new car!

it took me some time to formulate why exactly i was so initially attracted to the toyota yaris in the particular jade sea metallic color.

then i realized that it was an exact throwback to the powerwheels (TM) little mermaid-themed convertible that i was completely enamored with as a child every time we went into toys-r-us. i seem to remember that it was a pale seafoam convertible with starfish on the hubcaps and a lilac steering wheel. and it had a sebastian the crab horn on one side. it was amazing.

alas, i have never seen it since it was that small, red-haired four-year-old staring lovingly in toys-r-us. wow that sentence had a lot of hyphens. anyway, here, at least, is my new car which begins to attempt to recapture what has now become lost to the ravages of time:

shh! don't tell

i have a secret crush on....
....gene kelly.

but i guess it's not a secret anymore.

the touch, the feel of cotton

yesterday i treated myself to a trip to the laundromat since, being previously car-less, i haven't been able to do laundry since december. now, of course by now you are saying 'how the hell have you survived without doing laundry since december?' and the answer is that i did a lot of hand-washing, which is all well and good but limits severely how much you can wash, aka, not jeans because who washes jeans in the sink? at some point in late january, i believe, lisa took pity on me and let me do a load at her house, which was great but hardly covered the scope of my laundry needs.

but let me tell you that yesterday i did four loads of laundry, lavishly drying each load with two dryer sheets–why not go to town?–including all five of my towels–yes i own five!–and my bed linens, and last night i luxuriated in bed with the smell of fresh clean sheets which my cat quickly made work of covering with his discarded fur again. furry little stinker.

today i have clean clothes, a semi-clean house (i plan on taking care of much of that today), and i plan on taking a nice long walk in the not-quite-spring weather. and if i think of anything else clever to do, i'll do that too.

oh to be a cat

check out this breaking news. it's basically scientific evidence that having soft, cuddly pets is the best kind of healthy lifestyle. basically, if you love sweet puppies with big watery eyes and little kittens with pink little paws, you have discovered the zen of true happiness. is that redundant? maybe. and yet i don't care because i'm too busy feeling happy about having a furry stinker of my own, the famous captain jack sparrow, named such for the scar left on his right eye from when he had an ulcer as a baby (i.e., like a one-eyed pirate).


hmm i guess you can't see it when he's sleeping. this is such a typical pose too. i'm always so jealous in the mornings when i wake up early and have to go to work, while he snoozes, taking up my entire bed, while i head off to earn money to buy him fake mice and kibble. i might enjoy being a beloved cat in my next life.

goods and bads in march

so i should be getting my car on thursday. the downside is that regardless, i won't be going home to connecticut for easter as it's simply too far a drive to make if i have to be back for work on monday (yes i work monday–isn't that lovely?). so i'll be spending easter, the first easter in which i have done so, without my family and alone in gburg. fuuuuuun.

at least i will be seeing my sister on friday; we have a whole excursion planned to meet each other at longwood gardens just below philadelphia, and then we're going to proceed to see winterthur, the mansion owned by the dupont family who started longwood gardens. ok i know it sounds really cheesy, but we haven't been to both places in years and i'm totally excited!

longwood has acres of beautiful fountains and gardens to walk through, and my personal favorite, a huge greenhouse with lots of pathways and indoor streams and this huge hall with marble pillars and in the center, a sunken-in shallow pool with lily pads and all kinds of beautiful things floating in it.

and winterthur is such a cool house. the mr. dupont of the early twentieth century believed in promoting american trades and crafts, so he dedicated one room of the mansion to each state in the country. i love the new york state room–so federal.

this will make my easter not so sad :).

new cars are super

yesterday my dad drove down from brewster, ny to help me buy my new car. we went to the toyota dealership in hanover where we met the salesman with whom i had been in contact with. we were greeted in a very friendly manner, as behooves the reputation of toyota of hanover, and our salesman proceeded to try and make a personal connection with us by talking about his friend who went to rehab up in a center not far from brewster. i knew, then, that this day would be interesting.

it made me wonder if i sound nuts to families to whom i make idle chatter when they visit the admissions office. of course, i don't think i've ever mentioned rehab and i don't really plan to, but still. i'll be much more introspective about my whole approach from now on.

anyway, our salesman was perfectly nice and patient as i test drove the toyota yaris, then the toyota corrolla, then went back inside the dealership to look at color swatches of both cars, then went back outside to stare at both cars' exteriors, then requested to sit down again in the driver's seat of both cars, then sat down in the back seats of both cars, then stood again in front of both cars and compared them visually, then felt tempted to call my sister for advice but felt it would weaken my front to the dealer, then fell silent for a long time in contemplation, then announced that i was vaguely, positively, almost certainly sure that i wanted the yaris in sea jade metallic, which was what i originally wanted when i walked in there. but it was tough; the corolla is a great car too, and probably performs a bit better because it has a bigger engine. if only it looked as sleek and european as the yaris, and came in jade sea metallic, not horrific, forty-year-old woman tan. no offense. when i'm forty, i plan on being amazing. or at least never succumbing to wearing dresses with an elastic waistband.

so it was really difficult and i hope i've made the right decision because they didn't have the car in green for me to drive away that day so they're going to call a sister dealership on monday to have one sent over... so i hope when i see it that it's as beautiful as i hoped. especially since i signed a contract. i'll just have to trust that i had to make up my mind at some point. i wish emily had been there to help me decide since she's had so much input already on the non-economic aspect of car-buying, i.e., the spiritual fulfillment aspect.

but yayy i will have a new car! now if only gas prices weren't so agonizingly high....

le pied dans la bouche

classic admissions moment from past summer:

me: "hey, where's that french student who was coming for an interview?"

fellow admissions colleague: "oh you just missed him–he already interviewed and left."

me: "dammit, i was going to french him up!"

fellow admissions colleague: "'french him up?'"

me: "yeah, like talk to him in french and everything."

fellow admissions colleague: "you sure you didn't mean anything else by that?"

me: "it's not kinky because i added the preposition 'up.'"

a career option?

so here's one of my favorite french painters, the lovely elisabeth vigée-lebrun, in great part famous for her many portraits of marie antoinette. my favorite paintings are those she does of mothers and children. unfortunately i couldn't find a nice copy of those. but here she is, in a self-portrait.

if i had inherited any painting skills from the rest of my family, i would paint like her. but i didn't, nor am i a sculptor nor a watercolorist. piracy may indeed be my only option.

lowered standards of spiritual fulfillment

is it sad that i feel incredibly accomplished today because i finished editing the three web videos that i made for the accepted student website? because i do. and they're not even that amazing videos. but i am proud of them, and if that 'helpful links' page from the accepted student site isn't equally amazing by the time i'm done with it, then i won't count myself as worthy of being called an admissions counselor and assistant coordinator of communications.

actually that second part may not be my actual title. but leigh anne used it once when introducing me at an ees divisional meeting, so i thought i'd throw it in for sparkle.

history rocks!

plate tectonics are responsible for all mountain formations on the planet! isn't that amazing?

if we didn't have tectonic shift, we'd all be on one land mass, probably really smooshed together. and we wouldn't have the grand canyon, or mt. everest, or the tibetan plateau. and maria von trapp would never have been able to swing her arms around, singing about hills. not that the tv special "how the earth was made" pinpoints this fact, but still.

i love the history channel so much.

job satisfaction guaranteed

agatha=1
admissions=0.

reading applications=done!

...at least, this stage is...

...

must view some plaid stallions to calm myself before bed.

bagels

bagels! aaarg.

love song to the beautiful south

why do i keep having random flashbacks to france? it's not that i wouldn't love to see other nations–because believe me, i would had i the chance, and i'm really excited to visit indonesia this summer–but i miss my time in provence so much. it's like this wistful dream that sometimes seems quite unreal–because i was so happy there, so charged with energy and adventure, that i think sometimes that it can't be real; for how could so much happiness be possible?

one great tragedy is that i had the world's crappiest camera while i was there: a $100 (all i could afford to spend at the time) digital, 3-pixel, grainy, dysfunctional disaster that deleted half of my photos somehow, and those it did take were hardly comparable with the real thing. please don't conceive the notion that the photo here is an accurate representation of the south of france; the colors are all washed out, whereas provence is all wild and vibrant color–think of the violets in h.m. forster's a room with a view (where, incidentally, is portrayed the best love scene in the novel). at any rate, it's not a great photo.

on the other hand...it's such a compelling reason to go back.

a beautiful day in the neighborhood

yawn. a saturday spent reading applications that could have been spent...doing what? hmm. not really much else i could be doing except olympic walking. maybe it's just as well.

so a man was arrested right outside my house two nights ago. such a comfort. i didn't ask the police why he was arrested–it may have been a domestic violence case–but he was pinned to the sidewalk outside my window and they took a gun and a bottle of whiskey off of him. again, i feel so secure now. i think i'll take my stepmother up on her offer to make me some homemade indonesian-recipe mace. and maybe i'll replace jack with a german shepherd.

what am i saying? i could never replace jack; he and the dog will just have to be friends. the cat's kind of already a dog anyway, and bites something fierce.