Thursday, November 11, 2010

Best. Comment. Ever.

Last Friday, I was checking my email on my phone, when I saw that someone had commented on my blog. My first thought was, "OMGGGGGGGGGGG! Someone commented on my blog, YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!" My second thought was, "But wait. It's probably another sad spam message from 趙嘉慧 saying 'IS VERY GOOD.........'" (which I happened to receive on an old blog last week). But then I looked closer at who the comment was from. "Hmm, that's weird," I thought. "The comment is from Clarisonic?" I immediately assumed the comment was a joke, one of my friends being a total face dildo (a term Cody and I charmingly apply towards my Clarisonic), pretending to chastise me and make me think twice about hating my $200 deep face cleaner.

But no.

No, you guys. In fact...CLARISONIC, or a representative of the company, COMMENTED ON MY BLOG.

Now, let's just take a few moments to consider the following:

1) Big Brother Clarisonic actually forces a number of employees to track every single link to their website that is published in the vast Internet landscape.
2) Clarisonic took a look at my one-month-old, four-total-posts, five-total-comments-including-the-blogger-herself, free blog on Blogspot, and thought that my influence was so far-reaching that A COMMENT NEEDED TO BE MADE. Damage control MUST be applied, quickly!
3) In an effort to be my buddy, Clarisonic creepily wished me a happy belated birthday (to Kirsten -- oops! Buddy comment FAIL).

Now, I never meant to hurt the Clarisonic company's feelings. Clearly most people do love the product, and I just have abnormally lame skin. So, please, if you would like to try out Clarisonic for yourself, just ask me and I will happily give you my personalized pink Clarisonic. You'll have to get over the fact that the back of it is engraved with "Kristin" in italicized font, however. Maybe you'll have a better experience than me (in fact, I'm sure of it!).

In conclusion, thank you Clarisonic, for totally making my day on Friday. It remains to be seen whether you have the balls to comment again on a blog in which you are called a face dildo.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Fourteen Thoughts

How has it already been two weeks since I posted last?! I really entered this whole blogging thing again hoping to change my past habits, so I am going to post again, before I completely lose momentum. Not much has gone on in the past couple weeks, which is probably a gigantic reason for not posting anything. But now, to make up for each silent day, I present...Fourteen Thoughts.

1. The Giants won the World Series!, and though I'm not a baseball (or really, any sports) fan unless you count the odd MMA fight I'm forced to watch, I do super wish that I was in San Francisco last night to experience the excitement. This, I think, marks the first time since moving that I have actively desired to be back in San Francisco, and is a sharp contrast to the feeling I had over the weekend when I saw my first homeless person in months, and experienced a huge wave of gratitude that I don't have to hear "Spare change?" mumbled at me daily anymore.

2. Do I sound like a Republican?

3. I feel much more relaxed and less anxious than I did when I first started this blog. I'm attributing this to yoga/not running anymore/just getting more used to my surroundings/day-to-day routine in general.

4. Illustration of the difference in Type A and Type B personalities: Last week, I went to my first dental appointment out here and was incensed to learn that after they spent an hour farting around, taking X-rays and carefully recording every detail ever about my teeth that ever existed, ever, they were not going to clean my teeth and that I NEEDED TO COME BACK AT A LATER DATE. The way I responded to such news, even though I was super annoyed, was by amiably agreeing to just come back (later that day, of all stupid things). Cody experienced The Dentist yesterday, and when he was told to make another appointment because they weren't going to have time to get around to cleaning his teeth, he was ALSO incensed, but expressed it by telling them he was just going to go to another dentist, and going to the gym immediately after his appointment to "work off steam." I like being Type B and all, but methinks that if I were just a little more fiery, I could achieve a lot more in life...

5. Speaking of Cody, Georgia seems to have inexplicably turned him into the most stylish dude ever. To truly understand how this is hilarious and worth commenting on, you must understand that when I first met him, he dressed like a total middle-aged dad, basically refusing to wear anything but khakis from Banana Republic. When we moved to San Francisco, out of necessity, he became much more stylish, but only in a grad student, vaguely metrosexual kind of way (emphasis on vaguely...really, he just grew some facial hair and started shopping at places with a younger demographic than Banana Republic). Here, though, he gets comments on his button-down shirts ALL THE TIME! (And um...they're all from J.Crew. Apparently if you pair anything with a skinny tie, you win big in the style category.) This is a tad consternating for me, since I have yet to figure out what my style here is going to be (my old uniform of skinny jeans/flats doesn't really cut it here in the land of tanned and toned undergrads wearing tiny shorts), so I need to step up my game.

6. My mother-in-law got me a Clarisonic skin care system for my birthday, and I think it's made my skin break out. It's a $200 contraption, so I feel strongly that it should DO THE OPPOSITE.

7. Not too much progress on the house front, though we have picked out a paint color for the exterior, found a picture of a vintage bathroom that I would like the contractor to somehow just replicate, and I'm pretty certain that I want an orange front door. I think that would be kind of...badass.

8. I submitted my grad school application to UGA yesterday! It feels so good to actually be making changes in my life instead of just saying I will, one day in the future. The extremely old professor did eventually agree to write me a letter of recommendation, though I have a feeling he's not totally sure who I am.

9. I recently read that a woman's fertility decreases after the age of 30, something that is rather concerning to me, since I am 29 and always thought of myself as rather young and having plenty of time to figure life out. But now that I'm going back to school hopefully, it creates issues that I definitely did not consider earlier in my twenties. I realize every woman deals with the family/work/school balance in some way, but it's finally starting to hit me now. Part of me wishes I hadn't put everything off until 30 was looming, but I know that my life would have been extremely different and not necessarily in a good way, and you have to respect your own process.

10. We bought four bags of candy for the massive number of trick-or-treaters we thought we would get this weekend. Final number of trick-or-treaters: 0. I think this qualifies as a Halloween Fail.

11. Trader Joe's opened in Athens this past weekend. I'm not even lying when I say that my visit to TJ's this weekend substantially increased my happiness level, by like, a million. It was like a little slice of my old life, but with ample parking and an easy drive home!

12. Another thing that vastly improved my life this weekend was going to Woodfire Grill. Holy shit, that meal was a-mazing.

13. I voted today. I had no idea who I was voting for, and I had a not insubstantial feeling that it didn't matter anyway (hello, red state!), but I admit, I partly did it because I thought it would help me establish residency so I can get in-state tuition next year.

14. Next blog post, I WILL veer away from the list. Hopefully.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Weekend Update

I am sadly stranded here in the apartment (the car that was getting worked on last week? yeah, it's making scary noises now and chugging along in an alarming way, so I'm going to take it in tomorrow), so I figured I might as well write up an update, typically done in my favorite format: that of the list.

HOUSE

Last Friday we met with the contractor who is doing renovations on the house. I might as well say *our* house, though we haven't put any money down yet, but we're all pretty much acting like this will be our house. When we arrived at the house last week, the contractor, J., said he wanted to walk through the house with us to get a feel for our "style." I shot Cody a look of panic, since I have a vague notion that I like "modern" things, and this one time, my mom said my style could (maybe? possibly?) be described as "metropolitan." But, I mean, that's a tough statement to make, since up until this point, our method of choosing an apartment has been whatever we could afford (not much) that was near a BART station, and the furniture we would choose for said crappy apartment always involved choosing the cheapest model at IKEA. Anyways, we started walking through the house, and J. would ask questions, and Cody would look at me hopefully while I cast about wildly for an answer.

Example #1:

J: So, what do you think about opening up the kitchen to the living room?
C: [blank look]
K: Oh, wow, yes -- that sounds great!

Example #2:

J: What do you think about painting this wood-paneled wall white?
C: ...
K: ... Well, I don't know...
J: I think it would look cool. It would give it some nice texture.
C: [obviously relieved] Yes, I think so too -- could we see a sample?
K: Yes, yes, let's see an example.
J: [unfortunately not letting this go] Why did you say you weren't sure? What is it about it that you're wary of?
C: ...
K: ... [lamely] Maybe I just need to visualize it...

So anyways, that was how the majority of the conversations went. Really, I fully grasp that this opportunity is just being wasted on us, and those of you who would love to design a house but are currently living in an apartment in San Francisco (Kate) are probably dying as you read this right now, but the prospect of getting this house exactly the way we want it (once we figure out what that is) is super exciting and I'm SO anxious for the house to get done! Unfortunately, it probably won't be until April at the very earliest, so we'll just have to settle in and wait, which is something we unfortunately do very, very well.

ALSO, we found out that the schizophrenic's house has officially been bought, so by the time we move in, he should be gone!

Sidenote: If you like this kind of stuff, please PLEASE feel free to send me kitchen/bathroom pictures that fit my vague "modern" and "metropolitan" descriptors.

SCHOOL

So I finished writing my email appeals for Letters of Recommendation last week, and then I was unable to send them until I made Cody look over my shoulder and force me to hit "Send." But I did, and I've heard back from two of them already! I'm fearful that the third has NO idea who I am anymore, as he is, like, super old (he was old when I graduated a gazillion years ago), but I don't have a replacement for him, so I'm hoping that duty will prevail, and that eventually he'll agree to write an ambiguous recommendation. The other big news is that I signed up to take the GRE December 10, which gives me as much time as possible to study, and zero room for error.

This weekend also yielded the first GRE-induced breakdown, brought about by the fact that I apparently don't remember how to do algebra anymore. FML.

GEORGIA

We went for a hike in Tallulah Gorge State Park this weekend (beautiful! will post pics to Facebook eventually!), and the hike required climbing 1099 stairs. I felt really badass about it until we saw that a bunch of little kids were doing it too.

RUNNING

Running is over, you guys. I ran again last week and my hip continued to feel like it was going to fall off. I told my mom this weekend that running "just isn't fun" and she laughed at me, as though, DUH, EXERCISE IS NOT FUN, but I mean, I'm a very anxious type of person, and I feel that the running was just adding MORE anxiety, and that can't be good, right? Isn't that the OPPOSITE point of exercising? So, I'm going to run one last time this week and see how things go, but I'm pretty sure I'm going back to the elliptical and that I'm going to start up yoga. I am apparently a very delicate flower, and I need gentle, soothing exercises. Also, I haven't lost ANY weight running (I have in fact gained weight! How is this possible?), and my legs are now huge and my jeans barely fit over my thighs (ugh). Other evidence that I need to switch from running to the elliptical is that I had Jersey Shore on in the background (yeah yeah...don't judge), and The Situation rudely told Angelina that she should use the elliptical instead of the treadmill because it's a better workout, and any man who has coined the term "Gym, Tan, Laundry" clearly knows what he's talking about.

OTHER

I want a dog. I think I will DESERVE a dog after I take the GRE and successfully get my grad school application in. I have been hinting not very subtly to Cody that a puppy would be an awesome Christmas present, but I am a little scared about what our violent, mean cat, KittyMan, will do to a cute unsuspecting puppy.

I think that's it. Send me pics of bathrooms/kitchens and cute dogs!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

HOLY SHIT

Just found: This ginormous-ass bug in my bathtub. I don't think the iPhone picture quite does it justice. THIS BUG IS HUGE. This bug scores negative points for living in the south.

In other non-bug-related news, today has been slow. I've been working on drafting emails to the professors/former boss I'm going to ask to write me letters of recommendation. I'm trying to write super awesome, personal emails so that they'll feel really bad for saying no. :) "Run 30 minutes" has been a big Fail, but once again, I justify this with letters of recommendation being WAY more important, and also, still no Us Weekly.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Take Three

Okay, so this is the third blog I have started. The first, aimed at being a skewering/round-up of recent TV shows, faltered before the first post even made it to "Publish." I fared a little better with the second, actually publishing several posts before losing interest and just sort of...unceremoniously stopping. It's possible that this last blog will suffer a similar sad fate, though I'll try hard to keep up with it, because I'm pretty sure that writing is a good way to relieve my anxiety (something I need to do these days).

The point of this blog is to share amusing anecdotes about living in the south, and I will write more about Georgia and the south in future posts, but that feels like a broad, almost overwhelming, task at the moment, so let's just start with a few things that are true right at this moment:

- Every day I write myself a list of things to do, because I have a passionate love for lists. Today's list says, "Run for 30 minutes," "Dust," "Study for GRE." I am already revising this list in my head, mentally crossing off the hateful "Run for 30 minutes" and deciding instead to go to a cafe and do work (which, you must admit, isn't the funnest thing either -- it's not like I'm deciding to lay on the couch and watch Real Housewives). I feel good about this decision since I went for a 30-minute run on Monday and was pretty sure that my hip was going to fall off. Also, I like to read Us Weekly while running on the treadmill, and they didn't deliver it this week, so therefore I cannot go.
- As of this morning, I'm driving an ugly black PT Cruiser around for a week, due to one of the stupider accidents that I have been in, involving a sorority girl and a central turn lane (but insurance is paying for the majority of the repairs, hooray! I knew the accident wasn't TOTALLY my fault!). The PT Cruiser is large (and did I mention ugly?) and kind of scares me.
- I received disappointing news today. The news drove me to lay down dramatically in bed and feel sick for a while (wishing fervently that I was alive during the 19th century so that I could make use of some smelling salts), and then it propelled me to finally goddamn decide to apply for a master's in Child and Family Development at UGA, and to email the person in charge and actually find out some answers and stop putting it off. Questions I asked are: how late can I possibly take the GRE, and what sort of scores do I need to try to achieve? My studying for the GRE has been lackadaisical at best, and I'm concerned that I will do a horrible job if I have to take the test next month. Another concern is the three letters of recommendation; after being out of school for six years, finding enough professors to remember me may be a challenge. But I feel strangely motivated right now, and am aggressively flipping off my disappointing news metaphorically.
- We're in the process of buying a house right now. The house is falling apart and sad, but it's being renovated, and I'm hoping it will be all we're imagining in the end. It's in a historic district where Michael Stipe lives (I walked by his house casually a couple times, hoping to catch a glimpse of him...no such luck), and I think the neighborhood is a good fit because it's sort of funky and cool (not that we ARE funky and cool, but because, well, we're not old and in the family way either). Because we apparently will never be able to escape crazy people, the next door neighbor is a schizophrenic, who, we're told, is "harmless" and will be on his way to a home for crazy people soon.

That's it for now...More later from Athens, GA.