You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Vest

Whenever I'm home, I go through old photos from my childhood and I found a bunch from my tween-teen years in which I was experimenting with some interesting fashion choices.  Shortly afterwards I watched an old Garth and Kat sketch on SNL, and I realized I may have been more of a trendsetter than I thought as a kid, because far before the Wiig-Armisen era, I was rocking the dorky vest.

Wannabes.

Here are some highlights:

This was a pretty benign one that my mom made.  Note how studious it made me look.  Also note my pixie cut, inspired by Halle Berry (however Halle Berry probably never got mistaken for a boy at the 5th grade Halloween Party).

This was just me dressed up for a normal day at church, as far as I know, and not a "Relief Society Presidents of History" costume contest.  I still have the necklace.

This was high school.  I can tell because of the retainer and because I have two distinguishable eyebrows.  My mom made this vest because it was the early 2000's and Asian-inspired things were very in style.

This was one of my more unfortunate hairstyles.  But I think I pulled off the turtleneck-tucked-into-belted-jeans look quite nicely, if I do say so myself.

I was really obsessed with "Goosebumps" books, so when I saw this fabric at the fabric store, I was like, "Mom, you clearly must make me a vest."  Note how my belt matches my shirt, and note my awesome thumb-in-my-belt pose.  Also I think I made this necklace.  Also I'm sure I went to school in this outfit.  None of the other kids were as fashion-forward as I was, and therefore were too intimidated to ever hang out with me.  One time they even put me in a locker as to not be blinded by my stylishness.

I saved the best for last (or vest for last-ha!).  This was also in middle school when Old Navy Performance Fleece was a thing.  We must have been really poor when I was growing up because apparently Old Navy was too expensive for us and my mom bought me this knockoff at Sam's Club.  Discount substitutes notwithstanding, I knew how to be cool.

Is it weird that this reminds me of Anthony Michael Hall in "Sixteen Candles"?

So, Fred, Kirsten, just know that I'm onto you for stealing my look.  It's totally okay, I won't sue or anything, but if you would like to send me thank-you notes or cash or something, that would be cool.

Special Dating Post: Finding Your Holiday Romance

Merry Christmas, gentle readers!  If you're anything like me, you're probably finding yourself single this holiday season.  If you are me, you're finding yourself single this holiday season and spending all of your Christmas vacation watching made-for-TV holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel and ABC Family.  But, because I am brilliant, during this time I figured out exactly how to find true love just in time for Christmas (or New Year's Eve, at the very latest), and while it may be too late for me, I would love to impart this wisdom upon you, gentle readers.  Here are four strategies:

1. The Lie.  Heading home for the holidays?  Family giving you a hard time because in addition to their disapproval of your career choice, you're still single?  Just hire a fake significant other to come home with you--nobody will suspect a thing (which is good, because the truth would just about kill your great grandmother).  Your faux-beau could be an actor, an acquaintance, or just someone that walked into your place of employment one day.  It doesn't matter whether you like each other; it doesn't matter if they're not single in real life; it doesn't even matter if you kidnapped them at gunpoint; once you reveal personal secrets to each other and once you're forced to kiss under the mistletoe in front of everyone, the sparks will fly and you will go from "fakin'" to "taken."*  
2. The Relocation.  No luck finding love in the big city?  Just find yourself in a tiny town for the holiday.  Extra points if it's against your will, and even more points if it's a town that's inexplicably obsessed with Christmas.  Your true love will be pretty easy to find in said small town, because he/she will literally be the only other person your age.  When you first find yourself attracted to this single-parent/widower/veterinarian/volunteer-hockey-coach, be careful, because (as their not-apparently-related older acquaintance will tell you), nobody ever thought he/she would move on after nonspecific-tragic-event.  But in the end (and after you use your big-city know-how to save the town from some crisis), you will be in love, not only with single-parent/widower/veterinarian/volunteer-hockey-coach, but also with small town life, and most importantly, with Christmas.  
3. The Switch.  Don't like your life?  Take somebody else's!  Swap houses with a complete stranger (bonus points if it's a city-mouse/country-mouse situation--see #2).  This is probably one of the more high-reward tactics:  not only will you end up with someone from stranger's hometown, stranger will end up with one of the many people with whom you're having no luck romantically!  Two lovebirds, one stone.  
4. Magic.  Sometimes a case is so hopeless that earthly forces are insufficient.  In these cases, thank goodness for magical Christmas ornaments and older men who may or may not be Santa Claus.  They will manipulate the world so that you'll have a chance to relive that bad date over and over until you get it right, or they'll keep letting you run into that handsome stranger until he realizes how wrong-for-him his snooty rich girlfriend actually is.  At the end, you will give a kiss to your new honey, and a knowing wink to a light in the sky that is definitely your guardian angel and not an airplane.

Gentle readers, there is one week until Christmas.  I have full faith that, by using one or more of these tactics, you will be engaged by 2015.  Good luck!

*I am so, so sorry for that rhyme.

Vampire Slaying, PhD

I posted the following on Facebook one day:

I think that if Buffy had been in grad school instead of high school, she would have been a lot more complacent about all those apocalypses.

This got me thinking, what would happen if Buffy had been in grad school?  Here are some classic BtVS moments, re-imagined to be more appropriate to the grad school life:

Silver Linings...

I won't have to go into lab tomorrow!
(From "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date")

The "I Hate My Life and Every Decision I've Ever Made" Phase

Pretty much sums it up.
(From "Becoming, Part 2")

The Complicated Student/Adviser Relationship

From "Lover's Walk"

Departmental Seminar Refreshments

From "Restless"

And Finally, The Dissertation Defense

From "Showtime"

These are all I can think of for now.  There will probably be follow-up posts once my next Buffy-binge-watching session inspires me.

Reasons Why November Wasn't the Absolute Worst

I could write about how November was pretty sucky, in my true "depressing blog" fashion.  And it was kind of crappy.  The month started out with the epiphany that I'm kind of terrible and nobody will ever love me (not that I deserve it, anyway) and I'll never be as fulfilled as the pregnant ladies in diaper commercials or as musically talented as my roommate and my hair will never stop having split ends.

But really (and especially compared to last November...ugh) it actually wasn't such a terrible month after all.  Here's why:

I was freaking domestic as all heck, for one thing.  I made all manner of Thanksgiving food and a wreath!  Here are pictures:

Sweet Potato Casserole...toeing the line between side dish and dessert.

Cranberry Meringue and Cranberry-Pear-Pecan Pies

The wreath.  Not edible.

There were also two varieties of from-scratch cranberry sauce (not pictured).  The cranberry sauce may have inspired me to take up canning, despite my fear of giving my friends botulism.

I think the wreath was my favorite thing to make, despite it's not being able to be eaten.  Craft therapy isn't just for people in mental institutions, I guess.  Also I did this with people.  Two friends came over and we had craft night and ate soup and rolls and pie and watched the Grumpy Cat Christmas Movie on Lifetime (simultaneously better and worse than it sounds).

I did other things with people in November, too.  Despite my protestations that I was not worthy of love and friendship, people still insisted on hanging out with me (stupid people).  My old roommate came over one night and we ate green curry and watched the second Muppet movie (better than I'd expected it to be).  Another friend and I started a tradition (as in, we've done this twice) of making breakfast* while watching the previous evening's episode of "Grimm."

Culture!  I saw two plays on non-dates with a friend this month.  The first was Awake and Sing, which was really good.  The second was a college-level production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which was not spectacular, but it had sentimental value on account of the time I played Lucy in our fifth grade production.  Also before both plays, friend and I ate burgers, which is less "cultured" but still delicious.

Thanksgiving also happened.  Through a last-minute twist of fate involving cranberries, I got talked into going to a friend's family's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and it was lovely.  I played with an adorable three-year-old and got my nurturing quota in for the year.  Not to fear, however--I still managed to get most of my "by-myself Thanksgiving" traditions done on the surrounding days.  Such as watching the "Buffy" Thanksgiving Episode.

One day.

Probably one of the most not-crappy things about November was that I got the results back from my grant application.  Not the knowing-whether-it's-funded results, yet, but the scores.  And the scores were not terrible!  They were in fact quite good!  So much so that if I did get funded, it wouldn't be too surprising!  That I will find out in January, however, so I am crossing my fingers.

So yeah...not bad...not bad at all.  And it's December now, and I've decided to get into the Christmas spirit if it kills me.

*This could be a good time to share the anecdote about how I unwittingly bought a nine-dollar loaf of Brioche at Whole Foods...but it's not that exciting of a story.  I unwittingly bought a nine-dollar loaf of Brioche of Whole Foods.  The French Toast I made therewith didn't even moderately rock my world.

Baby Steps

I am happy* to report some progress in my attempts to be more the type of person who is nice and sociable and less the type of person who is introverted and lame and has no friends.

• I was meeting with someone from the Office of Proposal Development about a preceptorship application I was filing, and I noticed she had a Golden Girls mouse pad.  Introverted Alex would have thought that was cool but not said anything, but not that day!  I was like, "so you're a Golden Girls fan?" and then told her about when I went to see the Golden Girls Drag Queens.  Talking to a work-related person about personal things?  Who even does that?
• After class one day I was talking to my classmate and we happened to walk into the bathroom together.  My rule is usually "when you enter the stall, the conversation stops."  This girl clearly did not have that rule, and continued to chat.  At first I was mortified as I am not capable of that level of multitasking, but somehow--don't know how--I managed.  I think I gained some Female Points that day.
• Then I went to a Halloween party, but that was more because I was coerced, but still.  Read about it here.
• I feel like I'm finally starting to fit in with the other grad students in my department (as much as I can, being a bone person in a department full of brain people, I guess).  I would always hang out with just the other people in my year, but now I'm having full conversations with the higher years.  It's probably because I'm doing the quals thing soon and I'm officially "one of them" now, but it's cool.
• Three of the past four days I ate dinner not by myself.

Baby steps, guys.

*Maybe "happy" is a stretch.

Halloween-ween*

Happy (Belated) Halloween, everyone!

I did actually do things on actual (i.e., not-belated) Halloween.  Social things, even!  I originally intended to stay home alone and do a Hocus Pocus/Beetlejuice double feature, but instead my friend roped me into going to a ward Halloween party.  Of course I couldn't just go to a Halloween party without a costume because that would be even lamer than watching movies alone on one of the best holidays, so I decided to dress as a secondary character from an obscure, no-longer-on-the-air TV show:  Dr. Claire Saunders from Dollhouse.

What I was going for

What I was.  Fake scar tissue is hard to manipulate.

Anyway, nobody got it because very few people have seen or remember Dollhouse, which is unfortunate because it has the one-two punch of Joss Whedon's writing and Amy Acker's acting.  People just thought my scars were creepy.

Apart from that, the party was okay.  Halloween parties are kind of like awards shows, I've decided. You don't really care about the people except for what they're wearing.  I did get to revel in the lovely double standards of men's and women's costumes (e.g., how men can dress as shirtless vikings or male strippers and people think it's so clever, yet had I decided to bare my shoulders there would have probably been a riot).  There were some okay snacks, but I couldn't really eat much without the scars on my lips falling off.  But after the party I went home and watched the first half of Hocus Pocus, and finished it the next morning.  It's definitely a movie that I have to watch alone because the scene at the end with the ghost of Thackeray Binx makes me cry.

Later that day I went to the anatomy lab and spent four hours with the cadavers, which I guess is a very Halloween-appropriate activity.  Then I saw an old friend from college and watched Beetlejuice.  I guess I got all of my Halloween activities checked off, though I could have done more.  I think next year, when I am 30, I will go all out for Halloween.  I even have an idea for a costume.  Teaser:  there will be blue body paint involved.

Until next year!



*If you get this reference, you are a cool person.  Also, RIP "The Neighbors."

Addendum! A Saturday in Salem

I have been remiss!  My last post got so sidetracked talking about how much I hate Dawn Summers and staying up past 10:00 pm that I forgot to actually finish writing about my birthday weekend.  Here is a summary of a fantastic birthday-adjacent activity that took place last Saturday. 

A few weeks previous, my friend Jon Sue-Ho sent me an email inviting me to Salem, MA, to see...

wait for it...

Drag Queen Golden Girls!!!

Of course I accepted the invitation immediately.  The only engagement more pressing would have been a tea with the actual Golden Girls, which would have involved bringing three women back from the dead, so obviously that would be a higher priority than seeing some men in lady clothes.  But here is the tale:

We took the Commuter Rail to Salem, which was pretty fun because I like riding on trains.  We got there and decided to keep our expectations very low.  After all, we were going to see a drag show in the basement of a bar in Northern Massachusetts, so we couldn't expect much.  We waited in line behind some female musical theatre enthusiasts (the kind whose dream role is Mama Rose) who had clearly been pregaming the show, so that was fun and also really loud.  We sat down and waited for all of the people who had paid more for tickets than we did to get their drinks, and the show started.

IT WAS AMAZING.

I'm not going to describe the whole plot but it was basically the Golden Girls "Lost Halloween Episode" which was a main plot with a "clip show" of Golden Girls episodes that actually happened.  So good.  Also, I got to take a picture with the Golden Girls afterwards!

It's not every day that I take a picture with four men
and am not the prettiest one in it.
But, check out the Bea Arthur.  Spot.  On.

One cool thing was that the one who played Sophia was an award-winning Judy Garland impersonator, and after the show he came out as Judy and sang a song.  Also Dorothy and Sophia are a couple in real life, which is darling.

After the show we went to get food, because the food proviso in our tickets was a $20 per person minimum, which would have been fine if we were drinking alcohol, but that's a little excessive for bar food, so we went to a hot dog place across the street and it was DELICIOUS.  Also way cheaper than $20 per person.

Then we had some time to kill before our train, so we wandered around Salem.  Salem, MA, on a Saturday night in October strangely reminds me of Waikiki...only colder and much more haunted-feeling.  Nonetheless, there were tons of tourists and tons of stuff catering to the tourists.  It was pretty cool though, seeing people in Halloween costumes two weeks before Halloween.  All of the museums were closed, but I got to poke my head into a few magic shops and I think I would like to explore them more on a future occasion.  There was a red line on the sidewalk that we followed around the main part of town through all of the landmarks (akin to Boston's Freedom Trail--maybe it was called the "Wrongful Persecution" Trail?) and we were determined to find the end of it.  And we did, in the most anticlimactic manner.  It just stopped among some not-particularly-special-looking houses.  It was probably a decoy line painted by some murderers to lead tourists to their lair.  Thankfully we got led to no lairs, but we did double back and get to the train station.

The most remarkable thing that happened while waiting for the train was that we were standing uncomfortably close to a couple that was furiously making out.  So furious was the out-making that the girl dropped her jacket on the ground, and I spent the next five minutes concerned that she would forget it when boarding the train.  And she definitely did.  Thankfully a more outspoken bystander pointed it out.  This may have been the highlight of the trip that didn't involve drag queens.

Anyhow, Salem + Drag Queens + Birthday = Goodness.  Thank you to Jon Sue-Ho for a lovely evening.