My Music (Redux)

Remember when I used to post my "Top 25 Most Played" list from iTunes for everyone?  Remember how I stopped because it never changed much?  Then remember how I got a new laptop with new iTunes and could start from scratch with everything?  So without further ado, I give you my new list of the stuff I've listened to the most lately (or since I bought my laptop in April):

1. "Hold On" (Mary Beth Maziarz)
2. "Thursday" (Asobi Seksu)
3. "C'est la Mort" (The Civil Wars)
4. "Poison and Wine" (The Civil Wars)
5. "Shake It Out" (Florence and the Machine)
6. "21 Guns" (Original Broadway Cast of American Idiot)
7. "Scientists" (Jeremy Messersmith)
8. "Cathedrals" (Jump, Little Children)
9. "Homeward Bound" (BYU Singers and BYU Concert Choir)
10. "I Want You Back" (The Civil Wars)
11. "My Love" (Irie Love)*
12. "Organ Donor" (Jeremy Messersmith)
13. "The Call" (Regina Spektor)
14. "Gravity" (Sarah Bareilles)
15. "Falling" (The Civil Wars)
16. "Across the Universe" (Fiona Apple)**
17. "Falling Slowly" (Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova)
18. "Toussaint Grey, First In Life and Death" (Jeremy Messersmith)
19. "Knots" (Jeremy Messersmith)
20. "A Girl, A Boy, and a Graveyard" (Jeremy Messersmith)
21. "We Get On" (Kate Nash)
22. "Skeleton Song" (Kate Nash)
23. "Fade Into You" (Mazzy Star)
24. "Timshel" (Mumford & Sons)
25. "Come Home" (One Republic)

Again, I'm not ashamed of any of these songs!  As you may be able to tell, I discovered The Civil Wars recently.  I'm in love.  Also, I've definitely been in a very Jeremy Messersmith mood lately, but I defy you to find anyone with better death songs.

*Yeah, we listen to reggae in Hawaii.

**Yes, Laura, another Beatles cover that you'll probably hate.

Forced Fun and Fancy Parties

Or, "How I Spent the First Two-Thirds of My Weekend"

As is tradition (apparently), yesterday we had our JPAC company picnic.  Now, when a military organization sends out an invitation, they send out an invitation.  See below for the first part of the first of many pages outlining our specific orders:

One should note section 3a, especially the phrases "official duty location" and "[all] deviations from this guidance must be approved by the Deputy Commander."  This was mandatory fun, everyone!  The rule was that if you didn't want to go, you could either take official leave or go to work for the full day.  Now, I hate fun as much as the next incredibly dull person, but I'm wise enough to know that eating free food by the beach and getting to go home at 2:00 (or 1400, if you're military) is still preferable over going to work for nine hours.  So I went to the picnic.  It was fun for awhile.  The food was good and I walked by the ocean and gathered some "treasures from the sea"* until I stubbed my toe on a rock and had to go tend to the bleeding lest I contract some type of ocean disease.  Getting to go home in the middle of the day was pretty awesome; I had to keep reminding myself that it was a Friday and not the Saturday it felt like.  I spent a bit of the rest of the day at the mall (where I ate a pistachio macaroon at the Pacific Place Tea Garden--yum!) and then went home to clean my new-old chair.

Clearly, a Friday of fun with co-workers was just not enough!  I write tonight after having just returned from a fancy party at my old professor/current supervisor's house.  I got the invitation for this event Monday, as did some other co-workers:  "cocktails and dinner," it said!  My first thought:  whatever will I wear?  My second thought:  wow, I'm definitely not in grad school anymore!  A party at the "boss's" house!  This is how one moves up in life!  Thankfully, it turned out to not be the formal affair I had envisioned:  it was an outdoor gathering with many people from work and some not--no cause for worrying about which fork to use and the proper technique of buttering rolls.**  I felt slightly overdressed in my black-and-white fifties-esque "favorite" dress, but I didn't stand out like a sore thumb, either.  This is not to say that the event wasn't fancy--oh, how fancy it was!  Everything was so beautifully presented--no paper plates and plastic cutlery here!  The hosts definitely went to great lengths and it was much appreciated.  Of course, the food was fantastic!  Grilled steak and vegetables and hors d'oeuvres (this really delicious crab dip, among other things) and strawberry shortcakes and soda in glass bottles---look at me, I'm sounding like an orphan from the 1930s experiencing decadence for the first time!  And all the exclamation marks!  I guess my naïvete about such things is a good quality--better than jaded sighs of "ugh, not another one of these work parties," right?

At any rate, it was a fine weekend, and it's only Saturday night!


*I was feeling very Sarah, Plain and Tall as I did this; I intend to mail some of these "treasures" (shells, coral, and the like) to some of my "mainland" friends.
**You only butter the part you're eating at the very moment--cutting it in half and eating it like a butter sandwich is a terrible faux pas!  I usually avoid this awkwardness altogether by eating the entire roll at once.

Self-Doubt and Affirmation

Why am I taking the GRE again?

The answer I usually give people is that I'm applying to some PhD programs that want scores more recent than the ones that I have.

Is that really why, though?  Am I also trying to prove something?  And if so, what?  That I'm hard-working enough to study every weekend and get a really good score?  That I was worthy to live in academically-oriented Boston?  That I'm just as smart as all of my PhD-getting/having friends?

All of these doubts brought their friends, worries, along for the ride:  what if my scores are only in the 90th percentile?  What if I only get a 4.5 on the Analytical Writing?  Will everyone I know just shake their heads and say, "wow...I thought you were better than that"?

I needed a new philosophy, a mantra, if you will.  So here it is:

• My worth as a human being is not determined by my GRE scores.
• The people who liked/dated me in the past did not like/date me because of my GRE scores.*
• Similarly, people who currently like me will not stop liking me if I don't have amazing GRE scores (right?).
• Doing well on standardized tests is not an indicator of inherent intelligence.
• GRE scores are only a tiny portion of the grad school application.  I think the 3.99 GPA from my Master's Program will be much more outstanding in the eyes of the admissions committees.

I will recite this mantra for the next three weeks, until I take the test, even if I don't believe it.

*This sentiment totally reminds me of the scene in "Center Stage" where Maureen shows up at Jim's house crying and asking, "how much of what you liked about me was because I was a ballet dancer, and how much was because I was me?"  He just hugs her, but if I had written the movie, I would have had him say, "Oh honey, I didn't like the fact that you were a ballet dancer at all!"

Sometimes I Buy Furniture

I'll never have the amazing photo-taking skills flaunted by other furniture-liking people.

It all started when I noticed I wasn't sleeping well.  I was going to bed early and waking up early, but I was always very sleepy in the mornings.  I then realized that my sleepiness was being caused by two factors:  1) that I wasn't stretching enough in the mornings to wake myself up, and 2) I'm spending too much time in my bed doing things that are not sleeping.  Beds are for sleeping--not for eating breakfast (or dinner), blogging, taking GRE practice sets, and watching internet TV!   I decided I would buy a chair for my bedroom.  My roommate had bought one of those dorm chair things for her room and I thought I'd do the same, until I saw this chair (pictured above) advertised for a mere $20 on my apartment's bulletin board!

A sweet little old lady was moving with her husband back to Colorado (or "the Mainland" as they call it here, because apparently the other 98% of the country is all the same) and was selling some things that she didn't want to move.  When I came to her apartment to pick it up and give her the $20, she said how pretty I was and how she was glad that her chair was going to a nice person (aw...).  When I took the chair up to my apartment, I noticed it was in definite need of some work.  (I should have taken a "before" picture, but you know I never think of these things ahead of time.)  I steamed and Febrezed the upholstery as it was smelling a little less-than-fresh (they had a dog in the house), and I attacked the wood with some Old English lemon oil.  It's now shiny, lemony-fresh, and beautiful!  I do have quite the knack for salvaging old things, I must say (another story later, probably).  I intend to do much reading, blogging, and journal-writing in my new-old chair.

Chinatown

There were parts that were kind of dirty.  I thought the "Paradise Lost" sign was very appropriate on this street that smelled very much unlike tropical flowers and sea breezes.  

 There were also parts that were very clean.  Just look at all these brooms!

I felt like a giant white sore thumb in Chinatown.  I didn't want to far into any of the shops because foreign language situations make me very intimidated, though I found some cool jewelry shops that I would like to investigate further one day.  Also, I called my dad while I was there and he was like, "get out of there!  they're going to kidnap you and sell you into white slavery!"  And I was like, "it's twelve-thirty in the afternoon and I don't think that's how things work here."  Silly parents.

Growing Up, Growing Old, and "Other"

Signs that I'm a grownup:

• I totally rock at walking in high heels and getting in and out of cars in pencil skirts.
• I have a job in my field that pays me lots of dollars and requires me to figure out how to pay my own taxes.
• I know how to cook for myself.
• I've nearly mastered the art of knowing when to share my feelings and when to just keep stuff to myself.

Signs that I'm growing old:

• I keep finding grey hairs on my head.  
• Lumbar support has suddenly become a thing that's important to me.*
• I care about fiber content more than I care about calorie content.
• I can't ogle the beefy military guys at the gym without thinking that they're all probably too young for me.

Signs that I still have some more growing to do:

• I can't drive a car.
• I still sleep in a twin bed.
• Even though I know how to cook for myself, my dinnertime activities usually just consist of shoving Macaroni and Cheese into my mouth while sitting on my twin bed and watching "Smallville" reruns.

*On that note, there's a lot of office-switching going on at work right now, so yesterday I was able to get a new chair and it's seriously the best thing that's ever happened to me.  My quadratus lumborum is so happy.

Pardon My (Evil) Appearance

[NOTE/UPDATE:  Apparently if you're not reading too closely it might not be apparent that the thing I drank wasn't really made of coffee!!  I only appeared evil, friends!]

When I'm a supervillain (and let's face it, I'm on that path), I'm going to drink Double Chocolaty Chip Frappucino® Blended Cremes all the time just so people will look at me and be like, "wow, she must be evil!"

Actually, I won't.  They're only somewhat delicious, and that's not delicious enough to be worth the fat and calories.  I had to walk my evil-looking self three miles home today to not feel bad about drinking it.

In that game/poll/conversation-type-thing that Mormons do, the "if you were given a free pass to break one commandment, what commandment would you break?" thing, everyone always picks the Law of Chastity, but not I.*  I would totally pick drinking some delicious blended frozen chocolate coffee thing.**  I think this is why the Blended Creme has always piqued my curiosity whenever I would go into Starbucks--sinful deliciousness without the sin!  I finally ordered it today after feeling "on top of the world" and "devil may care" after buying my bus pass.  Like I said, it was okay, but not life changing.

So maybe that's not the sin I would pick after all, but I can't think of anything else appealing!  I guess I am a goody-two-shoes after all.


*I could go on about the reason for this, but that's a topic for a different discussion, so for the purposes of my talking about frozen coffee-free drinks, let's just say that I guess I'm really just not rebellious enough.
**Or tithing.  Seriously--why would people have premarital sex when they could save 10% of their income every month?