27 August 2007
persistence
I'm sitting on my bed in my dorm room, anxious to feel a cool breeze waft through my window and straining to hear my music over the persistent jackhammer of my cheap plastic fan, which is determined to prove me wrong by shaking its head back and forth indefinitely. My room is completely done except for the small posters and postcards that I'll put on the wall tomorrow. I just can't stand up any longer, my legs refuse.
It was a busy, busy day, but also a fun one. Yesterday after lunch, my mom and I drove my little car, packed to the brim with boxes and bags, to Claremont. We arrived at 6 on the dot, opened the car door (for only the second time in five hours) to a glorious warm evening and ate at my favorite restaurant. Rested and satiated, we finished Apocalypto at our friends' house, where we stayed the night (the friends' are still on holiday; it was nice to be in a quiet, empty house). This morning I found in the kitchen some bread, honey and hot chocolate powder and made myself breakfast. We bought some coffee in the village before starting the momentous task of moving into a new room. My dorm is beautiful and my room is cozy (I have a north-facing window so the light is always lovely). It was actually the least stressful and most pleasant of all my moving-ins, because it was still early in the morning (and cool), no was no one around, we parked right next to my building and I'm on the first floor so no stairs! The initial unpacking took several hours and the temperature skyrocketed between eight and noon, so we were getting pretty sweaty with all the work (my dorm isn't air conditioned although luckily it has thick walls and stays somewhat cool inside). After a break for a delicious lunch at another cute restaurant, we drove to Target to get the unforeseeable necessaries that had cropped up - toothpaste, hooks, pretty curtains, etc. After getting that stuff sorted out and assembled, it was already almost time to get going to the airport. We picked up a salad for my mom, ran into a family friend, and read trashy magazines for half an hour. Finally, it was time to say goodbye after a great day of getting settled in. I wish I could merge these two parts of my life, the college one and the family one, but I can't. I'm always incomplete.
Getting my room set up is the first step, and then it's getting through this weird week, and then it's getting my major, advisor and classes organized next week. Then I'll feel a bit better. That and when the temperature stays below eighty degrees! I'm done with summer.
24 August 2007
bouquet
Oh man. I did some lunges and leg lifts this morning as a new addition to my expanding exercise repertoire, and seriously, my ass and thighs are killing me! You know it's bad when you're sore not even twelve hours later. Physically getting out of bed tomorrow is going to suck. I'm usually in a deep sleep anyway - it's never been easy for me to just spring from the dream world into reality - but when your muscles ache too... sigh.
Report on waking up early and exercising, week 1: Well, I got up at 7:30 every morning, easy peasy. But every day I always had something to do or somewhere to be soon after I was up, but I was able to always be at the gym before noon. And today I was there just before nine! I think my body's getting used to being stimulated within a few hours of waking and now I can't imagine working out at four or five in the afternoon, so that's a good thing. Another week of this and I'm golden.
Last night, for the last time, I picked up my sister from soccer up in North Scottsdale. There was a storm brewing and the sky was dusty, so driving home on the 101 felt like being in War of the Worlds or something... the air was thick, the orange glow of the lamp posts illuminated the dust particles and the sky looked like a movie backdrop. On Cactus Road we bobbed up and down in the car like video game characters to the weird fun song by Of Montreal that I wrote about here last spring. Then, as we were almost home, Hung Up by Madonna came on and we turned it up super loud and I spun the car in tight circles for like fifteen revolutions, all the while singing at the top of our lungs - WAITING FOR YOUR CALL BABY NIGHT AND DAY, I'M HUNG UP - mmmmm, so fun. Our last night of the summer together.
So much to do tomorrow! I'm glad it feels right that summer is over. Nothing is worse than not being ready to transition but having to anyway. In a strange way, despite the self-blooming aspect of having things kind of just happen, this summer taught me quite a bit. About jobs, working with people, expectations, myself. I'm more sure than ever that Politics and International Relations is what I want to study. I am confident in the direction I want to take my life in the next few years. I have a list of expectations and goals for this school year. It was kind of a "getting down to business" summer... having to do the boring, necessary maintenance, but coming out of it with a humming machine.
21 August 2007
plastic
I'm the midst of my third annual college shopping spree. This one cannot be compared to my first, when I bought everything I might possibly need before I even got to college and then spent four months figuring out where to put all the stuff I didn't use. Now, it's less "shower caddy and paper clips" are more "overpriced tank tops and cute jewelry". I've broken up my clothes shopping into three separate trips because I just can't do the four-hour mega-shop. I have always claimed to hate shopping, which is actual neither a truth nor a lie. I wouldn't choose to go browse the shops for fun after class, just to see if I find anything. But if I need something and I'm in a positive mood, anything is possible. (Because the twice-a-year-shop-for-everything isn't at all ideal, I'm going to start going once a month and picking out a few things so my wardrobe will continuously be refreshed. I've adopted this non-procrastination approach to grocery shopping and essay writing and both have been happy successes.) Today was day two of three, and despite all the stores selling clothes in only black, beige and khaki I managed to get some nice summery things (it's going to be quite warm in Claremont for the next two months). But I have found absolutely no cute skirts anywhere! Nordstrom's website gives me a shred of hope; they are my last stop this week.
The shopping continued when I got home, because I might love finding fun home furnishings even more than finding clothes even though I don't yet have an apartment. I ogled a lot of things but since I can't nail things into walls my options are quite limited. I have long loved blik wall art so I got four little Russian Doll decals from UO. When I was very little I received as a present a set of actual wooden Russian dolls and I still adore them, so I thought it'd be nice to have another set. I also really need a necklace tree because my jewelry invariably ends up tangled together in this little box I have, and jewelry it too pretty to leave in the dark all its life. I found some nice ones on amazon.com but they were either for necklaces or earrings, and weren't pretty enough to be worth their price tag... and then I found Etsy, a website for buying and selling homemade crafts. The picture of the one I bought is no longer up but it kind of looks like this except with small branches at the bottom so I can use it for earrings too. For a beautiful, homemade wrought-iron piece I thought it was a steal for only $35.
20 August 2007
tiffin
Up at 7:30am on a Monday! For a split-second when the alarm went off I considered collapsing back into the warm, soft coziness, but I knew how disappointed I'd be in myself if I did, so I pulled it together, stretched out my limbs, and stumbled out of bed to stand up straight. Despite strongly desiring a bowl of cereal, I headed straight for the coffee machine and cut up a crisp apple while it was brewing. After the apple and coffee I was about to gauge if my energy level was high enough to go swimming when my darling sister called at 8am, saying she had forgotten all her binders (?? how does this happen) at home and could I please bring them right away to the front office at Chaparral. Despite the inconvenience, I was kind of excited to jump in the car because - (1) it would make me wake up more and get me moving, hopefully enough to make being at the gym by 9am a reality, and (2) I haven't been inside Chaparral for two years and wanted to see what I thought about it. Well, I only walked from the football parking lot through the bowels of the school over to the front office, but I had forgotten just how dark and dank that long hallway is! The inside of the 200 building has not yet changed: same low concrete walls, dirty greasy door handles, smelly cafeteria... in sore need of a makeover, although the front office and counseling center have been re-done and look quite nice. In three years, though, that school will be the crown jewel of SUSD. So in sum, it was pretty satisfying to park illegally, pass by kids scampering off at the sound of the bell, see the place just as it was when I was a high school student, and know that I would leave three minutes later.
Last night I was talking with Ali about Steve Pavlina's take on becoming an early riser, so here's the link.
It's pretty simple: go to bed when you're too sleepy to stay up, and wake up at the same time every morning. Having an extra hour or two daily equals several hundred hours over the course of a year, or about a full month more of your life each year. All the signs to develop this habit point to yes, just as they do with exercising first thing in the morning, but it is getting yourself to do so every day that is the hard part. But I know how much I beat myself up about things I earnestly want, yet still fail, to do, so that is the prime motivator: self-approval. Don't put it off, start right now.
As Pavlina says, the five pillars of self-discipline are Acceptance, Willpower, Hard Work, Industry and Persistence... A WHIP!
"The person who is waiting for something to turn up might start with their shirt sleeves.
-Garth Henrichs
"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."
-Pearl S. Buck
"There's nothing like biting off more than you can chew, and then chewing anyway."
-Mark Burnett
"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
-Calvin Coolidge
"Energy and persistence conquer all things."
-Benjamin Franklin
More of sage Benjamin Franklin's words of wisdom:
"Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."
"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals."
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."
"Passion governs, and she never governs wisely." in response to the situation of the colonists
"We must hang together, gentlemen, or we most assuredly will hang separately."
16 August 2007
suddenly
Being goofy at the cabin, July 2007.
Wow, summer's finally starting to come to an end. It's been such a long summer of the same stuff every week, week after week, that it's weird to imagine that the days of waiting for fall will soon disappear. Will and my Dad flew to New York early this morning for freshman orientation at Cornell, and now that he's gone it's pretty damn quiet around here. Hannah's already started school, Dad's away through this Sunday and he's also away next weekend, as is Hannah, and I leave in ten days... we're falling apart! No, we're not, but we won't all be together again until Christmas. Welcome to the real world, I guess.
With all the free time I've had sans work obligations, I've gone to the gym every day this week (except yesterday due to a pulled calf muscle). My class schedule this fall is going to force me half the week to exercise first thing in the morning which is actually great because I know from experience that leaving it until 4pm rarely works. Since I generally can't function well until I've been awake for a few hours and eaten and drunk coffee and water and stretched my muscles, I've been reading about how to turn myself into a morning exercise person because apparently it can be done. Most of it is sheer psychological willpower and determination which I have a lot of, so this week I'm getting up at 7:30 in order to get to the gym by 8:30. Despite my body yelling at me to stop, the few times I've done it (usually running last year with my crazy marathon friends) I love getting my workouts done first thing, because I feel accomplished, my appetite is more balanced for the day and I don't have to think about "fitting it in" after class, before dinner, after homework. Since I get bored doing one thing for more than a few months and because I want to start exercising every day, I'm now alternating swimming days with "weight-bearing cardio" days of running, ellipticals, stationary biking and a bit of weight lifting. With all the different muscles being used, this first week has left me quite sore but I hope that by the end of next week I'll have my body in synch with my new regimen so I can get to school and swing right into my new schedule. Unfortunately, the pool I'll be using at CMC is only open to the public (i.e. not the swim team) on weekdays from 11-1pm and 4:30-6:30pm. I wish it was open around 8:30 so I could keep the same exercise time every day but luckily since I have a break on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11am to 3pm, I'll swim Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and go to the gym on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Perfect! This summer has been really empowering for me because I finally found something I like to do (swimming) that keeps me motivated (I know it seems boring swimming laps back and forth for an hour, but I have a bunch of interesting workouts that switch up the strokes and work on different things - speed, endurance, technique, etc) and that has actually changed my body. Only recently have I figured out three things:
I finally had a spurt of creativity the other night and found lots of new music - LCD Soundsystem, The French Kicks, new albums by Modest Mouse, Bloc Party, Spoon, Phoenix... after spending eight months with the same ten CDs in my car and a broken CD burner in my computer, I finally have a new burner and... voila! new music. Keeping things interesting. Always moving forward. Fingers on the pulse.
*But, a Sprouts Marketplace just opened five minutes from school! So now I don't have to go out of the way down to Trader Joes - while I love the place, I do enjoy having a range of brands to choose from - for soy milk, yogurt and cereal! Yay!
10 August 2007
agenda
This summer has been like a long, steady, boring line punctuated by unexpected spikes here and there. Another spike this week: at work, a new girl started and I trained her to schedule appointments, utilize Intergy and use the phones. She's a great addition to the office, and with another competent person added to the full-time staff (not to mention four bodies competing for space in the tiny and awkwardly-shaped front office) I decided that my work there was done. Yesterday was my last day and I felt a big sense of relief walking out the doors for the last time. I didn't predict that I'd end my employment quite so early but it was a pleasant surprise and a mutually beneficial decision.
Last week I had a long chat with Keri, one of my best friends at Scripps, and she mentioned that she was going back to school early to help with orientation. Doing what and where, she didn't mention, but it was enough stimulus for me to try and get myself onto the list too. I spent Wednesday and Thursday emailing one of the coordinators and I've been approved not only to help out but also to move in early, which is the real reason why I wanted to get back to Scripps soon. I'm going to be working with the IT Department - helping freshmen setting up their internet, email and printers. My Dad did it all when I moved in last year so I don't know much about troubleshooting these things, but we have a 2-day crash course before the masses arrive. I'm pretty psyched that it all worked out - I now have two full weeks to enjoy myself at home (i.e. read, swim, and sleep) without any work obligations, and then I'll drive to California on Sunday the 26th, move into my dorm on Monday in relative peace, help make orientation on Thursday and Friday a smooth transition for the freshmen, and somewhere in there take a break to meet with a Politics professor to discuss the major, all before the rest of the school comes back on Sunday.
08 August 2007
innov
I was just on Apartment Therapy: LA and saw this amazing crib! Not that I actually live in LA or have an apartment or plan on having a baby for about a decade, but this would be my ideal infant sleeping HQs.
It grows with the child (see the visual progression here), and then when they're too big, it turns into two mod chairs! Too cool.
06 August 2007
love
"...that was Jane Cunningham, reporting from London. And before we depress you with the evening news, let's enjoy this upbeat rave music popular with Iranian youth."
BBC World News, 8.6.07
--------------------------
Today I'm feeling kinda voxy and I liked the question of the day, so I'll answer it: How many jobs have you had in the past five years? Where (did you work) and what did you do?
Let's work from the distant past to the present.
5. In the summer of 2004, before senior year, I worked part-time at Harkins Camelback 5 for about ten weeks. Both the best and worst job of my life, if you know what I mean. Learned more than I have at any other so far. Mostly, I worked concessions selling people popcorn, soda and candy and developed an intense aversion to the "liquid butter" I had to squirt over the popcorn. It would stain clothes and skin and you'd smell like fake buttered popcorn all night. I also occasionally had to clean theaters between shows but would try very hard to avoid doing this.
4. In September I quit and replied to a Help Wanted ad in my high school career center for a part-time file clerk at an oral surgeon's office ("we do anything above the neck"). In retrospect I'm still amazed at how oblivious I was to the potential risk and doom if the place had been a bad egg, but I lucked out. I spent nine months in the best office ever pulling charts and confirming appointments. And at the end of the summer, before I went to college, the doctor-dentist took out my wisdom teeth for free.
3. At ASU in the spring of 2006, I worked part-time in a graduate division of the university called the School of Health Management and Policy (SHMP; I prefer "shoomp") as an extra hand, basically. I answered the phones, re-organized binders, sorted the mail, and made dinner reservations for the director while swooning whenever the cute new associate professor walked by.
2. Last summer I wanted a change from the office life and got a full-time job as a hostess at a swanky French restaurant. Another job where I learned a lot. I took reservations, showed people to their tables, warded off hungry lions ready to kill me, developed an intense addiction to the Putomayo Presents: Latin Lounge CD, and sweeped together enough dusty Spanish to flirt with the busboys.
2. This past spring, I worked part-part-time in the Office of Development at my college. I basically helped upgrade and update the corporate sponsor database, and decided never to let myself become an old, lonely, bitter woman with smoker's cough.
1. This summer, I spent two months doing nothing for free at the Heard Museum, and (it will be a total of) three months at Paradise Valley Women's Care OBGYN, while drowning in estrogen and remember to note in the future the male-female ratio at the office of any future employers. I was first hired to schedule appointments, then to check in patients, and now I file away lab slips and drive the doctor's daughter to swim practice while counting down the weeks, days and hours until freedom.
05 August 2007
preposterous
I had a very strange day yesterday. Lots of odd things happened and I wasn't pleased with any of them. First I gave ten dollars to a guy who rang the doorbell, who asked in his pretty legit story for six dollars and I spent the rest of the day wondering if I compromised and gave him four dollars too much. Then I decided I needed to get some books. Anticipating a delightful browse at the used bookstore, I drove over there and pulled into a parking spot to see my old math tutor Earl walking down the street going nowhere else (the florist? the exercise equipment store? please) but to the bookstore as well. He saw me, I saw him, and a few minutes later we were in the same aisle feigning surprise and muttering awkwardly while we pretended to look at book spines. I left quickly and decided I should go for a swim to wash off the previous two encounters. I made up the workout as I went along and it felt good to work my muscles but half way through the hour an old European man wearing a green Speedo in the lane next to me decided to help me with my technique, something I'm sure I need but don't want forced upon me until I am ready to go about obtaining it myself. But because I am too polite and really need to learn to be more direct, I smiled and nodded - feeling irritated and embarrassed, as well as pitied by the other swimmers who had all stopped moving and were watching us - so when he was finally done all I wanted was to get the hell out of there and be alone. Luckily, the evening improved as my mother rented a few films and we wanted Hot Fuzz (which from the cover looked like something I'd roll my eyes at but ended up being hilarious. I highly recommend it) and I ate some cereal in a coffee cup on the sofa, something I haven't done in a long time and felt very cozy.
Today I decided not to go for a swim (although I have a response ready for the next person who wants to both ruin my workout and make me feel like a fool) so before spending an hour talking elatedly on the phone to one of my best friends from college, I went to a shiny corporate bookstore and bought three new overpriced books, one of which I've spent most of the afternoon curled up reading (The Emperor's Children). I rarely buy new books - I'm thrify and I support the democratic concept of a public library system - but after yesterday I decided that despite the risk, all I wanted was a pretty, glossy, weighty thing, satisfying to hold and with no due date stamped on the inside cover.
02 August 2007
nurit
I just had a subliminal experience on the phone with a guy who helped me fix the credit card machine at work. It was his voice... unsurprisingly, since that's all I experienced. While telephones are wonderful inventions, I've always felt a huge disconnect when talking to customer service representatives who are faceless, bodyless, and locationless. For all I know, they may not exist... but I know they do, because we're speaking the same language to each other, trying to solve a problem, in two places somewhere in the world. You most likely will never talk to them ever again so if you happen to feel a connection somehow being formed based on your faceless, bodyless and locationless conversation, you're only running towards disappointment because once you hang up there are many numbers and key-in options standing between you two ever connecting again. Earlier this afternoon I batched out the day's swipes too soon and canceled it upon realizing, but not soon enough to cancel it on the server. When I tried to batch out for real, it kept spitting out error notices. So I called the 1800 number on the side of the box, pressed number after number to get me to the best person to solve the problem, and then an actual human voice soothed my robot voice-raped ears. The problem took about twenty minutes to fix completely, and while I waited for things to spit out of the machine we chatted about the weather, about Arizona and Colorado, about what I'm studying and how I really don't like credit card machines (although I didn't admit that I quite enjoy pressing the soft, round buttons). He sounded like a nice person, which is somewhat disconcerting because you can discern very little from a hearing a voice... but I also am able to "sense" a lot from simple interactions like glances, conversations, gestures. I felt warmer afterwards than before, even though the air conditioning was on at full-blast. Near the end, he asked twice if he could help me with anything else and I wanted to say, "yes!" just so we could continue talking. I think maybe he wanted to as well. I hope that I made his job a bit more pleasant, knowing full well how unpleasant customers can be. How do strangers who meet in unconventional ways both mutually decide to become friends, without being creepy about it? It sounds like another cheesy plot from a 2007 You've Got Mail-remake. But maybe next Thursday I'll find another problem with the credit card machine.
01 August 2007
trois
It's August! Thank god!
I think August is the wisest summer month. June is choosy, July is smug, August is sage. And I'm loving these cloudy days and violent storms. AND it's almost Thursday! This week is going by fast.
I'm making curried split pea soup and roasted brussel sprouts right now. I'm listening to 91.5 KJZZ, and I'm all alone in an empty house.
I started swimming a couple months ago, and last week I met my first goal of swimming a mile non-stop. Now, after seven weeks of set training, I get to work on whatever I want to! I kind of don't like that freedom though, so I'm going to make up new "training schedule" so I have new goals to meet.
I saw Paris Je T'aime the other night with Andrea; very fun. It's a motley of sixteen vignettes set in Paris. I rather like short things - short films, short stories, poems. For me, they slyly redefine the parameters and shake it all up.
There really is so little to say! I'm grasping at air. But I am missing some other life of mine that I haven't lived yet.