the beat goes on

just finished the GRE. again. and this time i'm done for good. the score got slightly better overall, much better in Math, and a bit worse in Verbal. That's okay. I'm at peace.

clean slate

i erased every email he ever sent me last night. this morning, i'm feeling relieved but scared, hesitant because this means i am really starting over. it means i'm actually going to end up having to try the whole love thing again, eventually, and that freaks me out.

happy hour rocks

and so do nerve personals.

we will see...

actually important: DREAM ACT REJECTED

Senators reject legal status for children of immigrants

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The so-called Dream Act would have allowed young people to gain citizenship through education or the military.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig25oct25,0,4001492.story?coll=la-home-center

what is wrong with us?

bredwinna + funkdaddy: real hip hop

free cds from hip hop wannabes: the perks of working in the building that houses G-Unit.

magic lint brush

now, i know i'm not always the sharpest crayon in the box, but i like to think that i'm not a complete fool, either.

why, then, is it so difficult for me to figure out the secret of the magic lint brush????

for the first few swipes, we get along wonderfully-- it happily removes the lint from my corduroys, "like magic." somewhere near the fifth swipe, though, things somehow go awry and i'm left with lint residues, far worse than the original lint situation, in one area, often in the red color of the brush itself. what does this mean? why does this happen? who is to blame?

and how the hell am i supposed to clean the brush?!


your insights, fair readers, would be much appreciated, and are, quite simply, necessary.

i just keep going and going...

it's 2 am eastern.

i've been up since 8:40 am eastern. i showered, prettied up, gave a presentation, de-prettied, checked out of a hotel, spent an hour waiting to be shuttled to LAX, got to LAX, left with christina morado, saw her West LA apartment, shuttled back to LAX, flew to Vegas, saw my parents, was shuttled to their home, saw my dog, watched half of ocean's eleven, received a new business suit (laundry!) from my mom, and new perfume (givenchy!) from my brother, and then was shuttled back to the vegas airport. now i wait for the last leg of this seemingly neverending day.

my ass is going to be sick by friday, mark my words.

writing in LAX is weird,

mostly because there is a skinny white hipster-boy a table over sneaking glances at me. how weird. a white-boy checking me out.

anyway, just had a beautiful afternoon moment with chris morado, my mega-, which is the only way i know how to say that i believe i'm her mini-. her new LA apartment in west LA is gorgeous, really gorgeous, and she is happy. and pam is happy. might i be happy in LA? in an apartment that costs the same or a little bit more than my new york one but is better, oh so much better? in a different job, with a car that could take me home to my parents on the regular, with surpluses to bring me to new york without killing me? would it be worth it to get away from the city that holds the architecture of my broken heart? to rebuild, somewhere else, some other way?

i don't know. but, of course, i'm considering it, like i consider everything. not ready to make a move yet, that much i know, but it would be interesting. to move back to the place where i was happily single. before i felt the need to embrace internet dating, to meet my "match."

i'm putting the thought to bed, but am fairly sure that it will resurface, sooner rather than later. i hope i'm ready.

dude. my hair rocks, and so did my presentation!

it's happy and healthy. not everyone can say that. i swear, sometimes my hair fucking smiles!

and! i rocked the house at 8:30 am! my evals are great! yay! now to keep this positive roll going...no falling back into ugly ex-ness.

pam last night, morado today...no reason in the world to be sad.

you didn't really want to know this, but

the last time i was in california i was with him. we flew into LAX, just like i did last night. we drove the same stretches of road.

just those facts were enough to have me crying in the shower this morning.** to wake me up with bad dreams of missing him, of wanting him back, last night.

when will it ever end, i ask.


**fuck it, i'll be honest. i'm crying right fucking now. i can't stop fucking crying.
someone is going to have to fucking pay me to trust a man again. it just ain't happenin' of its own accord.

growing up sucks

i am on the first of four business trips that will be happening in the next two weeks, and i am feeling the burn of this whole "grown-up" thing. it's 5 am pacific time and i'm reviewing project materials and waiting impatiently for my room service to arrive (which it won't for another 2 hours because i for some reason thought i'd be able to sleep until 7).

i'm hungry, on the wrong time, and not excited about my presentation at all. everyone else came to this conference with 5-6 of their colleagues, and i'm here solo, with two wonderful hyatt regency beds (REALLY COMFY, by the way), endlessly tweaking my powerpoint presentation and studying for the GRE. not cool.

if this is what a quarter century looks like, i guess i'm ready, i just wish i were making more ;).

visiting L.A. is dangerous

cuz the minute the plane touches the runway, i miss the houses, the trees, the freeways, the smog. i miss the friends i left behind. i miss the music, the food, the atmosphere.

i don't miss the loneliness i felt most of the time, or the traffic, but there's something about LA that does call my name. hence the danger. new york is good enough for me when i'm there, and most places don't lull me away, but wow. LA.

i'm planning on returning to new york. will that really happen? physically, yes. probably. mentally? maybe not.

you are your own best thing

that's from somewhere in beloved (toni morrison). it came to me as i was walking to the train from work tonight. it's something i need to work on believing.
***
on the way home from the train every night now, i see kids- high school kids, middle school kids, and i miss them. their vibrance and their life. i don't miss their attitudes, or their laziness, or their "jokes," but there are a lot of things i do miss. i love the new job for the way it stretches my brain, and gives me opportunities to grow, but i miss the kids. i never thought i'd say this, but i would pay money, i think, to hear phionna's voice say, "ms. OSBORNE! what the hell you do to your hair?!"

these are the moments when i love new york

when cabbies are nicer than they need to be, and offer to take you farther than your money will take you to make sure you're safe...

when you know where to get fucking taste-tastic nachos at 1 a.m....

when getting away from a man is the best thing you've done all night...

when you have friends you can trust and enjoy without holding back.

new york can be pretty incredible, every once in awhile.

she's ba-ack!

i <3 new york 2. guilty pleasure!

hit it up on the vspot for a recap!

half of a yellow sun

i will be glad when this emotional precariousness is gone; i am better, but i am not yet whole. thankfully, i think i am happier and more fulfilled than i have been in awhile, but that only shows how unhappy i was in the midst of things with him.

this evening has been somewhat depressing- between the rain and the body bag i witnessed being removed from the 72nd street station on the way home, there haven't been a whole lot of pick-me-ups.

one plus, though, is the book i'm reading, half of a yellow sun by chimamandda ngozi adichie. long quote, but as i read it for the first time it caused one of those moments when you know you're not alone in a feeling that makes you curse your humanity and your weakness. it's those moments that make me such a voracious reader, always looking for the line that will make me feel like i belong, like i'm not alone:

She walked over to the stove and ran a sponge on the warm surface, over and over, her back to Odenigbo. She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother's behavior to upset her...But she was upset, and made even more so by Odenigbo's expression, as if he could not believe she was not quite as high-minded as he had thought. He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.
...
She shook her head. She would not let him make her feel that there was something wrong with her. It was her right to be upset, her right not to choose to brush her humiliation aside in the name of an overexalted intellectualism, and she would claim that right. "Go." She gestured toward the door. "Go and play your tennis and don't come back here."

- p. 128-129, Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie


another:

This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

-same source

the obenson report

interesting. black cinema podcast.

this is just not acceptable/just so predictable

so. yeah.

the noose on the professor's door at TC.

yeah.

i'm fucking angry. partly because of the noose, but mostly because this song seems to be on repeat. three and a half years ago i was on a college campus that experienced a hate crime that was later exposed to be a hoax. key to that conversation was the fact that the atmosphere of hate and racism had long existed before the hate crime, and that was only proven by the fact that the "hoax" was oh-so-believable when it happened. this came after a cross was burned on the campus of a neighboring school, by students who claimed it was "no big deal." an administration that tried to pat everything back into place.

i fell apart that night, the night the car was vandalized. i cried, and i called my parents and asked them to take me away. i am angry that any other student on a college campus for an experience that is most likely putting them into a life's worth of debt (or not) ever has to feel like they aren't wanted.

i shouldn't be surprised. i know these things. but sometimes the anger erupts and i lose my ability to focus, to dissemble, to assure the people around me that the world isn't killing me day by day with its bullshit, to tell myself that i'm "just fine."

this is some fucking bullshit.

yummy recipe blogs

a little bit for you, but a lot for me so that i can keep track of all of these great bakers!

http://bakingbites.com/
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/
http://www.cupcakeblog.com/

mexican chocolate torte, topped with chocolate ganache

sssh, don't tell heather, it's for her birthday!

cake....


and ganache so shiny you can see my 'fro in it....



equal yummy birthday wishes. :)

parting gift

fiona apple fucking rocked last night with nickel creek once sasha frere-jones shut up, of course.



this is not last night's performance, but it is close enough.

:D

crazy f*ing world

racialicious really did it up today. instead of rewriting the posts and passing them off as my own, i direct you to www.racialicious.com.

my work environment

today, my job required that i sit in a school auditorium listening to parliament and sly and the family stone for hours on end while talking about multicultural education. when i got back to the office, a few things stood out to my oh-so-relaxed mind:

• the administrative assistant uses copies of the derrida reader and infinite jest to prop up her computer monitor.
• someone is always playing spoon.
• my boss came by to tell me that she bought new makeup for her son's wedding this weekend, but that she's still looking for appropriate underwear (i didn't ask, and neither should you).
• i spend just as much time making tea and laughing my ass off as i do feeling totally overwhelmed and stressed-out. healthy? maybe not. entertaining? most definitely.
• working with a wanna-be improv comedian and an ex-stand up comedian can be good...and bad. eventually, forcing laughs becomes physically painful.
  
• everybody here is too liberal to watch crappy reality tv, so there's never anyone to gossip with about top chef, ANTM, or the latest VH1 crappy "love" show. i leave that to you, my dear blog!

i'm neither making tea nor laughing my ass off, so i should technically be working. boo.

yay hung!

weird title for my first post-move post, i know, but the top chef finale last night made me smile. go hung. you may be an uptight craphead a lot of the time, but boy, you are of-color, and you won a white people's competition. i'm not mad at you. (i considered writing i ain't mad atcha there, but, well, i would never really say that. god, i'm a loser.)

things are good, just like i thought they would be. i figured out an internet problem in the new apt today when i woke up with a weird moment of clarity-- just plug your router into the cable modem too, joy! and poof, i have internet. now if only getting her big ass loft bed out of my room were that easy. maybe that will be my moment of clarity tomorrow morning.

funny aside- my mother got angry with me yesterday for catching an attitude with her over the phone, and she actually threatened to get on a plane from las vegas to come put me in my place. i was in the shower as she was calling, so didn't see the phone lighting up, and when i came out there were five voicemails, each one just one mom-ism long:

• "i don't know WHO you think you're talking to!"
• "you betta ASK somebody!" ("ask" pronounced "ax," of course, because she was pissed- my mother only goes opa-locka on people for laughs or in fits of extreme anger)**
  
• "if you don't answer this phone, you WILL be sorry!"

it's been a good 10 years since i last heard these phrases in relation to myself, and, while it's not nice to laugh at other people's emotions, i am kind of excited about the prospect of using the phrases with my own children one day. :) funny, funny.

**also, can i just say that reading that wikipedia article is the first time i've ever heard that opa-locka is one of the most dangerous places in the united states? i lived right outside opa-locka my whole life and my grandfather was the mayor there once upon a time, and my whole family lives there. i've never felt as if i was in danger in opa-locka. weird.