So, apparently I'm still in school

I'm such a deadbeat. No, I'm not still in Amsterdam. Annie and I made it home and I even got to stop in Queens just long enough to say hi to Susie, Zack, and Graham, and to hear all of Astoria erupt at the ending of the World Cup final game. Since then I've had a wonderful two weeks at home, during which Brian and I found a sweet apartment (September 1st, get ready for cuteness), and even celebrated at my lovely friend Kelly's wedding in Savannah! We kind of couldn't believe how hot and humid it was down there, but nevertheless we had a great time.

Dare I say it...I'm packing for my other ginormous trip right now. I'm off to finish my grad program on a study abroad trip in Ireland, after which I'll just zip over to Brazil for week for another course. After that I'll be decorating my new apartment and hyperventilating daily about my lack of employment and my plethora of loan payments. For the time being, however, I'm psyched!! I can't wrap my mind around the idea that I'm leaving for a little over a month. I've had a little trouble deciding what to bring...



...so I'll probably overpack just a tiny bit. Updates to follow, for realz this time.

Euro trip?

Aaaand...I'm not home yet. Annie and I are stranded in Amsterdam for a night. We don't even know how it happened, just suddenly we were in the airport in Amsterdam and some expressionless lady from the airline was telling us that we wouldn't make our connecting flight because our first flight was delayed, and the next thing we knew, we were given "overnight kits" and shuttled to a hotel. A couple hours later our bellies are full and we are the proud owners of wooden shoe keychains. Both of those things helped immensely, since before that we were pretty much a wreck.

So that sucks. The only good thing about all of this is that we were bumped to business class. So much for my funny return post filled with pictures. All I'll say is that my birthday celebration with my cousins on the boat involved some very, very hilarious (and well-documented) karaoke. Now I have to make some phone calls.

Nouveau message.

Bonjour!

Okay. I know that I made this big deal about this being a travel blog and all, but here are three legitimate reasons why I haven't posted yet:
1. Internet service on the cruise is 50 cents a minute. Highway robbery!
2. We have had almost no free time when on shore.
3. I have been sick with some fierce, um...G.I. issues.

But now I'm in France for the first time, which is quite exciting! My parents and sister and I had the most amazing lunch in a teeny bistro in Nice. And tomorrow I finally get to see Aix-en-Provence, which Brian has been raving about. Before this we went to the Amalfi coast, Rome, and Florence. It's lovely to see family that I don't often see, and to go to so many cool places. However, cruise travel is also very strange to me. If I had to attach a general theme to it, I would probably pick "Buffet." That applies, most directly, to the food situation. What's up with the constant food? I mean CONSTANT. The only reason I haven't gained 10 pounds on this trip is because I literally have been too sick to eat. But the travel part is also a buffet of sorts too, since you just get a little of everything. I find it a little stressful to have to spend such a short amount of time in one place each day, but whatever. I'm certainly not complaining. The positive side of a buffet is that there's something for everyone. And it is kind of amazing that my 6-year-old cousin is just as occupied and entertained as my 83-year-old grandmother. And my whole, 26-person family on this trip is highly, highly funny.

Barcelona was absolutely stunning, we spent about four days there at the beginning, just Annie and I with Bridget. We saw tons of stuff, and had the perfect mix of seeing significant things like museums and architecture, and doing relaxing walking around and having sangria on the beach. I need to go back there.

Alright, family is gettintg antsy, as usual. Time to find un cafe, I believe. More later, and pictures when I get back, for sure!

Afloat.

So a year ago (or maybe more) I updated my blogger profile, and in the "About me" section, I wrote "Packing and unpacking." Funny how that's still totally true. And with that...

Welcome to my TravelBlog!

It's just becoming a travel blog by default, since I will be blogging while traveling for the next few months. I just spent a lovely week at home in the Chi, spending QT with Brian, running around getting ready for my trip, seeing my parents. And now it's far too early in the day and I'm in my sister's apartment in Brooklyn. You see, tonight she and I leave for Barcelona for a few days before our entire family gets there and we all go on a cruise. I've never been on a cruise before, let alone Conway Family Boat Extravaganza '06; I'll let you know how it goes. Anyway, right now Brendan and I are sitting across from each other on matching Powerbooks, having coffee and tooling around on the internet before we both go get Mystic Tans. That's right, yo.

So yeah, Barcelona here we come! I'm definitely excited for that, I've never been there. More when we get there, I promise. I've been berated enough for my blogging laziness. This is it, folks.

Crap, I forgot to download that Catalan podcast so I can brush up...

Crap.

Leaving is hard.

More on that later.

The unclassifiable.

Some things:

1. Danielle Gasparro is wonderful. Check out her music, and also try to see her live. Fun fact: she's Andrew's temporary roommate.

2. I am packing to move again. Already? The good thing is, for some reason I actually seem to have less crap than I thought! This is amazing, since every time I've moved I have been completely and totally floored by the amount of useless shit I own. This change may have to do with my impending divorce from my hetero-lifemate of six years (something I cannot yet actually face, let alone talk about), or it could have to do with the fact that said housemate and I, when packing to move to NYC a year ago, made some last minute, er, deposits, in the alley, of some very large piles of stuff that we simply didn't know where to stash at the last minute. So the last move was productive. But don't get me wrong, the amount of useless shit I still have is astounding. Astounding! Why on earth was I ever sentimental about Disneyland postcards? Why do I mysteriously have so many of my sister's high school pictures? And why, oh why, have I never organized my photos and continue to lug around torn, disintegrated envelopes full of them? The other good thing, however, is that I'm becoming less attached to crappy things and so very much more willing to chuck it all. God, it feels good.

3. Remember a few posts ago when I posted a picture of me in a scooter helmet, looking coy? Well as it turns out, I didn't look quite so flirtatious the entire time I was wearing that helmet. I also, apparently, did dances. Like this:

I just thought you should see that.

4. Back to this: Holy crap, I'm moving again? I don't even have a truck reserved and my stuff is supposedly being taken back to Chicago this weekend. I'm going to try to focus on how well I'm doing at throwing out crappy knick-knacks.

Fleet Week 2006: Success!

Well kids, I am now about to expose my real reason for relocating to New York City...to snag myself a sailor during the much anticipated yearly celebration of Fleet Week, when all those ships dock in the NYC harbor and the Navy lads go looking for fun. And did I ever bag me a seaman! Check him out:



Okay, okay...he's not really a random naval officer I picked up in a bar, and he may not actually have taken me to the Fleet Week ball. But we did have lunch at Cafe Bar in Astoria, Queens, while he was all gussied up in his dress whites. Doesn't he look sooo Top Gun?! "He" is my dear friend Andrew, a rabbinical student here in NYC who has worked as a chaplain in the Navy. He had a special meeting with an admiral, so he got to get dressed up, and we decided to make an afternoon of it. Hey, those creases take time!

Turns out it was a weekend of Andrew fun, which is a special brand of fantastic. Today we spent all day at his sweet place, reading Hebrew children's books about where babies come from, cooking a meal of fajitas, mango salsa, and peach-apple pie, and watching many of our very favorite episodes from the Buffy box set.

But that was only the end of my day. After a night of salsa dancing and a slumber party with Annie and Brendan, we got up this morning and walked around Fort Greene with our coffee mugs. Then Annie whipped up a brunch of pistachio french toast and ricotta fritatta muffins.



You know, just your typical Sunday morning spread.

Updates.

I am so ready to be done with this semester, for so many reasons. I'm trying to finish up two final assignments, and it's taking me waaaay longer than it should. It's frustrating. I need to have time to think about other things.

I'm currently in huge limbo right now about the decision of where I'll be next year, NY or Chicago. I don't want to think about it right now, but since it's consumed my thoughts for the last week or so, I thought I'd mention it.

So Sus, Josh and I woke up on this beautiful Saturday morning and watched the series finale of Six Feet Under as a family. We've all been watching the episodes at different times, but we all waited to watch the last one together. How is it that the end of a TV show can seem like the end of an era? It was amazing, and heart-wrenching, and I went for a run after and could only listen to soft, melancholy music. All of us talked about how we love the characters and how this is the only show where we truly think about them like we know them. Sigh.

In other news, my parents are coming to town today for my sister's various graduation events, and they're staying the whole week! Fun fun. They've never been here for that long since we moved here, and we're both excited for them to see actual parts of our daily lives.

Back to work. Once I'm done I'll post more, I'm sure. Ha. Speaking of which, I wish I knew how to redesign my blog template myself. It's just too much work to learn it now, but I want a new look.

Where does the time go?

I actually have negative time to be posting this week. I haven't been slacking, I've been busy having fun and, well, being busy. Brian came for a lovely extended weekend, and we were also graced with the presence of our long lost friends, the fabulous ATF and Lizzie. They joined us all the way from northern Michigan, a far-off land where all they eat is almond-crusted whitefish and cherries. We took them for big city food like dim sum and, um, italian...and we hit museums and bars and the hookah.

It was awesome. And I completely neglected my work, which is how it should have been. But now I have four papers due and I should have been in bed an hour ago. Yar!

On another note, for so many many reasons, I can't believe it's almost May.

I understand a love of shoes, but come ON.

We have lots of magazines in my apartment. Only one is technically mine--RealSimple--and that was a gift, but between the roommates we subscribe to TimeOut, The New Yorker, Blender, Harper's, and Cook's Illustrated. It's a lot of freaking breakfast-time reading material, to say nothing of the tremendous weight our coffee table bears.

So it was kind of out of the ordinary the other day, while I was standing in a mind-boggingly endless line at the drugstore just wanting to buy a snack for the train ride home, that I began eyeing a Marie Claire on the rack by the register. This is the reason they put those magazines there, because people buy them impulsively at the last second, and I knew that. I knew it. But I was facing an hour long train ride home, I was exhausted and not in the mood for my novel, and I'd never really read that particular magazine. And besides, the real reason I finally decided to buy it was because the largest, most prominent headline on the front had to do with hairstyles and related ideas, and to be honest I need a haircut so desperately right now that I think about my rat's nest a lot. So I bought it, as a guilty pleasure, and I really wish I hadn't.

Ugh. These are the kinds of magazines that sociologists and psychologists talk about. It's not Cosmo, because everyone, even subscribers, knows that Cosmo is ridiculous in a more overt way, what with hot pink covers and their same "HOT sex!!" headline every single damn month. It's much more difficult to take all of that seriously, even though I'm sure people do. But something like Marie Claire, which masks itself as a more understated, straightforward fashion and human interest glossy, is what I believe is doing more damage.

The first thing I noticed that pissed me off--though perhaps trivial--was the aforementioned hair feature. The biggest part about that was this huge pull-out of different celebrities' hairstyles, meant to give everyone the perfect for their face shape. Clearly this was not going to be the final authority on hair, but in this large spread of 80 pictures (literally), there were perhaps two with curly hair. This kind of stuff has pissed me off since I was twelve, but I was just sad to see it continue.

But that's not even the worst part. The "big features" that this magazine boasts? An investigative report into the "unbelievable duties" of Japan's sex volunteers, men who volunteer to deflower women who are nearing or past 30 and are still virgins. Thank goodness these men are around to, as the article says, help embarrassed "good girls learn about lovemaking"! Next up in the Features section: "Could you give up your razor for a month?" Gasp!! And my personal favorite: "I surfed naked for a pair of Manolos." Aside from an interesting article about human trafficking, that was pretty much it. Now, I know no one expects freaking Marie Claire to be changing the world, but can we ever begin to revise our idea of who exactly reads these magazines? Am I overreacting? It's true, most people pick these up so they have a fluffy read, and that's why I bought it too. But the readers do have brains, and sometimes I feel that things like this are actively trying to turn those brains into molasses. That's all.

Sigh.

Springy-dingy.

I had several very pleasant and funny interactions with strangers in New York City today, which can only mean one thing: spring fever. When you grow up in Chicago, you have a lot of trouble trusting balmy breezes that occur before May. You are very tentative in your enjoyment of the first warm front, because you always believe that it's some sort of evil ruse and in five minutes you'll be knocked over by a frigid wind or buried in snow. This is not the case here, at least not today. Never since I moved to New York (in the heat of last summer) have people made eye contact and smiled so much, and never have I been entertained so thoroughly by random people on the street/in an elevator/driving a cab. It was the only thing as refreshing as the 70-degrees-and-sunny weather.

I thought my day was going to thorougly suck when the 6 train arrived and I wasn't able to get in any of the FOUR (4) different doors I tried, because it was so packed full of people. I was running late, so I walked outside and jumped in a cab operated by one of the funniest characters I've ever met, a middle aged man who immediately told me I smelled good and that I could have any job in the world, especially in the hotel business, which he knows because he was a head hunter once. He can read people. Then he told me all about the jobs he's had, which include owning a restaurant in Mexico City and currently owning a deli in Westchester. What was he doing driving a cab? Who knows? I didn't ask, because I was too busy being entertained by his exhaustive analysis of my "genuine" and "charming" character, and his subsequent prediction of the most appropriate career path for me, all based on what he could see by looking in the rearview mirror. I gave him a nice tip, and when I reached my appointment and got in the elevator, a very small, very scruffy little man in a green messenger outfit who could have been anywhere between 35 and 60 years old told me in a raspy voice that I looked pretty.

So there you go. And the rest of the day continued with me smiling at people and them smiling back, other people smiling at each other, lots of how-are-you's, and very few public obscenties.

Powder.

I apologize. I haven't posted in a long time, and this one isn't particularly interesting. But it has a picture! Oooooh!

As I mentioned, Brian was here for a whole week, and besides when he was following me around to various jobs and other responsibilities (like basketball games, where he became a ringer for one of our absent players and kicked ass), we did actually do fun stuff, like picnic in Central Park and see movies.

Aaaaand...then I went skiing again. In Lake Tahoe. I know, I know, I went skiing only three blog posts ago, but because of a travel voucher we had, I had the chance to fly pretty much for free and I jumped on it. Brian was there, as well as an assortment of other fun people. And I confirmed my skiing addiction. Also, skiing at well-known places with real snow and mountains with actual high altitudes and views of a huge lake is really freaking cool.

See? There's me, and unfortunately--it was taken with my camera phone--you can't quite see the lake in the background, but it's there.

I tell ya, coming back was difficult. Leaving four days of vacation, skiing, and hot tub behind, then having a layover in my hometown airport and not being able to stay there, then coming back late and jumping into everything early today...it was tough. Still, you know what? I may eat my words, but I think spring may have begun.

At least the hardest parts of my job sometimes end up being so absurd they're funny.

Today, I had a rubber chicken thrown at me. Not as a joke.

In more positive news, Brian's spending an entire week of his spring break here! Woot!

Hey guys!

Starting a class and a new internship in the same week makes Margaret a very busy girl. No time for pondering blog post subjects these past few days. However, I'm not cranky in the least, because I get to run around doing all my stuff in freakishly nice weather! Seventy degrees? I'll take it!

Anyway, recently I was able to get together with most of the readership of my blog, two wonderful people who inspire me, and this was the result:

Susie, me, Graham

I think Graham said it best, as always. I wish I could have you both around all the time!

Ski bunny!

Ohmygoodness, I love skiing! We went to Camelback in Pennsylvania, and not counting the one time I went for a few hours at a crappy ski place in Wisconsin seven years ago, this weekend was my first real time skiing. So. Much. Fun. I feel like I learned pretty quickly--thanks to my expert and supportive companions, Brian, Sus, and Josh--and although some tumbles are inevitable, I avoided any gigantic wipeouts and achieved high speeds on some decidedly non-beginner runs. I was very proud of myself. I'm already trying to finagle a trip to an even more intense ski destination sometime in the near future...

I think I looked the part, n'est pas?

I heart the Olympics.

I love everything about them, winter and summer, from the endless colorful flags to the theme music to the teensy weensy gymnasts and the ripped skiiers, the outfits, the surprises, the scandals (speaking of, isn't Bode Miller an ass?), even the heartwarming TV profiles of the medal favorites, complete with shots of ever-supportive family members and training montages set to trendy music. Love it.

Zack asked me last night what even I would compete in if I had the chance to do any in the winter Olympics. I expressed interest in the obvious figure skating, and he said he'd always wanted to learn luge, but we both agreed that in the end, you really can't argue with short track speed skating. It's just so intense.

Back to my weekend o' work.

Sad? Depressed?

Just not yourself? Need a lift? Why not look at some weird pictures of baby animals?


Click on the picture. Come on, try it. You know you want to.

Aaaaand...there goes my morning.

Ummm...I don't really have anything much to say. I'm too distracted by GoogleChat at the moment. One more reason for an unproductive day? Check.

What are our thoughts about this new GoogleChat feature? Not that I haven't enjoyed the few tentative conversations I've had with fellow gmail-using friends, but it also seems sort of strange that it was unveiled so suddenly by Google, who just seemed to decide that it's one of those features that everyone wanted, like auto-forward or the ability to create email groups. Then again, I'm sure they do focus groups on this kind of thing all the time, right? Either way, it seems like a good way to get people to never not be connected to Google. As my dear friend ATF (who I'm chatting with at this very moment) said, and I quote, "for a company whose motto is Don't Be Evil, Google sure found a good way to make sure people can't do their jobs." Good thing I don't have a desk job now. My question is, where was this feature over the last two years, when I literally spun around in my desk chair to pass time at work?

Oh, and I won't go through a lengthy description of my Chicago weekend, but it was absolutely lovely. Brian outdid himself again, and I *almost* got to stay an extra day because of this "noreaster" (why the hell do they call it that?) that dumped snow all over New York. The weekend was full of fun surprises and seeing people...so much so that we ended up cancelling all plans on Sunday and instead watched many many episodes of "Entourage." Perfect.

And I already think my job is awesome!

Today was the best day of work ever. Like, seriously. The first graders I worked with, who are already pretty much my favorite, reached new levels of brilliance, complexity, and cooperation in all of our dramatic activities, several of which I did in my most recent graduate level course. A few actually giggled with delight while doing their extended work with partners. Extended. Work. With. Partners.

Really.

Then--and this is the crazy part--the middle schoolers, all of whom I wanted to fling off of the stage headfirst last week, spent an entire hour engaged, having fun, encouraging each other, and doing some of the best improv I've seen in a while. And they were nice.

Whaaa...??!

And of course, a potential employer just called.

I just had a cavity filled for the first time in my life. (oh, the shame!) Halfway through the procedure they had to give me an extra injection because I'm such a wimp when it comes to mouth pain. Now I'm sitting in a lounge at school, compulsively biting my numb lower lip, poking my cheek, and wondering if anyone can actually see the right side of my face drooping, because that's what it feels like.

And I desperately want a cup of coffee, but I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to keep it from dribbling down my face. This sucks.