No power in the 'verse can stop me.

Dear Universe,

I am a highly qualified administrative professional.  I can type over one hundred words per minute, manage schedules, and effectively communicate with corporate America.  I can correct wording, spelling, and grammar, while making sure the office has fresh (tastefully arranged) flowers and food for all staff meetings.  I can edit copy.  I can do research. I can draft professional letters and widely distributed memos without any embarrassing errors. I have a B.A. in English from a US News and World Report rated Top 100 school, and references that give GLOWING recommendations.

So. Universe. I have sent dozens of my resumes out into you.  MAKE SOMEONE HIRE ME. I don't care who, as long as it is a DAY JOB that pays my bills.

Sincerely,

A very tired and overqualified waitress.

Climbin up on Mission Hill, I could see the city lights. Wind was blowing, time stood still...

September is definitely the beginning of the year.  I don't care what the calendar says, everyone knows that the year turns around in the fall.  My roommates and I are finally moved into our crazy awesome new apartment.  We have been saying "next year, when we live together" since we decided to live together back in February, and we continued to say it well into August.

"Hey, next year, lets make sure we get cable."

"Yeah, cable's good.  Do we have to call in advance?"

"For next year?"

"We move in twelve days."

"Shit."

This is next year.  We have entered the 2011/2012 school year, and have to use both numbers for no reason that I can think of.  Try and think of something, besides the date, that feels new in January. 

So for my actual New Year's Resolution?  Well, I resolve to be better with money, more responsible with my time, and never late to work.  I'm not going to resolve to lose weight or dress better, because I hardly care how I dress and I'm gonna be the size I'm gonna be.  Those are the kinds of resolutions that people make when they are, say, four months into the year and depressed about snow.  Like in December.

On a kind of related note.  My apartment is amazing. If I hadn't broken my digital camera, I would post pictures right now of the view from my back porch. It's not just that you can majorly see the city lights and the unbearably beautiful Mission Hill church steeples, but there is also a lost-boys-in-neverland (the mythical place, not the ranch) kind of network of back porches that we are a part of.  You can literally gently toss a rock onto about seventeen other back porches full of other kids in their twenties who like to hang out on porches.  Our neighbors go out there and play the banjo at night. And whoever is playin is not bad at all.  We also discovered that 1: our predecessors left a giant leather couch on our back porch, that is non-gross and totally intact, and 2: they also left a can with thick string through the bottom hanging over the railing, which they presumably used to communicate with the people downstairs.  Rufio would be proud of our setup. 

My bedroom has built-in drawers and shelves, and a big gorgeous stained glass window.  Plus four regular windows. There are so many old details about the place, it's amazing. And ENORMOUS. I'm in love. Can't wait till I have some furniture in it.

Happy New Year everyone.  As soon as we have a blender, feel free to come join me for a new year's celebration with magaritas on the porch couch on The Island (which, btw, is the name of our apartment).


If you need to find me, try heading for the second star on the right, and straight on till morning.

If only I could also watch Trail Football this season...

It's back-to-school time, everyone can feel it.  We're all stocking up on supplies, working on our figures, revamping our wardrobes and getting ready to learn new things.

Except, oh wait!, I graduated this year. Like an idiot.

The smell of freshly sharpened pencils is getting me nostalgic (not that I've used pencils in class since about 2003) and I have this crazy desire to buy a backpack with dinosaurs on it (which I never wanted as a child).  Back to school is just about the coolest most exciting part of September, and I hate to think of myself as not being a part of it.


Perhaps, then, it's not a coincidence that I'm starting my new job this week, and just *had* to get new work shoes for the occasion.  For the record, those of you in the service industry, get Dansko professional clogs...

If only you'd been an English teacher...

I am, even after four years of it, astounded by how many people say that my major was a waste of my education.  I am a proud English major, bibliophile, and appreciator of literature.  I read the words of the great people who have gone before us, and I figure out what they were trying to leave us with. 

More importantly, to me at least, I study literature to be close with my loved ones. 

Ice Fishing.

Most little girls don’t take their first ice fishing trip at age four, because most parents would never allow it.  My father, however, had no problem dragging his would-be-ballerina out onto the polar ice caps, with only snow pants and purple flowered mittens to protect me from the elements. Our three trips to rural Pennsylvania every year were a treat, but the thought having to sit out in the cold and wait for some fish to bite on a worm made me wish we had stayed home in Baltimore. The only bright side was the dusty-rose-pink fishing pole that Dad had gotten engraved with my name, “RACHEL”, in all capital letters right above the reel.   

A Pansy for Your Thoughts

A free-form poem that explores Ophelia’s madness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and makes some guesses as to what drove her to her downfall.  Written at Northeastern University in 2010, revised in 2011 for the Greater Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Festival. I read this at my first ever poetry reading last week :)