Three by Three by Three

+ A timeline for this summer

      1. Past: After spending nearly 5 months attempting (and, surprisingly, succeeding) to turn myself into A Person Who Studies, I finally took the LSAT last Monday. It means a lot of things but mostly it means
            a. Freedom.
            b. ...Which is only partially mitigated by the prospect of waiting three weeks to get my score.
            c. I am one step closer to not being thrown upon the sea of life like a bean in a bikini. I have a grown up lady plan.

      2. Present: Life. Like really really good things that I've been looking forward to since the day my test first started creeping closer on the calendar. Por ejemplo:
            a. Pride, my favorite holiday (after all the holidays where I get to play games and eat food with my family).
            b. Roadtrip With Molly: The Remix. In which Molly, her 90-pound yellow labrador Orion, and I pile into her car and drive to the east coast with the help of 2 tablets of Benadryl hidden in peanut butter, Justin Timberlake, and cruise control.
            c. A-Camp, which I still struggle to find words about because my feelings are a little overwhelming and I'm out of practice with writing.

OG Roadtrip

      3. Future: And then, at some yet-to-be-determined point in the future, I'm moving to glorious España. So far I know exactly three things about what in the world I'm getting myself into, but if they're any indication at all of what it's going to be like, I'll be pleased as a peach.
            a. First of all, I'll be in Vigo, Galicia and (praise be to our lord baby Jesus) from what I hear, the fisherman types up there aren't quite as into jamón as the Polacos were. Unfortunately, that probably means I'll be dodging my fair share of pulpo there, but tentacles and suction cups are nothing compared to all that pig.
            b. In other food news, Galicia is known as the birthplace of my second-favorite pocket-shaped food: empanadas. They also serve a local cheese called tetilla and I figure any place that names their cheese after breasts is a place I want to be.
            c. Contrary to popular belief, the rain in Spain does not fall mainly in the plain; it falls in Galicia. Specifically, it falls in Fornelos de Montes, a village that has averaged over 160 inches of rain each year for a while now. Incidentally, Fornelos de Montes is also the village where I'll be teaching.

Disgusting.

+ My soundtrack for the last month or so

      1. Santigold: Of all the nights I've worked late, the one night I wasn't there was the night she came in. She was apparently lovely and gave tickets to my friends (including Andrew, the DJ/Back of House Specialist who saved my life a few nights ago when he solved the mystery of the song; by playing Santigold's new album while I was doing data transfers).
            a. Fame
            b. Freak Like Me
            c. Starstruck



      2. James Vincent McMorrow: This guy's got a voice like butta and is calm and sexy like woah. Which I think can be a hard thing to do without the cheese.
            a. If I Had A Boat
            b. Down The Burning Ropes
            c. And If My Heart Should Somehow Stop



      3. Shakira: Okay, so really Shakira's been my jam for the past 10 years, but the thought of moving has got me putting her on blast every day in an attempted to reabsorb Spanish.
            a. La Tortura
            b. Pies Descalzos, Suenos Blancos
            c. Gordita



      + Honorable mentions go to Plan B (She Said), Snow Tha Product (Holy Shit), Chiddy Bang (Ray Charles), Florence and the Machine (Cosmic Love), The Weeknd (High For This), Fun (Some Nights), Robyn (Call Your Girlfriend), and Gyptian (Hold Yuh)

+ Summer reading club

      1. Science
            a. Roses are red/ violets are blue/ they both grow better/ with more CO2
            b. "More intriguing, if you turn a seedling (or a whole bunch of seedlings) upside down...the tips and roots of the plant will sense, 'Hey, I'm upside down,' and will wiggle their way to the right direction, doing a double U-turn"    
            c. "How many continents are there? Well, how many continents do you want there to be?"
      2. People
            a. "What is lost when a language goes silent?"
            b. "The images capture Hernandez in his personal transformation — as well as blurred lines between gay and Catholic cultures, lines he was not encouraged to cross as a child."
            c. "10. Talks loud and uses slang"
      3. Food
            a. Avocado pasta
            b. Vegetable Pitas with Cilantro Pesto
            c. Nutella Milkshakes

I Need You To Understand That This Is Important

I want to know the name of this song.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (So Far)

10 thoughts for today

+1: My dog is really wonderful. No really, she is. I’ve just spent the night recovering from a week and a half spent house and dog sitting for my friend. I say recovering because her dog, while adorable, weighs roughly as much as I do and is a menace to society. Case in point: I left a box of oatmeal flakes on the top of the refrigerator (like a real refrigerator, not one of those tiny dorm ones) and when I came back from my 5 minute shower they were gone. Not just the flakes themselves but also the bag and box they came in. Where they went is anyone’s guess, but 36 hours of explosive diarrhea points to the dog’s stomach.

+2: After acquiring a laser pointer, I was able to spend most of my free time simultaneously running the dog around the apartment and catching up with my friends. I talked to a few friends I haven’t seen in ages and made plans to talk with some more. On top of that, at least three of my favorite people have moved or are moving to Cincinnati for a little while. I love the new friends I’ve made here, but as Mr. Emerson said, "It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."

+3: Last night around 3 am I woke up with an inexplicable craving for pb&j. It was the first thing I ate when I got home from work tonight and it tasted like pure comfort.

+4: Speaking of comfy things, Alison recently reintroduced me to the miracles of hot water bottles. Mine does wonders for heating up my feet in bed and is pretty good for snuggling when no living soul is available (I don’t cuddle with ghosts). It’s definitely going to have a place in...

+5: My new blog “Practical Magic," which I started after spending a night in Molly’s house organizing my bookmarked sites. See, I worry about forgetting all those little things that I’ve read or that people have told me or that I’ve discovered that make life easier. Like brushing your teeth in the shower. I was all about it for a year or so, but for some reason I forgot about it and stopped doing it. So now I have a blog for me with a name borrowed from an Alice Hoffman book that I’ve never read but liked this part from it:

"There are some things, after all, that I know for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."

+6: Another thing I did at Molly’s was read through all of Fit For a Femme’s blog. I’m feeling a bit at a crossroads in the haircut/clothes/genderish department and so I thought I’d do some exploring on the femmey side of the continuum. In related news, I bought a pair of snakeskin print pants.

+7: So while I may not have my style in order, I think I’ll still be eligible to receive my adult card this year. I have a 401k, signed up for stock options yesterday, and am doing my very own taxes this weekend. Being a grown up is almost too glamorous to handle.

+8: On the other hand, I spent the entire day at work giggling over an accidental penis joke.
Customer: Excuse me, do you know where the Whole Foods in Mason is?
Me: Yeah, it’s right on Mason-Montgomery
Customer: So just take 71 up there? What’s it by?
Me: Oh, it’s right next to the big Dick’s.
Me: Er...
Customer: (no change in expression)
Me: Heheheheheeee

+9: I also spent 2 hours tonight catching up on my favorite show, Switched at Birth. If you haven’t seen it yet, I don’t know what you’re doing. You should probably take 4 minutes right now to watch one of the actors sing Enrique Iglesias’s “Hero” so that you have a better idea of what you’re missing.

+10: Look at my motherlovin’ avocado plant!

Two Winters

This New Year, my only real resolution is to write something everyday. So far, I'm 7 for 9 since I hadn't yet thought up my plan on the two days of the month. I make promises to myself almost weekly--some of which I stop caring about, some which I've successfully implemented into my life, and some which I still have to remind myself about every day--so the idea of doing something concrete every single day for an entire year is appealing. I don't have any real set guidelines: I might write here, I might write for autostraddle, I might write a letter, or I might just write for myself. The point is that I write something.

Today, inspired by my friend (acquaintance? what do you call someone you met one time in 3-D and got along swimmingly with?) Ashley, I created two mixes for winter: cold and warm. The extremes that winter brings come in the differences between indoors and outside, light(s) and darkness, being alone and together. I've never been good at choosing favorites which makes winter the perfect season* for me.

*Along with spring, summer, and fall.

For the Love, Comes the Burning Young

--------------------------0--|--(3)--0---0--(3)--

--1----1-1--1-1--1-1--1-1-1--|---1---1---1---1---

--0h2--2-2--0-0--0-0--0-0-0--|---0---2---2---0---

-----------------2-2--3-3-3--|---0---2---3---0---

------------------------3-3--|---2-------3---2---

-----------------------------|---3-----------3---

peoplewholooklikeronweasley.tumblr.com

November Is For Sleeping

i wish that i believed in fate
i wish i didn't sleep so late

Oh darling I think that all of the answers
went south on the backs of those grey winged birds
or slipped through our fingers
while we were sleeping

Now comes, a river runs through the rafters down, down, down
Does it leave me sleeping? Dreaming only of spring