i deserve an award

for serious. so, after going to two of emma's orchestra concerts and one of her chorale concerts, i also went to the community production of the 'christmas carol' and was in the church christmas program. that's it. i win.

i went to billings, mt, the shopping mecca of the region, on thursday with an old pal hilary and completed shopping. i had to shop for a gift for a kid who i don't even know. i picked his name off of the giving tree at church. let me tell you: it is challenging buying clothing for someone you don't even know. i have no way of knowing if his coloring will be complemented by the articles i picked out. and i wanted to chose accessories but my friend hilary said that that would probably get him beaten up. apparently 11-year-old boys don't really wear accessories.

i've gotten back into reading since i graduated college. i think i just had to read to much for class to be interested in reading on my time off, unlike my good friend katherine, who reads all the time. anyway, i'm currently reading a really good book called the memory keeper's daughter by kim edwards. it is very good. you should read it.

macy is getting very large very quickly. we surmise that the things that are cute right now, while she is still relatively little, are going to be dangerous when she is a large dog. for example, now, when she jumps up, her legs only reach like maybe mid-thigh, or right above the knee. when she is full grown, she will kill someone when she does that. she is also biting a lot and starting to run away if she's not on her leash.

ok episode of the office on thursday. i bought it on itunes because i missed it on tv and watched it through twice completely and then watched little parts over and over again, searching for clues. well, i think that jim has realized that karen is nice and fun "but at the end of the day you're left thinking about the girl you really like, the one who broke your heart," as he says when he is counseling michael about rebounds. there was a good pam and jim moment over dwight's cia assignment. i love this show.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR TEETH

today, i had to go to the dentist because i broke off a ginormous chunk of my tooth. lady dentist says that i have to get a crown. today, they just put a pin (A PIN!) and filling in it. it hurts now even though it didn't hurt before. my left jaw is sore as well as like my chin area. they had to dig out a lot of tooth because there was...gross...decay. so, my sermon today is on the utter importance of dental hygiene. flossing always seems to be a challenging thing for me, but i will probably be better for a while since i just had a huge cave dug out of my tooth and it is all hurty and stuff.

i also went to work today. i "temped" for my mom and my dad's office. it was easy and all the patients know me and stuff. i got to play mom for a day and take emma to school and pick her up and take her to basketball practice. then my dad and i had a sushi-making party. it was mucho fun and my mom said we should have taken a picture, but we were too busy making and eating sushi. the sushi rice, once again, was a challenge, but it went much better than last time, when i just went to the chinese take out place and bought some sticky rice. it was fun and my dad had never rolled before, so i got to teach him a new skill. we even got emma to roll and eat some sushi.

i bought some fleece today at the fabric store to make a dress-up coat for macy. i'll post pictures when i get them. she's so cute!

baby, it's cold outside

well, obviously i've been listening to tons of christmas music because, well, that's what i do from thanksgiving until christmas. i love that song "baby, it's cold outside." well...LOVED. when you actually listen to the words of that song, it's like, "yo, dean martin (or whomever), the answer is no. no means no." i still like it though, i guess.

i finished the final book of the series of unfortunate events. i love those books. i always get sad when i get to the end of things, though. like how i cried hysterically at the final show of friends even though i never liked or really watched that show. today, i watched some clips on youtube.com of the office, which i am certifiably obsessed with, and i cried for pam and jim. i really hope they reconnect. this karen chick needs to get lost. for serious. i also love that ed helms is on the show now. i just realized that he used to be a correspondant for the daily show, and he was very funny on that. he's pretty much hilarious.

ok. i have a busy week: i have to shop for homeless kids and deliver cookies to shut-ins. typical day in the life.

this is what i want for christmas:

those, and basically any kitchenware. i am so so excited for a little apartment of my own.

!!

ahhh

well, i survived my first ever cross-country trip. i drove from boston to albany to pittsburgh to chicago to rapid city, sd to sheridan wyoming. i drove police-free for four days and finally got a ticket 15 minutes away from home. my first ever time getting pulled over. i was a little miffed. little jetta treated me well and kept my butt warm with the seat heaters.

we got a little puppy! a weimeraner-doberman (the father was an albino doberman), macy gray joins us as the newest member of the hall family. she's very good about peeing only on her pee-pad and makes poopy outside. she has this funny little fleece-lined coat that looks like a PFD (PERSONAL FLOATATION DEVICE). she's very very cute. she's sitting on my lap right now. here is a picture:

WTF

what is wrong with the time stamp on this thing? it said i just posted something at like 4:48 and it was really like 7:48. i have it set at eastern standard time. bizarre.

bliss

in like three hours, i will be picking up my car. and then i will be a car-driving member of this world. finally.

as this fine picture can attest to, we had a swell last night at the gris. seriously, sea chantey night could be the closest thing to heaven on earth. at right is me and anna with cliff and tim. we were backup singers-extraordinaire and we'd probably have a job if we lived closer. we also decided we're in love with essex, ct. not really any of the other surrounding towns, but essex is so cute. so cute. (minus the fact that there's nowhere to get breakfast on a Tuesday morning).

i'm departing on Thursday for my cc journey and I'm pumped!

i'm just generally very excited today. very excited.

i am almost a car-owning, move across the country girl

Oh so soon. I'm real excited. Today I went through my stuff and have widdled it down to four rubbermaid totes, a suitcase, and a duffel bag. I'm not sure how. I believe it has something to do with the salvation army donation truck.

I watched the awesomest movie on lifetime. As I watched it, I was sure that I had seen it before slash read the book. It was called "Homecoming," but when the lead character introduced herself as "Dicey," I remembered that the book was called Dicey's Song. I'm sure my friend Katherine, who is at UCLA studying Library Science and a children/young adult fiction guru probably knows about this book or has read it. It's legit. A very good book and excellent lifetime movie.

I'm listening to Matisyahu right now and remembering the night that he came to San Diego and the whoe entire crew went to the concert except that I couldn't because I had the duty. That sucked.

I also watched...well I watched a lot of movies today, but most specifically, I watched Holiday Inn, an old Irving Berlin movie with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and I have decided that I am now one of those people that has a slightly creepy thing for an old (very old, very dead) guy. I'm so into Bing Crosby. He was so good looking and such a charmer. And I'm pretty sure he would have been the best person ever to just sweep you off of your feet.

I'm excited for:
-being home in like a week and a day and a few hours.
-christmas in wyoming
-emma's birthday gift, which i'll probably want to use
-my car
-connecticut tomorrow (chantey night)
-"i hate you all" by get set go
-my 2007 planner (picking out the paper for it)
-the office

obsessive/crazy

last night i did the most obsessive crazy thing. i sat with a pile of q tips and i cleaned between all the links on my watch. it took about a half an hour. i am crazy. it's official.

i'm very excited...i bought an old 35 mm camera--a canon ae-1 and i have been having fun reading my "photography for beginners" book and walking around like i know what i'm doing.

i'm a good girl: i bought a very expensive bag the other day on impulse and returned it today. good for me.

p.s. i love the office and sea shanties.

if this were livejournal is would say...
music: SEA SHANTIES

happy thanksgiving

i spent most of my day sleeping/watching the office on itunes and being sick. i attempted to make mom's sweet potatoecasserole. i guess i should have asked for the recipe the day before so i had exactly what i needed and not a ballpark guestimate. oh well. it was ok.

i love the office so much. i really need pam and jim to get together. i love them.

i'm back in the game

ahh, it has been a while indeed. in the 6/7 months since i last posted, i:

graduated from college
moved into my first apartment
moved out of my first apartment
gave up everything to go sail around california
took the trolley to tijuana
decided i wanted to live in california
and
bought a car.

the last one i just did today, although it has been a tumultuous process which has taken like 6 weeks. i hate car dealers. but i am very excited for this (my very first) car.

where am i now? i'm laying in bed in my friend's house in sudbury mass. sudbury is a suburb that is way, way outside of boston. my friend nicole is very nice for letting me stay here. however, i am leaving next week. i'll be driving across country to wyoming until after christmas, at which time i will begin my new life in california. with my new car. i. am. stoked.

don't worry, though, everything you know about me has not all changed. i still love grey's anatomy and the office with a passion that is way too intense. i'm still obsessive about the facebook (when my internet works). i still consider paper as valuable as gold. i still love andre. i still check toothpastefordinner.com, marriedtothesea.com, and nataliedee.com every single day. i still check webmd.com quite frequently to see what new illness i may have. i'm still irrational and still very petty. i'm just going to do all of that in california now.

I'm pretty sure that I am prematurely 65. Lately, I have been feeling like I have chest pain ad mini heart attacks and also ulcers. It is a little disconcerting.

In other news, this must be the season for Posters Falling Off, because like 4 things have fallen off my wall in the last one day.

Also, last night, I skipped class (I also feel horrible about that) to go to Senate and then the Lip Sync, but there was this hilarious part of senate where little kids (ok, freshman) put on a skit about the cabinet members and the girl that was penny rolled up in sweats and a green jacket and a hat and flip flops and she was generally hilarious. I didn't get most of the other things because I don't know any of those people, but it was still funny. Until it was like 2 hours long, and then it stopped being funny. Although, there was an interesting presentation by Carlos Vega about an initiative to look at first year advising, which I think is a great idea. One of the things that he talked about is that until you finally choose a major (and maybe without any guidance) you have no real advisor. Your first year advisor basically exists to sign a paper and give you your alternate pin, or whatever. I have thought this to be a huge issue. I feel like sopho0more year is the hardest year because you are trying to narrow down your interests, and without any guidance, it's hard to do that for some. I also think that the advisor-advisee thing needs to be revamped in general.

i'm like, so mad

well, i'm mad today. and mostly over the last hour. there are a couple dead serious catalyts for this anger, which i won't go into much detail about, but mostly i have anger because:
I T I S S N O W I N G O U T S I D E.

i'm just saying that that is sort of balls.

also, this toolish girl in my antisemitism class makes me laugh! she is so funny that it almost alleviates the pain of the snow. today, we were talking about vampire iconography as a political tool and most specifically as an antisemitic political tool, and this chick asks the presenter, a women currently working on her dissertation on this topic at brandeis, whether or not she has found any similar trends with LEPRECHAUNS. serious town. i know this girl is canadian, but that still does not excuse it. i was almost unable to control my laughter. i started "coughing" to try to conceal it. also, my professor------i have no idea where i was going with that. never mind. anyway, she lights up my life.

sustainable development and ecotourism

I've decided that my room is kind of like an experiment in natural development. I allow the nature to fall as it may, to develop as it may and i try to ensure that visitors to the area leave it with minimum impact on naturally occurring environments. it is sustainable because i can usually find things and it is feasible because it does cost much energy to maintain this real estate. i believe that it is also important for cultural development to have various kinds of ecosystems available for living and simply for studying. promotion of cultural and bio-diversity is key in this project. don't think, though, that this development is exclusive. it is an attainable goal for many. you, too, can possibly participate in this innovative global project.

ow. i just got a popcorn shell stuck in my gums. i hate that.

grey's anatomy

so, you know when you like a tv show so much that you think about it a lot, you plan your sundays around it, you look forward all week to when it will be on tv, or sometimes day dream about it? well last night i dremt that i was actually part of grey's anatomy. i actually was walking down a corridor with izzie and meredith and we had an emergency because ellis grey was back in the hospital (probably being a pain in the ass) and she was like going to die or something. but then izzie and meredith didn't hold the elevator for me because i was lagging behind and so i went to a different elevator, but the security didn't believe that i was supposed to be there. i showed them my id and then they asked who i knew (and i, of course, said Andrew Hall, my real life dad) and then told them my supervisor was DEREK SHEPARD. so they called him and he gave me the ok. also, incidentally, i knew that the address to the cape may hallmark was 1565 ocean view blvd. it's actually not. it resides at 401 washington street. oh well, i thought that i was a genius for possessing this knowledge.

ok, so i am actually supposed to be writing a paper now...and i'm going to get back to that. but not without one last bit of knowledge: 10 hours until we are on a plane to vegas!!

i can boil down happiness to one thing

and it can be found on a thai take-out menu: mango fried rice.

nothing reminds me of happy times more than mango fried rice. and i know what you're thinking: FAT! but seriously...it reminds me of late nights and early afternoons in various rooms in severance. it reminds me of being lazy and generally deplorable with penny. i guess i'm not positive that "deplorable" means what i want it to, but that's ok.

so, my computer is almost fully functional. it has intraweb and firstclass and aim and itunes. it wins. except that the resolution is HUGE and you can basically read anything on it from like a mile away. it is gigundo.

vegas is but hours away. like 40 to be a little preciser. so excited!