today

today. today was a different day. today i woke up at 2:47 am to the sound of pouring rain. today i walked ten blocks in semi-flooded streets with sheets of rain coming down to union station at 3:15 am. today i took my first amtrak train in the northeast corridor. today i jumped on a plane on a whim after booking my flight the night before. today i felt enveloped by the familiar green rolling hills as i landed home, ithaca home. today i played with beautiful baby phoenix. today i started a mission that may change my life. today i had a lovely takeout dinner with friends on their second-story porch. and today, (perhaps tommorrow), another baby takes its first breath. micah.

i have no words

for the constant state of disarray that is my life since july. i have to be awake in less than five hours to walk to union station, catch a train, then a shuttle, then a plane. and then i'll be back in my happy place, away from the troubles of the district.

oh yeah. i moved to washington.

the only news you'll ever need

Barack Obama's facebook feed:

http://www.slate.com/id/2258126/?from=rss

so typical

of course, the latest awesomeness mashup of coffee and chocolate WOULD only be available in portland OR. and at stumptown roasters, the hipster maven no less.

blurg!

but we can still lust after the coffee bar, can't we?

neon makes everything better

scotty is having a very difficult conversation with his family right now. we are pretty sure we are not moving back to california, at least for now. i kind of feel like a villain in all of this, but it's just plain complicated.

but i found that someone spilled neon paint on the sidewalk below my window. and there's nothing like a little splash of neon to make everything seem okay.

the inchoate thesis does some soul searching

turned in my thesis revisions today. i'm more than exhausted. i went to bed as the sun started to rise this morning at 5am.

current sentiments? dear friend l. asked if i had a deadline hangover. i think that's the best term for what i feel right now. you want to be happy, because the worst is over. but all you feel is remorse over that paragraph that was still unclear, that word that could have been changed, that source you forgot to add, or that figure you cited but forgot to paste in the document. or, especially in my case, that you want to throw it all away and start over because you think you could do a hell of a better job if you started from scratch.

whatever.

the subject line for my email to my advisor read: the inchoate thesis, 2nd attempt.

the ideas and the assertions i make in my thesis are still new ideas, raw and needing some time to mature and change. i have commitment issues when it comes to writing, so i'm surprised the words came out at all. i'm going to be studying fresno for likely a large chunk of my life, so if it remains inchoate, well--i have a lifetime to perfect my thoughts and ideas.

next up: the post-deadline-hangover nap, which is always a sweet, sweet thing.

then off to utica for the evening to give a presentation. tres epuisant!

finish line

you can do it. two and a half days left. it's just a defense draft, you can always return to it. it's not going to solve the world's problems. in fact, no one may ever read it, and that's okay. it's your first attempt to articulate the way you see things. you may change your mind in the future, and disagree with what you write today. it's good, though. even emerson thinks so. what happened to mom isn't going to happen to you. you have a solid support network here in ithaca to back you up. mom didn't. no one believed in her, and so she didn't believe in herself. people believe that you have something to say, something that is unique. speak that voice. don't hide in anxiety and fear. stop obstructing yourself from progress because the perfect words don't appear on the page, the perfect ideas, the things that people will wonder why they haven't been discussed yet. it's a fucked up mess that is so much bigger than you realize. do not carry that burden alone. this is your catharsis. this is your first chance to speak from the outside.

and know that your family will always love you, despite the cognitive dissonance you may create in their mind. that's okay. it's all going to be okay.

twentyfive.

at about 12:03 eastern sunday morning, in the company of good friends and under the influence of a bit of cabernet sauvignon, i declared my twenty-sixth year the year of letting go.



here's to the surrender to serendipity!

mail day!

today was a very exciting mail day. i documented the fun with pictures.



who do i know that lives in milwaukee?!



ooh! i know what this is! but with a brat fry? this is already amazing, and i've only seen the cover.



i just love this design. my friend meghan's sister emily designed it. fabulous, no? and the fun is only getting started.



hey, this person also lives on green[e] street! but who are they? and in brooklyn? intrigue.



the 2010 buy local eat seasonal tea towel by claudia pearson illustration! what?! how?! oh, right. my birthday is sunday. but who?! thank you, mystery person!

now, if my new yorker could just arrive, mail day would be complete.

laying in bed and watching the snow fall

i just wanted to write about this sweet moment so someday i can go back and remember these few seconds of peace.

so quiet, so serene, so beautiful it takes me away from the stress for a few minutes.

i live in a snow globe.

but that silly california bear on my wall keeps reminding me this isn't forever.

oh, HELL no

just found the inspiration i need to kick ass on the paper i'm currently writing:

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/beck-yapping-palin-kitchen/

this was a way too upsetting reminder of all the times i was told by my male peers that my "place" was in the kitchen, growing up.

while i have a lot of issues with palin, i have absolutely no tolerance for this type of male chauvinistic behavior.

i swear, if i see a beck book at christmas, i'll throw it in the fireplace.

good god, how i love emerson

I've had to read some of the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson for my American Political Thought class. This guy puts to words ideas that I've been thinking about for years. He's completely provocative but completely natural, all at once. I'm positive I'll be reading him until the day I die.

"Prayer that craves particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Circles"

autumn. today. glorious.

i told scott today that from now on, i will be depressed every october. why? because i live in the most splendid place on earth to enjoy autumn.

we started here to enjoy lattes while getting some work done with leah. they just finished renovating it and the new layout blew my socks off. i mean, a whole other room with tables and cushy booths, shielded from the noise of the espresso bar? happiness.

and then we went here.

and we got this stuff.

and then we sat here for awhile and enjoyed life.

then we decided to go to here to do some browsing. we spent 60 cents.

i hope whatever city we land in next will be as delightful as this one.

neon colors, leaving on jet planes and whatnot

so....school has sequestered my attention already.

and so has traveling! i feel like i am on the road lots.

i was just in montreal. they like neon colors. so do i. that's where the photo above was taken. arcade fire's "neon bible" album makes much more sense now.

we also were in the adirondacks last weekend. good times learning how to start fires. scotty and i (being the city people that we are) watched a you tube video before we left on "how to start a campfire". yep. we are an embarrassment to many of our family and friends.

and next up on the tour of north america:

washington dc (conference)
fresno (research)
nyc (with corey and lissa!)
catskills (thanksgiving)
and then back to california (christmas)

with more probable trips to dc and california to follow into the spring...

oh boy oh boy.

sample first day conversation

me: hey, it's great to see you again.
person: yeah, same here. did you know your eyes are all red? are you on drugs? dani, i've told you those things aren't good for you...
me: yes, i'm aware. allergic conjunctivitis. caused by pollen, ragweed, etc. not drugs.
person: ewwww, get away! (while jumping a step backwards)
me: not contagious. hence the allergic.
person: well you look really bad.
me: thanks.
person: you should wear your sunglasses indoors today.
me: yeah. (putting sunglasses on)
person: you look funny.
me: thanks.

and, repeat.

new semester, new personality

in reconvening with my school friends yesterday--which was oh-so-glorious (more on the CRP love fest later), unsurprisingly, the conversation stumbled into how the next semester would be treating us. we've been through the emotional rollercoasters, breakdowns and neurotic fits of rage and bouts of hilarious laughter for no explainable reason, and we bonded through it all. but what is to come of the next 3 1/2 months of our lives?

my first semester, i was happy social girl. onto one party and then off to the next. i loved school and thrived.

into the second, i stressed myself into a pit of despair. five tough classes, ta'ing for an extremely demanding prof, design competition, and writing a proposal for my internship which still has yet to end. oh and maintaining a relationship with scotty? yeah. you could say i cried.

summer i was overwhelmed. struck by everything nyc had to offer and confused about where i ended up in life. not sure i had ever experienced a feeling people call 'loneliness' and not sure how to handle it once said 'emotion' was identified. got a slight obsession with soft serve and gilmore girls.

and fall? it's my favorite season, hands down. i'm predicting OCD mode. i've got a thesis to write, which means many many hours on my own schedule. i've got a few more activities to juggle, and i'm striving for a more balanced life. iCal is already my best friend. i've got six different calendars with six different to-do lists....and counting. it's a brilliant application. i'm going to have almost every hour of the day accounted for...that includes eating, sleeping, and chill time. it's like what i used to do as a child. no really, at age 9, this is what my daily schedule looked like:

6:00am Wake Up
6:05am Take Bath (we didn't have a shower)
6:25am Brush Hair
6:30am Blow-dry Hair
6:45am Curl Hair
6:55am Eat Breakfast
7:10am Pack Backpack
7:20am Make Bed
7:30am Get Bus To School

and then somewhere between then and now i became a person who hasn't made her bed in like three years. the word rebellious my mom might deem too much of an understatement.

so here's to hoping i won't rebel against my attempt to become my 9-year-old self again.

food for thought

"A 'change in heart' is in fact the alibi of people who do not wish to endanger the status quo."

George Orwell, in reference to Charles Dickens' ability to provide harsh social commentary on the Victorian era without renouncing the entire system of tyranny

(to understand the context more, read this article about To Kill A Mockingbird)

chew away.

bookshelves

okay, really. you know that whenever you go to someone's house often times you find yourself wandering over to their bookshelf to judge explore their book collection. i know i certainly do. but it's just so much fun, because the books people own can say a whole lot about who they are--their personality, their interests, their guilty pleasures (in my case...john grisham. eek. i said it.)

scotty and i have an extremely eclectic book collection. it's not like we have everything from proust to homer (which neither of us own). but. we both come from fairly religious households and cultural backgrounds that are at times starkly different than the world in which we now live. which is pretty academic and full of smarties. i think that our bookshelf is a good analogy for our the current state of our relationship. full of contradictions and often uneasy with the other.

noticing that friends often make a beeline for my bookshelf when they came over, i decided to make it entertainment. i strategically placed the communist manifesto next to the bible and darwin's writings next to 'the case for faith' (author who devoutly argues for Creationism). i'm not sure if anyone even noticed it or got a laugh but it was hilarious to me just to know it was there.

scotty has been reading a ton of theology books this last year, and those are heavily represented on our bookshelf. we are in different places as far as our theology goes right now, and he gallantly offered to put his books on the bottom shelf, or in a totally different place to spare some potentially awkward conversations with my friends about my faith. at first i was relieved--i mean come on, i'm not exactly a john piper fan or a calvinist.

but really? i decided not to care. we are who we are. in that spirit, i rearranged yet again, in my favorite organizing system: color coding. looks nice doesn't it?



i like how it turned out. yes, now people can see our copy of investing for dummies out in the open, but damn, that bookshelf looks cute. i may have left a few funny juxtapositions for laughs when i get desparate for comedic relief--oh freud, how did you make it next to love and respect? hehehe.

Merchar aka Mom

My mom is awesome. I just got off the phone with her. We talked for almost 4 hours. At home it is standard to sit on the "north courtyard" at my parents' house with either a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and discuss life with her for hours.

She likes to analyze you and herself. She is full of contradictions and I let her know that all of the time. She is the reason I am me in so many ways. She encourages me to be a feminist even though she is not one. She is inwardly feisty yet extremely, annoyingly, self-deprecatingly meek and humble. She encourages me to question things that she cannot or will not herself. She knows the importance of coming to your own conclusions and not accepting things at face value. She questions many things about herself--although irritating at times, it has shown me the importance of openness and honesty about yourself, maybe to a fault. She is infamous for her probing questions.

Sometimes her naivete about the world is a little shocking for someone of her age and intelligence. But then she will text you and sign off with 'lol' and you wonder if she really is that naive about the world and pop culture or if she just feigns innocence for the fun of it. She doesn't like to be called a closet liberal despite her views on foreign policy and the war because she voted for Bush twice and really likes Sarah Palin (I don't believe it, but I'll respect her wishes begrudgingly.)

Most people really like my mom. In high school my sisters and I had some friends that would come over just to hang out with her instead of us. Maybe because they really needed a good therapy session and she will analyze you without you even realizing it. People who don't like my mom are just shallow and don't get her and it's really too bad because I think she is often misunderstood. Possibly because she's so full of contradictions that you have to get to know her to take it all in and appreciate the confusion for what it is and not try to fit her into some silly box that you've contrived.

We call her Merchar and I have no clue why. But that's just our family. The original Merchar was actually a siamese cat we had for like 15 years, Milo. Most pets of ours usually start with one name and end with a completely different one. That's mostly Monique's doing. Just ask her what her latest name is for her husband. Or don't ask, if you don't like hearing peoples' pet names for each other. Yvette doesn't really. Nevertheless, we call my mom Merchar respectfully and lovingly and her license plate is even 'MERCHAR'. So if you ever drive by my mom just honk and wave and she will probably freak out that a stranger just did that (even if she knows you, her vision is horrible and she won't recognize you) and she'll then try to analyze later why some random person on the freeway would do such a thing.

I love my mom.

friday morning treat!

so, i woke up this morning after a glorious 8.5 hours of sleep to catch up for the last 5 days

(i've been going to sleep past 3am every night this week...damn final projects)

and i realized, i need coffee!

but (shocker) i don't know how to make coffee with our machine

and then i realized i could always go here

except i've already given them so much of my money its crazy

but then i realized i had this!



oh happy day!