Don't Hate Me 'Cause I'm Indie and You're Punk

Good Girls Don't Wear Sequins

Ok, now that we've gotten all that talk about FEEEELINGS out of the way, let's have some Real Talk about the awesome shit that comes with being a BiSC attendee. This (maybe not so) flattering picture of me was taken by my roommate/favorite person Dominique in our fancy Flamingo Go Room which had a MOTHEREFFING tv in our bathroom mirror. Guys, I don't have cable (YEAH, I SAID IT. LOOK, I WAS RAISED WITHOUT TV SO YOU CAN GO SIT IN THE CORNER AND JUDGE MY PRETENSION WHILE I JUDGE YOU WATCHING DANCE MOMS AND WE CAN ALL BE HAPPY WITH OUR JUDGE-Y LIFE DECISIONS). I don't even know what to do with a tv in the bathroom mirror, we turned it on once while we were doing our makeup, it was confusing. See also: comfiest beds ever and multi nozel shower.

WARNING: The Go Rooms and the regular hotel rooms at the Flamingo are really not the same. I stayed in one of the regular ones in January and it was actually kind of more like Motel 6 quality. So don't go booking hotel rooms at the Flamingo and come bitching at me because you got the cheap option.

At the bottom of the bed is my giant pile of SWAG. Missing from the giant pile of swag: the free drink by the pool coupon sponsored by GelaSkins. It's missing because that wristband means I just came back from the crazy Flamingo Go Pool. Which is the adult pool. (No, not THAT KIND of adult pool) As in the pool where the booze is. And the fancy VIP day beds. And the waterfall to swim under and then end up in a nifty grotto. Also, where we played never have I ever for toys from Babeland. Are you wondering how things could get more ridiculawesome? So was I at this point. Pool day already seemed like the best day of my life but then IT GOT BETTER.

One word: ZUMANITY. Sexy Cirque du Soleil. Hilarious and amazing and naked. Also incredibly disturbing. Well, only the crazy contortionist that kept popping things out of sockets and shit was disturbing. I actually had to cover my eyes. Then dancing, dancing, dancing. Happiest when dancing in sequins and 4 inch heels. Until I'm tired of the heels and have to switch to sandals. Whatever. Happiest when dancing in sequins.

Wait, did I say happiest when dancing in sequins? I might've meant happiest when wearing sequins and eating waffle fry pulled pork nacho... I don't even know how to describe these, but Sara and I managed to start a trend that apparently had like 40 people eating these piles of amazingness the next night. Seriously, what is happening here? Why did we each order our own plate? This is insanity. Also, this is 3am.

HI, now it's time for sleeping.

In case you are unaware, breakfast is my favorite meal. by which I mean, breakfast foods are my favorite because I almost never eat breakfast. So buffet time on Saturday where I got to eat bacon, sausage, french toast, waffles and potatoes was pretty much my idea of heaven. I may've also made it boozy thanks to mini bottles of Skyy. The only thing better than regular brunch is boozy brunch.

The next epic adventure was to the roller coaster on top of New York New York that Alberto insisted did not exist (SPOILER: it exists) but for some reason agreed to join Dominique, Kelly and me in walking to the other end of the strip to go on it. Or to prove us wrong. I 67% think he was hoping to prove us wrong. I really love roller coasters, but also am unable to keep my eyes open on roller coasters which probably defeats the purpose of going on a roller coaster on top of a hotel. BUT WHATEVER, I went on a roller coaster on top of a hotel because that's the kind of shit you do in Vegas right before you play Pac-Man battle royale and the world's biggest version of fruit ninja. Clearly I chose the right group for the afternoon. For those of you playing along at home, at this point I have gone multiple hours without booze in Vegas, a situation I find mildly intolerable because apparently I'm really easily over stimulated which doesn't mix with Vegas without alcohol. BUT DON'T WORRY.

Thankfully Minus 5 ice bar had us covered for the afternoon. Sadly we weren't allowed to take any electronics in or I'd have fifty million pictures and have tweeted so many clever things. Or just talked a lot about how one of the rooms made me feel like I was in Narnia because of the trees etched into the ice. Did I mention that everything was made of ice? And have I ever mentioned my lifelong goal of staying in an ice hotel? This did not lessen my desire to stay in an ice hotel. We had our picture taken in a giant ice throne so that we could yell "King in the North!" but it turns out most people sit in the giant ice throne to get a picture with the Vegas sign because when we came out the woman was all "oh, you have the picture in front of the Vegas sign" and we were like "what are you talking about, lady?" because we thought we took our picture on the ice throne and are possibly too nerdy AWESOME to notice Vegas signs . Oh well.

(Side note: I'm kneeling in a really short skirt in an ice room because I was sitting the same way as Alberto and Kelly and the photographer said "You need to sit in a more flattering position, can you kneel?". And I wanted to say "Whoa dude, just how badly do you think I want this photo?" but I hadn't finished my second margarita so I wasn't feeling quite that sassy yet.

Post side note: the drinks, which were served in ice cups, rocked my socks)

More buffet. More eating all the Le Bon Garçon caramels in my gift bag. Then slowly getting ready for the Mad Men party. Where, you know, NBD, we just skipped a giant line to get into Chateau, the club on the roof of the Paris hotel from which you can see the Bellagio fountains go off. It was only so awesome that we all had to take a minute to tweet/facebook/foursquare/etc about it. That's all.

I mean, how adorable is everyone in their 60s duds, on their phones? It's pretty great. Anachronism win. Cue more dancing. Have I mentioned that I like dancing? No, really, I really like dancing. I need to go dancing more (at all) in New York now that I work normal people hours. Who wants to be my dancing buddy? Let's just go ahead and assume this girl does.
Yes, this is kind of an awful picture because it was dark and we were using the front facing camera, but I don't even care. And now we've reached the point where this post is just going to devolve into pictures. You're welcome.

I swear I'm well spoken when I'm not nervous/sick.

Untitled from Alana Margaret on Vimeo.

 

 

Don't carry it all, don't carry it all

So I've been sitting here for about thirty minutes staring at the screen. My intention was to write one of those boring general update posts but then I remembered that I put whiskey in my tea and then in my hot chocolate and thought, "hmm, maybe I shouldn't blog now" and basically have been going back and forth for the last half hour about whether whiskey while blogging = awesome or worst idea ever. I'm leaning towards awesome, because all the best authors seemed to think it was a good plan, right?

And this is why I was somewhat (ok, fine, very weakly) arguing for getting cheap whiskey I wouldn't drink for the ham this weekend because I don't actually know that just because I have tasty whiskey doesn't mean I have to drink it.

Right.

So this is how I am:

A little stir crazy, but not actually depressed. Granted, my definition of depressed actually means crying jags, unable to get out of bed depressed not like "oh I'm not so pleased with my life today", but I am actually pretty ok. Yeah, I'd really, really, really like to find a job because I would like to get out of the house, meet new people and have some money coming in, or a lot of money coming in. Obviously, a lot would be best. I had an interview Friday for a bakery/cafe that isn't open yet, tomorrow I have an interview with a tutoring company, Saturday I have a stage. Craigslist, indeed and idealist are all getting a lot of page hits from this gal.

Sunday and Monday I didn't fall asleep until 5am. I do that sometimes. Yesterday I didn't let myself drink coffee and went to yoga and managed to fall asleep at 2am. Right now I have the worst TMJ pain I've had in years. The right side of my jaw barely opens. It's all a process. I really don't do well without routine and it's pretty hard to force yourself into one when you don't actually have anything you have to do on a time frame.

I spend too much time watching things on hulu, checking twitter and refreshing facebook. My google reader has gotten down to a reasonable number. I play a lot of words with friends with strangers. Surprisingly I haven't played World of Warcraft in weeks now. I think possibly because I'm afraid I'd get sucked in and then actually become useless and depressed. Also, our internet sometimes sucks.

I am really seriously looking into creating a line of gourmet caramels, toffees and marshmallows to sell over on my food blog that no longer gets updated but I'm nervous about putting the money into doing the R&D I need to (since most of the flavors I'm looking at doing are brand new) without having any money coming in. I'm pretty sure this is something I'm going to stick with once I get a job, unless it's a crazy working 50+ hours a week one. The caramel flavors I've come up with are unique and potentially really exciting if they all work out.

I'm starting to know my way around the neighborhood a little more, mostly due to just getting out of the house and wandering for a while most days. I've learned which teachers I like at the $5 yoga studio and which I don't (last night's teacher spoke as if he was delivering a dramatic monologue for all of class. I almost left in the first ten minutes it bothered me so much, but it was a pretty good flow if a different teacher had been instructing). I can mostly figure out which way I need to walk to get places. My room is turning more into my space every day.

Tomorrow I'm going to a tweetup at the American Museum of Natural History. Hopefully it'll be awesome and I'll meet some cool people. Annoyingly my camera battery is dead and I think I stuck the charger in a bag that hasn't made it here yet so any pics will be with my iPhone. I'm hoping it won't all be people that have cool science-y real blogs because it might be awkward to be like "yeah, I blog about how good I am at drinking and making questionable decisions". Whatevs, I can probably muster up enough nerd cred to fool them for about 5 minutes before excusing myself getting another glass of wine and finding the next person. It'll be good.

Of course I miss my friends. I miss being able to find multiple choices for organic cream top yogurt in the grocery store instead of none. I miss the feel and smell of being near the coast. I don't understand how I can be so near the ocean and not feel like it at all. I miss my cats.

But I'm ok. I'm not jumping up and down for a joy in love with life, but I'm ok and I'm still pretty excited to be here. For now, that's enough.

As always was always it shall be. Do you really love me?

"I took over the baking job at work AND I'm doing recipe development for a whole line of caramels AND we're doing high tea now"

"Still beating yourself up then?"

"Huh? What would I be beating myself up over?"

"I mean, still working way too much and way too late?"

"Yeah, I guess, you know me, I thrive on it"

"Christ, and you're in school? Are you taking care of yourself?"

"I totally changed my course load from the beginning of the semester. I was planning on take cultural anthropology, calculus, French and Spanish but I just didn't think I had time. Then I was just taking anthro and calculus but I didn't have time for the calculus homework"

Note how I avoid the "are you taking care of yourself?" part? I think it's safe to say that it doesn't take most people I spend a lot of time with very long to notice that I'm fantastic at taking care of other people, but left to my own devices I really do replace sleep with coffee and food with toast. I did not want to acknowledge that he had ever cared enough to notice, but I know that's a lie. 

"I'm taking anthro, creative writing and a late start art history class. My creative writing class is fucking amazing. It's basically just a writing workshop and in the first class I went to he referenced Kafka and Dostoevsky and Nabokov in like the first five minutes."

"That's awesome. So good for you. You know I just can't really get into Nabokov."

Oh hey, right, there are reasons I fell for this boy. Dating blog title revision "Let's talk literature, baby and could you be a little pretentious about it?".

"I've started about three Nabokov books and made it about three quarters of the way through each but never actually finished one. Maybe it's 'cause I haven't attempted to conquer Lolita. Anyways, what've you been up to the last month?"

"The usual, work. I'm starting to really like my kids and get really annoyed by the ones that are little shitheads. I didn't get the job with the d.o.r. I wanted. I finished all my grad school apps, I'm a little freaked out about it."

"Why are you freaked out about grad school?"

"I don't know. It just sounds all adult and stuff. I don't want to be an adult I just want to have fun, you know?"

"You know I'm not the person to relate to about that. I've had a career pretty much since I was twenty. I tried living your way for the past year, I thought I might like to try just having fun, it really didn't do it for me."

"Well, you're ridiculous. You've always been insanely responsible. I just, I don't want to be an adult but I realized I want to be able to have a family and be a provider at some point and I need to get my shit together to be able to do that. You've just been work and school? Any boy-o's?"

"Not really"

"Really? A hot number like you?"

"Don't really have the time or inclination at the moment"

"None at all?"

"I kind of had a one night stand while I was in New York. Anyways... Anything exciting going on in your life?"

"Not really, I was seeing Dan's (aka "just my type boy") boss for a while and it was going pretty well but then I caught her looking through my text messages one day"

"For serious?"

"Yeah, she wasn't even sly about it. I came back into the room and my phone was stuffed under the pillow with the charger still plugged in to it. I was so angry. I mean that has messages from my mother, my family's financial stuff, friend's personal lives. That's just not acceptable."

"Did she give you any explanation?"

"Yeah she said she wanted to make sure I wasn't saying shit about her to Dan."

"Really? That's it? Who the fuck does that?"

"I don't know. I was pissed."

"Well, if nothing else, at least you can say I never went through your text messages. I'm not that crazy."

"I've actually been thinking all in all our relationship was pretty great despite it's bursts of insanity."

"Seriously? Who does that?"

That's right, I'm not even touching that sentence about him liking our relationship. Uh, what? Not last I heard.

"I don't know. It's so not ok. You know how protective I am of my friends. But anyways, I've been thinking a lot about..."

And saved by the phone ring. I'm sitting there thinking "Oh shit, I thought I was getting beer and attempted seduction but he wants to talk about things? I hope he doesn't want to talk about our last conversation. I don't really want to go over that again".

<insert "random chit chat about how excited he is his best friend (ok, he has like ten million best friends) is moving to the bay area" here>

We've gone into the kitchen to refill our glasses of beer. I'm sitting in one of the tall bar stools at the counter. He puts his arm around me. I look up to talk to him and he kisses me.

Now, every other time he's kissed me after we've been apart for a while I've gotten that swoony, stomach in my chest and at the same time this is comfortable and nice feeling. That night I thought "ooh kissing, kissing is nice" and that's about all I felt.

"This is a terrible idea."

"No, I'm pretty sure this is a great idea"

"What?!"

"Look, I've been thinking about it for a while. I was in Berkeley the night before your birthday and I was just sitting in the car in front of Gregoire's for like 15 minutes because I wanted to buy you potato puffs but I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if you wanted anything to do with me."

"Why didn't you?"

"I just thought you wouldn't ever talk to me again. But then Sky was coming up and he was supposed to bring them the next day. I didn't even care if you didn't want to see me. I wanted to give you potato puffs. It was your birthday. I was prepared to just go to your house and leave them on the porch and walk away if you weren't home. But he never brought them."

"That's a pretty adorable story but it doesn't really explain why you think this is a great idea."

"I just, I keep seeing other people I don't like as much as you"

"Umm, I think that's almost a compliment but it sounds a little like 'well, I can't find anything better'"

"Fine, that wasn't quite right. I'm trying to be sweet here. It just always comes back to you. No matter what, I can't stop thinking about you."

He kisses me again. He pulls my head to his chest.

"Will you be my girlfriend?"

Standing in Line

I'm currently standing in line to pick up a copy of Wrath of the Lich King and typing this blog on my iPhone proving that, though I may look a lot less nerdy than these folks and though most people I know are surprised when they find out I play WoW, I'm placing fairly well in the nerdiness competition tonight.

I won't be hanging my free poster on the wall next to my Rodin and Degas posters though.