we'll all remember about 2009: not a lot of fun. :( Irony is a cruel, cruel, thing. How? Take my quote from the beginning of 2009: I'm sure that 2009 will shape up to be a huge year, just like 2008 was. But for all our sakes, I hope it's a huge year in that "OMG so many awesome things have happened and things are getting better for once" way and not in the "OMG everything is going to hell in a handbasket and it's only going...

...until 2009 is over. And honestly, it won't be a day too soon. ::sigh:: I had fully intended on launching into one of my year-end-wrap-up posts, in which I was going to list all of the shitty stuff that's happened to/for me this year and match it up to a list of awesome stuff that's happened to/for me this year in an attempt to convince myself that 2009 truly was not the worst year ever (even though I'm wholly convinced that it has been, and there's still 2 weeks to go). But then I got a phone call from BBE, and instantly felt better again about everything because we're going to hang out this weekend. So, while I still have time to compile my List Of Reasons Why 2009 Was The Worst Year Ever (Reason #1: I lost my job. Twice . (yes, twice...I'll explain eventually...)), I can start on my other list right now: People/Places/Things that were Awesome in 2009: #1: Best Boyfriend Ever. And that's all that needs to be on the list for now. :)

So when did it get to be the end of October already? Had a great day with BBE today. We went to the Guggenheim to see a Kandinsky exhibit. I learned that I'm not a big fan of Kandinsky. But I got to see a few Picassos and Monets up close, so that was awesome. Next museum on the list is MoMA, which I'm totally stoked about. One of the best parts of the day ('cause any day with BBE is a good day) was walking back through Central Park along the reservoir running track. The view of the west side was spectacular, and it helped me realize that fall isn't all that bad. Yes, I miss my flip flops and wife beaters, but sweaters and cute boots aren't the worst thing ever. And football helps a lot. Another short one today...just felt like jotting something down. Laters!