the road home

my week ahead is scaring me. again, a list:

my dad gets into boston tonight.

tomorrow my car gets fixed and it's my last day in the office as a 'local'.

thursday and friday will be spent packing and cleaning.

friday night or sat morning we'll take off, headed south to texas.

drive for 3 days and land at home by monday.

kiss my momma and grams and rest for 10 minutes.

tuesday morning i have to get up at 4am and head to the airport to fly back to boston.

ugh.

sweaty and salty

packing and moving is one of the most annoying things in life.

i know this is exactly what i asked for. what i've been working towards.

but ughhhh.

trying to organize a 2000 mile move plus keep things under control at work... it just is a lot going on.

plus it's toasty and humid here in boston. which i know is exactly what i'm moving back to in san antonio... but ughhh. i just dont want it now. i'm not in the mood...

oh man- big conflict

working out my acl schedule. and at first glance i have a big conflict. muse (who put on an awesome! live show) and artic monkeys (who i've never seen, but i like to jump around to) are playing at the same time on Saturday afternoon. yikes.

decision time.

i know my brother's vote w/o even asking him. (muse.) not sure of mine yet... eek.

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read more | digg story

excited

now that it has come to fruition, i am so excited to make the move down to texas.

yes, i'll still be in boston for ~60% of my time. but to know that 40% of my time every week can be spent at home in texas is huge.

i can eat regular dinners with my family. i can reconnect with friends i haven't seen regularly since 10th grade. i can watch my littlest cousins grow up. i can hike with my dad, shop with my mom and tell secrets with my brother with regular frequency. i don't have to plan out my trips home to the minute, squishing in as many people as possible into a short 3 or 4 day visit every 4 months. now i can hang with my gram or my grandpa without worrying that i'm neglecting the other by not seeing them on this visit down.

ah. i really hope this works out as well as i am planning on.

yeehaw.

got the final approval today.

i get to move to texas.

and by move i mean fly there on the weekends and then back to boston every monday morning... yeah.

more family time for sure. that's whats important.

yay!

moving on and on and on

moving out of my place in 12 days. i've been packing on and off for the past two weeks and it still looks as if i haven't even started.

this is not going to be fun.

i didn't even go out today except to go to mass and the grocery store. i actually did spend the day packing. and still... so much stuff all over the place.

i hate moving.

beyond the accumulation of 'stuff' on such a grand scale is the somewhat significant issue of figuring out where i will be 'living' per se come sept1. i can only last on the couch of ex-roomies for so long i think.

so stressful.

and i have amigos that are planning on visiting in the coming months. visiting 'me'. of course, when visiting me, it's important that they have an actual placeee to visit. a physical location where i live and they can stay for a night or two. i don't know where that is. eek. i need a place. soon.

this sucks.

----

went to a concert yesterday. the day was pretty beautiful out, feeling like fall in new england (though it's still bloody summer!), with sunny skies and nice breezes. only once the sun set it was freezing cold and my fingers began to turn blue.

musical highlights of the concert were band of horses, yeah yeah yeahs and modest mouse. my first time seeing each and they were fantastic. seeing karen o. in person in her total rockstar persona with crazy dancing and theatrical makeup and was so awesome.

seeing guster again was also great, only cos it took me back to bc days. i remember sitting on the windowsill of our mod on the last day of classes to watch them perform in the mod lot. ahh. bc memories. :p

----

my mom/bro are on the phone giving me update on people from my elementary school that she sees around town. two more girls are engaged/married. seriously. i cannot move to texas under these conditions. all other girls my age are married or engaged. all decent boys are already taken. there will be no girls for me to hang out with and no boys for me to date. fantastic.

not.

so depressing.

i'm so old school

while on vacation in miami last month i bought a nkotb shirt at urban outfitters. it was on clearance for 9.99 and was a black replica of a (white) shirt i had in elementary school.

i have loved nkotb for a long time. like since i was 5. i remember coming home from kindergarten (1989, what- what!) and going over to my cousin valerie's house to watch nkotb music videos. forreal. nkotb was my first cassette tape. (michael jackson and smurfs were on lp). such a baby of the 80s, i know.

today while thinking back i realized/recalled these fun facts. 19 years ago i loved 5 boys from boston. 19 years later i realized i've lived in their hometown for almost 6 years. freaky, huh? coincidence? tangential relation?

i'm a loser.

i did meet jordan knight once. in logan airport actually. on my very first visit to boston, my senior year at tams. aww. maybe that's what really sold me on this place. tricky tricky jordan knight. so cute. (i had the j. knight barbie when i was 5 or 6. picked it out myself. rat-tail and all. wow. ok. done for the night.)

good bye.

nyc graffiti and flickr and moving

i went to nyc this past weekend to hang with my girlies, maria and kel, and just wander around manhattan. and we went to the bronx and astoria. lots of traveling. walked a lot, did some minor shopping, and mostly just hung with the girls. we were all kind of tired and poopy but just laying around maria's place petting sphinx is fun. almost like the mod... only not.

anyways. during my wanderings i took some pictures of nice graf in soho. and now they're on flickr...


i've been digging graffiti for a quite a while and my interest has increased significantly in the past few years. i now constantly scope the streets for new pieces and point them out to my family and friends.

walking down a city street (and even driving down a country road) can always be interesting and art filled. for me graffiti is a great modern art form. i'm sure people have been tagging up walls for ages, scratching their names in trees and under desks. since the 1980s tagging and wall art has flourished across the US, both legally and illegally.

i appreciate it every day. each morning on my drive to work through allston, ma i'm able to graffiti-spot for a couple of blocks before i get on the highway. on trips away i spend time wandering around neighborhoods just looking for something different. graf is totally public art in its rawest form.

when i find these interesting pieces and i take pictures of them. i have gigs worth of pictures of street art. pasteups, tags and stencils. if i see it, i like it and my camera's handy i like to catch a pic before it gets painted over or washed away. another great thing about street art is it's limited lifespan. because these pieces are thrown up on walls allover the cities, they come and go at the will of the people. so communal. even if the community police try to wipe them out... all part of the circle. by taking a picture i have that piece captured on my hard drive even if someone else eventually/inevitably paints over it.

so anyways.

i take a lot of pictures and i like to show them to people. so i've turned to flickr as my website of choice for sharing my pictures with people i know and people i don't. opening up my graffiti archives for the world wide web to see.

flickr is a great place for tagging and searching pictures. through this foto-friendly community i've found pages of some of my favorite artists. the fact that i can take photos of these seemingly anonymous pieces, put them up on the site, and then have artists wander around and claim them as their own is fantastic. another benefit is that i'm able to wander around the collections of my fellow graf-lovers and see where they've been and what has caught their eyes.

it's like a team effort to photo and id all these artist around the world. a giant easter egg hunt, if you will, on the streets and on the sites. surprises around every corner, and yet sometimes, nothing interesting at all.

now i'm rambling.

whoops.

anyways. i love graffiti. flickr is a great site for fotos. and my new camera add-on's are in the mail. yay! new filters and a hood by the weekend - woohoo! i'll be back on the streets and snapping away asap.

right after i pack up my house. my tons and tons of crap.

our move date is 3 weeks away and my room/house is a dirty disaster. i need to get my booty in gear and packing. really. cos i'm moving. out of this house on aug 31. and to texas... sometime... semi-homeless for that middle part but no worries. no worries, no worries, it'll be ok.

---

i packed 3 boxes worth of books today. actually, rach packed one for me and cracked the whip to make me pack the other two. dang. 3 boxes of books packed up and still SO much stuff to go. this sucks.

mmm... tasty

i just got a couple slices of pizza from the caf at work. i never eat pizza here but today i wanted something different.

mushroom pizza. the mushrooms are most definitely from a can.

i like that.

the pizza tasted just like what i used to eat at pistol pete's when i was a kid. ahhh, pistol pete's. i think i had a birthday party there in 6th or 7th grade. obvs way too old for that kind of thing but i didn't care. greasy pizza andddd skeeball!

man. pistol pete's was awesome.

now its a bingo place. lame.

Someone’s Watching Your House - New York Times

haha, just what i was talking about last night... online house stalking... it's a national sickness.

read more | digg story

homesick

i'm looking at houses online. cos e-shopping for homes is great. between zillow, realtor and craigslist dot-coms there are a ton of places to just wander around the virtual realty market.

today while shopping i took a sattelite-swing over to check out my own house in dear san antonio. the satellite picture shows my dad's van in the driveway that is trimmed with rocks my mom and bro laid out. i see the shed in the back and our giant tree in the front yard.

seeing a place so familiar makes me so homesick. so.

i may not be in san antonio on september 1, but i'm working on getting there AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. forreal. i hate being so far away. especially when my family needs me.

have passport, will travel.

last night i finally found my passport after it's been MIA for about 1.5 months. pretty much since i got back from mexico at the end of may. i was getting kinda of nervous. i don't actually have any international flights planned right now, but i like to know that if someone offers up a spur of the moment trip to italy or australia or brazil- i'd be able to partake. so yeah. now i'm free to fly. or you know, drive across the border into canada-land if i so desire.

anyways. my passport had fallen behind my cable box. i'd put it on top of said cable box for "safe keeping". i'm such a mess. i've packed up the equivalent of 6 suitcases of clothes and bags and things, and my room is still overflowing with stuff.

oh dear. moving is going to be such a mess.

facebookin'

the news feed updates on facebook really crack me up. all kinds of random updates on people you may or may not be actual friends with. knowing the latest relationship status of someone i haven't talked to in 4 years, finding out a college roomate's new favorite movie... and today's best:

XXXXXX added "My Chemical Romance" to his favorite music.

HAHA. anyone over the age of 14 declaring for all to see that 'my chemical romance' is your favorite music is kinda random. the fact that the person who just made this update is a slightly nerdy kid from college makes this update even funnier. he is totally NOT being ironic with this pick.

truth be told, i make embarrassing and dorky updates to my facebook profile as well. but usually, i at least try to hide them - i always click the little 'x' to remove my actions from showing up in the news feed. no one really needs to know that i added girl talk to my favorite music or removed signs from my favorite movies. really. if they cared, they'll stalk my profile, right? haha.

oh web 2.0, how fun you are.

this whole post is dorky and exposes my ongoing love of facebook. apologies. instead of announcing my nerdy tendencies on facebook i like to expose them here. whatevs, right?

weekends

weekends around the house are great. just wandering around harvard, hanging out in the house, napping and reading.

its weird that we've lived here for almost a year now. and i'm moving out and south in a little over a month. i like this place when it's warm. it's just so far from home-home.

big changes, they are a'coming.

blogging on and on and on

today at lunch we were talking about this kid who is socially awkward. he sends mass emails and talks to strangers. and he has a website. which people at work have checked out. i feel like i saw it once but i don't remember what was on it. don't know if it was a blog... then someone mentioned another work-dude who had a blog and talked about work people using vaguely disguised nicknames. also strange/awkward. people at work reading a blog that talked about them...always turns into a weird joke.

so yeah. i have a blog. obviously. which could be found easily enough. it's cross listed with a ton of websites i frequent (cos i'm a dork that way). no big. pretty much everything i say on here i'd say to anyone i talk to in real life. i think my dad is my number one reader. and if you can say it in front of your parents and the rest of the internet, i really don't feel that worried about 'work people' reading what's here. i'm a dork, i have weird obsessions, and this is one of my hobbies. writing little diary entries and life observations on the internet for friends, family and myself. i talk and write a lot. i feel like most people know that about me anyways. i'm pretty open about stuff, so whatevs.

i know some people from work read this. most don't know it exists. not like i advertise. maybe as i progress in my career i'll talk less. i know how to censor myself. i don't really want to be a topic of lunch conversation. but i am a rockstar so maybe i am super interesting and worthy of lunchtime convos... heh. anyways. the blog will continue with my self-centeredness... read on friends...

there's always so much interestingness going on... :p

i stopped at newbury comics on the way home. went on a cd buying binge. that is why i work, right? to buy things i want. so i took that list i made last week and invested in a few pop artists. interpol, spoon, white stripes and girl talk to be exact. 4 new cds. so old fashioned, i know! but since i'm anti-itunes and sometimes have weird modern-luddite leanings, i still rock the plastic cases from time to time... anyways, i listened to interpol on the way home. fantastic. of course i have heard this album before online. but listening to a new cd for the first time while driving with the windows down is just extra special. tomorrow's drive to work will probably be some thump-y goodness cos i have to be awake so early. yay. new music is great.

also i bought a new phone today. shipped this afternoon and will probably get in on thursday. how exciting.

wow. reading the last two paragraphs reminds me that i am such an environment killing consumer. and it bothers me and i need to stop... working on it...

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sand and aliens

on saturday the roomies and i ventured out to revere beach to see the sandcastle competition. there were some crazy ones out there. the main event was a pirate ship inspired by pirates of the carribean including the octopus one and captain jack sparrow. we didn't get to see them blow up the losers at the end but it was still very cool.

after wandering around the sand exhibit we took in some sun on the beach. it wasn't as sketchy as everyone warned us it would be. just full of boston people. who are... boston-y. however, adjacent to us was also a group of what we determined to be brazillian. in this group were 4 boys wearing little tiny, very tight swim trunks. playing some kind of volleyball-soccer game. that was pretty much what entertained us girls for quite a while. eye candy for the girls. we're weirdos, oh well.

after a quick shower ellen and i ventured out to see transformers at fenway. ahem. yeah. the transformers were totally awesome. love them. shia, cute girl, hot soldier boy and the dialogue - yeah, not so impressive. sadly. the cartoon totally rocked my socks as a kid and now the robots still do but the movie was eh just due to all the human talking. tres annoying. oh well, still glad i saw it in the theater cos the autobots were REALLY cool.

---

and now its sunday night and as usual i am not in the mood to return to work in the morning. sometimes it feels like i'm in 7th grade again, dreading sitting in class after a free weekend. only i'm an adult now and its the cube life i'm not digging. oh well. so it goes...

maybe siren festival next weekend... we shall see...

the arts i want

when people tell me they don't have a favorite type of music or only
listen to top40 i judge them. harshly. i know, not all people care
about these things, but i do cos i'm a nerd. and tele- i love tele,
ask anyone i've ever lived with. good tv provides contemporary
commentaries on life in little 30 or 60 minute segments. lastly,
movies are great story tellers and tho i get to the theater so rarely,
catching a film with 200 other people really is a great experience.

below are things i'm liking right now. experienced or not. these are
picks i'm willing to pay to experience, cos i know i do or will like
them that much. usually i dont like paying for things. which is why
the internet is great. anyways...

cd's i want to buy and not download:
icky thump
our love to admire
ga ga ga ga ga

movies i want to see and not watch online:
spiderman3
transformers
paris, je t'aime

shows i'm loving right now:
online- skins, e4
on tv- flight of the conchords, hbo

i suggest you watch/listen to these sometime. they are good. forreal.

also there are a few art shows i really want to see this summer.
mostly in nyc. i think a roadtrip is in order... brookline to soho in
4 hours or less...

adios a miami

so, i'm back from the sunny side...

my week in miami was great. no computers and no work the whole time. just fun, sun and my travel buddy ellen. with a little family time thrown in to mix it up.

we got in on tuesday and wandered around til it started raining. then we had dinner at puerto sagua (which turned out to be the best restaurant on our trip) and passed out in the room. wednesday was spent sunning and sweating on the beach, a little shopping and then dinner and fireworks on the beach. closed out the night with some latin-tinged jam band jazz at jazid (which coincidentally is right next to miami ink, whose show i love).

thursday morning we rented a car and drove down to visit my family near key largo. two aunts, my gram, and some family friends were all at my aunt's house for the week. had my most delicious salad of the week there during a spanglish lunch and then ellen and i hung out in the pool and napping on the porch until dinner. gram and i had some quality time on the porch in the pitch black watching the lighting bugs flutter around. friday morning we had a caravan of cars drive up north to the largest flea market in america. i got a cool shell windchime and ellen got some jewelry. aunts and gram got purses. a successful trip for all. after filling up on gas we split up. ellen and i drove back down to miami and visited little havana. we took a look around a cigar factory and got some yum yums at a cuban bakery. the cuban coffee with lots of sugar was delicious.

back in miami we went to the beach, took a nap, had dinner at the cuban place again, and went to bed which is a bar/restaurant/lounge/club place with beds for seating. like the one in nyc. only this one was really small and empty. it was kind of like a frat party. weird. but fun cos they're open late. cos its not boston.

saturday morning we sunned ourselves on the beach again and then had lunch and slushies at wet willies. greasy burgers and deliciously crispy fries. after some showers and an a/c refresher we wandered down collins to lincoln ave and checked out all the cool shops and a whole artist studio complex which was one of my favorite places on the visit. it was SO hot the whole time but we did some quality shopping (real and window) and scored super end of season deals. after a detox-dinner of green green salads(we'd been eating fried and greasy food since tuesday) it started to rain. i had some tiramisu gelato while we skipped around back to the hotel- it was delish (the gelato, not the rain). after our long walk home both ellen and i passed out at like 10 and didn't wake up til 3am so there was no out on the streets that night.

sunday morning we woke up early only to find the skies cloudy and all the shops closed (duh- sunday). we wandered around, got rained on, napped, and then once it was sunny we did more shopping and beaching. took a shower, then we went out for a late dinner on ocean drive and people watched. ocean drive is awesome for people watching and car gawking. lots of fun cars around- lambos, ferraris and a lotus- oh my! closed out the night at mansion cos it's the thing to do in southbeach. weirdest part was the stripper pole. and the girls dancing on it. really. maybe i' just a prude, but better for it... anyways, best part of the night was seeing chris nunez from miami ink near the bar. i wish it was ami cos i love him (so does my aunt) but alas, just chris. still cool. i love that show. and i want a tattoo. badly. we stayed out so late and took advantage of the whole south beach thing. it's funny what can make ellen and i so proud. staying up late into the early morning. we're nerds.

sunday we got up late, had a last lunch at our cuban place and hit the road to the airport. the flight was delayed and my luggage was heavy. a guy on the train made fun of me. we made it home around midnight. a good, long trip. pictures on flickr/facebook/picasa if you're interested.

southbeach living is what i want. how could you not?

favorite observations:

• wearing bathing suits as streetwear is great. knowing that if you're hot you can just take off your shirt and walk around in a swimsuit is awesome. and so not kosher for boston.
• cuban black beans, rice and platanos all mixed together is a most delicious icky looking mixture. i could eat it every day.
• conversations that occur in spanish and english are more fun. and challenging to my little brain. in a good way.
  
• being able to take disco naps until 11 or 12 at night and knowing that restaurants and bar will still be open for hours and hours works really well with my love of nappy naps and being ready to go out after midnight.
• boys everywhere hit on you. which is sketchy yes, but also a great confidence booster. that's so anti-feminist but still so true.
  
• flip flops and shorts and tube tops. everyday. who needs pants? and real shoes? pshh. no.
• they have way better radio djs. they actually dj and dont just press play. how novel! and the mixed singles they have are cooler than what we've got in this pop-music backwater of boston.
  

now i'm back in boston. a little browner and a lot more relaxed. and wishing i could go back to the vacation life right now. forreal.