I need an outlet

And here it is, in the blog that I haven't posted to in over two years.

But I just have to say how incredibly proud I am of some of the things I said tonight in a situation where I would have previously acted completely opposite. Here's the interesting thing: I live with three other 20-somethings, the oldest of which is 29, and in my opinion, entirely too old to be living with roommates and spending hours a day playing war video games (that's just my opinion though). I mean, I hope in four years I'm stable enough to at least have my own place. Anyway, said roomie said he would mow the lawn this last weekend. And he did. But only the front lawn and the strip by our front sidewalk. He then wrote on our community whiteboard, asking if someone else would please do the back yard. OK, to clarify, the yard itself is not very big at all, and mowing the back part as well would only have taken an extra ten minutes. Before this, my roommate Molly and I had each borne the burden of taking care of the yard, each of us mowing the lawn multiple times, me getting my dad to donate his old mower since the one our landlord had for us was broken...

So he writes this note, asking if someone would do the back lawn. And I like being outside and keeping the yard nice, so the morning after said note, I went ahead and mowed it. No big deal, but I had previously had a HUGE problem with passive aggressive notes written on this board by said roomie, which happened WAY too often. So Molly comes home, shocked that I actually mowed the yard instead of saying something to Lee, and she confronts him about it, asking him why he couldn't just finish the job. He acted like there was no problem... I pointed out the fact that last time I mowed the lawn I mowed the whole thing... And that was the last word I had in the conversation.

Long story short, on the way home from trivia tonight, Molly was still visibly and verbally upset about the whole situation and I said to her something to the effect of, "Ya know what? We can't control how people have grown up, how many siblings they've had, what kind of financial situation their family was in and what they expect of other people in their life. All we can do is live up to our own standards of what it means to us to be a good, respectable person and be glad that we're not as oblivious to other people's feelings as people like Lee are."

And I mean that too. Recently I've really grabbed onto the adage that you should "pick your battles." Some people are beyond convincing. Actually a lot of people are. And the sooner you accept that with those people, the more likely you are to avoid unnecessary stress. If you say to yourself, "Hey, that's a dick move but you know what? I'm OK with picking up the slack to avoid the potential hurtfulness it will bring me if I think about it too much."

I guess moral of this jumbled, not very well written story is that you just gotta hold yourself to your own standards. If there are people out there who don't value everyone's feelings as much as you do, then how sad for them, right? You will live a more fulfilled life having really tried to make others happy and be a generous person without expecting anything in return. I really believe that.

Roadtrippin'

Mike and I left Connecticut Monday morning for our epic cross-country road trip, our escape from the stress of New York city, out onto the open road. Well.... this was after I spent a week at his mom's chilling out and playing with the new puppy while getting ready for the trip. Nothing is more entertaining to a puppy than bubbles:




Mike's mom had a going away party for him Saturday afternoon where I met a whole bunch of his extended family and hung out with a few I'd already met. Mike's uncle Bobby kinda looks like Chachi.


Monday we drove from Ansonia, CT to Pittsburgh, PA, and yesterday we drove from Pittsburgh to Chicago. From Pittsburgh through Ohio and Indiana I can tell you there's really not much to see. Though it's green, it's mostly flat farmland and not much else:





As flat and boring as it may have been, however, it has been incredibly relaxing and beneficial for us to have some quiet time away from the hustle and bustle of New York, especially with the mix CDs our friends sent us to keep us sane. Today we spent the day in Chicago. We took a boat tour of Lake Michigan with some great views of the skyline:

Then we headed for the Taste of Chicago for a sampling of eats. We ate literally all day long and then decided we had to have some deep dish before we leave early tomorrow. Luckily with have a great pizza place right down the street from our hotel.

Deep dish pizza is like a mozzarella stick pie. I'm pretty sure you'd have to be starving to eat more than one piece.

Wish us luck tomorrow heading to South Dakota, which may be even flatter and more boring than Indiana. :) Look for more pics soon.

Holy Samsquamch!

Last night I asked Mike if he'd ever contemplated the existence of Bigfoot or Sasquatch.

Being a wilderness type person and also who believes in evolution and the possibility of missing links, I told him that although I'd never seen one, it's possible such creatures do exist. I began scouring YouTube. A wealth of any kind of video you might want to see on any subject. And I found this:



The video itself is grainy, sideways and unrecognizable. The dialogue, however, is amazing. "Holy fuck, Ricky. I think it's a Samsquanch! *heavy scared breathing*"

I want to believe in them even more after seeing that video.


Meanwhile, I am leaving New York in exactly a week. Most of the time, it doesn't seem fair. I haven't ridden out my time here or seen everything I want to see. But, there is a lot to be proud of looking back on my time living in the big apple. Is it refreshing to live in a city where no one really looks out for anybody but themselves? Is it nice to be able to tune out crowds and drown out the mindless jabbering of those on the train on the way to work? Yes. But more than that, I am simply satisfied that I carry myself better, I have more confidence in myself as a human being and I can definitely say I am one tough chica based on what I have done and seen.

I, for the first time in a long while, am proud of me!

Getting ready to 'head out'

Blogging somehow become less of a priority when you work for two weeks straight, while at the same time getting ready for a cross-country road trip.

This is my last issue at Audubon, and yes, it is pretty sad. I've only ever felt like a real journalist while I've been working there, despite all the bullshit I had to go through as an intern. I've gotten my best clips there, met some amazing people in the process and I'm glad I spent the better part of 8 months there. I am going to continue to freelance with Audubon, as well as contribute to their flowering blog. Please check out my first blog for them:

http://magblog.audubon.org/node/69

This is only the first of many ranting posts about half-assed environmentalism I hope to make. It may be elitist, but at least it's honest. The normal Joe can do so much more for the environment than he thinks. And the high paid people are definitely not doing enough. I hope to reach both groups.

Meanwhile, Mike and I are planning our epic cross country trip.


View Larger Map

This is our trip (roughly). We're heartily planning it.

Meanwhile... just as you are so happy to leave somewhere, you are so aware of the good things about where you live. Going to open-air brunch on Saturdays... Randomly finding Farmers' Markets... When I came home and walked around my Astoria neighborhood, I saw a wedding, shining in the sun. All the guests waited for the couple to come out. They were 50 feet from the elevated subway. I choked back tears as I watched that couple triumphant, emerging from the sun-glazed stone of the orthodox Greek church. So many things you might hate about this place... in the context of all that is good, you never notice how much everything around you is truly beautiful in its own way.

Despite that, we are ready to go. Both of us are eager to find jobs where we will be happier, and moving in together ain't so bad either. I love this kid.

Slowly becoming a responsible adult

As I prepare both for my departure from my internship at Audubon, and my roadtrip across country with Mike, I've started taking baby steps toward being ready to job search hardcore-like once we get there. One of these steps was getting a decent business card. I went on overnightprints.com, and on a whim designed and ordered my own business cards. I read in a book my mom bought me about getting from college to career that if you can't get rid of 250 business cards pretty quickly, you aren't networking nearly hard enough. And seeing how it's about "who you know," I figured it was a good step.

They do include my phone number, BTW but I don't want thousands of blog fans calling me up ;)

So yeah your basic hippie journalist card, equipped with green text and tree. They actually turned out much better than I expected. Can't wait to give them out at the next Greendrinks NY, a group of people involved in the environmental industry somehow that meets every month. I've been on their list for a few months now but haven't had the guts to go because (I know this is silly) I didn't have a card to give out. It's so embarrassing when people give you their card and you have none to give back. Problem solved! Inebriation with other like-minded green people, here I come. Please also see this hilarious "American Psycho" clip that inspired me to make a kick-ass card
Last Thursday my Macbook's hard drive died. Literally. It was about ten minutes before I was going to leave for work and I turned it back on to quickly check my bank balance and all I got was this flashing folder with a question mark. I went to the Apple store and they said there was nothing they could do except give me a new hard drive. Then I went to a place that does data recovery, paid $650 up front for them to get any files they could off the old drive (this was after my editor said they could reimburse me for it). I've been working on Mike's computer (thanks, sweetie!)... waiting for the past week to see what they can do. Got a call today saying that nothing could be salvaged. So once the new drive is installed I get to start all over. I didn't really back up much, but once I think about it, a lot of the stuff that is important to me (including these blog posts) is already on online servers so what I lost is really not that bad.

My roommate Evan's father is here visiting from Greece, just arrived this afternoon. He's staying until the end of the month. Already I can see this is going to be an education. He, with his thick Greek accent, spent the last 20 minutes trying to tell us that the U.S. government gets us too worried about credit cards and money troubles to realize how much they're f-ing us over. If people had more time to get up and protest about things, we'd have month-long vacations and cushy retirement allowances like those in Greece, I suppose.

That's about it for now. If you have any suggestions for specific places Mike and I should visit on our cross-country trip, comment! Neither of us are really very good at planning trips so we could use the suggestions.

Sorry she hasn't seriously blogged in awhile,

Shawno

New York?

Last Friday Mike and I actually had a day off together. This hasn't happened since I started working for the Panhandler and we were quite excited about how we were going to spend it. We decided to have a Whole Foods picnic in Central Park at 59th street and then walk through the trails in the park.

That green thing in the middle is Central Park. If you picture us starting at the white circle in the lower left corner of that green and walking up to the reservoir in the middle... that's what we did that day. It was about 40 city blocks when we emerged from the lovely green.

Mikey is adorable.

This is the Great Lawn. I was actually pleasantly surprised at the birds and wildlife and green I saw during our day at the park. We spent the rest of the day avoiding Pope barricades.

Mike and I have decided to move west. Despite the beauty of Central Park, we are looking for more tranquility, less crowded public transportation and mountains (well, I'm looking for mountains at least). Destination Seattle, approximately mid July. Goodbye metrocards, bums, smelly sewers, rude assholes at every turn, overpriced eats, pretentiousness and false entitlement. I just hope my time here hasn't changed me much.

Oh, frat boy anthems

How many times in a row can you play ACDC's "Back in Black" without getting sick of it?

Me: probably somewhere around 2.5

My roommate: I dunno, I'll let you know when it stops, but this has been going on for days. It started with him listening to it a few times to figure out the guitar riff. Then he was singing it on the toilet. Now I hear it coming from his room and his girlfriend giggling. He is undoubtedly playing air guitar, perhaps doing some kind of Angus strut.

edit: today he sat around all day and then said, "Man I feel fat today. I know what will remedy this!" and he put on... you guessed it... "Back in Black" again. He said "This song is all balls."

ok....