oh hi

So, uh, I moved. That's where I've been the past two weeks. We don't have internet yet, and apparently if I don't have Internet at home, I don't go online at all, ever. Weird. I need to get it though, school starts tomorrow, and I need some ways to procrastinate. Oh, and the "we"--I live with Nathan now. It's totally fucking awesome so far, and we got through the moving process without hating/killing each other, so I'm hoping it will continue to be totally fucking awesome. In other news, school looks to be awesome this semester, and I applied to get a booth at Art vs. Craft with my friend Leah (who makes the prettiest and most amazing things), and The Best Volunteer Job in the World continues to delight and amaze me. And, that is all for now. We're at the bar across the street (that also has internet and coffee & bagels in the morning, sweet) and I need to finish up on the Internet so I can finish my beer and go home and sleep and get ready for school in the morning. Yeah!

back in mke

Doing schoolwork is so much easier at school. The library is so quiet! Also, it is hot outside! Summer is full of hot weather! I am full of revelations! Not Revelations though.

Back to catching up on video lectures! (No more online courses after this, btw.)

so this happened

It is very cold in Milwaukee right now. I walked to the co-op earlier to get some hot chocolate (and ended up getting non-dairy ice cream instead, because why not?). As it is very cold out, I was wearing a sweater and a long coat and a hat (one of those ones with ear flaps) and mittens. And then this happened:

marina: [walks down a dark street, car drives by slowly, window rolls down]
creepy guy: hey, baby, you be fine, you seeing anyone?
marina: yes?
creepy guy: oh, okay. sorry! [drives away]

I just... I was wearing all of my winter clothes, and it was dark, what was he basing his "i be fine" hypothesis on? Also, what the hell kind of creepy guy is he? He slows down (after dark in a not-great neighborhood) and verbally accosts a random girl, and then apologizes in a fairly sincere fashion and drives away when he finds out random girl has a boyfriend? I don't think he really "gets" it, and by "it," I mean "everything."

back

We got to Milwaukee about an hour ago. I slept nearly the entire way, and I'm still tired.

I wanted to post a few pictures of my grandma and grandpa from right around the time they got married, but my parents have dial-up, and it is so, so slow. My grandma sorted out all of her pictures at some point in the past few years, and I want to find a way to scan most if not all of them. Of course, they're up north and I'm in Milwaukee, so... I don't know.

Anyway, back in Milwaukee. School starts on Tuesday; I guess I'm ready. My parents are going to drive me around tomorrow so I can buy bookshelves and possibly also a filing cabinet. And possibly we will go to Costco! Exciting. Right now, I should go to sleep.

spanked

The Packers just beat the Vikings 34-0. You guys, this day is awesome. I got some delicious coffee at the Riverwest Co-op, I bought some super firm cubed tofu which they apparently bought after the suggestion I made last month because my co-op is awesome like that, and then I got to drink my coffee while watching the Packers totally spank the Vikings. 34-0! Spanked!

tomorrow is laundry day

You know what's really pretty wonderful? When you're sitting around, missing someone and feeling blue, and that person you're missing calls you and tells you that he/she misses you too.

On a related note, to all my lovely New York people, I miss you, and I'm terribly sorry I haven't called you. It's not you, it's me. I have been far too self-involved, adjusting to Milwaukee and getting two new jobs and this whole thing where I'm not really depressed anymore.

I made a necklace today. It is long and red and sparkly.

oh shit

I HAVE A JOB AT A BOOKSTORE.

MY LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE.

btw

I'm in Milwaukee. I have been busy and without internet inside my house, but I am here. Many stories will follow, probably after Time Warner finally installs internet on the 19th, nearly a month after we called them. For now, you should know that I'm more happy than I've been in months (years?) and my house is awesome and my room is amazing and pretty clean right now, if you don't count the boxes full of things with no place to go because I have almost no furniture. I sort of feel like an adult right now, which is weird and sort of unpleasant but also kind of nice.

Also, I'm a tiny bit drunk. How clichéd, getting drunk and posting to my "blog."

one step closer to being an archivist

Things That I am Going to Make With My Food Processor

[edit: even more words about food processors here]

Natural Peanut Butter. You know how you make peanut butter? You grind up peanuts. That's it! Apparently, it takes 1-3 minutes with a food processor. And I can add honey! And make it exactly as chunky as I want!

Salsa. Oh man, so many different kinds of salsa. I made salsa two nights ago, with roasted tomatoes and onions and red pepper, and I bought more tomatoes and peppers today at Fairway, and it will be even easier to make my own salsa when I have my own food processor. I'm still working on perfecting basic salsa, but I really want to try tomatillo salsa. Also, mango and pear and possibly apple. You can add so many things to salsa!

Pasta sauce! I can make it in bulk and add garlic and basil and whatever else I want! And then I can put it in jars and save it and I'll never have to buy pre-made pasta sauce!

Chutney! Why the fuck not?!

Cream Cheese [or more likely Neufchatel cheese] Mixes - green onions, jalapeño peppers, garlic, who knows!


I am so very excited about my soon-to-be-purchased food processor. I have a Target gift card that I saved from Christmas, so I'll actually be able to buy a pretty decent one. I haven't made a final decision yet, but I might buy it online now and have it sent to my new apartment so it'll be waiting for me when I arrive. They probably have free shipping on Target.com, right? I'm also going to buy a new rice cooker; my current one isn't nice enough to warrant packing and shipping it to Milwaukee, and Kira will be able to use it.

If anyone has product recommendations for food processors or rice cookers, please please please leave a comment. They will have to stand up to heavy use, as I am going to cook all the time in an effort to save money.

Cooking everything yourself instead of buying premade things is cheaper, right? Because I'm pretty sure it will be healthier, especially for me and my weird digestive system, but I'm sort of counting on it being cheaper as well. Kira and I have been talking about this a lot, and I think if I buy produce on sale and in season, and buy everything else on sale as well, I should be okay. Also, apparently a Costco is being built near Milwaukee, so I can take advantage of my parents' membership when they visit me.

Uhh sorry, this has veered into me worrying about money and moving. I'm not that surprised, since "holy shit, I can't afford to move, what if I don't find a job right away" is one of only three or four things that I think about anymore. [Others--"I'm moving from New York City to Milwaukee? What?!" and "Maybe I should just throw away everything I own and start fresh in Milwaukee because packing sucks ass."] Still, that doesn't mean it's interesting.

disc golf

Let me tell you something about disc golf--I suck ass at disc golf. There was definitely a time when I could throw a frisbee, and that time is not now, because I am terrible at the disc golfing. I did get to spend a lot of time in a sunny, sunny park while figuring out the extent of my terribleness, so at least there's that. (According to Firefox spell check, 'terribleness' is a real word, which doesn't seem right somehow.)

I'm flying back to New York tonight, which is lame times a million. Well, the bars open until 4am, the 24 hour delis, the museums, the beautiful old buildings, the history, the mad amounts of diverse people, the stores, etc, are obviously not lame. But I have to go back to work and back to all the responsibilities that I've been avoiding for the past week, and I'm not really "about" that.

Books purchased and/or borrowed this week:
The Plague - Camus
Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
Double or Nothing - Raymond Federman
Commies, Crooks, Gypsies, and Poets - Jan Novak

NOT self-centered

I reread that last thing I wrote, and wow, do I talk about myself a lot or what? Yeah, this is a blog, blah blah blah, shut up! I am not completely self-absorbed, and this blog is not (just) about my endlessly fascinating life.

Anyway! Here's a list of things that are cool.

1. Partisan. Lovely people, lovely music.

2. Milwaukee!!

3. El Topo. So weird, so good.

4. Riverwest!!

5. Sonic Typewriter. Noise band! You know you want it.

6. Dear Astronaut. But you knew that already, right?

6. Riding bikes!

(This is starting to seem a little sad. "I love riding bikes, woo!!!")


Anyway. I rode my bike to the library with Frank and Scott, and I am way more out of shape than I realized, but I made it all the way there AND all the way back. Then I drank a lot of beer, which will definitely help the out of shape thing. That was the night of the Propagandhi show, the awesomeness of which I doubt I could even begin to explain. I twisted my ankle at the show, and I'll just let you believe that it happened while I was slam-dancing or whatever, and not when I tripped five minutes after arriving. The point here is that Propagandhi is awesome, and you should listen to them right now.

(Why do I feel like everyone already knows this? Possibly because I'm generally at least five years behind the times.)

Milwaukee time has not all been fun time, but the non-fun time isn't nearly as interesting or fit for public consumption. Everything happens that's meant to happen, and other boring clichés. I think mostly this visit solidified my love for Milwaukee. I give up. Wooooo!! Milwaukee!!! Everyone care about Milwaukee!!!1!

mmmore milwaukee!!

Sooo yeah, "Milwaukee." Heard of it?

I went to another show last night, after going to an awesome cookout. Boca Burger makes a pretty good vegetarian bratwurst. There was so much good food, and I drank other people's good beer for half the night while I waited for my Hamm's to get cold. Related: Hamm's doesn't exactly taste like piss, but it is so much better when it's cold.

The show was fun; it was at The Pub, which is a weird little bar. The owner told me I could have a job there anytime I wanted after I drank whiskey straight from the bottle (he didn't have a shot glass for me, was the reason for that, I guess). It was Jameson, but he poured it in my mouth, and it felt a little too "Girls Gone Wild" to actually enjoy it. Also, Jeb told me that the owner has a terrible memory, so he probably won't remember that he promised me a job. Moral of the story? Do not let weird bartenders pour liquor in your mouth, even if it is free Jameson.

Seriously though, I drank liquor for the first time in awhile and the second time this year, and it's still a terrible idea. Remind me of that next time we go drinking.

coffee coffee milwaukee!!!

Holy shit, you guys!

Okay, I don't know where to go from there. I'm in Milwaukee, at a non-Starbucks cafe with free wireless, which is not nearly as exciting as where Kira and Max are, but I'm totally okay with that. For reals!

Going to see Propagandhi tonight. I bought tickets before I'd actually heard any of their songs, but I figured Jeb and his friends are going, and I'm all about tagging along with my cousin and his friends, as they are far cooler than me. Plus I figure Jeb has reliably awesome taste in music, so this Propagandhi thing would be awesome. Guess what? It is! They have a song called "And we thought nation-states were a bad idea," so really, how could I not like them? Plus I don't listen to nearly enough loud fast music lately.

Oh! I went to a Dear Astronaut practice last night, and let me tell you, they are fixing to take over the world. You'd best go buy some of their musics RIGHT NOW before it sells out and you'll miss your chance to buy their early work, and then how are you gonna be like "oh, I liked them before they got megafamous"? I recommend The Dark Forest and that's only 60% because I'm thanked in the liner notes (famous by association!!!).

So I'm on my second coffee of the day, and now that I think about it I haven't really eaten anything today, woops!

back from the homeland

I feel like I've used that as a title before.

So very much happened while I was in Wisconsin; I don't even know where to start. I'm running on about two hours of sleep, and I don't get off work for another million hours, so I'll keep this short and erratic.

My sister got into a pretty bad car accident the night I got back. She's okay, thankfully, aside from a broken ankle and some painful gross awesome bruises (one of em looked like jesus for a day or so). We ended up spending a lot of time together and didn't fight once, which was cool albeit weird as the sisterly bonding was the result of a scary awful thing. Tracey is amazing, which I can say because she doesn't know this blog shit exists.

I saw a million awesome bands on New Year's Eve in Milwaukee and had a generally awesome time, aside from two hours sort of in the middle that were just really terrible. Entirely unrelated to the bands though. No details will be forthcoming as it's honestly not that interesting, I swear, but I probably maybe will get around to talking about how I can't write anything in here lately because everything that happens is something that seems inappropriate for public consumption. That may or may not make sense (two hours of sleep, and not even bed-sleep or couch-sleep, two hours of plane-sleep) but probably I'll write more about that later because it's related to my Awesome Totally Non-Cliched New Year's Eve Epiphany (2007).

Dear Astronaut! Guys, my cousin Jeb is an awesome human being and an awesome musician in this way that constantly freaks me out. In the best possible way! Jeb and Scott and Frank put on an amazing show, as did the rest of the bands that I loved and yet am too tired to remember all the names but definitely you should somehow check them out anyway.

Yeah, Milwaukee was really super awesome. I could see myself living there, I think.

TIRED TIRED TIRED COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE

What else? I took a bunch of pictures of Dear Astronaut, and Jeb posted them on the MySpace, and people complimented them and stuff, even people who didn't know me, and I did a little happy dance. Go look at their MySpace and check out the photos and see how very completely awesome I am. Also, you could check out my Flickr page, as I posted the entire set there. I'm in the process of weeding out the crap ones so you can only see the very best. They're in the "New Year's Eve in Milwaukee" set.

While I'm linking to things, my other cousin Jason is in the hilarious awesome band From New York City. I missed their first concert by one day (it would've been so perfect too, if I'd gotten home from new york city in time to see their show) which I will regret forever. Jason and his friends managed to create this completely spot-on satire (I'm like 51% sure that's the words that I mean to say) of douchebag New York hipsters, plus they can actually play their instruments good and stuff. Check them out!

I really love my family a lot.

Soon (Probably) : more about Christmas, more about Milwaukee, more about my Awesome Totally Non-Cliched New Year's Eve Epiphany (2007), more about everything and anything

This wasn't short at all!