seattle

ahoy from the northwest!
first of all, allow me to share my weirdest observance here first: this city smells fantastic! it always smells like it just rained. fresh and full of oxygen! amazing!

i also enjoy the moss and evergreen feel of the place, natural and mountainous. but Seattle is also a hipster alcove where only the finest breed of hip citizens make their home, which is an interesting way to view a new place...
Scott and I have the morning off, Jason had to go to class earlier this morning so we'll be meeting up with him for lunch. tomorrow I think he has the day off so we're going to attempt to go hiking somewhere if the rain stays away for any length of time and a rental car isn't too terribly expensive.
what have we been doing, you muse?
well, on Saturday I flew in from Denver, which was a tearful departure from Sarah but it was also nice to see Jason for the first time in months. ironically, the last time I saw them was around the same time too...
after picking me up from the airport (which is called SeaTac and also featured death cab performing at some point in the future when I won't be here...) we went to a weird avant garde "marimba" performance at a place called 'On the Boards.' cute and hipster, but this show was horrible. (are you a sadist? are you down to fuck? are you being abused? are you down to fuck? rule number 24: i don't care)

then we went to Seattle's 2nd best bar, (don't ask us what #1 is) and wandered five-ish miles around downtown looking for non-existant bars because apparently everyone in Seattle goes to bed at 11pm. on weekends.
yesterday, we went to Freemont "the center of the universe" with my Uncle, who is an exact replica of my mother only male. it's nice, because he's not my mom but close enough that I know they're related, moreso than many of her other siblings. i enjoy spending time with him.
so Scott and I are going to head out to grab a cup of coffee before we reunite with our host and go down to the market.
hope everyone is doing well!

denver

NYC to Denver is a strange contrast. Here, the whole city is expansive. There's sprawl (and then literally mountains beyond mountains) which is so absolutely different from New York. The malls are all outside, which is particularly weird because it snows here, it's cold. And there are a lot of malls, with huge one story layouts. I'd say the people in Denver are a mix of outdoorsy snobs and yuppies, mixed with a little ghetto and some businessmen who still manage to wear underarmour or hiking boots to the office. I realize after typing that how influenced I am by my hosts, who haven't exactly had the social experience they were anticipating. I guess there are hipsters too, but we've seen them mostly at malls and they all have this adventure flare about them.

People are also really into pot. I'm not talking about Sarah & TJ, but rather the entire Denver community. There are dispensaries all over the place; some look professional, others look exactly like you'd imagine it would look if some high school pot dealer opened up a shack to sell his crop. It's really bizarre...apparently everyone has a prescription for it, regardless of if they 'need' it or not. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think the whole situation would just be better if it were just flat out legal instead of only legal for medical purposes because I think it cheapens the experience of those who actually need it. This whole counter-culture thing evolves where it's totally okay and cool to abuse the US medical system. Or the Colorado medical system, I guess. I don't know, I guess good for stoners who don't have to worry about being arrested, bad for morality. Why can't they just come out and say it's legal even if you don't have glaucoma or anxiety attacks? I don't think weed hurts anyone as much as everyone likes to vilify it. Gateway drug? Maybe. But what about tobacco? I've seen people ruin their lives because of that drug.

Seeing Sarah has been tremendous. She has to be responsible this week, meaning she has to wake up at 2am to get to work at 3, but she's off by noon every day just pretty tired. It's not a big deal though because as much as I like exploring and seeing a place, I'm really here just to see her and it really doesn't matter what we do. Plus that, I miss doing normal stuff with her like watching TV, baking and going shopping anyway, which exactly what we've been up to. When I got here, she surprised me with this bottle (pictured at right) which has the words to the song from the Fox and the Hound "Best of Friends" decoupaged around in a circle. I cried. We're such girls.

This apartment is really incredible, too. They've done such a good job of decorating it, and this couch that I'm sleeping on they got for like $20 on Craigslist. You can see a little of the matching love seat in the background of the picture. I'm so happy for them, they're real people. It's almost sad that they're coming home in September...almost. 

quittin' time

I quit my job at Woodman's yesterday. Bad signs when I'm checking the clock every two minutes and no sense of nostalgia overwhelms me, just constant reminders that I might just survive these last few hours, only a few more hours...
I hope the "OH SHIT I JUST GOT FIRED FROM WOODMAN'S" nightmares cease now.

I'm happy to be rid of it. Although I'm happy I stuck it out for five-ish years and had the follow through/responsibility to keep a job that long, I'm also kind of disappointed in myself. I guess no one can be held to the gold standard of morality, but I really hated that job. I hated my duties there, I hated the management, I hated the ridiculous rules and hoops I had to jump through. I hate the company. I hate all that it stands for and how they treat their employees. And yet, I continued to work there and will probably continue to shop there because they paid me so amazingly well and they are cheap and will save me money. I feel like I'm in a moral catch-22 in which I know I'm coward but I'll keep doing what I'm doing anyway.

It is with great pleasure that I announce this blog has now become a travel blog. I figure, I'm really only visiting Madison the next time I'm here anyway (for less than a week) to take care of business, bid adieu to my loved ones, pack, cash checks and pay tuition and go.

Next stop, Denver!

let's hear it for New York

Just got home, like, an hour ago. I'm tired, in the "...but there's so much more to do!" way, as in, getting ready for the other trips that are impending.

Thoughts on New York:
Connie and I had a great time, we saw so many really diverse and interesting sights and tasted so many amazing tastes and introduced ourselves to worlds we will never be a part of.
What I mean by that last bit is that we were invited into settings and around people that are really different from those here at home. We stayed with some people who work on Wall Street, for firms like JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley (I don't care what they say, that still sounds like a conflict of interest to me), we had lunch with Yvonne, who is an intern in the high fashion world (she helped design a dress that the girl from Glee wore to some event or another) and we dove head first into the entertainment industry yesterday, seeing the filming for Live with Kelly (formerly with Regis), The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon, and as all luck would have it, we saw 30 Rock being filmed outside. I still am a little shocked because I don't really watch that much TV, so seeing any TV show being filmed would've been cool, but actually seeing a shoot from a show that I follow and enjoy was kind of a one-in-a-million. Tina Fey looks awesome, by the way.
We also made our way to the Met, which was really fascinating but we didn't get to spend nearly enough time there. The admission is "suggested donation" so next time I'm in New York I'm going for significantly less because I didn't get my money's worth last time (petty, petty, petty).

There were so many things that we experienced it's hard to put all but the most recent here on this blog. It was restaurant week, so I had some fantastic eats and also got some insider New Yorker tips on places to eat/drink. Those tips were seriously invaluable and made the whole experience that much better.

As with everywhere I go, I did take notice of the sky. It's beautiful, broken into by endless buildings and human construction, but on clear days bright and deep and on the cloudy ones dotted by the occasional ray of sun beaming down onto the buildings.

I can see myself living there, but it's troubling because I have the distinct impression that I would be living a very lonely life. Granted, the life I lead is certainly close to that here in Madison, I just fear that I could easily slip into a pattern where seeing others and meeting others easily falls to the wayside due to the effort required on my part to make and retain a social setting for myself. Apparently in New York it's totally acceptable to find mates through online dating websites, which is not really the case here. I guess I can see why: everyone is busy and it's really hard to meet people surrounded by people. Seems moronic but I can understand it. If I do move there, I think I would aim for the West Village, that was my favorite neighborhood. I can see myself living in the ultimate 'live and let live' and enjoying it. Maybe it'll happen someday...

concerns relating to media

the old chemistry books that collect dust on the shelves of my house concern me. will the books that i am using in school now appear so archaic to my children as the old calculus books of the 1980's? will papered books seem like days of yore to them as they all gather all their information from the internet and their electronic reading devices? that's a pity. books are romantic...like records. it's sad to see the decline of the album. the cds, and before that the records (let's be honest, we can all do without the cassettes and VHSes) because the physical proof of our interests is disappearing. it used to take serious music collectors lifetimes to build collections of records from various eclectic shops and trades and whatnot. now, i can have all the music i've even ever heard of (and more, believe me) at the touch of a fingertip. yes, my music library is more diverse, but i argue it means less. that's concerning as well. will my 20 beyonce singles that i bounce along to in the car ever mean half as much as one EP to some 21 year old 30 years ago? i was trying to assemble some sort of list of albums that i would invest in if the record buying scheme was still the same today as 20 years ago...

for sures:
revolver/rubber soul/sgt. pepper/the white album-the beatles
transatlanticism/plans-dcfc
give up-the postal service
bob dylan's greatest hits
blame it on gravity-the old 97's
the lion king soundtrack

but how would i ever know that those were my favorite albums? i know that i love them by exposure and reexposure on my ipod/itunes/other people's itunes/ipods that also got the music through somewhat unsavory means. i'd probably just like the same songs as everyone else on the radio, especially now, knowing me and how lazy i've become with the music discovery.

but the books thing, that really has me going. i love my books, and my kindle, while great and all, is just helping the inevitable right along. is it inevitable? will books disappear? will kids in school also cease to learn regular writing in favor of typing or even oral dictation, as cursive has disappeared? (cursive, in the old days, was supposedly faster than printing letters, fancy that)

other concerns:
will cereal boxes become animated? (no more annoying jingles, please)
will tv's become totally rewindable all the time?
will my shower curtain tell me what the outside temperature is and how to dress for the day?
will siri have grandchildren who interact with my grandchildren?
will apple products always be superior?
will the globe come up with some sort of universal identification that can access emergency medical records quickly for every human being?
will my children use retinal scans to get into their lockers instead of my combination lock?
will the house i buy have sound that follows me from room to room and automatic lighting?

how many cities in how many weeks?

The last of my Madison weeks are rapidly approaching. I can't believe it! I'm very excited; excited for New York (!) excited for Denver (!) (this is pointless adding exclamation points after each of my destinations, suffice to say each should be followed by a !) Seattle, Rome, Cologne, Krakow, Accra, Moscow...Athens, EUROPE.

I just get so excited thinking about it. And now that I have a Kindle, I can read on all my transportation without carrying a ton of weighty books! Any book recommendations, blog readers? So far I've downloaded pretty much all of the classics (free on Amazon Prime) and The Hunger Games. Let me know!

Nothing new happens here, really, other than Woodman's, although last night I did go out with Janet and Rushi and there were Martinis and Mojitos. And fun times. I'm going to miss my Madison...

and i don't feel any different

So, this is the new year...do they really get less and less exciting as you get older, or is that just me? I feel like the month arbitrarily changed to January and a bunch of people went to party as usual on Saturday night. I didn't even hear cheering at midnight, to be honest. I tried to make legitimate new year's resolutions, I even wrote them down. It's day three and I haven't really started working on them yet...maybe it's time.
So why do we celebrate the passage of time?
Holidays are...strange. It's as if humans randomly decided that they needed to celebrate things. Do you think it's human nature to celebrate things, or do you think it's social tradition? And where does "human nature" stop and "social tradition" begin when you're speaking of a tradition that dates back to...well, not the beginning of time but certainly close? (Probably 1 year following the beginning of time, which was probably declared an 'international' holiday)