|
Thursday, July 29, 2004
|
Can I just mention how ecstatic I am that we have Coke here now? The office supplies unlimited Coke, but it's all been Diet Coke up until today. Now there are lots and lots of cans of regular Coke! Woohoo!
- Lizzardie, at 1:35 PM
|
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
|
*YAWN* I am very tired. It's been a crazy few weeks here in Boston...
I've been working, which is totally been wearing me out. It's hard getting used to this long week, early schedule. And this week has been even worse, due to gettin up early.
Why have I been getting up early this week? The Democratic National Convention, my friends, has invaded Boston. I started by getting up early in case there was bad traffic, as was the prediction, and I wanted to get into work early so that I could get out of work early. But I've had the shortest commutes since I started working. I think everyone left Boston fearing the worse, and it turned out okay for those of us that stayed. :-)
I continued going into work early so that I could go downtown after work. Sunday, I went and volunteered with Rock the Vote, which was fun. We were all over the city, and ended up outside the Avalon/Fenway Park, handing out materials. I saw Jerry Springer, and supposedly Natalie Portman was outside, too (ohh, I saw Al Franken filming for MSNBC at Quincy Market, if anyone cares about that). And of course, during the madness of people trying to get into the Avalon (they couldn't get the volunteers in, unfortunately), the Yankees were playing at the Red Sox, to make things even more crazy.
Monday I skipped out on the excitement, and stayed home and watched Convention coverage, thinking how cool it was that the Clintons were speaking just a few miles from me, but since I've seen both of them speak, it wasn't so exciting. Yesterday, though, I did more volunteering. We marched around Faneiul Hall and down to the FleetCenter, chanting Rock the Vote stuff and trying to make noise. Then we headed down towards the Avalon, where there was another concert, this time Black Eyed Peas (I don't know who was at Sunday's concert). I ended up having my choice... go to the concert... or go to the Convention. I chose to go to the Convention, because how many times am I going to have that opportunity? I unfortunately missed State Sen. Barack Obama's speech (I heard it was good, and I read the transcript, plus he's from Illinois, and going to be the new Senator there, since there's no one running against him, and I doubt the Republicans will find someone to run and win). I did get to see Teresa Heinz Kerry speak, though, and that was pretty cool. Just being at the Fleet Center was really exciting (it took me 20 minutes to get inside, due to construction, closed streets, North Station being closed, security - and there was no wait!), and it almost makes me want to be a Democrat, haha. I pretended to be one last night, though, and cheered, and brought home signs. I haven't decided who I'm voting for yet, but I could be cool with Kerry being President, and if I can figure out what he stands for, I may vote for him (though I'll be voting in Massachusetts and he'll win by a landslide here, so what do I care). At the very least, the roommates should appreciate the signs. Ohh, and maybe I'll post pictures one of these days (I love my digital camera).
Speaking of the roommates, they're gone for the week, so I have the apartment to myself (actually, everyone I know in Boston, I think, left for the weekend). They went to Maine, and I gotta say, I've enjoyed the peace and quiet. They've been gone since Saturday, and while I've enjoyed the quiet time, I gotta say that I do not like being by myself. So, as much as I hate to admit it, I miss the silly boys, and I'll be happy when they get back, and I have someone to talk to. It's been cool, hanging out with Rock the Vote and meeting new people, but I do miss my friends.
So yeah, that's been my life lately. Tomorrow, if my feet are feeling better, I'll head downtown again and do more fun convention, voter stuff. At the very least, I got a free tshirt that says, "fcuk you, I'm voting!" :-)
- Lizzardie, at 9:41 PM
|
Monday, July 19, 2004
|
I don't know the person who signed my guestbook today, but I posted it anyway. If I know you, let me know! :-)
- Lizzardie, at 8:50 PM
|
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
|
I shouldn't write posts like the last one and then not follow up on them. Ahh well.
Let's see, how have the last coupla days been.... Demetri and his friend Marcail visited on Friday, so Kathy came up from Norton. I was going to write that Marcail reminded me of someone but I didn't know who, and it all of a sudden came to me... she reminds me of Betsy! There was some hanging out in Harvard Square and whatnot, and then a bunch of us went to Brighton for tapas, at a place called Tasca, which was in some ways better than Dali (other tapas place, closer to the house). Jeff ditched us, so we ended up getting lost in Brighton, but eventually found our way back. Demetri, though, much like with many other things, is a super-paranoid driver which did not put me at ease. Then on Saturday, Susan got into town, so I went to South Station to pick her up. We did apartment hunting for her - we saw this place and the girl who lives there was really cool; we talked to her for an hour and a half. That's Susan's first choice, so I hope she gets that apartment because I want to become friends with Sara(h), she's so cool. Then Saturday night we went up to Nashua for Corinne's birthday party, which was fun. Chris Bianchi was there, which was quite a surprise. Corinne made me a "you've got a job" strawberry dacqueri - her presentation rocked. Low-ball glass, maraschino cherry stuck on a paper umbrella with a lime wedge on the glass.... classy. So yeah, the evening was fun, but quickly turned sour when I got home to find my roommates playing poker. What's that you say? No big deal? Well, I've been wanting to play poker for 6 weeks now (since I moved in) and they've refused to play with me, and now play on one of the few nights I go out without them. Bastards. So that wasn't what ruined my evening, but it started the chain of events.
Sunday sucked. I had wanted to go downtown, but had been unable to sleep the night before, so I just lounged around most of the day. Susan wanted to go out to eat, and the roommates joined us, so their presence, combined with my order being messed up, totally ruined my evening. Ugh.
And then yesterday, Monday, was my first day of work. I wore new clothes, and lots of people commented on how nice I looked (Kristen and both of the roommates). Hehehe, I'm shallow. Anyway, everyone at work was really nice, and they're trying to teach me the ropes. I share an office with the guy who's supervising/training me, and I have a really great view. It looks North, and all I see is trees (we're on the 9th floor). I was exhausted by the end of the day, but I'm totally happy with the job. And the great news is that the commute isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It seems like it'll take between 20 and 40 minutes each way, and on the way back today, it was under 20 minutes. I can totally deal with that! There was a card waiting for me when I got home from Herb, which was a nice gesture and made me not so angry anymore. Later I walked up to Harvard Square to meet Susan, who had managed to get herself lost. We ate at John Harvard's, which was totally pleasant and yummy (good customer service, too). When we got back, we watched Secret Window, which has Johnny Depp in it, but is totally weird. And there's blood. Yuck.
Today more work. I've been getting up early to do toning exercises in the morning, in hopes of getting rid of some "problem areas." I'm hoping I'll be able to continue the early schedule, because then I don't have to do them at night, which I think makes it more difficult to sleep. And I've been pretty tired the last 2 days after work.
I've also been ridiculously hungry. I'm still hungry. I had a decent-sized lunch, yet I've been eating since I got home and I still can't fill my stomach. Pasta - the homemade noodles and some marinara sauce, then yogurt with honey, almonds and walnuts, then peppermint ice cream, then strawberry yogurt with almonds. I don't know what else to eat. I guess I should buy snack stuff to keep at work.
There are some annoying things I need to take care of... ordering a new desk chair (the ones they've found for me are no good) and other office supplies, finding a doctor (ugh, stupid HMO's), filling my prescription, making appointments, laundry, Tome... and I'm just going to go to bed after Queer Eye (on right now) because I'm too tired to do anything else. Welcome to the working world.
- Lizzardie, at 10:09 PM
|
Sunday, July 11, 2004
|
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
How does a perfectly good day get ruined so quickly?
- Lizzardie, at 2:39 AM
|
Friday, July 09, 2004
|
I think things are better here. Let's hope I'm right.
Before I forget, I am taking book recommendations. Currently, I'm reading Emma, which I've been trying to read for years now. I think I'm making a dent, and forcing myself to read at least a chapter a day. So far, it does not read as well as Mansfield Park did. And I still have two other Jane Austin books on my shelf to go. Anyway, there are 8 more books on my bookshelf left after this that I haven't read, and I'm thinking either Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) or Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) next, haven't decided. But one day, I will have read all of the books on my shelf, or I'll get tired of going through them, one of those, and I'll need new books. So please make some recommendations!
I made noodles today. Making homemade noodles is something I felt like I should try, and while I had the time, I figured why not. It took a long time and was a lot of work. The noodles were pretty good, though, and I have some homemade dry ones, but I'm not sure that I'll ever do it again. And when you cook them, you should eat them, because they get sticky (though I'll try adding some olive oil to the water with the dry ones). I made a yummy tomato sauce, too.
Tomorrow Demetri is roadtripping here from Westchester, so Kathy will come up from her home (south of Boston). Susan comes in on Saturday to look for apartments, and Corinne's birthday party is Saturday in Nashua, so I'm looking forward to spending time with friends. Yay.
- Lizzardie, at 1:22 AM
|
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
|
So, three days later and things are not going so well here. For one, I haven't talked to either of my roommates since I lost my temper (unless you count "hello lizjones" and "goodnight lizjones" as Jeff talking to me). And for another, I don't know what to do about the situation. I know that I owe them an apology for acting crazy, particularly because I did it in front of their friends, but beyond that, I'm not sure what I need to do. Clearly, it wasn't just the stupid Scattegories incident that made me upset. I've talked to the normal group of people about what happened, and there seems to be no clear consensus about what happened and what's making me upset. And the only reason I haven't apologized yet is that I know that right after the apology there needs to be a discussion about making things better, and I haven't quite figured out how that needs to go. Also, it doesn't help that neither of the roommates will come into the same room as me.
I probably hit my low-point of this past semester (still thinking in terms of semesters, even though I'm no longer in school and won't be, for the forseeable future) sometime in mid-April. I'm sure if anyone was to go back to those posts, I sound miserable. I was so freaked out about school stuff, project stuff, money stuff, job stuff, housing stuff, etc... Everyone kept telling me that it would work out okay, and I wanted to kill them because I didn't believe it. How could it possibly all work out? There was a conversation with Herb amongst all of that, where he talked to me about time... "the curse and the promise of time for human experience is that all things end." I didn't believe him. I didn't see myself getting through my project, graduating, moving to Boston and getting a job. I told him that it wasn't like I was going to wake up one morning and have a job. He told me I was wrong.
Turns out, he was exactly right. Less than 3 months have passed since that conversation.... I made it through my project, with the company giving us rave reviews... I made it through all of my other classes, too, and earned one of the highest GPA's of my college career, resulting in, of course, the completion of my Masters degree... I moved to Boston, just like I had been wanting to do since the end of last summer... and one day, I woke up, and in my inbox I had a job offer. Everything I wanted 3 months ago, everything that I thought was out of reach, I now have.
So what am I doing now? Purposely making myself miserable. It doesn't make any sense. I'm happy with where I am in my life, it's what I wanted to happen 5 years ago when I decided to go to Cornell. Even the MEng thing payed off in the end... it gave me some time to figure out where I wanted to live and it gave me this huge project that provided experience to put on my resume (and help me out in my education) and something to talk about in interviews (I'm sure it was instrumental in me getting this job). Instead of me moving on at the end of undergrad, not sure if I was ready, I got to move on a year later, when I KNEW I was ready. I got to pick the city I live in, took the risk of moving here without a job and miraculously found one a month later. I'm proud of what I've done. It's one of those unusual times in my life when I actually feel lucky. There is no reason for me to do this to myself. For once, I have nothing to worry about, and creating something to worry about is pointless. I should relish this moment, because there probably won't be many more times like this in my life.
Wow, NOW I feel better. I think I know what I want to do and need to say now.
- Lizzardie, at 4:06 PM
|
Monday, July 05, 2004
|
So let's start with the good things. Boston fireworks = spectacular. It was by far the best fireworks display I have ever seen. It was so good, that had it been half as long, I STILL would have said that. There was a whole section that was just the white sizzling ones, which are my favorite. There was also a section of little white ones that just seemed to appear and cover the whole sky. There were also these green ones that looked like worms that appeared to just be floating in the sky on parachutes. So, so cool. I was getting a little tired of waiting for them to start (they did a brief display at the end of the Pops peformance of the 1812 Overture, and then we waited like another hour) but definitely well worth the wait. WOW. We were on the Cambridge side of the river, but obviously close, since they shoot them off from a barge in the middle of the river. Someone was playing the radio broadcast of the concert, since we obviously couldn't hear it from across the river. So, so good.
Anyway, the rest of the night sucked. I'd rather not get into it, but here's the gist of it... we were playing Scattegories, the category was "Something you save up to buy," the letter was "U" and I put "unicycle." And that ended up ruining my evening. So ridiculous. Board games are supposed to be fun, but I'm really starting to hate them because people are really obnoxious and competitive and can't seem to look beyond the obvious. "Unicycle" is not even that creative of an answer for that category, but apparently it's too far of a stretch for my crazy friends. I guess we'll never be playing that game again, since I'm the one who owns it and I'm certainly not going to want to. Ugh.
I'm know I'm being somewhat ridiculous, and that the stupid Scattegories incident isn't the only thing that's bothering me... but I'm always getting told how uncreative I am, and Scattegories is all about creativity, and my friends can't even stretch their minds a little bit to see how a UNICYCLE (which is a thing, something you buy, and a novelty item) could fit that category. I don't even care that I usually lose that game. I don't care that it was only a point. If there's no incentive to be creative in the game because anything that's remotely different is going to get shot down... then that takes all of the fun out of it for me. And I'm fine with that.
And now I've gone on a ridiculous tirade that I didn't even want to do. Woohoo.
- Lizzardie, at 5:24 PM
|
Sunday, July 04, 2004
|
Tonight is a strange night. I haven't quite figured out why, but it is strange. First I should note that my new room set up bothers me somewhat, in that I can no longer prop my feet on my bed while I'm sitting at my desk. I have to content myself with propping them on the desk itself, which is definitely not the same. Other parts of it I like, though - the room. And the change in set up was necessary to put the air conditioner in.
I didn't do much today. There was a lot of trying to sleep and failing. I finished the Secretary section of the Tome. And I read a book. I started this evening, and finished, mostly in the last 3 hours, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. I enjoyed this one much more than Slaughterhouse Five. Having finished the book, I now want to hear President Lehman's speech from Commencement again, so I can get the point that Herb and my aunt have raved about. Apparently they do put Commencement speeches online - if you'd like to read any one of the last 10 years of Cornell's Commencement speeches, go to this site: http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/News/Speechxxxx, where xxxx is the year you want, 1994 to 2003 - but as you can see, 2004's is not yet up there, so I wait. Anyway, the book had lots of references to Cornell in it - it's strange, because the book was written in the 1960's, but the references still apply - pre-meds, Greeks, Hotelies... I was amazed, as I always am, to find out that in general, everything is always the same. The line "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." appeared in the book as well. I immediately recognized it from the DMB song "Tripping Billies," and I went to look up the lyrics to find out if it was referencing Vonnegut or something else - I couldn't tell. Anyway, it was pretty easy reading and I liked it, so that's my initial book review at 4:00am.
I took a brief break from the book to watch flies in the living room with Herb. For some reason we have a ton of flies in the house, and so we watched them fly around the living room, counting them, commenting on where they were, how many there were. The kept pausing on the chandelier, then taking off again. I would watch one fly around and around the room, and then I my eyes would hit the chandelier and everything would go white... it was always a few seconds before my eyes could focus again, and by then I had lost the fly I was watching. I swear we sat there doing this for 5 or 10 minutes. Herb commented that we were behaving like cats.
Yeah, I said it was a strange evening. Jeff and AJ just got back from wherever they were, and I promised I'd go to bed soon, so maybe I'll do that. Fireworks on the Esplanade tomorrow, whatever that means (apparently the Esplanade is this park along the Charles River on the Boston side, and unless you arrive early, you can't find a place to sit). I am excited about the fireworks. They're supposed to be spectacular.
- Lizzardie, at 4:05 AM
|
Saturday, July 03, 2004
|
Yesterday I finally got the celebration I was waiting for (sorta). At least my roommates put in an effort, which I know I should be grateful for.
First I went downtown with Jeff, AJ, Kristen and John to meet up with Cheryl and then go to the Foggy Goggle, where one of Cheryl's friends works. Her friend wasn't there, and the place was not that impressive. Half of the stuff on their menu was not available, and there menu was not extensive to begin with. And their music selection started off pretty nice - they played almost an entire Violent Femmes album - but then deteriorated rapidly, into Britney and some weird remixes (Jefferson Airplane?). You could tell this place was mostly a bar, and not so used to the restaurant aspect (it took forever to get our check and our waiter flat-out told us he was hungover and not really up to working that day). So yeah, don't go to the Foggy Goggle.
Lunch had been late, so we just planned to stay in the city for the rest of the day. We walked down Newbury Street, which is really pretty and has lots of shopping, albiet expensive shopping. Kristen took me to the bead store, and I'm really looking forward to going back to the one at Harvard Square so that I can make some jewelry. Then we headed towards the Public Gardens and the Boston Common, and just hung out in the park for awhile. We made plans to go and pick Vinny up at South Station when her bus got in from NYC. Of course, we got there, and her bus was late, so we had an hour to kill. Cheryl wanted to go to a bar, so Jeff took us to the Boston Harbour Hotel. This place was beautiful (this was actually where I was supposed to go with Jeff and Herb last summer one night and it never panned out), but not what any of us had in mind, as we were all in shorts and jeans and whatnot. So, we went over by the water where they were showing a movie outside, and just hung out there until it was time to go get Vinny.
Once we had Vinny, we headed to the North End, where we met up with Herb and Rebecca. There was some confusion over which restaurant we were going to eat at, but finally ended up at Dolce Vite Ristorante, which is where we went on my birthday last year. It was fantastic, of course. I got the seafood special, which was expensive, but had jumbo shrimp, scallops and about half a lobster tail (still in the shell) with homemade linguini and a tomato-brandy sauce. YUM. The wine was a Valpolicella Classico, also delicious (though served a bit warm). After dinner, we parted ways with most people, or tried to. Vinny had left to spend time with other friends, and the rest of us were going to hop on the T to get back to our homes. Cheryl and Rebecca needed the green line all the way, while we needed to switch to the red line in order to get back to Somerville. Jeff and AJ managed to not get off at our stop (Herb and I made it off fine), and had to double back. Herb and I waited for them, which gave us a great opportunity to make fun of them.
So yeah, that was the evening. We still haven't enjoyed my Barolo, but soon enough I guess. I just wish my roommates were willing to make solid plans, because half of the night I didn't know what was going on, and it didn't even seem like everyone there wanted to go out to dinner that night. I don't think that Herb and Jeff realized that it was important to me that my friends be there for my celebration - namely, Herb, Jeff, Vinny and Rebecca - but that everyone else was an afterthought. Except, I didn't want other people to be miserable, either. So if we'd had a more solid plan that everyone knew about, I think everyone would have been more happy, instead of a lot of really grumpy people. *sigh*
I'm looking forward to being at the park tomorrow for the music and fireworks, and I'll still get to spend some time with Vinny this weekend, so hopefully things will brighten up.
- Lizzardie, at 12:05 PM
|
Friday, July 02, 2004
|
I know this is ridiculous, but I had a bad day and this made me feel better:
| How to make a Lizzardie |
Ingredients:
3 parts success
3 parts brilliance
1 part beauty |
Method:
Add to a cocktail shaker and mix vigorously. Top it off with a sprinkle of curiosity and enjoy! |
Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com
I'm not even sure what happened today, because it didn't start off bad. I did some celebratory shopping yesterday, and I was content to sit and work on the Tome all afternoon. I got a little distracted for awhile talking to a friend, and then a little frustrated with the Tome, but you know, no big deal. But then....
I have learned that men (all of them) are complete morons, so I can't just hint at something. But when I ask repeatedly for someone to not do something, and I'm clearly upset... should it require more than that?
I feel like I was torn apart all day. Like, several hours of someone just ripping everything about me to shreds. This is not a nice feeling. Apparently there's something wrong with me, or so I was told. I feel absolutely horrible and full of regret now, even though I don't think I did anything wrong. I was upset with a situation, I asked for the situation to change several times, it didn't, I retreated into my room, done deal. But no, I have problems. And if someone could explain to me how me being insecure (which okay, I admit that I am) makes me arrogant, that would be great. I can see how someone could be both (I think I've been told I'm both before), but one because of the other? I don't understand this at all.
So yeah, needless to say, I have not been in pleasant mood all evening. And the Tome didn't get done. And I'm exhausted. And I missed Celebrity Poker, which I was looking forward to all week. My only consolation is that I got to try a Sloe Gin Fizz and it was mighty tasty. I'll have to order that more often.
Now I'm going to sleep, and pray that I have more fun tomorrow, as we're supposed to be celebrating my new job at a North End restaurant.
- Lizzardie, at 2:32 AM
|
|
