Biggest Compliment Ever

This morning my boyfriend told me that I had the feet of a child: "Your feet look like you play outside barefoot." Here's a few reasons he gave for the youthful appeal of my polished hooves:
1) They are smooth on top, but slightly wrinkled on the bottom
2) They are tanned
3) They have a perpetual coating of chipped bright pink nail polish
4) They do not have protruding blue veins
5) They are hairless
6) They are shaped like empanadas
Oh and he didn't mention this, but my feet never, ever stink. That's because I, like other girls, am made of sugar and spice and other such pleasantries.

Time Management

12am-2am: Reading a book about a half-hippie, half-Asian orphan who commits arson and larceny to try to get ahead in life.
2am-7.05am: Sleeping
7.05am-8.05am: Alternately hitting snooze, resetting alarm, and falling asleep
8.05am-9.05am: Getting ready for work
9.05-9.40am: Re-parking car so I don't get a ticket, catching metro, walking to work
9.40am-6.45pm: Winning bread
6.45pm-7.45pm: Catching metro home, grocery shopping, walking home with heavy groceries
7.45pm-11.45pm: Making meals for the next 3 days, doing dishes, making cupcakes with roommate, taking pictures of furniture and items we will sell/give away
11.45pm-12.00am: Brushing teeth, washing face, laying out stuff for next day, blogging about my day.
Just a typical, lame day in my life.

Fly Away Home

I flew back from California the other day. I took 2 flights. I used the restroom once on each plane. Both times, the door was unlocked. Both times, I walked in on a lady with her panties around her ankles half-moaning at me to keep out. I'm scarred for life.

Co-Inky-Dink

The place where I'm working now is mentioned as a "resource" in the workbook I have been talking about. And so last year I glanced the name over, and then I ended up working for them, having no idea what that organization was in the first place. Too bad the information about the organization is outdated.

Looking Back

I found a workbook that I did last year about career goals. I'm comparing what I wrote then to what I have done in the past year.

Job-search objective, May 2005.

-Internship in DC
-Network
-Learn
-Get published
-Get out there
-Part-time jobs (tutoring)
-Know the city
-See everything

I still have to work on the "see everything" part. I still really only know NW. I feel like I did a pretty good job everywhere else though. I have gotten a lot of my work "published" and I got a great part-time job. I can't believe where I'm headed next. I really need to start planning my life again from scratch.

Progress Has Been Made

My "personal considerations" from an exercise I completed in May 2005:
I can relocate
Salary - at least $20,000/yr.
I would like to be near my boyfriend and a friend of mine
I want a place of my own and nice things
The ability to travel; visit family and friends.

I like how I didn't set my sights too crazy; I guess I was being realistic. But I have fulfilled all of these considerations. I moved to DC with a college friend, I ended up making some sort of salary, my apartments have been more than liveable, and I have managed to travel around the US to visit some of my family and friends.

I think it's a really good exercise to take stock of what you have experienced and then try to organize that information into goals and accomplishments, challenges and successes. Especially if you're a dork like me.

Crab Phobia

Crab Fun – VI
Originally uploaded by carf.

What a brave young man. These crustaceans frighten me. The first time I noticed this was when I was on an island in the Bahamas walking to a secluded beach when a bunch of crabs suddenly surrounded me, spitting and spluttering, with their claws raised above their heads, limping and scuttling like shellaced zombies.
Zombies--I mean crabs--are nature's most efficient waste disposals. They do a great job of cleaning up carcasses--even human ones. So when they surrounded me one day I felt like they could hardly wait for me to die before they picked my carcass clean. *Shudder*

California Eatin'

In-n-Out, double-single, animal style
Raspberries (so very sweet)
Cherries (so much cheaper than in DC)
Carnitas (with all the trimmings from an authentic Mexican shop)
Basque food (featuring pickled cow tongue that was pretty good)
Blueberry pancakes

I feel like I've been in California for a long time, like I never left. But I keep thinking about my friends, boyfriend, and stuff in DC.
Everyone I know here is either flying to or recently coming back from Asia--mostly China, Japan, Philippines. If I wasn't going to grad school this year I would definitely be on my way to the Far East, but as it is now I guess I'll just have to settle (ha) for Europe. I don't even know exactly where I want to be anymore, geographically. I suppose it doesn't matter, really, as long as my mind and soul are in the right place. Here's to figuring that out.

Moby's Music Bores Me

mobius
Originally uploaded by gaminrey.

I have been thinking about Möbius strips since yesterday. I have no idea how it entered my head, but I didn't remember what it was until I eugoogled it just now. And I found this cool picture from a playground, that is pretty much representative of a Möbius strip:

A surface with only one side and only one boundary component. It has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It was co-discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.

Bodies Are Amazing, Part I

"The brain also seemed an unlikely home port for the animating spirit, for animals had been observed to get on quite well for a surprising length of time without the benefit of a brain. Whytt wrote of the experiment of a man named Redi, who found that 'a land tortoise, whose brain he extracted by a hole made in its skull, in the beginning of November, lived on to the middle of May following.'"
~Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach

Move Your Arse!

I am the happiest girl in the world because HELL'S KITCHEN IS BACK ON TV!! Thank you, Fox, for bringing Gordon Ramsey into our homes and kitchens once again.

Happiness

Footsies
Originally uploaded by spyzter.

Tanned feet make me happy. There's just something about a brown foot that makes me feel like all is well with the world. (These aren't mine, but I'll show you mine later).

Memory

My little brother used to put his ear to my knee as he moved my patella back and forth and listened to the weird creeky grasshopper sound and giggled like a school girl. I don't know why he thought it was so funny.

Parting = Sorrow

I had to say goodbye to my favorite shorts for the past 6 years. I got them at a Nike outlet store. They were my workout/pajama/swimming/all-purpose shorts. They used to be lavender, but gradually turned grey. And they're full of runs and holes. And when I say "full" I mean full. So it's time to say chao.

Holiday Monday

My boyfriend and I went to Annapolis, MD on Memorial Day because a nearby beach was filled to capacity so they wouldn't let us in. But Annapolis is a quaint little town, and we had a good time. The place was chock full of tourists, some kind of rude, but there were flowers, flags, and cute little things everywhere.

The Eyes Have It

Red Eye Fly
Originally uploaded by Micro Macro.

All I wanted were some contacts--and I got them in the mail yesterday! I no longer have to look like a dork everyday, now I can choose which days I would like to look like a dork and which days I would like to look nice.
Last night I had a dream that my face felt kind of funny, and I went to the mirror to see what was going on. As I was looking at my eyes in the mirror, I watched a fly burrow beneath a layer of my left eyeball and finally settle right below my eyelid. I could see the shape of the fly in my eye. As if that wasn't awful enough, in my right eye my pupil started to cave in, leaving an ashey crust were my pupil used to be. This must be related to my excitement for getting my contacts delivered.
I also dreamt that I was some kind of magical assassin. I won't go into too many of the gory details, but I came from a royal magic family and we were competing against another family so I went around assassinating our competitors using various methods, such as the blunt end of pencils and pens with some kind of poisonous paint on them.
Aint dreams grand?