Brrrrrr....

It is 16 degrees outside, but the TV says 0 with windchill... I'm not even brave enough to go outside and find out what that feels like! I was planning to go to the gym this morning but now that's seeming like a remote possibility since I'm not exactly willing to walk six blocks to get there. The snow came back for a very little while yesterday afternoon, but it didn't accumulate... For a while it was on the forecast for Saturday but it looks like a no now. I'm kind of majorly bummed.

And then, of course, lucky me has a dermatology appointment that is just close enough to walk to. This afternoon. Oh god, please let it warm up, I don't want to walk in this!!!

I spent some of last night redecorating the blog and I think it's pretty snazzy now - let me know how you like it. :)

But why is the snow gone? D:

Today, I woke up, and it was snowing. Big fat fluffy white flakes were falling past my window. "It's snowing!" I said ecstatically to my roommate.

Her response was something along the lines of, "so it is." (Not a direct quote, don't sue me.)

I think my Florida roots become pretty apparent when I get excited over weather like this:

And so I went happily to my first class, convinced I had struck Winter Wonderland gold and wondering how much snow there would be when I got out of class, only to discover that, an hour and fifteen minutes later, the snow was gone and all that was left was some very wet pavement, some iced up cars and bushes, and some very cold air. It was such a buzz kill.

The weather report says it might snow again this afternoon, and again on tuesday, so I'll keep my fingers crossed. I want to go sledding or something in Central Park!

Yours, dreaming of a white January...

-Leez.

A hump day off?

v Below paragraph is probably TMI.

Usually on wednesdays I have one class in the middle of the day. If it weren't cancelled, I would be pile driving through King Lear right now instead of writing this. To be honest, I have no idea what to do with myself. I went to the gym yesterday, so I have pretty much zero motivation to troop my fat ass down there today as well. Maybe I'll finally call campus health about making a dermatology appointment. I keep telling myself to, but then I don't. It's probably some subconscious aversion to getting willingly stuck with needles before they can put me on acutane (which I think is overkill), but then again I combined my prescription stuff with four kinds of over the counter and all that seems to be doing is making me dry. I'm almost out of the prescription stuff, too, so I need to go to campus health if only for refills.

^Above paragraph was TMI.

Like there's even a little post-it note with the phone number and the words "Call about Dermatology" on my desk. I need to get it done.

ANYWAY.

My new philosophy for handling days that verge off in the direction of shitty before 10 AM is convince yourself that "Today is going to rock by virtue of everything shitty that could possibly happen having happened before 9:30, so the rest is going to be awesome." If this doesn't work, drink a can of SLAP and suddenly everything is better. It's probably just a placebo effect, but everything is funnier with huge amounts of caffeine. I like the green apple kind. It's yummy. Anything you find out on facebook shot of someone dying is not worth letting it ruin your day. And that's all I'm going to say about that because this entry already verging on passive-aggressive and it is soooooo not meant to be.

On Saturday, some friends were in town so I called up another friend in the city and we went to Central Park for... THE LIGHTSABER BATTLE OF THE CENTURY!!! Pictures below:

I'm the dork in red. Also included in this photo, and much prettier than me, are a Kota, a Brazile, and an Alex.

A video of the event:

If you're ever in Central Park and want to see what huge rock it is we're climbing on, if you go in near Columbus Circle and head just a little bit north, you'll see this huge dome of glacial leftovers attached to a concrete construction playground. In summer they pipe water through it. That's our battle spot.

I leave you with a Leez, an Alex, and a Kota doing battle:

What I'm reading now:

I have become fascinated by The Daily Coyote and have spent the last two days reading the back logs. It's so cool! I'm hooked!

Gunnerkrigg Court is probably my new favorite webcomic ever, followed by Bad Machinery. Also, Weregeek. But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that what I like best about them is their regular update schedule that their artists actually stick to.

When I'm not slogging through junk for class, I'm gradually making my way through Let The Great World Spin, which is marvelous.

----

While out with friends today, we came across a TV shoot in Rockefeller Center for a scene of 30 Rock. My friend and I looked at each other and squealed like little girls when we caught sight of Tina Fey.

I love New York. :)

In the future...

I will remember not to eat Upstein Sushi.

However I am happy that hundred calorie cookie packs are an option on meal exchange instead of chips now.

And I am very, very happy that I get so see some of my friends tomorrow!

Belated resolutions:

1. No more Chipotle, or at least a lot less of it. It is

• expensive
• not even my favorite burrito place
• enough food to feed a Thai family of five, according to Noah.

2. Go to the gym at least twice a week. Tuesday nights or Wednesday afternoons and Fridays.

3. Will that summer internship to happen. Use telepathic powers if necessary.

I...

Believe: in karmic justice and divine intervention. I see small miracles and blessings in disguise everywhere I look. This philosophy is difficult to apply to the world at large (the picture is too big to grasp from our tiny human perspectives, or else I'm sure it would make sense there as well), but it works just fine in day to day life.

Think: You only get as much good out of the world as you are willing to put into it. If you take care of your responsibilities, the rest will take care of itself. Do the best you can do and if it's meant to be, it will be.

Understand: the world by trying to recreate it. If I'm hung up on a character type, it will reappear until I get it right. When the character is believable, when people say to me, "that is a person and not a caricature," then I understand it and I can put it into my repertoire and maybe not use it so much.

Try: to be a better person, every single day.

...Wow, that sounded so damn idealistic. Let's see if I still feel the same way in a few years.

Some jottings:

• "He turned off her life support, and then went and had coffee with his daughter. Everything (and nothing) was exactly the same."
• The clouds are so thick that you can't see out your window. Everything past it is just an expressionless expanse of swirling white and gray. In this moment, the world need not even actually exist at all.
• The wind whistles here, literally whistles, like a mournful bird or an old woman who long ago forgot the tune.
• "Well, you see, they're two straight guys, and they're each trying to prove that the other one is gay..."
• And it's funny, because you're laughing, because you're realizing how ridiculous it is. (When you're trying to keep your umbrella from turning inside out, and it's not doing you any good, because the rain is coming at you sideways.)
• I think I like it a lot when real life starts to feel like the movies. It's good to be back in New York. :)

How to: do laundry. And a current-events round up.

At school:

-Load all your dirty clothes into a laundry bag. Don't sort them. Don't do anything. Maybe wash your jeans inside-out if you don't like them fading. (Invest in a good canvas bag with backpack style straps. I've seen them with wheels but I think that's a bit extravagant.)

-Trek down to the laundry room. It's in the subcellar that looks like it doubled as the set of a Hammer horror classic back in the 1950s or so when Christopher Lee was better known as Dracula than as Willy Wonka's father. With this kind of atmosphere, it's no wonder I've developed a morbid fear of zombies waiting for me when the elevator door opens...

-Pick a washing machine. Any washing machine. Follow all the directions. load it up. Shell out anywhere between a dollar and three dollars for a single cycle. Pray to god it works.

-???

-Come back half an hour later. Find a dryer. Load your stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat what you did with the washing machine.

-Come back an hour later. Most of your clothes won't be dry, but that's why you have a drying rack to set up in your dorm room, right? Right? You did buy one of those, didn't you? And be sure to unload your stuff within five minutes of the dryer shutting off, otherwise the frat boy from 6B will come down and decide he desperately needs to dry his towels RIGHT NOW and dump your clothes on the floor.

At home:

-Take your time. Sort your clothes. Hang-dry stuff. Leave things in the dryer as long as you like. Don't pay a cent. I don't know. I make it up as I go along.

Current Events Round Up

The most spectacular solar eclipse of the millennium was visible over Asia and Africa yesterday. Because I live in the Southeastern United States, I will content myself to looking at pretty, dramatic pictures of Masai tribesmen and half-occluded shots of the sun.

Haiti tragedy lightning round: Being white and well-educated will not save you from natural disasters, as the death of the "Brazilian mother theresa" in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake proves. For every story like this that makes it to the news, there are a hundred more dying in anonymity. It really just isn't South America's week, from a seismic point of view.

If even the German government says not to use Microsoft Internet Explorer as your web browser, it's probably time to listen.

And Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep seal their tie for best actress by locking lips. ...I got nothing to say here.

-Leez.

First hurricanes and now major earthquakes...

Haiti just can't catch a break, can it?

Not a whole lot for me to say here, just observing that for an island nation that never hurt anybody they seem to have awful luck.

Haiti is either the butt, or the butt monkey, of the planet. I'm not sure which.

I lied. [Huge picture dump.]

It's not dead, it's popping and incredibly funky.




^Inside the music/book store


^The patio outside the pizzeria in the market





^"Downtown"

v awesome little shopping area called Ruskin Place. Very hip and bohemian.






v Some houses around town. I love the architecture. If you've ever seen The Truman Show, they filmed that here because of how distinctive the houses are.




^This being Jim Carrey's actual house in the movie...

v I went stalking the back paths in search of interesting details








v Found a sculpture garden!



Also, "air moss" is the coolest stuff in the world when you are seven. When you find it again at age eighteen, you can't help but be a little dejected that it is not as crumbly as you remember it being.


Also, in regards to my "Bike hero is a hoax?" question a few posts ago, I did some Google-Fu and discovered that the video itself is not faked, but its origins are - it was not made by a couple of kids with too much time and creativity than they knew what to do with, it was made by an ad agency in the style of a couple of bored kids. Case closed.

-Leez.

Cold town in a cold state

I drove out to Seaside with my mother yesterday. It's a five hour drive, and I mostly amused myself by counting cows and browsing the web on my phone, thus proving that I am a casualty of the 21st century (what did we do before we had internet on our phones? Probably died of boredom.) On the drive, we watched the temperature plummet on the car thermometer. for a while it got up to a brisk fifty degrees, but then it was 48... and then 45... and then 43... and I think it was in the high thirties when we finally rolled into town around five-thirty in the afternoon. I had to pinch myself to remind me that this is Florida.

The view from the back porch last night:




(Beach pavilion thingy at the end of the row of cottages.)

The weather is cold, but also really crisp and clear and perfect for taking photos, so I'll be sure to snap some more. Seaside is a fun, funky little beach town that is absolutely packed in summer but kind of dies in the off season. (Can you tell I love it?)

-Leez.

Freshman Fifteen Contingency Plan

I am classically opposed to exercise classes. When I go to the gym, I do some weights, some sit-ups, spend about half an hour on the stationary bike, and call it a day all by my lonesome. Before college, this was a routine repeated about once or twice a week with a couple hours of dance classes thrown in in the name of variety. Once I got up to school, however, my workout routine became non-existent. I tried to replace it with with the occasional long walk, but it didn't really work, the change in dietary habits got to me, and I gained five pounds first semester, which isn't so bad, but could easily turn into something worse.

Before winter break, my plan went as follows:

"I am going to eat healthy and I am going to go to the gym every day and I am going to get so in shape and it is going to be awesome!"

My likelihood of following through with this, however, was about one in six thousand. So instead I got home and my mother informed me that, the morning of my first day back, I would be accompanying her to "spinning". As previously mentioned, I am opposed to group exercise on principle - do I really want to look like a fat idiot in front of a large group? But it wasn't so bad as I expected it to be. (Although it is brutal brutal brutal.) And they play good music. It makes me think of this:



(I didn't actually wind up going to the gym every day single day. But more than I probably would have. Moral of the story: group exercise classes are not for squares.)

Also, I heard somewhere that the above video was faked - does anyone know anything more about this? It seems to me like it could go either way.

"Arctic Blast"

The thing about Florida is that it doesn't really have Winter. There are, for the most part, only two seasons - "Hurricane Season," which starts sometime in July and continues until early October or as late as early November depending on complicated meteorological concepts like "El Nino" and "The Gulf Stream" that I don't 100% pretend to understand, and "The Rest of the Year."

"The Rest of the Year" can be divided into three sections- "Hot", "Warm," and "Those two weeks of the year when it drops below sixty and we run around like chickens with our heads cut off while we complain about how cold it is while we are still showing off our cute manicured toenails in our $2 Old Navy flip flops." What this total disconnection from How Weather Works In The Upper 48 States of the Union [not including southern California, Hawaii, and select parts of Texas] means is that, when it gets cold, especially when it stays cold like it has been these last few weeks, we have no idea what to do. Unless you are one of those people who enjoys yearly ski trips, it means you are probably ill-equipped to handle this weather.

So Floridians crank up the heat, don ski jackets and layer up their University of Florida sweatshirts six thick, and complain about how damn cold it is and how it's killing their poor citrus trees. (This is an actual problem in commercial groves, where if the temperature stays below freezing for too long it can destroy the entire crop for next year.) It also leads to amusing news stories like this one.

Being a first year student at a university well north of the Mason-Dixon line, I was looking forward to coming home and enjoying a few weeks of sunny weather and balmy temperatures. This was silly optimism - Jacksonville in January is horrible and rainy, and thanks to this "arctic blast," we're all on edge for a snow storm that probably isn't going to come. I fared only slightly better than the permanent residents of the area (whom I used to count myself as one of) only because I happen to own a jacket.

I'm heading out to the Panhandle next week before I have to go back to school on the eighteenth, hoping the weather will be better...

...It probably won't be.

-Leez.