the once and future tropie

A quarterly update!!

TV UPDATE: I really have no idea what I am going to be watching this year, other than sitcoms (New Girl, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Mindy Project if we ever catch up on it). I've been meaning to pick up Elementary for ages, but other than that….? I think this may be the year I catch up on all the imports I've been meaning to for ages.

WORK UPDATE: ( insert jim quote here )

HOUSING UPDATE: blaaaagh. We're in the process of picking everything out for the restoration, FINALLY, which is exciting but also exhausting. We're probably not going to be back before the end of the year. This mostly stresses me out and makes me sad, and I don't want to think about it anymore!

OTHER: Wedding season is finally over, everyone take a celebratory nap! The final damage was 6 weddings including 10 events attended in 3 states. May I never have a season like this every again, amen.

I feel so behind on everything, all the time. My boss gave me the nicest possible talking-to about my forgetting to send some documents before a meeting he had, but it was still, ugh. After forgetting my debit card while getting coffee (recovered several hours later) and leaving my phone at a restaurant (recovered within the hour), I had a personal come to jesus evaluation with myself, but it still makes me feel like an alien with tunnel vision all the time.

* We went to a wedding in Chicago a few weekends ago, which was lovely, even if in attending we picked up two other weddings to attend later in the summer. That brings the total up to six.

* A combination of the fire, getting sick, getting sick again but a different way, and finally resolving my knee issues has put more of a fuck up dent in my training for the half marathon than I would have liked. I don't want to say that I don't think I'll break two hours, because I hate the feeling like I constantly set goals for myself and then make excuses for why they're unreasonable, but I just don't know.

* Apartment restoration is really getting going, now: ( Read more... )

+ blaaaah, this week: my boss asked that I come in early tomorrow*, which is funny because I was already planning to come in early to finish a project. Double-early on a Monday, awesome stuff.

+ I think I've finally gotten through the section of my Netflix queue where I decided to get into classic movies. I'm excited for whatever the next random phase I was in, I'm guessing about 15 months ago. I'm hoping for a mid-90s renaissance period.

+ My car is slowly but surely falling apart: right now it acknowledges that it has a functioning CD player, like, 30% of the time. Most mornings it plays 20 seconds of a song and then starts skipping so aggressively that I debate pulling over and debate beating it with my shoe, which is nice, because it saves my coffee for until I actually get into the office.

+ Wow, this sounds like a bummer. I actually had a very nice week! Ran 12.5 miles (total)! Last weekend I drove up to Toronto and ate everything, please adopt me, Canadians at large. Bought some incredibly, magnificently hideous plaid shorts in order to psych myself up for spring; it's almost working.

*"I don't want to ask you to come in early, but could you come in at 8?"

One last year end list!



I like how misleading looking October is, if you don't know that I started biking a lot more. No, surprise, I actually swam 77 miles in one month.

My work trip went pretty well, 12+ hours of transit on the return leg due to a blizzard NOTWITHSTANDING. The best ever news: my work nemesis quit! If you're wondering how did I already acquire a work nemesis, other than through the sheer force of my charming personality and the sheer force of his constant need to talk about strippers, I just don't know what to tell you.

So far I have accomplished only one thing on my to-do list for January, even the fun things. Fun things remaining: watch [all the movies], Elementary, finish The Hour (hahaha). The only good thing about work trips is that I end up reading a shit load due to SO MUCH AIRPORT DOWNTIME. I finally finished 1968, which was awesome, but I had been reading it since sometime embarrassing like September.

Let's play a game called: Is this cute, or terrifying?

+ Music: Getting into Of Monsters and Men three months after everyone else.

+ Movies: I watched My Neighbor Totoro for the first time last week. What an amazing warm sweater of a movie.

+TEEVEE: Gravity Falls and Twin Peaks!!! The summer is the best time for the supernatural. I mean, I guess maybe Twin Peaks isn't supernatural yet, or is it??? etc.

+ Miscellaneous: actually going to the early swim hours at the gym. Getting up at 6:15! Voluntarily! Who is this person! Swimming a mile, coincidentally, is also why I am super into:

+ Quaker instant oatmeal (cinnamon and spice) version. mmmm.

* The last two episodes of New Girl have been absolutely delightful. I can't believe how much I love that show. NOTE: IT IS A LOT, is how much.

* Speaking of things I never thought I'd like: I just finished my second week of Bikram yoga and ohhhh my goodness. I'm totally one of those people now, you guys, I'm sorry, but it's so amazing. After the first session my shoulders hurt for like two days, but they are so much looser now! I still look like I've been through some horrible botched surgery or something in comparison to everyone else during the opening breathing poses, but I'll take what I can get.

(Honestly, during the first session when they tell you to put your hands under your chin and lift your elbows, I started off like, yup, elbows just below the ears, that's how high they go, and I looked over at K in the mirror and his arms were parallel with his head and we both stared at each other in the mirror with twin expressions of What the fuck is up with your arms??? I mean, he has trick elbows, but I'm also broken.)

* I just started reading Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell, and it's really funny, you guys. Way funnier than a book about, uh, presidential assassinations has any right to be. It starts off with an anecdote about her seeing the musical "Assassins" while staying in a quaint New England B&B and goes from there. I can also remember being That Person, creeping people out with how much you love "Assassins," but it's so good, you guys. It's Sondheim! It's about alienation and violence and your relationship with the state! I've never actually seen it performed, but I DO have a recording of it with Victor Garber as John Wilkes Booth.

* How about Sunday's Mad Men, eh?? Jesus H. I haven't found a review of it that expressed adequately how ballsy I found it, but I suppose that's not new either.

+ This week I hit two exciting milestones: I have had a normal sleep schedule for over a week, and I have been officially rejected from ten jobs. EXCITING TIMES!

+ The novelty of being unemployed and not having any deadlines is starting to wear off, not surprisingly. I'm trying to keep a better schedule of going to the gym in the afternoons so that I don't feel like a total bum, as well as making myself be social, but, you know. It's hard!

+ I went to History Prom on Friday, aka the formal event hosted by one of the big history centers in the city, and it was delightful. They had a huge dance floor with a ceiling made of twinkle lights! I had the classiest shot of rum I have ever imbibed! Many people commented on my cat-eye! Much less stressful than any of my actual proms, no lie.

+ Other miscellany: I have been watching Misfits, and I love/hate it an awful lot. Party Saab is in the Party Shop getting a new bumper, which has put a damper on my starting some new craft projects. My shoulders have been much better since I instituted the "going swimming more frequently" plan! Confidentially if you saw my last post, I am feeling much better in other regards! I knit a bunch of Swiffer cloths and it made me really happy! The end!

Today I redesigned most of my digital spaces, and I am super pleased with all of the results! I've been feeling somewhat cluttered in my actual space, which I am obviously managing by clearing out my gmail and social medias. Good strategy!

I sorted through the books and DVDs earlier in the summer to weed them out (because we currently have four bookshelves in a one-bedroom apartment, and they are all overfull), and recently went through my jewelry box. I'm debating setting up an Etsy or something to list some of it. Have any of you guys had luck doing something similar?

I keep thinking I have big exciting news to impart, but it's mostly just excitement over all the new layouts. ( And my new desktop picture! )

An addendum to my previous post: unlike every other period of schooling my adult or semi-adult life, I am overall quite happy, despite periods of extreme stress. So despite all evidence to the contrary, I'm doing pretty okay. I am not enthused about today and tomorrow's amount of work, but here are some things to get me (and you!) through them:

+ THE CONCERNS OF MINDY KALING. I'm so excited it's a little gross.

+ two episodes of Fringe to watch when I'm finished with class on Thursday!

+ THREE episodes of Downton Abbey to watch when I'm finished with class on Thursday!

+ And PNR right after!

+ Planning a Halloween party. COSTUME SUGGESTIONS? I'm kind of leaning toward Velma Dinkley right now.

+ Pandora's "Skinny Love" radio station being a team player this week.

+ My application to graduate was accepted!! I gave them a check for the $15 graduation fee because LOL OF FUCKING COURSE! Pending my passing all three classes this fall, I graduate in December!! :DDDDDDDD

+ I'm undecided about walking in May, but K really wants me to, so we'll see. (I probably will.)

+ This is just a very good essay (series of essays?): A Unified Theory of Orgasm. It is pretty explicit and probably not your best work reading.

+ I have been swimming more lately and it just makes me happy! Even if, on Monday, I spite-swam an ill-advised 50 butterfly because the girls in the lane next to me were doing incredibly pointless butterfly "training" exercises and talking about how much better the exercises were than the actual stroke, and because I am an adult who makes rational and mature choices.

* This past weekend I went on a customary summer East Coast tour, this time with a visit to college friends (just typing that sentence made me feel old). I imagine it's strange visiting your old campus under any circumstances, but it feels particularly odd in New York when things change so aggressively quickly: my dorm of two years is no longer a dorm! The diner where we spent most of spring semester senior year, gone! The Strand's Financial District annex, gone! The Starbucks where that nun yelled at me - no, that is still there. Anyway. It was rad and nostalgic and mostly worth slogging around in the storms in entirely porous shoes with my rusty umbrella.

* Those of you of my acquaintance who are crochetters: is it terribly tacky to crochet a whole blanket in single crochet? I like the way it looks, though not as much as some of the actual patterns I've seen, but those are so haaaard and I don't understand them!! UGH FINE I WILL LOOK AT THEM SOME MORE, god, you're so bossy.

* Have you watched The Hour yet? You should watch The Hour.

* HAPPY BIRTHDAY ningicoco.livejournal.com!!!