100 Things About Me, 2009 Version

I realized that there are once again a lot of things that needed to change on my 100 Things About Me list. I suppose I need to start updating this every year or so just because things change so often. One of these days I'll stop editing it and just write a new one entirely, but for now I think updates are enough. As with the last time I did this, I left the things that are still true and updated (or deleted entirely) where appropriate.

1. I still have a common first and last name and a more unusual middle name, but recently I had to make a real decision about how I want to use my name professionally. Prior to now it didn't really matter since I had no publications anyway, but as of this month I'm officially the assistant editor of a publication (which sounds a bit more fancy than it actually is) so I had to decide how I want my name to appear in print. I surprised myself by deciding to use just my first and last name, my thought process being that it's easier to tack a married name onto a simple first/last name as opposed to a first/middle/last name combination that could get really long and unwieldly. I doubted for a long time that I'd seriously have to consider things like that, but this appears to be where life is taking me.

2. I still worry a bit about seeming pretentious, but I've also realized that maybe sometimes I AM pretentious, and I'm reasonably okay with that.

3. I have a rule for myself that I need to workout twenty days a month.

4. I have accomplished this goal every month since January of 2004, except for February and March of 2005, when I had a sprained ankle from falling down stairs in a parking garage.

5. Making rules about working out is good for me because I love food and don't think I could diet if I tried.

6. Luckily, I would rather eat hummus than Cheetos anyway.

7. I have fully replaced my Food Network addiction with a TLC/Bravo/Netflix On-Demand addiction.

8. I still watch a lot of HGTV.

9. My college roommate is now an interior designer. She taught me the biggest decorating mistake people make is pushing all of their furniture up against the walls.

10. I am now quite used to sleeping all night in bed like a normal person. No more falling asleep on the couch and waking up in the middle of the night to move! It helps that I have someone to share the bed with.

11. I'm still in a relationship with a guy whose blog pseudonym is Penn. As you might have inferred from item #1, things are going well!

12. Penn and I have been together for a year and a half now. Since I last updated this 100 Things thing, we spent six months dating long distance and then he got a job in the city where I was living and now we've been happily living together for a year.

13. I used to be a big fan of open relationships. I still think there is a time and place for them and they're a smart option when you're young and not ready to be tied down and committed (in college, for example) but now I definitely feel like I've been there, done that.

14. I really hate the term "boyfriend." It makes me feel like I'm fifteen. But "significant other" sounds pretentious, "partner" is misleading (it generally seems to imply a homosexual relationship, no?) and "lover" just sounds ridiculous, plus it doesn't give any sense of commitment.

15. I really did stop dating a guy because a tobacco stain on his bottom tooth annoyed the hell out of me. I don't know what I thought I was doing dating a smoker in the first place. That's a definite long-term NO for me.

16. Tobacco Guy was the shortest relationship I've ever had. It lasted three weeks (and do you want to know something really terrible? Off the top of my head I can't even remember his name! I'd have to look it up in my journal).

17. I did have a quasi-one night stand once, but I don't count that as a relationship, more just a silly thing that seemed like a good idea in college (a lot of things seemed like a good idea in college...which is not to say that they necessarily seem like a bad idea now, they're just not a good idea for ME now since I'm currently in another phase).

18. The longest relationship I have ever had lasted three years...but obviously I'm hoping to beat that record with my current relationship.

19. I tried for a while to stay friends with Phil, my ex from that relationship. Turns out he was incapable of being friends with me once I had a new boyfriend. I'd like to think he was too jealous to handle it, but I think that's too flattering to me. So I don't know what his deal is, but I tried to stay friendly. Nowadays we don't have any contact, by his choice, which I thought would make me really sad but it turns out the longer I go without speaking to him the more I reflect back on that relationship and realize how wrong I was to try to make it work for so long in the first place. Being with Penn has made me realize what it's like to have a boyfriend who actually respects me, so I don't miss Phil at all these days. I do hope he's doing well, though, since I have no reason to wish him ill.

20. One of the main reasons things have worked with Penn in a way that they never could have worked in my last relationship is that we have similar life goals. We both see marriage and kids in the future, something I either couldn't envision with other guys I dated in the past or that they couldn't envision doing with me.

21. I still really, really want to be a mother. The biological clock is ticking even more loudly now that I'm dating a man who I think would make a great father. With that said, I still envision at least a couple more child-free years, hopefully.

22. I just realized my old list was missing #22! So, here's a completely random fact: I tried salt water taffy for the first time when I was 26 years old and it's now one of my favorite types of candy.

23. Yes, I still question the sanity of wanting to bring a child into this over-crowded, mixed up world, but I guess people just keep doing it because of the hope that everything will get better, or at least not slide downhill precipitously from the way things are now.

24. I am a feminist.

25. I firmly believe in God and the idea of an afterlife, but I have yet to find an overall belief system that works for me. In theory I'm a Christian, although in reality I have so many issues with the teachings of so many Christian groups that I can only pick and choose the elements I believe in, like some sort of Religion Buffet. That seems to sort of defeat the purpose of faith, which in my mind involves believing in something enough to follow all of its tenets. I'm still trying to reconcile all of this, and I imagine it will be a lifelong struggle for me. Fully believing in Christian teaching seems to require turning off large portions of your brain and common sense, something I refuse to do and can't imagine God would want me to do. For now I'm treating my faith as an ongoing research project, looking at as many different angles as possible.

26. My only real hobby is reading.

27. I am certified to teach high school, but I don't know that I ever will.

28. I never changed my major in college.

29. I decided I wanted to go on for my PhD in my sophomore year of college. I no longer remember how or why I made this decision, but now I'm on that road and not planning to exit any time soon.

30. Since I started college, I have never taken a break. I went straight from college into an MA program and then into a PhD program. Most people seem to think that's a crazy choice, but I don't understand why I should take time off if I already know what I want to do.

31. I think those must be my father's genes talking, since he got into the restaurant business when he was 20 (as a dishwasher), managed his own business by the time he was 22 or 23, and owned his own restaurant before he was 30.

32. I have my father's drive but my mother's tendency to worry a lot and stress out when things aren't going according to plan. It makes for an interesting combination of wanting to take the big risks but being terrified to take them.

33. Of my three siblings, I'm the most likely to burst into tears.

34. Oddly, most people outside of my family don't consider me to be a very emotional person. Friends typically describe me as even-keeled. I can't think of many people who have seen me cry. I had a friend tell me recently that he's never seen me really stressed, which isn't entirely true, but that's sort of the reputation I have. Maybe I feel like I need to keep it together most of the time and it's only with family that I can really let down my guard.

35. I had a friend ask me recently, "Is your dog more like your friend or like your baby?" I thought it was an interesting question. The answer: like my baby.

36. My cat, on the other hand, is more like my buddy than my baby. That's probably because my cat is extremely cool. Really, he is. I can't even tell you how many times people have said, "Wow, I've never met a cat like that before." He has a very sweet, chilled out, unique personality.

37. I spent a little over three years living completely alone, and I really did love it. I had absolutely no problem living by myself. Now I live with Penn, and I surprised myself by really loving living with him, too. I find that I have all the perks I had when living alone (we're so comfortable together I can literally do whatever I want/need to do in front of him), plus the added bonus of a warm body to cuddle up to at night.

38. When I'm living with other people it's very important that I have a space somewhere that is mine and mine alone. Even when I'm sharing hotel rooms for a short period of time it's important to me to have my own space where I can organize my things, even if my "space" is just the side of my bed.

39. I am a neat freak, definitely a "place for everything and everything in its place" kind of person. (I imagine this will drive Penn nuts eventually. So far it just means I spend five minutes every night putting away the paper/credit cards/keys/electronics he has scattered around the house and he spends a few minutes every day asking where I put things. This arrangement seems to be working.)

40. I take really good notes. Really. In my MA program, everyone would make copies of my notebooks before tests to make sure they had all the information that I did.

41. Nobody at my current university teases me for the words I use in conversations. They do, however, tease me for my propensity to wear heels in situations where everyone else is wearing sneakers. I'm the "fashion bug" of my department, which surprises me because I feel pretty low maintenance most of the time!

42. I overuse the words "ridiculous", "literally," and the phrase "in theory."

43. But at least I use the word "literally" correctly. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say "literally" when they're not talking about something that LITERALLY happened, i.e. "I literally died laughing." Uh, no. You didn't.

44. My favorite city that I have ever visited so far is London. Paris, on the other hand, was a huge disappointment. I'm willing to give it a second chance one of these days, though.

45. I have been to England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Mexico, Canada, and Russia. I don't consider that to be nearly enough countries.

46. I love traveling. One of my goals in life is to visit every state in the U.S. and set foot on every continent, including Antarctica. And the more countries I can visit, the better.

47. I have now visited 33 states plus the District of Columbia. The problem now is that the states that are left are not places that I am particularly eager to visit (Iowa or Alabama, anyone?) But I'm determined to see them all, so I'll find a reason to get to all of them eventually. Even Nebraska.

48. I still have to force myself to take a shower because I still think it's really boring waste of fifteen minutes every day. Luckily, I'm a normal person who dislikes smelling bad, so I do shower I also still have a wide variety of shower gel (five, at the moment, which is actually low for me).

49. I now officially consider myself something of a cook. I managed to wean myself from frozen food and I now only have Lean Cuisines occasionally for lunch. I cook full meals (from recipes) 2-3 times a week now and cobble together soup/sandwich/wrap/crackers and dip meals the rest of the time. Penn and I are really good about not blowing our money on takeout (In the whole time we've been dating I think we've had fast food together less than a dozen times, and primarily just when we're traveling) and we limit restaurant meals to 1-2 a week. Turns out I'm much more enthusiastic about cooking when I'm cooking for someone other than just myself.

50. I am very good at making change, but most math beyond that is completely baffling to me.

51. My favorite parttime job was when I worked as a valet and bartender at a performance hall. I made very good money for doing an extremely easy job, and I got to drive some fun cars that I will never, ever be able to afford.

52. In general, though, I hate driving and like living in an area of the country that has generally reliable public transportation. Since the last time I updated this I sold my (broken) car and have now started taking the bus and subway or biking almost exclusively.

53. I love thunderstorms, provided I'm in the comfort of my own home and the power doesn't go out. (I should amend this to say I love desert thunderstorms. Thunderstorms here in the east are VERY unsatisfying. Nothing like the great thunder boomers out west. Here when it rains it's just drizzly and gray all day. Nothing exciting about that.

54. I have recurring nightmares about tornadoes, giving birth to a baby by myself, plane crashes, and driving my car off an unfinished highway overpass.

55. I still take off my shoes and jewelry first thing when I get home. I don't generally take my pants off anymore because a) I lost a few pounds and my jeans are comfortable enough to lounge around in now and b) it's generally much chillier here than it was where I was living before.

56. I sleep like a normal person now! Unless it's a Friday or Saturday and we're out with friends, Penn and I are usually in bed by 11 at the latest and I'm up between 8 and 9:30. Shockingly, I feel much better rested and more healthy than I used to when I was staying up until 3 AM on a regular basis.

57. I wouldn't say I seek out wild and adventurous experiences (in fact, my grandpa would probably tell you that I'm a "glass ass"), but when opportunities find me I don't often turn them down. I will try any food, I love going places I've never been before, etc.

58. The only thing I can't imagine myself ever doing is skydiving. With that said, I almost feel like I need to make myself do it at some point just because I'm so incredibly scared of it.

59. My favorite colors to wear are brown, green, and purple. I love most shades of yellow but I can't wear it at all because it washes me out.

60. My grandfather is a gynecologist and he gives me the free birth control samples he gets from drug reps at the hospital. I currently have enough pill to last until February of 2013. Seriously! I'll be 30 then, which seems like a good time to start a family if I haven't started trying already. So I think I'm set!

61. Speaking of my grandpa, my mom's parents are both still living, and I love them very much and am very close to them. They live in my hometown.

62. My dad's parents have both passed away. I was never as close to them. My grandfather had his moments when I could tell he really loved us, but he could be a very abrasive person. And my grandmother had Parkinson's disease, so by the time I was old enough to really want to have conversations with her, she wasn't able to really talk to me. That makes me sad.

63. I feel equally close to both of my parents but for different reasons. I feel very lucky to have such a great relationship with them.

64. My sister is two years younger than me, and my brother is two years younger than her. They have more in common with each other than I do with either of them, but I have a good relationship with both of them, too. We generally have a lot of fun together.

65. I used to be addicted to text messaging. I don't do it quite as much now, but it's still the primary way I communicate with my family and some of my long-distance friends (Yes, my parents text! Even my grandpa texts!)

66. I listen to NPR whenever I'm driving a car or cleaning the apartment. I find it soothing to listen to voices talking, even when they're talking about sad news stories.

67. I am addicted to the internet and reading blogs (which is why I keep my own). When you find a blog written by a good writer, it's like reading a novel that never ends. I don't even want to know how many hours of my life I've spent on the internet, because I know the general waste of time would just depress me.

68. My favorite indulgences are professional massages and meals at restaurants that are normally out of my budget.

69. I like clothes shopping but never do it unless I am on vacation or need something particular. I think this trait probably saves me a lot of money.

70. I'm not a big impulse buyer in general. I go grocery shopping with a detailed list (and try to prevent Penn from throwing random items into the cart!), I generally think about products for several days before I go out to buy them, and if I'm tempted to make an impulse purchase I usually leave the store and then come back later if I still really want the item.

71. I generally feel good about my body and don't spend much time worrying about my weight/looks. I think we should all be concerned about whether or not we are healthy, but not whether or not we're thin. In all fairness, though, I guess I need to admit that I am pretty thin and always have been, mostly thanks to good genes and not anything virtuous that I do. I sometimes wonder whether or not I'd still have this healthy of a body image if I had a different body. I'd like to think I'd still have the same body confidence, but who knows?

72. I really do believe health is more important than looks, though. On that note, I'm STILL trying to boost my cardio endurance (biking is helping; I may not be much of a jogger but I am willing to push myself on the bike) and after I had a scary-looking mole removed over the summer I'm now vigilant with my sunscreen.

73. I have been in love twice. It's amazing how different the two experiences have been, though. I'm not willing to discount the first time I was in love (I think that cheapens a relationship that I was devoted to for a long time, and I do believe it's possible to be in love more than once in life) but the first experience doesn't match the sort of love I feel for Penn now. The love I feel now has completely overshadowed and wiped out that first love. I now think back fondly on being in love for the first time, but it's hard--almost impossible--to remember what it really felt like when I compare it to the strong feeling of love and commitment I have now.

74. My favorite TV shows are 30 Rock, Flight of the Conchords, The Sopranos, and Big Love. I gave up on Lost and Grey's Anatomy because they both just got too absurd. My favorite TV show of all time is still Sex and the City. I have all of the DVDs and have watched the entire series probably five times.

75. For the record, I identify most strongly with Miranda.

76. I don't think I'm a very romantic person, at least not in the traditional sense. If a guy ever tried to propose to me by taking me to an expensive restaurant and putting my ring in a glass of champagne, I would say no. Anything that seems like a cliche is a huge turn-off to me. However, I have made the discovery that it's possible to do romantic things while still making them feel sincere. I'm not sure how this is possible, but it's one of my favorite things about Penn.

77. I don't like to have the overhead lights on in my apartment, so I have a lot of lamps (actually, the apartment we're currently living in doesn't even have overhead lights except for one chandelier in the dining room, so it's a good thing I had so many lamps!).

78. I can't sleep soundly unless I am completely covered with a blanket, from ears to toes. Also, I sleep most soundly if Penn's chest or upper arm is my pillow.

79. I have a freckled face and look younger than I actually am.

80. I have mostly Swiss, German, and Dutch ancestry.

81. I would rather wear silver than gold.

82. I am more of a saver than a spender and feel uneasy unless I have a certain amount of "just in case" money in the bank.

83. I watch Waiting for Guffman at least once every six months. It never stops being funny.

84. I'm allergic to cats and dogs but have built up an immunity to my own. I rarely get allergic in my own apartment unless I go too long without vacuuming, but if I go anywhere else with animals I have allergy attacks.

85. My favorite types of food are Mexican, Italian, and Greek. But it has to be REAL Mexican food. I'll eat Tex Mex, but it's not the same.

86. I am an animal lover, and if I hadn't chosen my current career path I wouldn't mind doing something animal-related. I used to think I wanted to be a marine biologist and work at Sea World, for example.

87. Once I got to swim with dolphins in Florida, and it was one of the most purely happy moments of my life.

88. I also wouldn't mind having a travel-related job. The older and more settled I get (dog, boyfriend, eventually family) the less I can imagine a travel job actually fitting into my life, but I still think about how fun it would be to work for a travel website or show or lead world tours or something.

89. I don't like making phone calls. If it weren't for the internet, I would be terrible at keeping in touch with old friends.

90. I have a bit of OCD about shaving my legs and have to do it every single time I shower. If I don't shave my legs I still feel dirty even though I have just gotten out of the water.

91. I finally kicked my Coca-Cola habit! Now I only have a few a week. Sometimes not even that many! I pretty much drink just water and hot tea most days unless I'm on vacation. Then anything goes.

92. I used to like to read before I fell asleep every night. Now Penn has established a "no reading in bed" rule. In theory I agree with him. We don't have a TV in the bedroom, either, because we believe the bed should be for sleeping and/or sex and that's it. Still, I haven't been able to kick my relaxation ritual of reading before bed. Now I just read on the couch for a minute before going into the bedroom.

93. I used to be horribly disgusted by loose strands of hair. I have gotten better about it in the past couple of years, but I still think hair strands are one of the most disgusting things in the world. Interestingly enough, strands of animal hair don't bother me at all.

94. I used to sleep with socks on my hands most nights. Now that I sleep with another person, I only have sock-hands when my hands are really dry.

95. My family has a cabin in the Rocky Mountains and it's my favorite place on earth.

96. I am a lip gloss addict and I have ten (!!!) different varieties on my dresser right now (really). I will admit that it is possible that this addiction is getting out of hand.

97. I wear Estee Lauder Beyond Paradise perfume most days, even though I have a variety I could use.

98. I started taking dance lessons when I was four and was on the dance team in high school. I really miss dancing.

99. It doesn't take very much to make me happy, and it takes a lot to make me sad.

100. I still believe that moving to University Land was the best decision I ever made.

Blissful

When I was single--particularly before I'd ever had a boyfriend at all--I used to imagine the sort of dates I would go on when I had a boyfriend. I got most of my ideas from movies or TV shows, I think. Mostly these fantasies involved things like cooking spaghetti dinners together or going for hikes by waterfalls or sharing a bowl of popcorn on the couch while watching movies or other ridiculously girly things. I think everybody does that, imagines what life would be like with someone to share it with (although when I mentioned to Penn that I used to fantasize about the going-on-dates part of dating he admitted that when he was single he pretty much only imagined the having-sex part of dating, so I guess we all have our priorities). Anyway, it's fun now to realize how often my coupled life fulfills my fantasies of what it could possibly be, in both major as well as fairly superficial ways.

This weekend was my first free weekend in three weeks, so Penn and I took full advantage of my free time. Yesterday we took our bikes down to City A and biked to a museum I've been wanting to go to for a while. Mainly I wanted to go because I'd heard the food court was awesome, and it was. It had a huge variety of food from different regions, random things like buffalo tacos and fried yucca and beet and purple potato salad. Yum. It was a really nice day for a bike ride, too. The weather has been perfect this weekend.

Today we went up to City B to check out a reenactment of Edgar Allan Poe's funeral (I'm not sure that "reenactment" was exactly the right word because I think this funeral was much better attended than his actual funeral probably was) and then we went to an art museum to check out an exhibit of paintings and book illustrations of Poe's stories. So it was Poe Day, I guess. We biked all around for this outing, too, from the museum to the church where Poe is buried and back. I love my bike so much. It makes getting around so much easier, and I get the satisfaction of working out while just going about my daily activities.

Anyway, there were a bunch of little moments this weekend when I was so thankful, when I looked around at my interesting surroundings and my handsome, smiling boyfriend and my only concrete thought was, "I have such a nice life." I wouldn't exchange my life with anyone. Even my troubles are not real troubles, just annoyances and frustrations. I'm so lucky, and I feel so thankful for how nice everything is right now. Life can be a total crapshoot, and I know there will be troubles in the future because that's just how life works. It can't be this good forever, no one gets a charmed life forever. But I'll keep stockpiling weekends like this while I can.

Oh, and speaking of lucky: I'm going to London in a month! I know I mentioned that we were planning to go to Europe this fall but things were still up in the air. Well, it seems like plans have finally started concretely falling into place. See, one of my professors got a grant to do research into starting a study abroad program in London, but he's too busy to do the research himself. For some reason he thinks I'm competent enough to do the research into setting up this new program, so when he got the grant he told me that he was going to send me to London for a couple of weeks to meet with people and observe programs currently in progress that are similar to the one my department wants to start. So I've known since last spring that there was a pretty good chance this research trip was going to happen provided the funding didn't somehow disappear (you never know, these days), but I didn't know when exactly it was going to happen. Meanwhile, Penn has also been planning a trip to Europe because his sister and her family are currently stationed in the Netherlands and Penn and his mom wanted to go over there for Thanksgiving. Penn invited me to go with them, too. For the past few months it's been a puzzle of trying to figure out if schedules can work out so that I can somehow tack the Netherlands onto my London trip, thereby saving myself a lot of money, or whether I was going to go to London in the spring, in which case I was going to have to buy a plane ticket to the Netherlands but I wasn't going to be able to go to Europe for as long as Penn and his mom were planning to go since I'm allowed to leave for school-related business but otherwise leaving all my assistantship work for three weeks wouldn't go over so well. Anyway, I still haven't bought my plane tickets yet but I got confirmation from my professor that I can go to London before Thanksgiving. Perfect! So now we have a plan. I'll take my most-expenses-paid (!!!) research trip to London and be there for two weeks. Meanwhile, Penn is taking some time off work and for the first ten days I'm in London he'll be in the Netherlands and Paris with his family. Then the last weekend I'm in London Penn is going to come over and meet me and we'll either hang out there or take a weekend trip somewhere else if my research is done (we both love London but we've also both been there several times, and in my quest to see as much of the world as possible there's something appealing about trying to see somewhere else I've never been before). Then we'll go back to the Netherlands to have Thanksgiving* with Penn's sisters family and then Penn and his mom and I will fly home the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And then Penn and I will be home for a little over two weeks before flying to my hometown for Christmas! It's going to be a crazy couple of months, but I'm so, so excited about the fact that there's a very good chance I'll be in London a month from now. I told you, life is good!

*Yes, I'm well aware of the fact that technically there is no Thanksgiving in the Netherlands, but since all it really involves is eating a lot of food as a family, I think we can manage to make our own.

The C8 Gets Stranger all the Time

So I'm on the bus on my way to campus right now and for once I'm not bogged down with work that I'm frantically trying to finish on my bus ride, so I have time to tell you about the lunatics on my bus.
Typically, my fellow commuters are fairly normal people. One of the pleasures of public transit, however, is the total nutjobs I sometimes encounter. I try to refrain from using this forum to mock people who seem truly disturbed, but some people are fair game, either because they seem mentally stable but have just made odd choices or their eccentricities are harmless and amusing. Like the guy who claimed he saw Michael Jackson's ghost in the cemetery (before he was actually dead, I mean...not that I think MJ is moonwalking in the local cemetery even now) or the woman who was sporting a Frosty the Snowman sweater last week. I mean, even if we agree that Frosty is a seasonal winter thing and not a Christmas thing, it's still two months too early. Or, hey, the guys who got on the bus right this minute who are apparently celebrating Odd Hat Day. One has a baseball cap with a couple of bird feathers awkwardly attached to it (think Fagan in Oliver!) and I swear the other one is wearing a tea cozy on his head, ala Snatch.
Anyway, those people are all quirky but sort of lovable. Even the guy last week who was loudly planning Jose's Getting Out of Jail Cookout over his cellphone had good intentions. But last week I encountered Total Jackass Crazies. And this story I'm sharing just because I want you to be as outraged as I was. (In my head, anyway. I'm not really one to start bus confrontations.) Anyway, these two guys were older white men, dressed in ill fitting business suits. They were carrying a bag of supposedly real gold and silver jewelry that, if I understood their discussion correctly, they'd stolen from "the old Korean ladies" and this was completely acceptable because of the finders-keepers rule. They were then attempting to sell this jewelry on the bus to unsuspecting women who didn't realize that before they got on the bus the guys had been marking hundred dollar prices on the jewelry so they could then say "This was two hundred dollars but I'll sell it to you for thirty!" amazingly, a couple of women actually bought stuff! At first I was like, who buys jewelry on the bus?! But then I realized that a lot of my fellow commuters are recent immigrants from Latin American countries where it's much more common for people to pedal items anywhere: buses, street corners, restaurants, whatever. And these jackass con artists are aware of this and preying specifically on Hispanic immigrants. At one point one of them even said, "We need to go down to X, it's full of Latinas, they'll buy all this crap and if we liquidate by noon we can catch the bus to the racetrack." It wasn't even just the fact that they were cheating people that bothered me. It was the things the one guy was saying. I was so appalled that I started taking notes in the book I was reading so I could tell Penn about it in detail later. Here are just some of the things the guy said during the thirty minutes I was on the bus with him:
"All fat women are fat because they eat their emotions. They can't get laid so they get their sexual satisfaction through eating and then they get even fatter and no one will sleep with them. It's a vicious cycle. Look at Oprah, why does someone with as much as she has need to be fat? It's because she's sexually frustrated."
"I know a coke addict that will buy this stuff. She'll do anything. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking advantage, but that's her problem."
"Why is everything called MLK around here? The guy is dead!"
"You can't hang out around high schools because this country says that's illegal. But colleges are okay!"
"We can't go sell in X County. They're all stuck up Jew bitches over there who can afford to pay full price. They don't need us over there." (For the record, I live in X County, so you can see Jackass's assumptions are TOTALLY valid.
And, finally as we pulled onto campus, Jackass goes "Look at these college students now. It's nothing like it used to be. Now it's all about diversity." And I stood up to exit the bus and the guy behind me, who happened to be black, also stood up to exit. And Jackass goes, "See, look at that! There's no reason those two should be getting off the bus together. I've been to some colleges, and I know how it's supposed to be, and it's not supposed to be like this."
The guy and I just got off the bus and said nothing, but in retrospect I really wish I'd kicked Jackass in the balls on my way up the aisle.
Sometimes the only way I get through these situations is by reminding myself that his generation is dying off, and hopefully there will be less and less people like him every generation. I can hope, anyway.

Comped

I'm finished!! I finished my comprehensive exam essays and mailed the last two in this morning at 7:30. I wrote 95 pages in three weeks. I guess it's nice to know that I can do that when I have to, although I can't imagine that I'd ever want to do it again. I am not officially finished yet because I still have to defend the nonsense I wrote, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll pass at least some of the sections. Surely I won't have to do rewrites on all six essays...surely...Anyway, I have three weeks until my defense and I'm giving myself permission to take those three weeks off from school work. I didn't really get a real summer break this year because in theory I was supposed to have been reading for comps the whole time (so even when I was taking a break I felt somewhat guilty about it). The next three weeks can be a real break, though. Yes, I need to write and defend a prospectus and get going on the dissertation sooner rather than later, but there's no point in working on the dissertation until I'm sure I'm over the comps hurdle. So for once in my life I can spend three weeks reading novels and riding my bike and sleeping in and going on dates with my boyfriend without the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I should really be working.

I got myself through comps by bribing myself. "Just finish this essay and you can..." I'd tell myself. So now I have a whole list of ways I want to spoil myself. I want to get my hair trimmed, I want to buy new shoes, I want to buy new shower gel, I want to get a massage or a pedicure, I want to use my Barnes and Noble gift certificate. Mostly I just want to do all the things I didn't really have time to do for the past three weeks. This morning I took a four hour nap and when I woke up all I really wanted to do was bake cookies and clean my apartment and make a grocery list because I'll actually have time to cook this week. I'm easy to please, really.

The past three weeks have not been fun. I was in my home office all the time, and if for some reason I wasn't in my office reading and writing, I was thinking about how that's where I needed to be. It's an amazing feeling to be done. Tonight Nicole and I went out with our boys* for all-you-can-eat wings and beer to celebrate the end (for now, at least) of our exams and it was such a great feeling to not have to bring a school book on the subway and to not have to rush home to close myself in the office and get back to reading and outlining. I know I still have a lot of work ahead of me. There's that write-a-whole-book thing that I have to get through somehow. But I feel like in terms of compressing a massive amount of work into a small amount of time, nothing will be worse than the past three weeks have been, and if I can do that, I can do almost anything (for example, Mari has assured me that childbirth is definitely easier than comps).

I'm off to drink several glasses of wine and sleep for 12 hours. Good night!

*I think our boyfriends are happy to have their girlfriends back, too. I've pretty much only been seeing Penn in bed at night and I haven't seen him on weekends at all because he has been going to visit his friends in his hometown on weekends to give me guilt-free time to work. Which was nice of him, of course, but I've been missing him. Still, I know I'm so lucky. Some of my friends have significant others who have no patience with the grad student lifestyle. I have quite literally watched grad school end marriages (sounds ridiculous, but it's true. The combination of lots of work+very little income is hard on relationships, for some shocking reason). Instead of that, though, I have an awesome boyfriend who encouraged me to work all month, who gave me massages when my neck started hurting after hours hunched over the computer, who purposely tried to get out of the house on weekends so he wouldn't distract me, and who bought me "Congratulations on finishing your exams" flowers. He's still too good to be true sometimes, honestly!

2/3rds

I've written 63 pages in the last two weeks. I have at least 30 more pages to write this week. I really don't know what this exam is supposed to prove, since I doubt there will ever again be a period in my life when I need to write quite so much in such a small amount of time. It seems like the only point of this is the hurdle itself: prove that you have the tenacity to complete this assignment and we'll let you suffer through writing a dissertation for us.

While I've been holed up in my apartment, people have been going to Oktoberfests and football games and having actual weekends without me. I'm jealous, of course, and yet there are also moments when this is strangely soothing. Last night it was just after midnight and I was sitting in my home office finishing up last week's papers. My thoughts were flowing freely for once (the perfect combination of adrenaline and too-tired-to-waste-time-doubting-my-ideas), my fingers were clattering over the keyboard, I had classical music playing on Pandora,* I had a box of saltwater taffy on stand-by for when I ran out of steam on the typing. My boyfriend was in bed in the other room and, in addition to wanting to be in bed with him there were a dozen places I would rather have been at that moment. And yet at the same time there is nothing else I wanted to be doing more than what I was doing right then: reading, thinking, writing, putting the puzzle pieces of a theory together in a way that it clicked for me, even if it won't necessarily click in the same way for anyone else.

There are not a lot of moments in life when I am completely convinced that I've chosen the right career path, but throughout this process I've been reminded again and again that I am doing this because I want to do it, and that no matter what happens at my defense in a few weeks I am going to get over this arbitrary hurdle and finish this degree because right now I'm not supposed to be doing anything else.

Thank God for intrinsic motivation.

*I used to scoff at the idea that classical music was helpful for studying, and yet personal experience has proven to me that a surefire way to really understand heavy reading material is to turn off all other technological distractions and listen to streaming classical radio. The combination of theory+classical music just clicks in my brain. I don't mock those studies anymore.

Where I'm At

From: My Former Undergrad Professor Now Working on Her PhD at A Different University
To: Me
How is the PhD stuff going?

From: Me
To: My Former Professor
I'm taking my comprehensive exams right now. Well, technically right now I'm on Facebook, but you know what I mean. I work on them for the next three weeks. I defend the exam in October. I'm dreading the defense even more than the writing. This is how I anticipate it going:
Prof: Why did you choose to cover Topic A instead of Topic B?
Me: Um, because I already had a bunch of books at Topic A at home so it required a little less effort?
Prof: You wrote about Era C, but you didn't bother to mention Very Important Person from Said Period. Why not?
Me: Because I don't really know anything about VIP, so I thought it was better to just pretend he didn't exist. Is that not okay?
Ugh. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

From: My Former Professor
To: Me
I have a strategy planned out for my comprehensive exam defense, too:
Prof: You wrote about Era C, but you didn't bother to mention Very Important Person from Said Period. Why not?
Me: (Take off all of my clothes. Smile broadly.)
My plan is based on the fact that two out of my three committee members are in their seventies. I figure the shock will kill at least one of them. The others will be in a stress-induced coma. When they ask me, "What were their final words before they died?!" I'll say, "They gasped and then said, 'You pass.'"
I will only resort to this plan if I have to say "I don't know" more than three times...in an hour. You are more than welcome to borrow my idea, although I am approaching 50 and I have a bit more potential to shock and appall my committee.

From: Me
To: My Former Professor
That's such a good idea! Unfortunately, my committee is relatively young and spry, so it might be harder for me to shock them to death. Although I have another plan inspired by a friend who defended her MA when she was nine months pregnant. She was a week away from her due date at the time, and she said that everyone was so terrified she was going to go into labor at any minute that they were basically like, "Congratulations, you passed! Now get out of here, you're making us nervous!"
Unfortunately, the whole be-so-pregnant-that-everyone-is-either-pitying-me-or-terrified-but-either-way-just-wants-me-out-of-the-conference-room plan couldn't be put into action for comps. But I suppose if I time the next couple of years verrrrrry carefully and get lucky (or unlucky, maybe...dissertating while pregnant doesn't sound fun) I could still put the plan into action for my dissertation defense.

From: My Former Professor
To: Me
Great idea! Hard to get pregnant at 47...bummer. I think you should seriously consider doing it for the dissertation defense. And, if the baby comes early, bring him/her along and about half an hour into the defense say, "Don't mind me, I just need to nurse. Continue with your questions." Ha!
I came up with one more plan: Walk in with a mask. "Hi everyone, I just found out I have swine flu! Don't get too close!"
Enough plans. Happy writing!

Also, there is this:

From: Nicole

To: Everyone Writing Comprehensive Exams
Does anyone else feel like all of a sudden they can only comprehend very simple ideas and write those in very simple sentences?
I like English. It is good. It tells stories.
(Don't use that, anyone! It's mine!)

From: Me
To: Everyone
At least you're writing sentences. I just keep thinking, "Wait, you mean I can't just keep reading things and making outlines? I actually have to write thirty pages at some point this week? Well, crap. Can't you just look over my outline? It makes all the points I would have made anyway, and you don't have to put up with the torture of reading my poorly strung together sentences."

From: G
To: Everyone:
I. Response
A. Same as *A*
1. Outlines

2. Ideas

3. Quotes
B. Different from *A*
1. Formulate outline with source in mind

2. Discover no English version of source, despite TONS of critical research found

3. To reformulate argument, check out more books

4. Almost hit borrowing limit from library

5. Drive 45 minutes to borrow book from J.

C. Subtext/Additional Questions

1. Why am I reading MORE at this point?

2. Why is it Wednesday already?

3. I wonder if wine would help this response?

From: J

To: Everyone
Women, please, some of us are trying to surf the net for critical theory Clifs Notes!

From: Mari
To: Everyone
We sincerely apologize for interrupting your Wikipedia time.
Also, do our committee members really find it necessary to write on every section of our questions that we should fully and accurately cite our sources? I think we've got that part...

From: G
To: Everyone
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
Accurately cite that, bitches!
I am using the MS Word Thesaurus way too much. It first started when I appropriated Nicole's three word sentences that she already claimed. Now I think I'm just going to quote and cite Nicole's e-mail...which I would have to look up how to format Chicago style.

From: Me
To: Everyone
We have to do this for seventeen more days? BLARGH!
P.S.-Resorting to drinking soon. It always worked for theory seminar response papers...

From: Nicole
To: Everyone
I think I have swine flu.
Really.
Great timing.

Don't you wish you were me right now?

Goodbye until October!

Conversations on the Way to the Beach

Me: I was just trying to figure out if I like to do anything crafty at all.
Penn: Crafty? Why would you want to do crafts?
Me: That's just it. I don't. I don't want to scrapbook or paint or crochet or do anything like that. Maybe every now and then, but not on a regular basis. I don't think I have any crafty hobbies.
Penn: No. You just like to organize things...That's about it.

Me:It really bothers me when song lyrics aren't correct.
Penn: I know.
Me: It's okay if someone writes a song that's all just grammatically incorrect nonsense. Like some of the Beatles stuff, that doesn't bother me. But you either have to make most of the song grammatically incorrect and just run with it, or else you can't make any mistakes at all. You can't just throw one grammatically incorrect phrase into the song. Then people wonder if you did it on purpose or if you don't even realize you released a song with a mistake.
Penn: People don't wonder that. YOU wonder that.

For the record, Maddi still calls me every time she hears that Fergalicious song from a couple of years ago just because she knows it infuriates me that the song puts an E in Tasty. It is a bit of an obsession, I suppose. It's not like you can't make grammar and spelling mistakes on your own, but surely with all the steps an album has to go through before release, someone could point out that "most loneliest" isn't acceptable.For example. I'm just saying.

You're Getting Very Sleepy...

I just got a letter from my landlord letting Penn and I know that we can renew our lease for another year. And she's not even increasing our rent! Hooray! That's a huge weight off my shoulders. Our current lease is up October 22nd and if we had to move next month the timing would be terrible. I'm writing my exams until the first week of October and I know these exams are going to be so time-consuming that it's going to be hard to find time to eat and sleep during the next three weeks, much less keep up with my assistantship and tutoring work. House-hunting would have been almost impossible. Then we would have had only a couple of weeks to pack and get situated in between my exams and our upcoming trip to Europe. [I'll have to talk more about that in another post; we're almost definitely going to Europe in November but almost all of the details--even seemingly obvious things like "where?" and "when?"--are still to be determined.] Basically, moving next month would have been a logistical nightmare.

Plus I just don't want to leave this condo yet. I really, really love it here. The location has proven to be even better than we anticipated. It's quiet, Penn and I both have very easy commutes from here (he can bike to work in five minutes, it doesn't get easier than that!), we can walk to the grocery store, our neighborhood is full of every variety of restaurant you can possibly imagine (Chinese, Thai, Japanese, seafood, Argentine, Italian, Peruvian, barbecue, pizza, wings, hamburgers, kosher, amazing Honduran taco trucks...), we can bike a mile to a path that takes us into the center of City A, we can walk or bike to the subway station and be downtown in 25 minutes or in our town center in 10. The biggest complaint I have about any of our neighbors is that one of them occasionally smokes on his balcony and on cool nights when our windows are opened we can sometimes smell the smoke. Big deal. I still love the way the owners painted this condo, and I'm really cooking regularly for the first time in my life, something I attribute almost entirely to our awesome kitchen that I love to use. And just last month I finally finished hanging all of the artwork Penn and I never took the time to frame when we first moved in together or aquired over the past year. I hung up all of our art (note: I'm using the term "art" loosely, as our art mostly consists of free postcards I brought home from Russia and maps and album covers) and now it feels even more like home here. Oh, and our new (to us) fifty-inch (!) TV was delivered the other day and I definitely don't want to carry that beast downstairs for at least a year.

Knowing that we can stay here for another year is a relief. And who knows what will happen by this time next year. There's a possibility that Penn's office may move locations and we may opt to move closer to it. We took a homebuyers' class over the summer and determined that we aren't ready to buy quite yet but we may be ready a year or two from now. Basically, being here for another year should be perfect, and I think by this time next year I may be ready to move somewhere else. But for now I'm just really, really glad we don't have to move this year!

And now for a fun conspiracy theory: last night Penn and I were talking about the job he had when we first met (which he hated) and he said, "Did I ever tell you about how they tried to hypnotize us?" I started laughing and said, "Nooo..." and he proceeded to tell me a story about a particular training session he had to do at his old job. I don't want to say what exactly his old job was, but it was a job working for a, um, conservative branch of the government. He was stuck working with a bunch of redneck guys. You know the type, guys that have "These Colors Don't Run" American flag stickers on the back of their trucks and can't believe anyone wouldn't want to own a gun and refer to anyone with brown skin as "the Mexicans." He used to come home from work with t-shirts that said things like, "Support the Troops, Support Each Other" and featured screenprints of soldiers wearing gas masks and stick figures shaped like policemen and nurses and 1950s businessmen. Oh, and I think there was a shirt that pictured a ripped Uncle Sam with, like, missiles or something in the background (I never actually saw that one, Penn just told me about it). Anyway, that job was SO WRONG for him and we always joked about how so much of the job was an attempt at brainwashing, so I was amazed the hypnotism story had never come up before. But last night (interrupted by tons of laughter on my part) he described a training session where all the employees had to go into a room full of comfortable folding chairs and put on virtual reality-esque goggles that covered their eyes and ears completely and watch a film about having a positive attitude in the workplace. He said before the film started the trainer said, "Now, don't fall asleep! You'll want to fall asleep, but stay awake!" and then the movie started and at first it showed bad actors in a workplace scenario of some sort but then it switched to scenes of meadows and waterfalls with single words like "trust" or "unity" superimposed over them as soothing music played. And then Penn fell asleep and he woke up to the sound of the trainer saying, "Wake up! The movie is over!" After the training he talked to all of his coworkers about it and nobody, not one person, stayed awake for the movie.

Doesn't that make you a bit suspicious? It sounds like the video intentionally made everyone fall asleep. Why else would there be soothing pictures and music and key words to focus on? I don't know much about hypnosis, but isn't picturing soothing places and repeating mantras a big part of some versions of it? And I don't think there was any discussion about the lessons supposedly taught by this video after it was over. Just a simple, "Wake up! Go back to work!"
I told Penn that they probably were hypnotized and that at some point while everyone was asleep the trainer put some sort of code word deep in their subconsciences. And suddenly one evening at 9 PM the code word will be broadcast around the country via all radio and television signals and Penn will turn to me with a glazed look in his eye and slowly say, "Must. Attack. Red. China," and then he'll stalk out the door to buy his army fatigues and I'll be all puzzled, alone on the couch, and I'll never see him again.

In all seriousness, though, isn't that story sort of bizarre? I've been to a lot of training sessions in my life, but they always had clear objectives and they never involved personal video equipment.

Anyway, I'm going to the beach tomorrow for the last time this season. I'll be with Penn and his friends and the other girlfriends and I'm going to enjoy this vacation because it's the last free weekend I'll have for three weeks.

Things That Are Happening (or Have Happened)

• I haven't seen Creepy White Van guy since last week, so that's good.
• Here's a scintilating topic: My hair is now so long that it's starting to cause weird problems. When it's wet post-shower I have to keep it in front of my shoulders until it is dry because it's annoying to lean back on the couch against my own wet hair. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night now because Penn is accidentally sleeping on my hair, keeping me trapped in one position. Despite the fact that I've been growing my hair out for well over a year now, it has only been in the past month or so that it has started to annoy me. So, I may have reached the limit on how long I can stand to have my hair (for the record: just below my breasts. I may be able to handle another couple of inches. We'll see.)
• Penn and I did a twelve mile bike ride today. It was supposed to be a ten mile bike ride, but we took a couple of accidental detours. Also, we learned a valuable lesson: when there is a bike trail that winds from behind your apartment all the way to your destination in another city, just STAY ON THE BIKE TRAIL. Don't go getting any sort of crazy ideas about "saving time" by "taking a shortcut to 16th Street" because said shortcut will either a) not be a short cut because you'll temporarily get lost or b) will be a short cut, technically, but will involve a hill that's so steep you want to cry and it just won't be worth it. Trust me. With that said, we made it to our destination (a free outdoor blues festival) and it was a lot of fun and then we ate enormous sandwiches for dinner and then took our bikes on the subway to get home and all was well. That's the furthest I've taken the bike in one day (so far) and I'm up for more biking adventures in the future.
• Those adventures will have to be sometime after my comprehensive exams, which begin in just over a week. Ugh. I've long since passed the point of freaking out about the exams and am now just resigned to the thought that if I fail I can do it all again sometime and I'll eventually pass...someday. Because writing 120 pages in three weeks is something I can do twice if necessary. Right. My new attitude towards these exams may not be an improvement.
• My car is dead. Very, very dead. So dead that the cost to repair the car is more than the car itself is worth. So, no more car. Mostly this isn't actually a big deal. I hated having to spend money on anything car-related and it's as if deep down I've known for the past few months that the car was on its last legs (wheels?) anyway because I had gotten into the habit of biking or riding the bus or subway almost everywhere. I also stepped up my practice with driving Penn's truck, which is good because that stick shift truck is now the only working vehicle we own. I'm proud to say that I drove it to work on the Scariest Highway in America by myself the other day. As in, completely alone! I was the only person in the truck, Penn wasn't sitting there to say things like, "You really need to shift to fifth," or "The brake is still on." So, yeah, mostly I don't care that the car is dead and I think that for now Penn and I will be just fine sharing a vehicle since he walks to work and I take the bus to campus and we were both only filling our cars' gas tanks once a month or less before the Death of My Car anyway. Sharing shouldn't be a problem (and if it proves to be one, my dad has offered us his old truck. In fact, he's pretty much trying to force me to take the truck because he wants an excuse to buy his midlife crisis sports car. It's a nice offer, I'm just not exactly enthusiastic about the three-day drive it would take me to get Dad's truck up here, so, we'll see). Anyway, I did have an afternoon where I was a bit sad about my car because it's the end of an era. I'm pretty sure the days of two-seater sports cars are behind me, at least until I'm trying to pawn my Mom-SUV off on my hypothetical future child so I can buy MY midlife crisis convertible.
• On a vaguely related note, Penn and I opened a bank account together the other day. We're still keeping most of our money separate, but combining a little bit of it will make the day-to-day logistics of living together easier. I'm living with my boyfriend and we now have a joint checking account. That's still a little mind-blowing sometimes.

Seattle

Hi there. I need to catch you up on a lot of things, don't I? Well, maybe not a lot of things. It's not like anything of earth-shattering importance has happened lately in my world. But I feel like I haven't really updated this thing in weeks so here we go:

The trip to Seattle with my grandparents and sister was awesome. (It was this trip, the one we'd been planning since December of 2007) First, the opera part of the trip: I watched 17 hours of Wagner opera over the course of the week. The Ring Cycle is like some sort of crazy triathlon of operagoing. We went to operas on Monday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, and Saturday night. The last two operas were each five hours long. There were a couple of half-hour intermissions in the longer operas and we had tickets to a VIP room where we could move around and stretch and get free wine and small meals and coffee (which didn't help me much because I'm not really a coffee drinker), but still, that's a lot of time sitting and watching opera. I was actually surprised by how much I ended up loving it. Prior to the trip I'd only seen a handful of other operas in my life and never anything by Wagner. Sometimes I felt like the only person in the audience who wasn't a hardcore Wagnerian. (There are people-incredibly wealthy, insane people-who spend the entire year traveling the world from one Ring Cycle to another. I loved the cycle, don't get me wrong, but I kept wondering if these people realize there are other art forms out there...or even other operas, if they don't feel like branching out that much.) Anyway, the production itself was very impressive. There were flying mermaids and cliffs flickering with actual fire and a horse and, well, the spectacle was really amazing. I also loved the music, although I'll admit that I'm not qualified to judge the quality of the singing (it sounded good to me!). Anyway, I really enjoyed the cycle. The fact that my mind keeps traveling back to it on a regular basis two weeks later means it definitely made a major impression.

I would definitely attend the whole cycle again...provided I could ever afford to do it on my own, which is sort of unlikely. The one downside to the experience was the conflict I always feel in these...well, "rich people" situations (for want of a better word). There's a part of me that really loves it. I'm never going to look a gift horse in the mouth and complain about being related to people who can afford to fly me across the country, put me up in a really nice hotel, and buy me tickets to absurdly expensive entertainment. I love the feeling I have when I'm dressed up with a glass of wine in one hand and a plate of tiny crabcakes in the other. I like when someone leaps to my service to valet park my car or carry my suitcase. It's great to be able to pick a restaurant based purely on what sounds good and not even have to look at the prices on the menu because whatever it costs I know we can afford it. I guess what I'm babbling about is this: the trappings of wealth are really pretty damn fantastic. I feel extremely blessed that my grandparents have lived their lives in such a way that they can afford to do such nice things for me and my siblings and cousins. But I always feel conflicted because, first of all, as much as people like to think they get rich through hard work, I know that most of it is just luck and could easily slip away (illness could bankrupt a family, we could become--GASP!--a socialist country, etc.). I don't understand how people come to feel entitled, to feel like money is just a given thing in their lives. That emotion doesn't exist for me, and so it sometimes rubs me the wrong way to be in a room full of people who don't appear to feel lucky for what they have. I'm in the VIP donor room just marveling that I get to be there at all, while around me old ladies are shoving chocolates into their purses and complaining about how there aren't enough and in my head I'm shouting, "Seriously, people, you have thousands of dollars to donate to something as frivolous as an opera performance and yet you're concerned that you're not getting enough foil-wrapped chocolates?!) It's doubly frustrating because the half of me that can't believe how much money people spend on the arts when there are so many people in need wars with the half whose ENTIRE CAREER hinges on the fact that people remain interested in and continue to donate money to the fine arts. My other conflict in these "rich people" situations stems from the fact that I grew up solidly middle class and will likely (hopefully) raise my own family in the middle class so I didn't grow up my whole life in this world. Sure, I grew up with a lot of privileges not everyone has. We always got to take summer vacations, we always got new back-to-school clothes, we never wanted for any of the basics, ever. But it was only recently, when my dad's business started doing particularly well, that my parents upgraded from La Quintas to Hyatts, you know? And, like I said, I can't shake the feeling that I shouldn't get used to the nice opportunities I can have spending time with my family because it could all slip away just as easily. I look at the life Penn and I have supporting ourselves, and it feels perfectly nice. There's honestly not much we need that we don't have right now. We have all the basics we need and we have quite a few luxuries, too. We can afford a few vacations a year, we can afford to go out with friends on weekends, etc. We have to watch our money, but we don't have to stress constantly about it. And this lifestyle is perfectly satisfying to me. I'm rambling, but I guess my point is that I really enjoy the opportunities afforded to me by my grandparents' money, but I don't feel like the "fancy" part of my life is a right. It feels like a privilege, always, and I wish more of the people I was at the opera with realized exactly how privileged they are.

Wow, I didn't realize I needed to get that off my chest. Sometimes these entries go places I wasn't expecting.

Anyway, there was also a lot of the Seattle trip that had nothing to do with opera. It was great getting to spend time with my grandparents, and I also spent a lot of one-on-one time with my sister. We so rarely get to do that anymore, so it was really nice. We did a lot of the Seattle tourist things: Pike Place Market (AMAZING!), the Fremont Troll, the Experience Music Project, the aquarium. We even took a ferry to Victoria, Canada for the day and went to the Buchart Gardens (also AMAZING). I really, really loved Seattle. It's a very pretty city with a lot of great restaurants and a perfect mix of urban culture and outdoor activities. I could see myself living there, actually, which surprised me because I thought I'd pretty much determined that I'm an east coast person. I'm looking forward to going back someday.

I was going to update you on the rest of my life but this got lengthy so I'll save it for another entry, I suppose.