Thinking is Overrated

I should be working, but instead I'm thinking. You know, I always wanted to be a good writer, but I think my biggest block has always been taking those risks with yourself and putting all of your deepest, darkest thoughts and secrets out in writing. How do extremely private people do it? Especially if, you're like me and have nothing interesting to write about unless it comes from real life. I don't make fiction, I don't write good poetry (I know, I've tried), and apparently I'm not doing so well in the "daily life and trials of Ryan" department either.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have a lot of things on my mind that I'm not so sure I want to share on so public a format. Not that I think that anyone other than a select few reads this thing, but it's out there, you know?

There's a woman whose blog I just started to read lately, Heather B., and she's a gifted writer (in my opinion), with a lot of really wonderful things to say. She doesn't hold anything back, and I think that is a large part of her gift. To be a good writer, you really have to dig deep... The best bloggers do just that. Someday I'm going to look back at all of this and know that I could have pushed the envelope, could have said more, could have written better, could have dug deep...

I don't know...

Because No One Else Is!

I feel the need to blog since I maniacally check all my friends' weblogs about twenty times a day and none of them are writing - WHERE ARE YOU, PEOPLE??!!! (Although maybe this just means that all you people have a life and are out living it, or actually love your jobs and don't spend all day trying to avoid it.)

Although I must give props where due - Garland wrote his first entry since Christmas today.

Anyway, I am off to the movies now - I don't care how poor I am; if I don't do something outside of the house soon I WILL SCREAM! (And you won't like that... Neither will my roommates for that matter...)

What I Should Be Doing Vs. What I Am

Okay, I should really be working to catch up on all I missed last week, but I couldn't resist this one thing (I will write more about my vacation later, I promise!):

High school meme, stolen from many I’ve been told…

1. What year was it? I can only assume that this means which year did I graduate – from high school, that is: 1997.

2. What were your favorite bands or musical artists? Nirvana, Korn, Godsmack, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden…things of that ilk. Apparently I was a raging teenager on the inside. Or greatly influenced by WAAF and all that satan music my brother liked to play…

3. What was your favorite outfit? Even today I couldn’t name a single item of clothing in my wardrobe.

4. What was up with your hair? Nothing. I managed to have hair that cannot really be made fun of at this juncture.

5. Who were your best friends? The same people I knew since kindergarten (with a few minor exceptions): Christian S., Christy P. (now married, so it’s really Christy S.), Joanna W., Michael L., Jeff C., Chris P., Nicole G., Jenn D., Katy F., yadda, yadda, yadda…

6. Where did you work? There are really only so many options in Clinton, MA. I chose the CVS option.

7. Did you take the bus? Nope. The bus is only offered if you are more than 2 miles from school, or some other such BS like that. I think I was only 1.9999999_ miles from school, so I walked.

8. Who did you have a crush on? I fear to admit this because one of my “crushes” is now pretty much a town drunkard, but one was this kid whose grandparents lived across the street from me and I thought he looked a lot like a young Harrison Ford. The other was my only high school “boyfriend” – if you can call holding hands after four months of “dating” a real boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. Admittedly, I’ve always been much too level-headed to really let any boy blind me to what I’m trying to do with my life, so the first was more of an admire-from-afar-gosh-he’s-kind-of-cute things, and the second was more of a he’s-shy-and-adorable-this-should-be-fun-breaking-him-in kind of a thing.

9. Did you fight with your parents? I think I buck the trend on this one, but I really always got along well with my parents. No major fueds.

10. Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on? Maybe toward the end of my high school career, I thought Gavin Rossdale was pretty hot, but look at how he turned out – the scumbag! Now I just make Celebrity Cheat Sheets for all my friends and log them into my Palm pilot.

11. Did you smoke cigarettes? Not even a puff.

12. Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack because you were too nervous to find your locker? “Nervous” was never a word associated with me.

13. Did you have a 'clique'? My group of friends actually named ourselves “THE clique,” a kind of thumb-to-nose action toward the rest of society.

14. Did you have "The Max" like Zach, Kelly, and Slater? I remember spending a lot of time at Denny’s, but mostly we spent our evenings hanging out in the parking lot of CVS and Victory, when we all got out of work.

15. Admit it, were you popular? Popular? No. Massively disliked? No. Oblivious? Very likely.

16. Who did you want to be just like? I never had any aspiration to be like someone else.

17. What did you want to be when you grew up? I don’t know, I just wanted to go to college…

How to Gouge Out One's Eyes without Even Trying

Step 1: Earn ivy league degree
Step 2: Work despicable job for exorbitant salary
Setp 3: Quit aforementioned lucrative job
Step 4: Maintain unemployment for no less than 6 months, harboring a wonderfully deep and profound depression alongside newfound hostility towards boyfriend
Step 5: Break up with boyfriend
Step 6: Flee city - i.e. the site of despicable job and failed relationship - and, having no prospects, take on very low-paying nonprofit job in new city
Step 7: Work 8+ hours a day in front of a computer, eating all meals at desk, in an attempt to straighten out a year's worth of finances that you didn't compile in the first place
Step 8: Never obtain a finance or accounting degree

I have now been doing the accounting for 2004 at work for three weeks, amidst answering the phones, drafting letters, supervising interns, etc. Can I just say how much I would rather be tossed out of a low-flying plane at this point???

Our accounts are in shambles. Nothing makes sense, entries are missing, check copies weren't made, and not once did anyone actually think it would be a good idea to make a detailed accounting of the big centennial celebration we apparently had over the summer! What a mess.

And here I am, left holding the strings...

Nothing to say, but I'll say it anyway

So, Anthony is getting surgery this week and I'm celebrating by going to Punta Cana on Monday.

Actually, it really wasn't supposed to happen like this. Jimmy and I have been trying to go on vacation since November, but Apple Vacations keeps putting us off - as if a trip won in a radio show contest isn't as valid and unchangeable as a regularly scheduled vacation that you actually pay for! All I know is that we now have flight plans and both Jimmy and I could really use this vacation!!! I am really looking forward to spending some time with him...there's a lot to catch up on.

As for Anthony and the big surgery: when we were in Charlotte over the holidays visiting his family, his mom brought him to a specialist to check on his knee. Apparently an old injury that no one fully investigated has now come back to bite him in the good old tushie. They need to take a final MRI to make sure, but it looks like he has some torn cartilage or something, which if you tweak his knee the right way causes oodles and oodles of fun. The doctor plans on drilling three holes - one for the fiber optics camera so they can see what they're doing, and two more to actually complete the surgery. If I am correct in my assumption (as I had the same type of surgery, sort of), this is what you call a laproscopic surgery. They will scrape down the cartilage in his knee so it's smooth, and then patch him up and send him on his merry way with some painkillers (which, knowing Anthony, he probably won't take). The cartilage will then grow back properly and heal itself.

The surgery should last only a few hours and Anthony goes home at the end of the day. They say that within three weeks he's going to be 100%, which is exactly what they told me when I had my kidney out in 2001. It's amazing that the body can heal itself so quickly, but it's true.

Of course, I think Anthony's being a dumbass by driving himself down to North Carolina, but thus far I haven't been able to make arrangements to fly into Charlotte so that I can drive him back when I get home from the Dominican Republic (it just so happens that he plans to return to NYC the same weekend I return from my trip). So his whole return plan is up in the air, as we don't know how he'll feel within a week of surgery. So, we'll see.

Right now I can't afford a flight into Charlotte so I'm relying on Apple Vacations to make the switch. As it is so close to our date of departure and we already have confirmed flights, I don't know what they can do without charging me my firstborn child or an extraneous limb. Again, we'll see...

I stole this from my friend, David...

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

To misquote my friend David, "Where the hell is the snow???!" Yes, I realize that most of the time (lately) winter doesn't even start in truth until January/February, but this is ridiculous! It's January 5th and it's raining out! It's not even close to snow-like temperatures. We're not even getting sleet...!

Well, whatever, my rant is over. It's five days into 2005, and after nearly 6 days away from my apartment, I am ready to start some of my post-holiday "resolutions." Despite the rain, tonight I am going to the gym and I promised myself I would run at least five miles. Tomorrow I will try again to wake up at the butt-crack of dawn (i.e. 6AM - way before dawn these days!) and hit the gym before work - there's a yoga class I want to take that starts at 6:45AM on Thursdays (and Tuesdays, actually). We'll get to see how flexible I am not and go from there (must I remind you that I believe I am the only female in the history of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center to actually fail the flexibility test??!!!).

Everything else should come into place once I actually purchase some groceries and have the stuff of life to live on...

Did I mention that I saw Scarface for the first time all over again this past weekend? What that means is that the movie didn't really make an enormous impression on me as I put it on my Netflix list as if I had never really seen it. Out of five stars - five being "I loved it!," four being "I really liked it," three being "I liked it," two being "I didn't like it," and one being "I hated it!" - I give the movie a three. I don't know what all those rap moguls are about, all trying to emulate Al Pacino's character. I really didn't find the movie that compelling.

I also saw one of Pedro Almodovar's classic movies, Atame! (Tie me up! Tie me down!), which stars Antonio Banderas as a mental patient who is finally declared "normal" and leaves the institution only to kidnap a porn star so she can get to know him and decide she wants to marry him. It is one of the few movies that I think Banderas actually shines in - it's probably because it's entirely in Spanish. I've heard before that Banderas is a much better actor when he acts in Spanish... In any case, I won't ruin the ending for you, but I thought it was fairly implausible and I wasn't overly impressed, like I have been with Almodovar's other work. Again, I give this movie 3 stars.

The other movie I managed to see was "The Door in the Floor" with Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. If you waited your whole life to see Kim Basinger naked, then this is your movie. My thought on it is that it somehow managed to stay on my movie list after Vincent and I broke up and it was one of his selections, dammit! Any movie with a premise of a husband hiring an assistant who looks exactly like one of their dead sons so his wife can have sex with him is a bit underwhelming, and a lot deviant. I think that if they were going for sick and twisted, they could have pushed the envelope more. Again, not truly compelling. I rated it 3 stars (again).

So that was my movie weekend (other than Monty Python's The Holy Grail, which if you haven't seen it, you don't know what you're missing!). Which is in fact about all I did this weekend: watch movies. I don't think I moved from the couch in Anthony's apartment until Monday night, when I started suffering from cabin fever and needed to get out of the shoebox...I mean, apartment!

So, Christmas with Anthony was quiet (the one we had in New York on Friday morning), New Year's was quiet, even Michael coming over to drink like a fish was quiet... A generally dull, quiet, long weekend...mmmmm....