GO FAMILY! BEAT…NOT MY FAMILY!

 
wait, what?

oh god i have not written here in a long time. quick entry and then BACK TO WORK!

workworkwrowkrworkworkwork

so anyway, zach went to his grandma’s in pennsylvania for thanksgiving and she woke up one morning and said, “i had a dream that someone came up to me and said ‘you are going to die’ and it scared me and i couldn’t get back to sleep”. you and i both know this means bad news bears because not that i really believe in that kind of stuff, but it does happen that when you are older (90) and you have dreams like that, it typically means not-so-good things are coming.

she died wednesday.

so he headed out thursday and i went out friday and spent time with the family and now i understand why jarrod acted the way he did at our mom’s funeral, because when you have met someone twice and don’t really know the family and don’t feel like going through the receiving line because…why? you really don’t know what to do and just stand around for lack of a better idea. so i did that. it was also the first time i had seen a casket lowered into the ground (as i remember it, when my dad’s dad died, melania and i were playing hopscotch on gravestones because we were but tiny lasses at the time) and that was …about what you would think it would be.

but for the rest of the time, i met zach’s family and ate fantastic food and heard some great stories about makeshift bombs made in a tide box exploding looney tunes style in his dad’s face and general 12-year-old debauchery in a quiet pennsylvania town.

i met a guy named maher from twinsburg who is related to zach. he and i talked about roundabouts and traffic circles and he has been to dublin before. i talked to zach’s aunt frances about consignment shopping and project runway and z’s mom and i had a series of lovely chats about entourage, snots, socks and facebook.

the two parts that really stood out to me, and then oh god i really have to go, were when zach’s uncle dean was doing a muslim blessing over the casket – first, fourteen-some guys and three women in hijabs came into the funeral home room three-quarters of the way through the funeral and stood in the back, and when dean motioned for them to come up and bless the body, he wanted them spread out so everyone could see in front of them, but the ringleader of the group said, “no, this will help her” when he insisted they all be concentrated in one group in front of everyone. very sweet and i have no idea why.

the second was when twinsburg guy (maher, not to be confused with zach’s uncle maher who makes movies) was translating arabic writing on the backs of all of these pictures collected from zach’s grandma’s house would tell us what the hell was written on the back of each photo. there were a few in particular of this guy who zach’s aunt had affectionately nicknamed “slick willy” because he had slicked back hair and looked like a real “hey, how you doin’” type of guy and it turns out that his writing completely reflected that – writing “i wish the moon and stars for you” and “may the memories wash ashore from the boat of happiness” or something. later, maher looking through the pictures and said “this is my father!” and everyone went AHHHHHHHH and gasped and it was fantastic.

so despite the horrible situation and losing a treasure in the family, it was kind of a great time sitting around, hearing stories and meeting everyone.

fin

THEN I WILL NOT BE BABYSITTING TOMORROW EVENING, AMIRITE?

HI

SORRY

I HAVE BEEN BUSY

back in the day i would rush home to get on the computer and my mom would say “you can get on for 15 minutes, but that’s all!” and now i am on the computer roughly 15 hours a day

whoaaaa, it’s been too long.

this article from the nyt really annoyed me, and zach humored me and let me bitch for however long i needed until i decided i finished. i am preaching to the choir here, but still.

i think our generation’s problem is that we were raised to believe we could do anything, which, in theory is a good thing, but at the same time, that adage never had the *butyouwillhavetoworkforitsry2say at the bottom. so you have a bunch of entitled, underqualified so-and-sos who were told that they could have anything they wanted (and if not, mom and dad would pull some strings and you would magically have a foot in the door) without having to work or make sacrifices.

which is why the tale of these young ladies annoyed me so.

ISSUE 1: i live in an $2900 apartment on the uws? how will i make rent?
SOLUTION: get an apartment in hoboken for $450. also, when it mentions that their mom lives in weehauken, that’s the town right next to hoboken. it’s not berlin, it’s right across the hudson to nyc. apparently they are too good to live there

ISSUE 1.5: i live in a walk-up
SOLUTION: everyone lives in a walk-up when he/she is 24

ISSUE 2: networking with people/how will i meet anyone?
SOLUTION: join linkedin and connect to everyone and his brother.

ISSUE 3: wah wah i went to softball and i didn’t meet anyone. why don’t i have a job yet?
SOLUTION: maybe because the reason you go to softball is to decompress after work and you don’t want to talk about your job and potentially networking for two blondes. volunteer on a sunday morning for the ny roadrunners. there are cute runner guys and lots of nonprofit hobknobbers and (gasp) it is for a good cause

ISSUE 4: i want to be on tv and be a sportscaster with my twin sister but i don’t know anyone wah wah
SOLUTION: put that shit on youtube, digg the hell out of it and get your friends to do it, too. better yet, make a video of you falling down/getting smacked in the face with something/playing a song about some sort of cacao-based preciptation and digg the hell out of it – someone will notice you

ISSUE 5: wah wah things are too expensive. i only make $800 a week
SOLUTION: i didn’t buy conditioner for the first four months i lived here. so i don’t want to hear it. stop going to midtown happy hours (take the r to steinway (“ew, queens?”) and get strong margaritas a block away for $3.50)

i also liked the tale of them being down home girls (yee-haw) and sending buckeyes to potential employers – really, girls? surely you aren’t compensating for a 3.[yeswell] gpa or less than outstanding work experience in the past because you spent your summer in cancun instead of interning. i cannot think that someone genuinely qualified for a position could ostensibly be beaten out by a candidate who made *~*BUCKEYES~*~*.

this whole thing upset me, because i can think of three girls off the top of my head who were from ohio, moved to nyc and made it work. do they live in $2900 apartments? no. were they unemployed for a while? yes. are they okay now? yes. it takes time, dammit. but to expect that you can go to starbucks every day and aroma coffee and chill out on facebook on your mac, bitch and feel like people should have sympathy for you…giiiiiiiiirl..

well, today zach and i moved in together. we moved a huge-ass tv, a heavy-ass futon (which was moved up three flights of stairs and should not have made it upstairs, as it seemed physically impossible), a bed, 7 boxes (him), 21 bags (me), a computer, etc., etc., etc. i love this part of town – we have a pharmacy cleverly disguised as a kids’ toy store on the corner, a bike shop on the other corner, a seafood restaurant on the third (yuck) and…i don’t know what’s on the fourth. one of the houses on our street has a baby donkey statue in the front yard, i kid you not. i will take two.

i would also like to explain to everyone that really, i am not getting married. i am also not getting engaged. we were hanging out last night – zach’s roommate made dinner and had friends over and they joked that there were these crazy girls who forced their boyfs to move in with them and then begged them for engagement rings. i do not want to get married right now. i don’t. and from my door to his door, it takes me an hour and a half on the train one way. that’s from here to athens. so, to reiterate, it is a 2 bedroom apartment for a great deal, i don’t have to sit on the train for three hours a day and life is good.

otherwise, i’m tired. zzzz

I think my head might explode from everything going on. I’ve been hustling like a mofo lately, spending so much time on my computer I would rather have it just attached to me all the time and learning more about Lady Gaga than I ever thought possible.

Also, I bought tri-blend shirts for Mira and Nora today and Mira wouldn’t take hers off despite the tag. New American Apparel converts! You’re welcome, Dov.

Also #2, working at home is sweet because when someone is being a mental retard over help emails, you can say “you retard” out loud and nobody will notice! mostly because you are by yourself but this is beside the point.

Anyway, I am alive, just busy, and I promise to be a bettablogga soon.

I figured I would be fine going without shaving my legs today because the hair is light and you can never really see it unless you are looking with a magnifying glass and that is slightly disturbing.

ANYWAY, it is -4 degrees here at le bucks d’étoile and goosebumps ensued and now you can tell that it’s, like consistently long all over my leg. If the people here were concerned with anything but their I’m-very-busy-and-important-and-I-must-leave-my-phone-ringer-on delightful selves, I think they would be grossed out by me.

This ends my leg hair update.

It’s Tuesday! This means babysitting, probably banana pudding, Chopped, etc. It also means I have three days left and then I’m outta here.

We were talking about how the last day is going to go last night, and I don’t think Zach thought I was serious when I said I wanted it to be like the end of Grease, but I really would love that. Give or take a Spandex outfit and the phrase “tell me about it, stud,” I wouldn’t mind it if we walked out together – he is coming in Friday at some point to go over the basics of the food site – singing You’re The One That I Want, flying out the 21st floor in a red convertible and having Stockard Channing (she was 33 when that movie was filmed! seriously) wave at us after having learned that she is not pregnant and will graduate on time.

In reality, I will probably wave at Eugy, walk out of the office carrying my $10 unicycle bought off a coworker, turn on my mp3 player and listen to Pavement and breathe a sigh of relief that my occupation will never revolve around eProps. Phew.

Otherwise, tomorrow I am going to play Beatles Rock Band with Gill and Luc and his friend and his mom (…I think) and will have to teach them the harmonies in the “ooh-la-lala” descant in You Won’t See Me and probably fail out of a bunch of songs. So it goes.

Also, in “uhh…” news, I ordered a tape recorder for *~*~*`interviews8~*8`8`8` August 7 from this chick on Amazon and it never showed up. I emailed Amazon saying “wut” and they said the order was just canceled because it’d been a month, so I bought it on another site for cheaper and all was well and now I can record myself saying “pie” and save it as an mp3.

I got an email at 1:30 this morning saying my recorder shipped (uh) after a month of her not responding and a subsequent “we are refunding you” message wherein she sent a delightful message:

I have never sold anything on Amazon before. I did not understand that you and another person purchasing this item were two different people. I only had one recorder to sell. Sorry I misunderstood the system.

I mean, come on. I do not think I will be leaving good feedback. And now there’s, like, $180 sitting in Amazon limbo chillin’ for 10 business days. Sweet. ARGH. Help me write feedback, please.

I don’t know what else. Hm.