Nice times in Olympia

As you might easily have guessed from my miserable attitude just 5 days ago, things are obviously alright. I've been working at old school, and hanging out with this guy. Today, I trained as a cook, which is cool, since being a cashier isn't all its chalked up to be. Tonight, I plan on taking a long walk, reading a book and watching Paris, Je T'aime and hanging out with that guy.
Tomorrow, I will work at KRS in the morning, learn more about pizza making in the early afternoon, and anything after that is too far in the future to be planned.


But....................the important thing is that I am a happy little clam at the moment, and that I have bought a plane ticket to Minneapolis for 12:55am on July 28th. It was a stupid flight to chose, but I'm a poor decision maker, so now I will begin convincing myself that it'll be exciting to hang around the airport at night.



I also embroidered a charming little dude on the back of my t-shirt last night, as I was waiting around to get sleepy. I plan to scatter more little embroidered dudes on the rest of my clothes, which is why my plans now include a trip to someplace that sells embroidery thread.

On a more positive note, I absolutely and emphatically cannot WAIT to get the dave longstreth/black flag tribute album! I think it is going to seriously RULE.

Terribly Homesick

I have settled into my mini-room in Olympia. I am ridiculously and pathetically homesick. If you happen to be on my extensive list of mail-recipients (and I don't know why anyone who didn't know me would read this), you can look forward to receiving a whiny and depressing letter, detailing my limited experiences so far. Some of the highlights including :

walking to and from downtown a few times a day.
wondering if people notice that I'm always walking to and from downtown.
chastising myself for wondering if people are noticing me.
wondering if people think I'm a weirdo for walking around so much.

It's the sort of beautiful cycle of thought that only occurs when one spends immense amounts of time alone and without aims or goals. Perhaps, as any number of people have told me in the months leading up to this move, Olympia was not the best possible destination. It is too early to tell, but it's on my mind. I've also found myself overly concerned with "bothering" people, which has so far translated into not getting in touch with anyone I knew last summer, and having my feelings hurt that my house was not demolished in a mad rush of people trying to hang out with me. So, in the end, I know I'm being pretty ridiculous and more than a little self-centered, as well as quite impatient and unrealistic. But still.

40 hours of travel, not enough naps

I arrived in Olympia on the afternoon of June 10th, and there were sunshowers, which felt pretty epic and important. I immediately hopped on the wrong bus and was almost whisked away to some shitty place where my house is not at. Luckily, the crisis was averted and yours truly was saved. So I scoped out the house and dropped off my suitcase, got take out from saigon rendezvouz and hopped on the greyhound. On the bus, I grappled with such supremely mindblowing questions as:

Do people around me know that this is fake meat I am eating?
Wouldn't it be cool to get matching tetris tattoos with someone you're pretty keen on?
Why am I going to Los Angeles?
Should I just get off in Portland and hang?
Have I drank enough water?
Have I drank enough soda?
Do my feet smell?
I smell really bad, don't I?

Obviously, this sharp little mind of mine has no trouble grappling with truly pressing issues and concerns, even when sitting on a greyhound for 25 hours, listening to a skipping cd player and reading David Foster Wallace,who, by the way, is an out-and-out genius as far as I'm concerned, mostly because of his epic and poignant footnotes. I wish I knew how to make footnotes on the internet, as this would have been a good opportunity for an homage.

An exciting story from my vacation, actually two, and both from last night:

1. As Allison and I drove towards downtown Los Angeles, on the freeway, the car began to slow down. As I was not at the wheel, and have little idea as to how cars actually do what they do, I assumed this was on purpose. Sadly, I was wrong, and we had actually run out of gas. I also had to pee. We decided to hop out of the car and look for a gas station. We asked the first car we found, asking directions from a woman who didn't speak english, and her 10-year old son. We started walking, when all of a sudden, they pulled up, asking if we wanted a bottle of gasoline. Long story short, this awesome family totally went out of their way to lend us a hand and helped us siphon gas into a car pulled over on the shoulder of a busy freeway. I fell desperately in love, not like that's uncommon. Also, throughout all this, Allison and I looked remarkably like prostitutes, as we stood on the corner wearing dresses, trying to ignore the cars that slowed down and asked if we needed a lift.

2. The second time I fell in love was at Amoeba, where the clerk in a slayer shirt was a total babe who talked about Jonathan Richman, and instead of holding a conversation about Massachusetts, and potentially asking what on earth people actually DO in Los Angeles, I didn't. Also, in retrospect, I have absolutely no idea if he was really a babe or not, which is obviously arbitrary anyway, since he complimented my purchases, and was into Jonathan Richman and Slayer. So, duh.


My suntan is still a sunburn, but it'll fade. I'm bussing it back to Olympia tomorrow, with my darling bicycle this time. Woot Woot!

11:53 am: arrive in Seattle, WA. 7:30 tomorrow: arrive in Los Angeles, CA. This is going to be a long and complicated something, but when the dust clears, I'll be taking up residence in Olympia, WA, once more. I miss Boston, I miss New York, I miss Vassar College, I wonder if this is a poorly thought out decision. I suppose I wouldn't be my fathers daughter if I wasn't nervously rethinking this all at the last moment. Airport!

so i finished college...

I've been a prize-winning graduate of a fully accredited collegiate institution for over a week, and I haven't done anything particularly notable. I've mulled over the troubling implications of flipping between "the biggest loser", a weight-loss reality TV show, and "barefoot contessa", a sickeningly heavy-on-the-butter show on the food network. I've begun to compile a master book-list, for the television-less time in the near future when I will once again be an independent woman, no longer suckling from the parental teat of full refrigerators and cable television. I've been listening to This American Life while playing tetris.

so that's my life, and this is the aforementioned book list.

David Foster Wallace A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll never do Again
Umberto Eco How to Travel with a Salmon and other stories
Amy Hempel Collected Stories
Matthew Derby Super Flat Times
Ben Marcus The Age of Wire and String
John Fante Ask the Dust
Miranda July Nobody Belongs Here More than You
Dave Eggers What is the What
Gary Lutz Stories in the Worst Way
David Ohle Motorman
Raymond Carver Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories
Grace Paley The Collected Stories
Sarah Vowell Assassination Vacation
John Hodgman My Areas of Expertise


So there. I've got a blog.