winged orange

I spent yesterday in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, celebrating Michael Jackson’s birthday at Spike Lee’s party. And it. Was. AWESOME. The atmosphere was TERRIFIC. There were so many people…just…people everywhere. And now that I think about it, I don’t even remember seeing security, except on the path into the park. Everybody was just really respectful and positive and I was really impressed that there wasn’t one little problem in that huge mob of people. This guy even got up on the port-a-potties and danced to Dirty Diana, and no one yelled at him to get down or pulled him off. He just finished out the song and climbed down, no big thing. I was so amazed about that one little thing, just because I think it kind of speaks to the crowd that was there and the spirit of the event.

And it was a great event. There was music and dancing and laughing, and Spike Lee, and free Ben & Jerry’s, and birthday cake. And my personal hero of the day, the icee guy. We won’t talk about how hardcore I stalked the icee guy. But those things were do delicious and refreshing. And it was balls-hot yesterday too, just sayin’.

I had great company, too. I met up with a lot of the girls from twitter/#awesometown, and they were so much fun! We all need to hang out again at some point, guys. Couch is open! Come on down!

July was kind of an insane month. It started with Gaga and got crazier from there. There wasn’t a day I didn’t have somewhere to be that month, and unfortunately that trend has continued into August, between work, job interviews, and preparing to move and start school. Some days I think whether or not I find a job will be irrelevant because I’m convinced this schedule is going to kill me before school starts anyway. Some days I tell myself to suck it up and get used to it, because once school starts and I finally DO find a job, I’m not going to have a spare minute anyway.

It’s not all been boring, necessary stuff, though. I spent a weekend with Scott; he lives in Seaside (no, he is not a Jersey Shore guido; the thought of it makes me want to puke, not even kidding) and we went to the beach. I spent like six hours in the ocean, which makes up for not having been in the ocean at all in the last six YEARS. I also totally won a free game of Rooftop Mini Golf. Go me.

And I saw Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers with my dad, and they were amazing. Not in the same fist-pumping, foot-stomping way Bon Jovi was amazing, and not in the same flashy trashy way Gaga was amazing, but amazing nonetheless. I love Tom Petty; I kind of wish he was my quiet country uncle who would come to backyard BBQs and have a beer and tell me fun stories. I love that he can rock out and still be reasonably mellow. Plus they played “Learning to Fly,” which is my favorite Tom Petty song ever.

That, though…that was July 31, and that was kind of the last good thing. Sadie, my 1998 Ford Contour, needed new brakes, thermostat, water pump, and heat sensor, so I wracked up a good $800 in repairs. I had several job interviews, none of which have panned out. One of which didn’t actually happen – I took a day off work (and subsequently was docked for the day) to schlep to Manhattan for a second interview for a job I really wanted and was pretty sure I was going to get. I got there early. I waited. Phone calls were made. I waited more. Finally I was told that my interviewer was not coming – “something came up”. When I got home (4 hours later), I had an email from my interviewer saying she’d turned her alarm off and overslept. Really? REALLY? So you oversleep – unprofessional, but it happens. But if your staff are calling you (and they were) telling you that your 10:00 appointment is here, you get your ass out of bed and get to the office. My interviewer wants to reschedule, but not gonna lie, I have major reservations. If that’s how unprofessional you’re going to be before I’m hired, what’s it like to work for you?!

The whole “being unemployed” thing is really stressing me out. Not just because I’m unemployed because I’m going to school, but…well. I might as well put this out there, because I don’t think I’ve addressed this before, even though it was pretty major and happened way back before Disney. Remember that incident that happened back in February/March? That one with that terrible kid that tried to throttle me on two separate occasions and I was afraid to work with him? The one that ended with this statement:

I’m a little nervous about whether I’ll be asked to renew my contract. I don’t especially want to, but I can’t find another job and I can’t get into school, I’m going to have to, and I’m kind of afraid I won’t be recommended for rehire.

Um. Yeah. Turns out I wasn’t recommended for rehire, specifically because of that incident. Apparently I’m a liability. (It’s a long story, and if enough people are interested, I’ll post the whole “How I Got Fired” story in a protected entry. It’s kind of crazy.) Bear in mind, though, I didn’t know this until the end of June, about a week before I left for Disney. I’ve been looking for work in Manhattan since April, blithely using my bosses as references. God only knows what they’re saying about me. I’ve since switched to using my coworkers/head teachers as references instead, but it hasn’t helped my situation any. I am well over 100 applications submitted and still no closer to employment, and that scares the hell out of me, because I start school in, like, 3 weeks. September 8.

That scares the hell out of me too, starting school. In some ways, I’m so excited to go back. I get excited when I tell people that “I’m a first year PhD student” in the same way that I do when I tell people I’m getting married. It’s something that I’ve wanted since I was 11, to be a psychologist. I’m so used to being “not good enough” professionally – not good enough to get my doctorate right out of undergrad, not good enough to find a job with my MA – that I’m a little awestruck that I was accepted to a PhD program at all.

But sometimes the thought of it all paralyzes me. It’s not even the job thing (although finding a job would be a huge help), but it’s just…I wonder if I’m cut out to be a psychologist. I know Fordham accepted me, which implies that they think I’m qualified, but when I read grad student forums and stuff, these people seem so well-spoken and together. And then there’s me, running around Disney World in my Captain EO t-shirt, saying things like, “Awesome possum”. I’m terrified that I’m not mature enough to do this, and I’m terrified that going through with this whole thing will change me into a stodgy, serious version of myself, and I can’t even handle that. I’m fun. I like being fun.

Besides, this whole thing is such a gamble anyway. It’s a calculated gamble this time, at least; I’m paying for 99.9% of my classes and expenses out of pocket, so I won’t be saddled with extra debt that I can’t crawl out from under when I graduate. But all of that is money I can’t save now, so it’s putting me farther behind. I feel so far behind my friends. Almost all of them are married or engaged (finally caught up there, I guess), own houses, have kids on the way, have great jobs that pay them enough to live on and have fun with, or some combination thereof. Scott and I have spent the last four years trying to manage some semblance of financial solvency. We can’t even get married for three more years because we need to save for the wedding and I can’t contribute nearly what I’d like because of school. We won’t be able to own a house or even think about starting a family until we’re at least 30. By that point, my friends’ kids will all be starting kindergarten. I feel like everyone else is swimming through life and I’m just trying to keep my head above water.

I know that it’s a trade-off. I know that, in theory, having my doctorate will make our lives easier. My choice is basically for things to suck now or suck later – if I pay for school out of pocket, things will suck now. If I take loans, things will suck later. I’m choosing for things to suck now, and I know that’s the right choice, but it’s hard and I wish it was easier.

I keep trying to think of A League of Their Own, when Dottie doesn’t want to play baseball anymore because she thinks it might be too hard. And Tom Hanks tells her, “Of course it’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard. If it was easy, everybody would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.” He was right. He was 100% right.

I just hope that, at the end, the great was worth all the hard.

Saw Lady Gaga last night in Atlantic City, and she was AWESOME. Seriously, the show was a groovy take on The Wizard of Oz and Gaga really is fantastic live. She played just about everything on The Fame (except “Paper Gangster”, boo) and I think everything on The Fame Monster, plus “Glitter & Grease,” “Vanity,” & a new song called “You and I,” which I really, really loved. I was sad I was out of money from Disney, because a.) I wanted a t-shirt and b.) I wanted to go buy tickets for another show. It was that good.

A couple of my friends went with me, and they went to the Beach Bar across from Boardwalk Hall while I was at the show. I specifically left them with the instructions, “Don’t get shitfaced!” but who listens to me? They had, to borrow a phrase from Gaga, “had a little bit too much, much”. Fortunately, they were at that stage of drunk where they were funny rather than sick, so that’s good. They’re much better at making friends when they’ve had a few, and we made some fun friends. My favorite friend was this guy (click for bigger):

This is Backup Dancer Scotty. My friend Melissa (on the left in the picture) told him she liked his cool hair, which you can’t see in the photo, but it has leopard spots painted into it. He said thanks and that it helped in his line of work. Melissa asked him what he did, and he said, “Oh, I’m a backup dancer for Lady Gaga”. WHAT?! IS THIS REAL LIFE? Apparently it was. He was the nicest guy; we hung out with him for quite a while. He said he’d also danced for Janet Jackson and Britney Spears in the past, and that when he wasn’t touring, he lived in Lancaster, PA. Seriously, nicest guy ever.

And then a little while after THAT, as we’re leaving the bar, LADY GAGA HERSELF rolled by in one of those rickshaw things that pushy dudes are always pushing around the boardwalk, and started high-fiving fans. It was CRAZY.

So to sum it all up, last night I:

• saw Lady Gaga live
• drank mojitos with one of her backup dancers
• high-fived Gaga on a rickshaw
• got hit on by British guys dressed up as cowboys because that’s how they thought Americans celebrated Independence Day
• turned down aforementioned hit with my brand new diamond ring ;)
• literally held my drunk-ass friends’ hands as we walked the five blocks back to the train station
• took someone’s keys for the first time EVER
• had a friggin’ ball

I still kind of can’t believe it was real. I don’t party, I very rarely go to bars, and I certainly don’t meet random backup dancers in bars I don’t go to. CRAZINESS.

I’m back from Florida, and the Disney hangover has finally worn off. It was a really excellent trip; I did everything I went there to do. I rode all the rides in Magic Kingdom (no lie). We did Drinking Around the World in EPCOT. We rode Expedition Everest and saw the Flights of Wonder show in Animal Kingdom. We rode Rock N Roller Coaster and said goodbye to the old Star Tours in MGM. We even went to Universal and braved the crowds and the heat to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Scott got us into the cast and press preview of Captain EO, which was amazing, because it wasn’t due to open until two days after we left.

And, as some of you know from Twitter & Facebook, while we were there, Scott and I got engaged! :)

I know my Twitter friends are dying to hear how it all went down. It was a pretty crazy ride, but very us. We got into Florida on June 24, and we were there crazy early – like 8:30 AM early. We couldn’t get into the rooms yet, so we stored our luggage and went to MGM (yes, I know it’s technically Hollywood Studios now. But that name is a sham and a lie and I won’t be a party to it). We stayed at the park as long as we could, until we decided around 3:30 that we all needed a shower – it was humid in Florida! Like, ungodly humid. You walked outside and you just hit a tangible wall of humidity. Ugh. We had dinner reservations at 7:30, and nobody wanted to be gross, so we went back to shower, nap, and change.

We checked in at the desk and got our room numbers, and collected our luggage. When I walked into Scott’s and my room, I was met with this:

I was both excited and vaguely disappointed. We had told Disney when we changed our reservation, way back in October, that we’d be celebrating our engagement when we visited. I never called back and canceled it; I was still holding out hope that we’d be engaged by the time we set foot on Disney property. I assumed the basket was from Disney, and Scott said he would check, but not to open it, which I agreed with – I once paid $15 for a poncho because Disney left it in our room and I opened it, thinking it was part of the deal. He called a little while later and said to leave it, the hotel staff would send it back to the florist; it was a mistake. Well, boo hiss. I didn’t have time to worry about it, though. We had dinner reservations at MGM. By the time we came back that night, the basket was gone.

The next day, June 25, was Magic Kingdom Day! I was super- excited; Magic Kingdom is my favorite place in the history of ever, and the park had extra magic hours that night – open until 3 AM! We went early in the morning and rode the good stuff – Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirates. I may have had a nap in the Hall of Presidents. By about noon-thirty, we were tired, sweaty, and hungry, so we went back to the hotel for lunch. We had to be back to the park by 5 for dinner reservations at Tony’s, which is the Lady & the Tramp restaurant on Main Street.

As we were getting ready for dinner, I saw Scott putting on pants. “Honey, what are you doing? It is a million and five degrees outside.” “I know, but the pants breathe better than my shorts.” “Okay. Whatever.” I was so tired by that point – we had had three hours of sleep Wednesday into Thursday and not much more Thursday into Friday – that I wasn’t going to argue. I did, however, briefly contemplate dressing up nicer, since we had dinner reservations, but in the end, comfort won out and I threw on new gym shorts and a Michael Jackson t-shirt.

So we had dinner at Tony’s – which was massive – and then got ready to begin this photo scavenger hunt that Scott’s friend Jess had written up for us. Jess is an avid Disney-goer, and between regular park visits and cruises, she probably has at least twice as many Disney hours under her belt as I have. She was awesome, and made us photo hunts for each park, divided up either by couple or by guys vs. girls. Magic Kingdom day was guys vs. girls, so after dinner, we literally hit the ground running. Newbie & I thought the boys were going to get kicked out of the park, the way they were tearing down Main Street! We studied the list and started on Main Street – we took care of, like, five pictures right there: funny hats, Lady & the Tramp’s pawprints, singin’ in the rain on a lamp post, picking up an alien (I had a Stitch backpack), and a picture with a classic Disney character. We made our way through the rest of the park at a speed faster than I’ve ever seen it, doing really crazy things along the way. One of the items on the list was “singing It’s a Small World”. I wanted to win, so I took a video of Newbie doing the entire thing in ASL. Poor girl.

We had just finished the second-t0-last thing on the list, which was “playing pirates” in Adventureland, when we got a text from the boys saying that they’d won and to meet them at the castle. I was so pissed. “THERE IS NO WAY THAT THEY BEAT US! WE FLEW!” We sauntered back to the castle, where the boys were waiting, talking to a Photopass photographer to take the final picture: in front of the castle:

We took a couple of group shots when Rusty, the photographer, said he wasn’t busy and would we like to do more closer to the castle? Ummm…yes! So we moved closer and took a few more. For one of them, Rusty wanted us to look sad. That one was hard. I love Disney too much to be sad.

In the middle of our little photoshoot, Scott stopped and said, “Hold up, guys. This isn’t working for me. Something’s missing.” And then he did this:

Which was rapidly followed by a lot of this:

And a little speech, which, not gonna lie, I don’t even remember. (Scott says he expected that, and I’ll hear it again at the wedding.) I do remember, though, that it ended with, “Will you marry me?” Which was then followed by this:

This:

This:

And finally, this:

Afterward, there were lots of phone calls and texting, Newbie & Adrian presented Scott with a ball & chain from Pirates, and then someone said, “You just got engaged! What are you gonna do now?!”

My answer? “I’M GOIN’ TO DISNEY WORLD!” (We totally went on Space Mountain right after that. Best. Engagement. EVAR.)

And that basket that almost ruined the whole thing? It came back, a little bigger and a little badder:

Oh! And because everyone always asks, here’s my (beautiful, lovely, gorgeous, I’m-never-taking-it-off) ring:

And that’s it, the story of how we started our happily ever after. :) All the rest of the pictures from the trip are up on my Flickr, if anyone’s interested!

See that handsome son-of-a-bitch up there in that photo? That one all excited to be huggin’ Minnie Mouse? THAT WILL BE ME, IN LESS THAN TEN HOURS. I AM GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!

See you all on July 1! :D

Getting “it” for the first time in the back seat of a car, feeling that virgin beer or pot buzz, seeing Star Wars back in the beginning when absolutely every human being on Planet Earth was going through the same thing at the same awesome moment in time: these are the intensely personal, emotional, epiphany-type experiences that are right up there with being a Bon Jovi fan at a Bon Jovi concert.

– Lonn Friend, ‘One Wild Night Live 1985-2001′ liner notes

I’m finally reasonably recovered from seeing Bon Jovi on Wednesday. The show was amazing, but I got back home at 3:30 Thursday morning and was up for work at 6:20. Good lord, I was so useless that day at work. Worth it, though. Worth. IT.

I knew our show was going to be awesome because it was a hometown show, and there’s a totally different energy seeing Bon Jovi in Jersey versus seeing them in Philly or some other venue. However, I totally didn’t realize that Bon Jovi was the first act or event to play the New Meadowlands Stadium, and that we were there on opening night, which was pretty damn cool. The set list was really good, even though they didn’t play Captain Crash for me (but they played it the other two nights at Meadowlands. Why hurt me, boys? I love you). They played some stuff I haven’t heard live before. They opened with “Blood on Blood,” and did “Something for the Pain” acoustic, which was pretty badass, especially because they brought Tico (the drummer) and David (the keyboardist) out front. Tico played a freakin’ washboard and David played an accordion and it was awesome. The biggest surprise for me was that they did “Dry County” as their first encore. I LOVE that song; it’s off Keep the Faith and it’s just awesome. I lost my mind when I realized that’s what they were playing. I don’t know what possessed them to include that in the tour, but I’m glad they did! (Side note: as I was going through YouTube videos to find a good one for this post, I was hearing people in a good portion of the videos going, “OH MY GOD THEY ARE PLAYING DRY COUNTY!” That was totally me.)

Before I saw the live show, I was convinced I wasn’t really crazy about the new album, The Circle. Admittedly, a lot of the songs sound really similar to each other or to other songs the band’s recorded in the past. It wasn’t nearly as strong as Have A Nice Day had been. You can tell Jon had a theme he was going for, and you can sort of tell which songs fit in that theme and which don’t. I had kind of hoped it would grow on me like Lost Highway had, but it just…didn’t. The album as a whole is more mellow than a lot of their more recent stuff had been. But they did such a good job with the songs from The Circle that they played live -  “We Weren’t Born to Follow,” “When We Were Beautiful,” “Superman Tonight,” and “Love’s the Only Rule” – that I figured I must have been missing something. Not gonna lie, what really won me over was the live performance of “Love’s the Only Rule”. I don’t know, something about the way Jon got us all to sing the “whoa-oh-ohs” got me. I love audience participation at Bon Jovi concerts. There is something too cool about singing with your favorite band with thousands of other fans who love them just as much as you do.

I don’t love the new album as much as some of their others, but I definitely enjoy it more since hearing some of the songs live. I would have loved to have heard “Fast Cars” live, but I don’t think they’ve done that one yet. Overall, the show really reminded me why I love Bon Jovi. I hadn’t listened to them very much this year at all, because I’ve been so caught up in other things and with other artists. I just forgot how much I love them and how much of my life I have invested in them. I haven’t missed a tour since 2003, and I’ve seen them more than once on some tours. That’s pretty crazy; there isn’t another band or singer I’ll follow to the extent that I follow my boys. I don’t know if it’s because we’re all from Jersey, or if it’s because I really got into them when I was a junior in high school, when I was finally starting to be comfortable with who I am, but this band totally has a piece of my heart. I will always love my boys. <3

I’ve been so busy and stressed out lately, it’s a wonder I haven’t actually lost my mind. Between worrying about work and worrying about school and worrying about having work while I’m in school, I’m just a hot mess. I don’t sleep well, and when I do sleep, I have crazy whacked out dreams. Even on the weekends. On Saturday night, I had a dream that I was outside in this outdoor aviary with lots of beautiful birds in cages…including mine. Lori was in a cage with five or six other cockatiels, and someone let the birds out so we could see them. And then they all flew away, even Lori. Ohhh, I was so heartbroken. I had to wake up and check on her to make sure she was still safely in her cage. After I went back to sleep, I had ANOTHER weird dream. I dreamed that I was watching what looked like a live version of Captain EO, and I was there with a friend from work, rockin’ out. She told me that after EO was over, Michael was going to come out to see the audience, so I ran to the bathroom so I wouldn’t have to go when the gloriousness was happening. Don’t you know, I MISSED IT. Leave it to me to miss Michael Jackson in my dreams because I had to pee. What is my life, guys?

That’s not the half of it. I’ve had dreams I’ve left work – just upped and left – and got in huge trouble. I’ve had dreams involving floating severed heads. It’s horrible. Some of them, like that severed head dream, leave me chilled to the bone when I wake up. I can’t wait until I have a job and this is all settled. It’s too much for me to deal with all at once; I could handle competency exams and photo IDs and immunization records all separately, but on top of this job hunt and the uncertainty of it all, it’s just sort of getting on top of me. But there’s no time for me to let it get on top of me during the day, so it manifests itself at night. Wonderful.

On Sunday, I took a break and met Scott in Princeton for the day. I love Princeton. I love that whole area; I went to college in Ewing, which is not far at all from Princeton, and I miss it all the time. I miss the area just as much as I miss being in college; I only associate that area of the state with good things. College was for me what high school is for a lot of people – best years of my life. I went through my first breakup there. I met the love of my life there. I grew up there. I had a hell of a lot of fun. :)

The original plan was just to go up to Princeton Record Exchange, go to Twist for probiotic fro-yo, and then go to dinner. Scott wanted to go to Washington Crossing Park too. He’s a history buff; I’m not that way, but I humored him. The little museum was nice, and there were revolutionary war spinning wheels at the Johnson Ferry House. Mostly it was a lot of walking around outside which was nice; I hadn’t really gone to the gym last week (#slacker), so it did me good to walk around. We got a lot of nice pictures, too – click for bigger at Flickr.

After we were done at the park, we drove down to Princeton to walk around Nassau Street, which is right across from the university and where all the main shops are. Princeton really is beautiful.

I got my favorite at Twist: probiotic Ghiradelli chocolate fro-yo with strawberries, Reese’s Cups, hot fudge, & peanut butter sauce. MMMMMMM. I could live on that stuff, not even gonna lie. :) We also went to Prex because I wanted to look for vinyl to put on my wall when I move. I have two of my mom’s old Bette Midler albums, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and Stevie Nicks’ Belladonna on vinyl already, but Prex has a really good selection of $1 vinyl. I passed up a copy of Bat Out of Hell there years ago and I’m STILL sorry about that to this day. I wanted to get some vinyl from all of my favorites. They didn’t have everything I wanted, but I came away with a good selection!

The top is three Bette Midler albums: The Rose soundtrack (homygod I love that movie), No Frills (which has one of the best covers of all Bette’s albums), and Mud Will Be Flung Tonight!, which is her comedy album. The bottom is Heart’s self-titled album, Bon Jovi’s 7800 Degrees Fahrenheit, and, of course, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Thriller even has the liner notes with it. I still need a Gaga vinyl, preferably The Fame Monster, something by Meat Loaf, and something by Tom Petty. I also really, really, REALLY want to find Dangerous on vinyl. I think that’s my favorite album cover ever. I love it so much I bought it on a t-shirt. It needs to live on my wall.

We had a really nice day. :) It was great to kind of put all my stress on the back burner for at least a little while. Did I mention that Scotty even bought me Thriller? I have the best boyfriend ever. I win.

My birthday was yesterday, May 2. I am officially 26. I really don’t know how to feel about this. This means that I’m 4 years away from 30. I handled 25 pretty well, but not gonna lie, there was some kicking and screaming with 26. Most of it was mental, but I spent the week leading up to my birthday in kind of a funk, which is odd for me – usually I can’t WAIT for my birthday, but this year I had a lot of shit going on, between my car acting funny (turns out it was the battery, but I don’t know how long I can keep getting off easy with these car repairs) and being sure that certain people would forget my birthday (they did). None of it was directly related to getting older, but I’m sure that was part of it. I’m trying to get over myself there, because this is shaping up to be a good year for me in a lot of ways.

A little yarn and some good company never hurt anything, though, and I perked up when it was time to go to Maryland Sheep & Wool. Amanda (who is not Lloyd and who needs a nickname) and I schlepped it down to MD to meet my friend Lizz, who was not a yarn person, but who is interested enough that she’d brave the 90-degree weather and the crowds with us for the second year in a row. We had a really good time, despite the heat. Lizz had such a good time that she came in “just to watch” and left with 2 felting kits, 2 skeins of yarn, and 2 weaving looms. I’ve converted another one. :D I myself didn’t get too crazy – I only bought a 4 oz. purple/blue cloud of fiber from Loop and 8 oz. of see-it-from-space pink/yellow/orange cormo, both of which you can see in the photo mosaic farther down the page. I also got two Sheep Incognito prints: Firefly Ballet & The Odd Couple. Those prints are dangerous; I had a hell of a time deciding on those two, and I saw at least five more that I wanted.

Amanda and I came back from MD just in time for me to watch the Kentucky Derby with my family and pick my second Derby winner in a row. :) Scott took me to dinner at Friday’s, where I had the aptly-named Ultimate Mojito, and was a little silly by the time we got home. Between the sunburn, the exhaustion of being up at 7 and running all day on 5 hours of sleep, 4 hours of car travel, and alcohol, I was done. I just crashed.

Sunday was my actual birthday, so I got up and made cupcakes using the Hello Cupcake! book Lloyd brought me in October. :) Scott took me to see How to Train Your Dragon, which was adorable, and I highly recommend it. We had steak dinner – my favorite! – and did presents. My big gift was the tickets for Bon Jovi later this month, but I also got some birthday money and some Disney money.

All in all, it was a nice, quiet birthday. I’ll leave you with some photos. Full versions are all on Flickr, if you’re interested.:

I’m going to be so sad when spring break is over. I’m really enjoying having a whole week off, even if today is the first day I haven’t left the house. So far on my spring break, I have:

Visited the Franklin Institute with Scott

This is one of those things we’ve been meaning to do for the five and a half years we’ve been together, and are only just now getting to. Neither of us had been to the Institute in about 10 years, and a lot of stuff had changed. We had a pretty good time, though. :) I even had my very first astronaut ice cream, which was much better than I expected room temperature, freeze-dried ice cream to be.

During our trip, we also learned that New York is better than Philadelphia in terms of public transportation and city layout (and everything, really), did a half-ass toe stand on the light-up Billie Jean floor (see photos), and discovered that I have the most awesome but ultimately useless Spidey Sense ever: I can correctly identify a Michael Jackson song from a block away within one note. No lie. There was an impersonator in a park about a block away, and while we were waiting to cross the street, I heard the very beginning of Smooth Criminal – the part right before the heartbeat – and I was all, “What? Smooth Criminal? Where?!” Scott thought I was hearing things until we got farther down the block and he saw the impersonator. “Honey,” he said, “that is AMAZING. One note.” I win. :D

Went to Fordham to meet my advisor

This was yesterday. Ultimately, it went pretty well. Turns out that my master’s degree isn’t entirely useless – out of the 11 classes I took for my MA, I can count 6 of them towards my doctorate. I may also be able to get a seventh, if I can argue it well enough, because APA just changed the requirements on cognition courses. I really hope I can exempt out of it, because not only would it save me $3,000, it would also save me having to take another cog course. It was such a bitch when I took it at Columbia. :P

Anyway. Six courses is a semester and a half, seven is almost a full year. That will save me between $18,000 and $21,000, which is FANTASTIC. I also learned that even though you have to register for some thing, like doctoral residency, thrice (I said it), you only pay for it once, and it’s only a $1,000 fee as opposed to a $3,000 fee. Also, the first three years are heavy coursework, and the last two are practica and internship, which means that those two years are lighter years financially. This is all good news. I sent in my deposit today, with the thought that if I can’t find a job to support myself before the semester starts, that I’ll either withdraw or try to defer my admission.

So in short, #DrWingedOrangePhD is a tentative go. :D (Guys, when I graduate, can I get a sign for my office with that hashtag on it? Please?)

Did no knitting, but lots of spinning

It was 90 degrees most of this week. For some reason, I decided this was the perfect time to play with all my nice, warm wool. I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either, but there you have it. The first thing I wanted to do was finish spinning this fiber I’d had on a bobbin for the last year. The way I screwed up the first half of it was such a disappointment that I couldn’t even touch the second half for the longest time. I wanted my bobbin back, so I just sucked it up and spun it. I’m not even sure how to categorize the final product.

It looks fine in the picture, I know, but see how many skeins there are? That’s a problem. I got that first good-sized skein done and was apparently at 240 yards before the yarn snapped. I was annoyed, but I just skeined up what I had and started over. After another 82 years, the yarn broke again. Nuts. Skein, restart. Then after another 50 yards, I had another snap. By that point, I was yelling, “OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” every two minutes. I got one more 100-yard skein done before I had to stop. You should see what I had to throw out. Probably 50 yards, at least, of little 10-yard pieces that would snap off randomly between the smaller skeins.

I can’t bring myself to wash it. I’m convinced it’s going to disintegrate. The part that gets me is that all told, there’s enough for me to make either of the shawls I want to make. I just don’t know if I trust it. Spinning friends – thoughts? Should I try to use it? Should I treat it like The One Ring and try to burn it, because clearly this stuff is cursed?

In the meantime, I picked up something new so I wouldn’t hate spinning forever and ever because of the Yarn of DOOM. This is cormo/bamboo I got at MD Sheep & Wool last year. It has sparklies in it, which means that everything else in my little world will contain yellow sparklies for about two months after I finish the yarn. :)