Future Me

I hope I look this chic and put together on my first day of work in NYC in the fall. 

Via here and here.

But, I'm pretty sure I'll feel more like this:

via here

Thunderstorms

The weather report in NC is calling for thunderstorms next week.  I am jealous because I would take a good thunderstorm over pretty much any other kind of weather.  I might as well be five years old when I see a dark anvil-shaped cloud, I get embarrassingly excited every single time.  This probably stems from the fact that my dad has the same reaction.  Guess where thunderstorms never happen.  Reason number 3452 to get out of New Haven.

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This last picture was taken (not by me) at Myrtle.  No doubt the best thunderstorms happen at the beach.

Hotdog Spaghetti

Are you kidding me?  This is the coolest thing I've seen all day week.  I just stared at this picture for five minutes straight.   It's like cooking + craft time, and it's cracking me up.

via pinterest, no source

Busy Busy

I have a ridiculous amount of things to do in the next week.  I miss my pre-midterm laziness, it was much more enjoyable.  These are a couple of the books I'm using to research my economic history paper.  I drink my tea and flip through them, and I feel super academic and fancy.  But then I just get bored, because these books are boring.

Almost perfect living room

via here

Love the greys and the lighting and, of course, the striped pillows.  Replace the liquor cart with book shelves, add a cozy rug, and I'll move in.

Irritated

Most of the people I spend time with up here consider themselves liberal and open-minded.  They are quick to condemn racism, sexism, and judgments based on stereotypes.  People here take pride in their own tolerance and pat themselves on the back for their enlightenment.  However, apparently, there's one stereotype that it's still okay to perpetuate; it seeps through everyday conversations and it drives me up the wall.  It pops up everywhere: the south is backward, the south is ignorant, the people are stupid, no one goes there willingly.  Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes not so much.  I've never been personally called uneducated or backward, but the innuendo surrounding the region is unmistakable.  A small town in Massachusetts is charming; a small town in Alabama is underdeveloped.  A flag on a house in Connecticut is patriotic; a flag on a house in Georgia is redneck.  I can vouch for the fact that there are ignorant people in every part of the country, but I have never met better people than I have in the south.  It blows my mind that the same people who fight for openness and equality around campus will turn around and make a joke about the south being full of hicks.  Unsurprisingly, these are usually the people who haven't spent any significant amount of time down there.  So I would say that this doesn't make someone liberal and open-minded, but elitist and bigoted instead.  Sorry I'm not sorry.

this is how this makes me feel

Sunday

I'm not a big fan of Sundays.  I feel like they're best spent hanging out with family, laying around outside, and eating.  However, I'm more than eight hundred miles away from my family.  Also, it's thirty degrees here with two inches of snow in the forecast for tonight.  I did just eat my weight in Tostitos with a hint of lime, though.

My suite-mate says she can tell I'm homesick when I turn off the Regina Spektor and Feist and turn on the Dixie Chicks and Shania.  Truth.  Guess what I'm playing now.

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Wrinkles

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Here's hoping that when I'm this wrinkly, I will have accomplished tons of cool and meaningful junk.  This guy looks like he has.

Layers

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This picture is 97% of the reason I want a tan/khaki blazer.  I love how layers look, but when I put on more than one thing with long sleeves, I kind of feel like I'm going to suffocate.  So there's my dilemma.  Also, I want her tan and freckled chest.

Brie-Obsession

I could eat brie cheese all day, every day.  Seriously.  My favorite recent discovery is that the usually-outrageously-overpriced market down the street will make a brie grilled cheese for only $3.50!  And earlier today I found this picture of a raspberry and brie panini (with drizzled honey).  Get in my belly.

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(P.S. I don't think I knew until about thirty seconds ago that raspberry was spelled with a "p.")

Tradition

Today I spent multiple hours holding a lighter up to a stick of sealing wax waiting for it to drip onto envelopes.  After a bit of a learning curve, and a blistered thumb, my University Society had very official looking invitations to stuff under the doors of unsuspecting juniors.  Most likely my first and last time wax sealing envelopes.  Not too shabby, I think.

Graduation Attire

Graduation is three short months away.  There are going to be lots of fancy Ivy-style events, so I think I'll need to wear this for one of them.  It's so fresh and happy, even though I'll probably be crying my eyes out the whole time.  I will be soon be starting a monetary collection for my spring/summer 2011 outfit fund because apparently a couple yards of yellow fabric fashioned into a simple tank dress is worth over eight hundred bucks.

Graduation by atsuga

Sunflower Belted Dress, $845
Allix Marl Jersey Blazer by Theory, 300 GBP
Rebecca Minkoff M.A.B. Flat | Rebecca Minkoff Online Store, $185
Accessories | Rebecca Minkoff Online Store, $160

Do you know what you are?

“Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.”

— Henry David Thoreau (via here)

Color

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4. What do you wear to bed?

Erm, a t-shirt and an old pair of boxers.  Exciting, I know.  Here's something far more entertaining than my pajama habits.

via here

Spring Date

Spring Date 

Things I Need

here, here, and here

Jackie's White House Tour

Her voice sounds like a creepy-housewife-robot.

3. What kind of person attracts you?

Oh, this is a good question.  I am attracted to people I respect, to good people.  I am drawn to people who set high standards for themselves and live up to them.  By this, I don't mean those who push for four-point-oh's.  I mean people who have a strong sense of common decency.

I gravitate toward those who put others before themselves.  The kind of people who go out of their way to help people.  The kind of people who say they are going to do something and they do it.  I like those people.

Also, I realize that this means I'm not attracted to myself all the time.  I'm working on it.

via here

Elton John

This album cover, released in '75, kills me.  Look at Elton go.

Can't look away

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They scare me so much, but I cannot stop looking at them.

Remember this?

Growing up, my dad got National Geographic in the mail every month.  The yellow spines would line our bookcases.  He had so many they would also spill out from the shelves under the end tables as well as the magazine rack in the bathroom.  And like a million other Americans, I was always mesmerized by the photo of the Afghan Girl.  The original story ran in 1985, I was not even born yet.  But I remember looking at the picture and thinking about how crazy her eyeballs were.  Then in 2002, National Geographic went and found her in the hills of Afghanistan.  Remember?  It felt like such an important story.

2. How have you changed in the past 2 years?

I'm a bit behind on this challenge, but I'm still going to power through.  How have I changed?  Well I suppose I've become more mature.  I've gotten to know myself better.  This sounds like a cliché pile of crap.  So, right, more specific things.  I can pull my hair back in a ponytail now.  I know what it means to be in a convoluted, confusing relationship.  I can say I've lived independently in two cities on opposite sides of the country.  I've become more confident in some ways, and more inhibited in others.  However, in a lot of ways, I've stayed the same.  I'm one hundred percent positive my answer will be more interesting 2 years from now.

Cowboy's gotten more gray hairs in the past 2 years.

Things I Like

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Dirt Map

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1. Weird things you do when you're alone.

This sounds really gross, but I pick.  Pick at my fingernails, pick at blackheads, pick at dry skin.  Okay, that's all I want to say because I just grossed myself out.  Maybe I should work on this bad habit.

Thirty Day Challenge

I think I will do this.

Baby Animals

Oh man, I love babies.  Baby animals included.  Future Me needs some prints of Sharon Montrose's photography on my walls.  Look at these little guys.  I need all of them.  I can't even handle it!

News

Today I was reading the New York Times in class instead of paying attention, and I started reading this story about a safe drug injection site for users in Vancouver.  This program hands out clean needles to cut down on the spread of HIV and has nurses on site keep people from dying of a drug overdose.  The nurses also offer other medical services like gynecological exams, wound dressing, and STD testing.  In return for coming to the center and using new needles, the users are protected from Canadian narcotics laws.

This lady is shooting drugs into her jugular. 

via here

This article blew my mind.  My first thought was- what a weird, creepy, novel and clever idea.  It's like a really intriguing spin on the whole 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' mantra.  No one will ever be able be able to eradicate drug use without dealing with underlying societal crap, so in the meantime, why not make people safer?  My second thought was- how in the world do those nurses work there?  I hope with my whole heart that this is a weekly, if not monthly, commitment for them.  To see this day in and day out would have to be an emotional health hazard.

I feel like a big slimy slug.

Sense of Direction

I've always known I have a terrible, awful, no-good sense of direction.  It's hereditary; my dad can't find his way around either.  My friends make fun of me.  Other family members make fun of me.  I'd like to think I've learned how to cope over the years.  Right before running out the door to go to a new location (or maybe even a place I've been to three times before), I'll take a picture with my phone of the google map on my computer.  I have almost as many map photos on my phone as pictures of my dog, Cowboy. And that is way too many.  Here is a small selection.

This is pitiful, really.  Three of these locations are on the campus of a college that I have attended for three and a half years now.  At least with this method I can pretend like I'm checking a text message instead of being the second semester senior checking a map.