It's possible that my vampire obsession has gone too far...

Among other things, 2008 has brought a resurgence of my young adult fascination with vampires. Blame Twilight or True Blood or the new series Vamps (Gossip Girl meets Twilight, I am not made of stone, you know)... Whatever the reason, yesterday marked the culmination of this fad when I incurred this wound while at work:

*


Although it was a incident of freak glassware breakage and not the undead that caused the incisions near my jugular, I am going to take it as a sign that I should close the book (or books) on vampires with the close of the year. And move on to werewolves.

*Um, yes I am wearing the t-shirt from the 2001 Project Shakespeare production of Richard III.

Dear Baby Animals,

Please stop being so cute so I can finish my essay.

Rose

So it's really a good thing that no one has to hear all of my thoughts. Not merely because it would be very invasive of my privacy, but also because some part of my brain is singing November Rain for the ENTIRE month of November. It actually started around October 29 this year. And honestly I don't think anyone has the patience to withstand so many guitar solos in wheat fields and wedding cakes falling off tables in slow motion. If you had to think about that stuff as often as I do, you'd certainly go crazy. And December is only slightly better because I am not intimately acquainted with the video for Long December by Counting Crows. So it's just the lyrics on loop. All month long. Happy holidays, mind readers!

So I am REALLY trying to write this personal statement but while writing I started listening to Ys for the first time in a little while. It's just so lovely. And though I probably listened to this song enough times while I was in Amsterdam to add up to a week of my life, I still think it's the best. Also it's really amazing to watch people play the harp. The amount of sound that one instrument can make! It's fantastic. I am particularly partial to the passage that repeats, "Why the long face?" Back to work now.

Sad Truth

So this is what The New York Times homepage looks like right now. So maybe this makes me totally un-international (or whatever) but I found it very confusing to have a picture of a peach stand next to a story about Georgia the country and not Georgia the state. Counter-intuitive if you ask me.

Also I am deeply disappointed in all of you for not sitting me down and forcing me to watch Slings and Arrows. Really what were you thinking?

Somehow I've become so nervous about these election results that I'm acting like I'm going on a first date. So not only am I compulsively changing my clothes (I was wearing a red shirt!! Now it's blue...) but I'm also making lots of really bad jokes. Mostly asking things like, "When will we kno-bama?" or thinking that when Mary says, "Back to you, Wolf" they should hilariously have Wolf the American Gladiator on screen. You know to break the ice a little. The tension is killing me!

Thanks Stef!

Stef got me the number one best hoodie of all time. Here it is:



Not only is it in hipster-as-what, awesome red and black watch, it is also lined in this super soft and furry faux sheerling. And to top it all off there's a secret pocket!!!!!!


On an unrelated note the late night electric guitarist on the F train (you know with the hat and the amplifier?) has learned "Baby Can I Hold You." And it's definitely more appropriate in terms of tone for the quiet, late-night ride, but it's kind of awkward to be listening to this song and accidentally make eye contact with strangers. Also I forgot how affective the song is. That's all.

Still in it!!!!!!!!

Between the Twilight saga and Tru Blood I think it is safe to say that all contemporary vampire themed cultural output is terrible. Alas for the good old days:

Ruminations on the Bolt Bus

As I type these words a young man is nodding in and out of sleep over his MacBook Pro to my left as vistas of scenic Yonkers speed by on my right. Yes, through the wonders of modern technology I am connected to the Internet and traveling to Boston at the same time. I really have no concept of the mechanism that makes this possible. Am I getting service via a cell phone signal? Is there some giant satellite dish on top of the bus (I checked as I was getting on but it could be in the middle, out of view. Buses are tall)? Regardless, this magical manifestation of modernity allows me to bore you with these observations:

The Bolt Bus stops at the corner of eighth avenue on thirty-fourth street. There's a plaque commissioned by the Ukrainian American Society on the building there which recognizes the location as the site of Nikola Tesla's death. I briefly wondered at the possibility of deliberate symbolism in deciding to have a giant red bus with a lightning bolt on the side stopping in front of Tesla's death place.

Hell's Kitchen seems like a sort of adorable neighborhood. After four years in New York I'd never seen it before today.

Initially none of the power outlets were working on the bus. This created a sort of mini-hysteria. The tensions ran so high that the bus driver pulled over at ninth avenue and fifty-first street to fix the problem. We had been moving for seven minutes and the repair took at least ten.

According to their website, Bolt Bus stops at 34th and 8th when going to Boston and Philly and 36th and 7th when going to DC. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the Philly and DC buses stopping in the same place on the West side with easy access to the Lincoln tunnel and have the Boston bus stop somewhere further east with easy access to the Tri-Borough bridge or at least FDR drive? It took us forty-five minutes to get out of Manhattan today.

I saw a giant beautiful rainbow ahead to the east as we turned on to 287. A prodigious sign, to be sure.

The dude in front of me is totally watching Reality Bites.

At five-thirty we passed the last exit in Norwalk, CT. This was two and a half hours into our supposedly four hour and fifteen minute trip. I might reach the end of the internet.

I uesd to not be able to sleep on any moving vehicle, but somehow in the last year or so the opposite has become true and I have started nodding off without even meaning to. I am worried that this is the first sign of an early-onset dementia. Also, since I unwittingly napped today, what if I'm not tired enough tonight to go to sleep early to wake up early tomorrow to go to sleep early tomorrow to wake up early on Saturday for the LSAT????? Seriously. I am not very good at sleeping.

In addition to mid-90's melodrama, the dude in front of me is assiduously tracking our progress forward on Google maps. He should clearly be traveling by plane.

This has essentially devolved into a Twitter. I'm going to go watch funny stuff on Hulu.

7:30 is an inhuman hour at which to wake. Damn test.

Fall Outerwear

So I'm really trying to be good about studying and prep for the LSAT (7 days!), but tonight I am going to a birthday party and it's rainy and I have to wear a jacket. Choosing a jacket is of course an epic decision and because Richard has already left for the evening it falls to you, dear internet, to be my second eyes.

Mostly my fall weight outerwear has been acquired through various forms of "free." In fact the only thing I bought I have had since I was 20 (at a adorable thrift store in Hungary). So there's something a little bit weird about all the options (ordering from least to most weird):



This is the one I bought. It's cute but the arms fit kind of funny, right? Also the zipper doesn't completely work anymore.



So Kendra gave me this vest when we were living together. Prior to my wearing it, we had tacked it to the wall for decoration. It's also pretty short. In like a 1993, cropped-tops-are-hot kind of way.



This jacket also has some early 90's appeal. I got it at a clothing swap (thanks Ella!). It seems like a normal-ish choice, but then you realize that the collar and cuffs are lined with faux fur instead of wooly sheerling. It's challenging.



I honestly love wearing this coat. But it's actually a little bit longer than your standard trench. And the bottom is more of a full skirt than an a-line. It can look sort of intensely dramatic. Yeah, it used to be my mom's.



Can I ever wear this in public? Is any outfit plain enough to balance the oversized shoulder pads and the mid-80's pleating details? This one comes courtesy of my aunt Sukins and was the inspiration for my first request for a leather jacket.

Helpful Hints: How Italian Men Can Improve Their Game

So I went to a wine tasting today. Generally they're sort of crowded affairs in conference rooms or ballrooms of hotels. Tables ring the room and there's a bunch of cheese and bread and bottled water in the middle. I sort of dress up for these things. I guess the rule is to look professional, but my motivation is generally to look older and more serious. It's hard enough to get men to take me seriously about wine without looking like the kind of girl they try to pick up in bars. Today that involved the shoes pictured to the right (with slacks because the skirt was just too shiny). Nonetheless I managed to be the youngest woman in the room. A charming, older (let's say late 70's) gentleman took a particular shine to me and followed me around to a few tables. Although he had many complimentary things to say, my personal favorite was when he called me a "mountain of glory." It's important to picture this man, standing about 5'4'', fumbling through his Sicilian accent, doing his best to channel Martin Scorsese in his tie-less black suit. I would like to take this opportunity to tell all you Italian men reading this blog that words like "great" (as in "great tower of beauty") and "mountain" might best be left out of your courtship routine.

Tonight I was on the R train (taking the longest route home possible) and when passing through the Courtlandt Street subway station and I started to think about the newspapers on the platform and whether they were from seven years ago. And then I started to think about how that was seven years ago. And then I realized today is the four year anniversary of my move to New York City.

Right after that I thought about the perfect poem to describe that feeling of how the general history reminded me of my particular history and how it was all sort of uncertain and nostalgic. But I just spent about twenty minutes looking through Google for this poem and I don't think it exists after all. Which makes me wish I had a photographic memory so I would always be able to quote exactly what poem I was thinking of. Or maybe I should just write my own poems. Or go to bed.

What Not To Do: Late Night Messaging

As many of you dear readers have experienced, I have a penchant for late night, less-than-sober, text-based communications. It's something I am certainly not proud of, but it's who I am and I don't know what I can do about it short of developing breathalizer software for my phone and computer (hear me Steve Jobs?). Normally message recipients are good friends and occasionally *cringe* former lovers. Last night, however, I managed to send the following message to a Facebook friend who I went to KINDERGARTEN with (and haven't seen since I was fifteen, probably):

I noticed that you're currently employed by Legal Seafood. My sister has been gainfully employed at the Park Square location of that same chain for the last three years... I was thinking you might be unwittingly working side by side for the last several weeks without even knowing your connection! But, basically, if you're working with a girl named Molly who looks uncannily like me, you should say hi, cause she's my sister.....
Late'
Rose

My concern is not really that I said something stupid. The content isn't particularly damning. I just think about how it must look to recieve such a random and syntactically quirky message with a 3:47am date stamp. Not good. Not good.

Hardly a Post

So I'm a jerk and I never update. Noted. Mea culpa. But here's what's news lately:

1) My new sunglasses are so fly:



Sometimes I'm wearing them and it's like, "Damn, New York. Can you stop sweating me for a little? Cause I have to walk here."


2) You should all try the 2007 Muga Rose. It's not super cheap but it's well under $20 and it's easily the best rose I've had in over a year. So delicious.

3) It seems likely that I'm looking for a new job. I want to keep working with wine and I feel pretty open to what's available. Hit me up if you know something.

I just had to tell myself, "Rose, it's 3:15 am and you are going to publish a blog post about dating? Get your mind right and go to bed."

Teenaged

So there's this girl who has been sitting on my stoop all day. I am pretty sure she lives in the building cause I've seen her before. And I don't know for certain that she's been there all day, but let's say it's been an hour or two. I would guess she's fifteen. All she's doing is scrolling through her cell phone and flipping it open and closed. I mean, I haven't been watching her continuously, but as far as I can tell. It's important to note that I don't have one of those grand, Brooklyn, Do The Right Thing kind of stoops. The stoop is an inch and a half higher than the sidewalk. The point is, she's almost certainly just sitting out there cause she has nothing else too do and doesn't want to sit her apartment because of family or heat or whatever, but mostly boredom. At least things might change a little on the street. You know cars drive by. Occasionally there are bicycles. The point is, do you remember how boring it was to be a teenager?

Thinking back, I have no idea what I did to pass the time when I was fifteen. Except Shakespeare summer camp, of course. Leila and I took the T to places like the Cambridgeside Galleria because were so used to the Copley and Prudential malls that they were boring. Malls are categorically boring of course, so it seems like we must have been bored once we got there too. And I guess I listened to the radio alot then as well. Which means that I must have spent alot of time at home near the radio. Jeez. So much time just passed in my life without anything happening.

So far this summer has been incredibly boring. No offense to anyone I have had a great time with in the last month. The days are just full of pointless scrolling through internet pages and long walks and magazines. I feel like I am waiting for my life to happen which is how I remember feeling when I was a teenager. And it's really dumb because I'm obviously old enough to know that you have to make things happen and that sitting around drinking coffee like a dullard is not how to do it. Which is unfortunate because lately that's all I've wanted to do.

Melons

Recently one of my coworkers told me that pure watermelon juice has an almost immediate laxative effect if consumed in large enough quantities. I haven't remembered to test this claim with research or experimentation, but it would be a sort of weird thing to fabricate, so I believe it. Then today I read this about the arousing effects of watermelons. Which leaves all of us (or so I imagine) wondering about the intersection of these two unexpected properties of this refreshing summer fruit. Which is sort of a gross image and generally involves too many seeds.

Failure of the Algorithm?

According to IMDB, if I like How She Move I might also like Porky's and The Notebook.