Dates with Mountains

Went for a hike in early March with G and borrowed dog, Rosa.  Rosa is the smartest dog I've ever encountered.  G and I didn't know exactly where to go and Rosa always knew.  We would start walking the wrong way and Rosa would practically roll her eyes at us.  I need a dog that is smarter than me.

The mountains here look so grown up with snow all over them..  The snow makes them look taller!  It was a perfect spring day on Saturday, 70 degrees and sunny- first day out with bare legs.  Then today while I was at work I looked out of the window at one point and it was POURING SNOW.  Western North Carolina does this every year but every year it takes everyone by surprise.  I get excited every time.

Triumphant Return of Internet Whore

This morning I woke up with the song “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros in my head:

Home, Let me come home
Home is whenever I’m with you
Home, yes I am home
Home is wherever I’m with you

Returning from Paris after visiting my best friend there has really made me feel like home is just about who you’re with.  I thought I would be devastated to return to Asheville after the fantasy Paris vacation, and it is kind of hard to see how expensive goat cheese is here, but my friends and the sunny mountains are providing a wonderful homecoming.  The buffer of seeing a lot of lovies in DC due to a welcomed layover also helped- and reminded me that I am anything but alone.

I turned this blog off (you didn’t miss any posts, I just put it on lockdown) because I couldn’t keep my overwhelming winter sadness off of the internet.  I am healed now and motivated to make this space more interesting and less personal (the way it started out in the beginning).  This will continue to be a personal blog, though.

Memories Made in the Coldest Winter

I realize I have semi-abandoned this blog. I tend to do that when I get too busy (true) or when I get really sad (also true). I think I will just pick up this blog from current life- if I tried to brief the interwebs about the past two months it would be too much. Instead, I will leave you with a sort of photoblog of my absence and I will just start writing from the here and now. yaaaaay.






This past weekend my buddy A came up from Raleigh to visit! It was perfect timing because I've been super down and sad about the weather, job issues, homesickness for my boyfriend / western NC, etc. Winter is way harder than I ever expected- I've always enjoyed winter a lot. When Spring didn't suddenly appear at the end of February I was really thrown off. I'm spoiled.


So A and I went to the Library of Congress with her boyfriend F (both of them are getting their degrees in Library Science). That was pretty cool- but not as cool as the BABY GORILLA we saw at the National Zoo (!!!!!!!!!!) We also saw sleeping otters. And a cute otter statue. And PANDAS. and RED PANDAS. PANDAS!!!


We spent a lot of time in Adam's Morgan- so of course we went to Amsterdam Falafel- the most awesome food EVER. You get a pita with falafels in it that they FRY TO ORDER and then you get to put all the toppings you want on it. Oh man, I could eat that every day. It's also cheap and they have really good fries.

We walked a lot over the weekend- it makes my feet tired but it makes my legs feel good. It was so warm over the weekend and for most of today- my mood has improved a lot. Feeling a breeze on my legs is enough to change my outlook on life, if only for a little while. The entire city smells different when it warms up, maybe it's the daffodils or maybe it's the fact that I can actually smell things and my nose isn't running constantly. I cry and whine about winter in DC, I know it's nothing that bad- but we did have 8 inches of snow a week ago and I didn't have any delays in work or anything. I think that validates my crying and whining at least a little bit.

Work has been strange lately. I'm not going to say much on this most public of all venues- but I feel it must be known on my blog that the real world is not "glamorous" at all. The only glamorous part is not having homework and getting a paycheck. Realizing this and accepting it can be very difficult, and can raise many more questions and decisions to be made. I am constantly searching for happiness and ways to fake my own happiness.

Here is my current list of fake happiness (temporary happiness that fools you into short term happiness):
exercising
reeses (easter egg reeses are especially good)
hair mousse
alcohol
sunshine
surfing petfinder.com
calculating airfares
google image searching sealions or groundhogs

I can go on. I am trying to get happy- re-starting this blog is a sign of that. Spring is sure to help out: new opportunities, lots of friends to see- there is always something to be done or someone to visit. I predict some great changes coming. I am joining a kickball league. Hibernation is over!

NYC weekend of awesome

Oh, oh. I don't even remember what happened last week. Friday night I skipped town and took a bus to New York City! I met up with C (who lives there) and we made preparations to have as much fun as possible over the next couple days. It's basically the most awesome thing in life that I can take a bus to NYC whenever I want for round trip $35-$40. It's a 4.5-5 hour bus ride, which is a little grueling after that 3rd hour, but man! Way worth it!

She lives in Brooklyn and I am officially and huge fan of "BK" - the non scary neighborhoods are way hip. On Saturday we went to Manhattan for some Christmas shopping. We hit up the Evolution Store, which was AWESOME - basically a standard Natural History Museum but all for sale. It was kind of weird because they have human skeletons for sale- how does that work? They had lots of seashells and rocks, freeze-dried animals, nuts, bones, way cool stuff. I found Christmas tree incense!!!

We also went to the Dwell Sample Sale because C works at Dwell!!! It was so much fun!!! The stuff there is so high end and unavailable to us (for real rich people cuteness) but since it was the sale we could actually buy stuff. I got this AWESOME weekend bag so that when I go to NYC every single weekend in the future I can use my way hip WEEKENDER. I'm pretty sure it would be the first bag stolen off the bus if a thief happened to be around when I'm traveling- but luckily I made it through the trip home. I got a lot of Christmas shopping done there which is way sweet since Christmas is 10 days away (?!!!)

C and I looked in lots of other stores and had super amounts of fun looking at all the crap that you can only get in NYC. We went to a holiday market and a farmers market that had TONS OF LOCAL APPLES for way cheaper than at the stupid Eastern Market in DC (ugh!) AND hot apple cider?!! omg. I got a huge thing of apple cider. Then we hung out with some really fat NYC squirrels. City squirrels really are the coolest because they are fatter and they are pretty tame. At that point two of the best things in life encountered each other, drinking fresh apple cider with some fatty squirrels. Way cool. We could say, "HEY SQUIRREL, HEY!" and they would come to you!!!

We met up with my homegirl L (from college) which was AMAZING because I hadn't seen her in a year! We went to a really cool Indian restaurant called Milon. It was really crazy, there are so many Christmas lights and pepper lights that you hit your head on them inside. They play crazy remixes of Indian music and if it's your birthday they have strobe lights and a special remix of happy birthday!! The food was very mild, which was kind of nice for Indian food because that way I could use all of the sauces on it without it being too spicy. I'm an official fan. Not to mention that it was super cheap. Afterwards we walked around (I had no idea where we were) and went to a bar.

Saturday was also Santacon for NYC. Santacon is a "Santa Convention" where anyone who wants to dresses up like Santa and meets somewhere and goes bar hopping all day long. Seriously, it starts at 10AM. We saw Santas EVERYWHERE. I tried and tried to find out where all the Santas were- I asked all the Santas I saw. They were all either too drunk to tell me or remember or they didn't know themselves. I even gave my phone number to a Santa to call me when he found the other Santas. Oh, Santas.

On Sunday we went to a cool "flea market" in Brooklyn which was a bunch of vintage and indie hipster vendors selling really cool crap. I miss that kind of stuff in DC; there is way more art and arty kind of stuff going on with young people in NYC. DC is very much suit-oriented, even with the young people. I love NYC with a thousand hearts but I will never trade the DC metro system for anything. We had a "fear/love" scale at my old job at Warren Wilson where you rate random things according to your fear or love of it. On my fear and love scale the NYC subway is way way way far down on fear. It is like a giant bathroom under the city, complete with bathroom tile. Holy god, I still have absolutely no clue where we were or where we went on it.

It'd be cool to have a fear/love scale for the blog. Maybe I will construct an image that will live on the side bar or something and as I blog I will add things to the fear/love scale. I miss that thing.

So all the fun wound down and I had to go to Chinatown to catch a Chinatown bus to go back to DC. Of course I hit up one of the Chinatown grocery stores because they have the most interesting stuff that you have never seen. I stocked up on Hi Chews and boarded the mean long bus back to DC. Now I have a cold and I came home from work early. This week seriously needs to speed up because Christmas vacation is SO CLOSE. I'm back to slothing on the couch watching John and Kate + 8.

Great Northeast Adventure GO!

So I've been adventuring.  It goes like this:

• July 29 (?) started driving to Maine (from South Carolina) for vacation with boyfriend's family.
  
• Stopped in Baltimore and walked the streets (go get your Gram Parsons)
  
• Stopped in Providence and ate at La Creperie with C
  
• Got to Maine

-Farming adventures- harvesting wax beans and lettuce on an organic farm

-Sailing

-Lobster races a la Annie Hall but not as annoying (that movie is weird)

-Hiking at the Holbrook Island Sanctuary

-Discount shopping at Reny's and Marden's

-Endless Flight of the Concords listening

-Being mistaken for townies (only the bf and me) in Portland, ME

-General family cheerleader activities because I'm not actually related

More stories later on that, maybe.  It was really cold and rainy the whole time and I LOVED it.  Being cold.. in August.  It's so magical.  (cue the song "Carolina Girls")

Now I'm in Providence, Rhode Island chilling with C in her apartment.  When my boyfriend's family was driving back to South Carolina I just thought... why on earth would I want to go back there.  Especially right now, when the highs have been in the 100's.  So I just stayed in Providence and watched them leave.  I was only going to stay for a week but I have no real obligations- so I'm going to stay until the end of August and help C move out and drive down to South Carolina.  We're going to have a yard sale on Saturday.  She knits a lot and we cook together.  We got an amazing deal at Jcrew the other day (2 dresses and a skirt for $22? Jcrew?!  did you know they have a 15% student discount?)  We picked a lot of blueberries.  She took me to Ikea!!!!!  Super adventures GO!

Yesterday I went to Boston to meet up with some college friends.  We had so much fun going to the Garment District, walking around Harvard, discussing all the medical study opportunities available in the Boston area, eating in China Town at the best vegetarian restaurant EVER (that had these blended fruit and coconut milk smoothie things), riding the T, finding the perfect iced coffee, just everything.  I have lots of pictures but I didn't bring my camera cord, I'll have to ask C for one.  Seeing all these people (and getting the hell out of South Carolina) has made me feel so much better in general.  I'm still keeping up with the job search and applying and interviewing-- but getting out and doing different things is so nice.  We're going to meet up again next week and try to add more Warren Wilson friends to the mix.  

Today on my way back to Providence I was waiting for the T and I got mistaken for a townie AGAIN.  Way to go me!!!

Another main reason I've been feeling so bad lately at home in South Carolina has been the inadequacy I feel about not having a steady job, not getting a job, all the rejection letters, missing college, etc.  It is such a lonely business to not have a car and be stuck in a town when you had so many dreams about post-collegiate life.  Seeing old friends my age in the EXACT SAME SITUATION having the EXACT SAME conversations about the job search, interviews, waiting for calls and emails- it has made me feel not quite so alone.  It is much better to go through this with other people going through it too.  It's hard to remember that I'm not alone when I'm so removed from so many people I love.

I also started a new project for this blog.  I am always excited when I see how other places recycle- what kind of cans they use, how they label their containers, etc.  I've started taking pictures of all the different ones I've seen in my travels and hopefully I'll get to post them to have a kind of collection for the "trashlady."  Not that anyone would be interested in how other cities and schools recycle- it's just cool seeing it in action.  You can see most of the containers people use in catalogues but for me it is also a documentation of where I've been traveling.  So... soon you can look at recycling containers.

oh Rachel Ray, you're a national treasure!

Last night I was brushing my teeth in my bathroom and as I was brushing a baby roach flew out of the ceiling and landed on my hand. The same hand that was holding my toothbrush in my mouth. If that won't make you paranoid as shit I DON'T KNOW WHAT WILL.

On the subject of oral hygiene, I was excited to find 6 tubes of Tom's of Maine toothpaste new-in-the-box at my local flea market today. I know that they are real and not scary fake/poisoned things because they were at one of the booths of 20 boxes of pharmacy items. In the past year a type of flea market vendor has emerged where all they sell are boxes and boxes of brand new pharmacy items. It seems like they buy it in bulk and that the items are overstock/damaged/changing packaging/out of season. It's really crazy stuff- toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, razors, condoms, vitamins, notebooks, camera film (usually expired), makeup, shampoo... EVERYTHING. And it's all $1 each or 2 for $1. Usually you don't find really nice things like Tom's of Maine but today I was pleasantly surprised, especially since I'm about to finish my tube that I had. I also found some kind of tea tree oil spray toner organic blah blah. I do realize, though, that some things are better bought "for-real" new in the store.

Two friends from my good old alma mater came to visit last night on their way to the beach. It was the first time I found myself talking about college- to former classmates- in a reminiscent kind of way. The same way I talk about high school. It made me feel really lame. We had a good time, though, and it was great to see college people. I really want to go up to Asheville to see Daniel Johnston on Tuesday and also visit the homies up there. I may take it upon myself to convince the boyfriend to go... but I don't know yet.

My old-skool buddy C is in town and had a graduation party at her house today. It was precious and fun. I guess you know you're really growing up when you start enjoying adults significantly more than you used to.

I also want to make it known that I would post pictures of the crap I talk about on this blog but I can't right now because I'm using my mom's computer. We got this computer in ... 1999? Earlier? It has Windows 98. I think it would seriously die if I tried to do pictures on it. So until I can hook up my computer to the internet there will be no pictures.