"...and CUT!"

Over the past several days, I've found myself caught in several moments of cinematic irony or perfection, so much so that I keep waiting for someone to step out from behind the door or around the hall and tell me my scene's over. I have to stop looking upwards to see the fuzzy grey mic's suspended just out of the camera's range.

Act 1, Scene 1
Alex came to pick me up, like the good sister she is, on Tuesday. Spent the night and hung out with my crazy friends for a bit after we traversed Chinatown in the cold looking for stocking stuffers. We bought mom an anchor-shaped cookie ornament, in keeping with the eternal nautical theme of the past 4 years; long live the Mariners' Museum. Good times.

We hauled ourselves out of bed bright and early, and made the prerequisite stop at Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. As we walk in the door, cameras are rolling...

...Three cops in uniform with large midsections tease the 'new guy,' clad in tight fitting pants and long-underwear shirt which accentuates formidable arm muscles and pecs. All of the law enforcement officers order donuts while relating the ocurrences of the past night's watch and intra-bureau gossip. Seasoned veterans indulge new pretty boy, brush powdered sugar off of their jackets, then pile into separate cars and head their own way down Lancaster Ave...

...cut to Scene 2
A pair of freckled blonde sisters on a road trip, racing through cold Thanksgiving air down country highways to meet the family. They catch up on the few months that they've been apart, interspersed with peals of laughter resulting from witty anecdotes of familial idiosyncracies. The younger one drifts off to sleep as Bonnie Raitt sings, the warm sun from the window too soporific for her to maintain consciousness.

Fade to black.

Scene 3
Family together at last, montage of 4 separate discussions of turkey cooking times, temperatures, and recipes. Reminiscence of Thanksgivings past....
Mom: Wasn't that when he was on the 10,000 calorie diet for swimming?
Sibling: I read that women need a minimum of 1800 calories to stay alive.
Mom: Well, Weight Watchers had us on 1000 a day, and you lost weight.
Sibling: Yeah, and how well did that work?
Mom: it worked fine, but...you get kind of hungry with only 1000 calories a day.

Family Friend: [aside, with a knowing smile] She has the gift, doesn't she?

Oh, for the gift of the obvious...cut to last dinner with group:

Scene 4
Dripping wet and disheveled, the sisters burst in the screen door with shopping bags and Spanish rioja. Dinner preparations begin, butter melted for garlic bread and pasta sauce bubbing happily on the stove while the assembled crowd breaks into small family groups enjoying a glass of wine before dinner. Three hours later, dinner finished, the "kids" (21-27) curled up on couches chatting, parents long gone to bed. Fade to black; End Act 1, 'Thanksgiving.'

Act 2, Scene 1
A early winter night in Phildadelphia, bare hands hold chilled gloved ones tight strolling through Rittenhouse square on the way to the movies. Colored light spheres dangle from leafless trees, brightly lit traffic whizzes by on all 4 sides of the square and every once in a while a gust of wind comes by to stir up leaves on the sidewalks or dislodge her scarf.

cut to Scene 2
Animatedly discussing the movie, the pair enters the warm, crowded bakery only to find no open tables. Her glasses fog and she laughs as she takes them off. He suggests takeout, and she agrees [pan the dessert case: chocolate ganache, 3 different buttercreams top glossy cakes], they leave hand in hand: one with a box stamped with "Pink Rose Pastry," the other with a hot cup of coffee. Steam curls up from the coffee cup as they cross 5th and Walnut, she looks around to check for camera crews, for the artifice that has to be hiding in the chilly shadows. Looks up at him, sips coffee, chuckles and says "it doesn't quite seem real." Fade to black

[male voice-over: "This is decidedly pleasant."]

Homecoming

“Welcome home” he said to me, as I packed up my computer to go. I felt like I’d been away from Haverford for ages, not less than 48 hours. It’s a little ridiculous.

As I walked westward to Ardmore from the North dorms, the stars above caught my eye in their brilliance. I turned around to see the big dipper standing on end, balanced precariously on its handle, the flashing red lights on the radio towers to the north up by King of Prussia that reflect onto the duck pond, and a mist-swathed string of streetlights leading up the hill into the trees. A disembodied pair of headlights emerged from Duck Pond Lane as I passed Barclay into another soupy cloud of fog, and I couldn’t think as a result of all my conflicting sensations. The cool night air should have woken up my brain, sharpened my mental processes, but it only made the twinkling constellations more diamond-like on that dark navy velvet sky, and confused me even more. One of the things that I’ve learned about my often invasive introspection is that although I may be very critical about things and flatter myself observant, other phenomena take a surprisingly long time to sink in. It’s been nearly a month, and I still don’t really want to acknowledge that it’s real. It's hard enough to tell myself that I'm actually in a functioning relationship, let alone attribute my newfound peace of mind to the actions and/or presence of another person besides myself. Yes, I know I can be perversely self-reliant at times, not the most flattering of characteristics.

“Welcome home” he said, and it felt true, it felt right. “You sound happy,” Rachael said today on the phone (post-Rhodes-congratulation), and it sounded like the truth. I can’t quite admit it straight faced yet, but it shows through to the people that know me well, despite the wishes of my black little sarcastic heart. I am happy, and the scary thing is I know why.

Fancy Footwear

Yes, I know alliterations are cliched, but deal.

Also, the damn squirrels are getting bolder as the temperatures fall. Winter makes those bastards desperate, and one scared the fuck out of me this morning staring at me through the window. Repeated cursing did nothing to discourage him from attempting to eat through my screen. Bastards.

Anyway, these things are irrelevant to today's story; moving on...

In high school, my friend Rachael and I were infamous in our English class for finding blatant and not-so-blatant sexual innuendos in literature. We were brilliant, and lended an air of irreverence and informality to such readings as "Kublai Kahn" and "The Sun Also Rises," endlessly amusing our teacher. One day, in the middle of class, Mrs. Ulmer remarked "those are some strappy shoes, Thea." Perplexed, I didn't quite know how to respond. Rachael bursts into laughter, and I look quizzically at both my peer and teacher. Characteristically, the elder replied "well, you know what boys want to do with strappy shoes..." suggestively. Mystified and combative, I retorted "what, wear them?" "No, take them off!" I still don't quite buy her reasoning, but ever since then it's been a running joke that I enjoy suggestive footwear.

A year or so after the strappy shoe incident, I came across an old Eagles song called "Those Shoes" which is essentially about a prostitute who wears strappy heels. A few of the lyrics go something like "got those pretty little straps around your ankle / together with those chains around your heart...oh, no, you can't do that / once you started wearing those shoes." Unable to contain myself, I emailed the song to Rachael and hilarity ensued. So maybe Mrs. Ulmer wasn't the only one that though there were hidden messages in one's choice of podiatric accessories.

Then, the last straw: last summer, I heard a song by Kirsty McColl on our local alternative radio station. Not only was it about a liberated woman who enjoyed stiletto heels, but the chorus was in Spanish with a salsa beat. It tells the story of three different encounters that this femme fatal has with three men, each vignette hinging on her shoes. Fittingly enough, the song is called "In These Shoes." Story three goes like this...

Then I met an Englishman, 'Oh,' he said "What are you afraid of?"
"won't you walk up and down my spine? It makes me feel strangely alive"
I said: "In these, shoes? I doubt you'd survive."

Chorus:
No le gusta caminar.
No puede montar a caballo,
Como se puede bailar?
Es un escandalo!

(trans.)
She doesn't like to walk,
she can't ride a horse,
how on earth can she dance?
it's scandalous!

How's that for a shoe addict's anthem? Kaitlyn and I, in a fit of irresponsibility, under the auspices of getting her some interview shoes, made a trip to DSW on Monday night before Senior Sem. Unable to resist temptation, I bought a pair of black stilettos with buckles on the front. They are, if I may say, HOT. Definitely my tallest shoes yet, and the beauty of it is that I can walk in them perfectly fine over reasonable distances. A woman walks differently in heels; more rhythmically, and often times more confidently. Literally, a pick-me-up. We asked ourselves several times, after extravagantly purchasing frivolous shoes, if it's wrong that new shoes should make us so happy. I believe the verdict was no.

Whenever I walk around the city, sit on the train, or go to a new place, I always check out other people's shoes. They don't have to be 4 inch, impossibly narrow heels to catch my attention, but something inventive, cute, or different. Women wear shoes mainly for other women, and despite Mrs. Ulmer's theory on strappy sandals, it's been my experience that guys couldn't give a shit what girls wear on their feet. And that's fine with me, I'll keep on wearing my fancy footwear regardless of its psychological implications in members of the opposite sex. Heels and other such accessories are as much a personal thing for me as they are a fashion statement, but I'm as vain as any other female: I always get a little thrill when someone says (male or female) "hey, nice shoes!"

Good Weekend? Good Weekend.

It's come to my attention that I've been a little lax in updating the blog lately. I apologize profusely for such callousness, and shall endeavor to remedy the situation presently, as have decided that attending "Chemistry of Art and Artifacts" this morning would be a waste of time. Hey, I had a 'phone interview' for a job this summer, so I'm justifying it that way. As if I ever needed to rationalize things, ha!

I didn't do anything this weekend, in the same way that I haven't been doing anything for the past two weeks, which is to say I've been busy as hell. I remember having remarked what seems like ages ago that "I probably wouldn't even have time for a relationship" this semester, so now that someone actually wants to spend time with me (shock of shocks, I'm still having trouble processing this...), my ordinary schedule thrown together with nuts and bolts, barely able to withstand minor alterations, goes to hell. That said, I can't imagine a more pleasant way to destroy my monotonous routine.

Occasionally, to soothe away the weekday tradition of hurriedly prepared and eaten meals, running out the door to [insert meeting here], I have to remind myself that cooking makes me happy. On Friday, after a long day at Hot Soup, I dozed off on the train. An inauspicious start to another Hot, Hot Friday Night? Yes, perhaps. Famished by the time my partially frozen fingers managed to pry open our off-kilter door, in about 6.7 seconds I set up the kitchen for dinner.

Grabbed the "Tango" soundtrack from deep within my desk drawer where it had been buried all semester, cranked up the stereo, and lit a burner on the stove almost before I'd finished chopping up the quarter onion that I needed for risotto. As the percussion swelled and the accordion wailed desde un país muy muy lejos, my diced onions, garlic, and pine nuts sizzled away on the stove. Then, once the inital rush of sauteeing and deglazing the now aromatic pan was over, I took some time do wash the dishes. At the sink, a sense of calm enveloped me along with steamy risotto fumes. Its so relaxing to stand there knowing that the rice would sit there beside me tranquilly, absorbing the scents of thyme and sage as the chicken broth bubbled away. There's a fantastically uplifting feeling involved in finishing up a meal in my slippers, grating some salty parmesan over a bowl of hot ristotto, puring myself a glass of wine and twirling out of the kitchen to a heartwrenching tango, dinner in hand.

I sat there in my rolling desk chair with my yummy meal, Tango blaring out of my computer, kicked my feet up on the couch, and read a few pages of "The Soul of a Chef," feeling extraordinarily content, gastronomically speaking. I get a call telling me to expect company, who arrives conveniently as I'm enjoying dessert: a small chunk of Ghirardhelli dark to go with last of the red wine, and who proceeds to give me a shoulder massage. I almost fell out of my chair, I was so relaxed. Fantastic.

Then, on Saturday I got to actually blow glass for the first time since August, neatly negating the icky feeling that was hanging over me due to sinus infection and nearly missing my trains. Even went for run outside on Sunday, which, while it nearly killed me on the hills, was envigorating. I even remembered to
1. go grocery shopping (and even succumbed to the temptation of the holiday Martha Stewart Living)
2. call my sister to organize logistics of next weekend's adventure
3. have quality chat with roommate, of whom I have not seen much lately
4. attend film screening of "M" for class
5. get 8 hours of sleep.

And now it's Monday, so work begins again. I've got to be on the ball this week if I am indeed going to be gallavanting all over the Northeast corridor. Ha, yeah, like that's likely. In any case, I should at least pretend like I'm on task. Hasta pronto, todos.

Good enough, Charlie? =)

...and it's snowing

are you kidding me? huge fluffy flakes and it's 45 degrees outside? today is surreal.

Yellow Galoshes and Fat Squirrels

One day this week, I can't even remember which (it must have been Tuesday. Was it raining on Tuesday? Sure, why not), as I rushed the library before class, I saw a girl wearing bright lemoney-yellow galoshes over her jeans. I'm talking old school Paddington Bear style rubber boots; you could see them from 80 yards away. Kudos to her for having the fashionista balls to tromp around on a drizzly day in such brightly hued footwear. Either that, or negative 10 points for trying to be 'modster' chic.

Haverford College, and Pennsylvania in particular, has been the host of some seriously whacked out meteorological phenomena in the past week. Today, the power went out twice because it was so windy. Right now, outside my window in the small wind-tunnel created by apartments 14 and 18, howling gusts are sweeping large clumps of damp leaves in cyclones, while the yew bushes over in the parking lot up the hill are inclined at a 50 degree angle when the wind really picks up. It's gone from below freezing to 60, back down again in the frosty region, and then last night I hardly needed a jacket to go out to dinner. Weird shit, man. The squirrels know what's up.

All of them, including the hideously ugly ones like the half-tailed mongrel that lives behind our building, have been doing nothing but eating and fighting over acorns the past week in preparation for the wintry times ahead. It's odd how an animal's immediate self-preservation instincts can go completely to hell when they're preparing for the future. I feel as though there should be some sort of allegory there, for my own incipient plans, but I'm 1. not awake enough yet to find it, or 2. still so sleepily deluded that I think squirrels will be a source of personal inspiration. In any case, the plump creatures just sit there next to the path when people walk by, unperturbed by humans. Considering the bad blood that we've established over the course of this semester due to several cases of forced entry into the apartment, sometimes I have the urge to just kick one. This doesn't make me bad person, I swear! I'm sure there are perfectly nice squirrels out there...somewhere.

Anyway, the wind rages on outside, and I've got some reading to do before class this afternoon, so I should get on that.

Sparkly Nights

These first few weeks of November are always strange. The weather is always doing odd things. The leaves have pretty much all fallen from the trees, leaving a color fanatic like myself rather unimpressed with the dreary brown-ness of the Mid-Atlantic region. It's too far from the winter holidays to inspire a countdown, but it's already late enough in the year to make you wonder "what the fuck happened to October?" as deadlines encroach and work begins to snowball.

November is never a *good* month, yet it marks a point in time when it's acceptable to bake with pumpkin; I get to break out the cinnamon, allspice, and ginger to fill the kitchen with the spicy, warmth-inducing scents of autumn. Mom sent me some cheesy nonstick tart tins in the mail today (along with junk mail and useless credit card applications) increasing my haphazard collection of 4" diameter tartlet pans to 12. Three different kinds, some fluted, some not; some have the nice removeable bottoms, and some of them are just plain molded ones that you find in the supermarket. None of them match, but they work well enough for small batches. If I ever had to cater anything, there'd be a problem. Not having ventured far into baking endeavors of late, the new tart pans merited a christening. Of course, they had to be pumpkin. Creamy, fluffy, cinnamon-specked sienna colored disks of warm goodness were totally worth using up the very last of the flour in the house, and gave me a sense of purpose on this awkward Monday afternoon. I also shamelessly consumed much more tart filling than can be healthy for one person =).

I hadn't eaten pumpkin-flavored goodies in ages; in fact, I don't know that I remember the last time that I enjoyed this temporal delicacy, I just know it's been a while.

It's also been a long time since I've felt the dry, chill air of a not-quite-winter night tingle my nose when I leave a building on my way home. Every year, there's that one night, the first time that it's cold enough to crystallize water on the tips of the grass, on already crunchy dried leaves, and it gets to me every year. The past week, as I trudge home from the library or venture out of the apartment after dark, I look forward to reaching the Campus Center green. Where the streetlights don't quite reach the whole field, and reflections from brightly lit windows or even the moon scatter bits of light across my path. The facets glint differently with every step, and as I walk on there's no time to think about whatever crazy bullshit is running around in my head. I'm too busy marvelling at the glittery path in front of me, that crackles as I go.

I'm a simple girl, easily amused by sparkly things. In November, I need that smack of cold air to revive my senses: to pull me out of my introversion and back into the real world of twinkling stars and frost, of warm pumpkin tarts.

I shall not tolerate incompetence!

From the hours of 10:36 to 10:55 EST, one Bob Kieft sent no less than thirty copies of a document of indeterminate length to the 2nd tier laser printer in Magill. An average of 2 copies per minute (a conservative figure; sometimes there were more) for 29 minutes. Now, ordinarily one would think that after the first, oh, FIVE copies didn't print, he would have stopped to investigate what was going on, emerged from his office to see why the fuck things weren't functioning properly. I don't profess to be any sort of mechanical genius, but I know enough to push the large, visible, user-friendly touch screen that says "PRINT MONITOR" to see what the hell's going on.

What I found when I attempted the aforementioned process looked something like this:
10:36 rkieft...word doc...printing in progress
10:36 rkieft.....printing
10:37 rkieft.....printing
10:38 rkieft.....printing
10:38 rkieft.....printing
10:38 rkieft.....printing
10:39 rkieft.....printing
10:39 rkieft.....printing
10:40 rkieft.....printing
...and so on.

Hmmm, mysterious, no? Indecipherable? Yes, I know it's complex. Cryptic, even.

So the printer, the functional hub of library activity on the ground floor, is dead. He killed the printer with the most ridiculous violation of library etiquette that I have seen in a long time. But Thea, aren't you being excessively critical? Isn't this excuseable for a freshman, an upperclassperson unacquainted with the laws of library behavior? Yes, that I'll concede. So who is this elusive rkeift who does not seem to understand the concept of logical and courteous codes of printer usage?

HAVERFORD COLLEGE'S HEAD LIBRARIAN.

This is a man who is responsible for all of the goings-on in the college library system, who hypothetically has some degree of technical savvy as a prerequisite for his position of leadership. This is a man in charge of the library administration, a man with a CompLit PhD. If this is what a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature will get you, God save me from academia! All I can think about, standing there in front of the printer, realizing that the library research area is not the appropriate environment for throwing things and yelling, calmly pressing the touch screen every 15 seconds to delete copy after copy of "-SENENG.doc" from the print cue is my mental picture of him sitting in his office pondering this enigma: clicking the cute printer icon in Windows ME XP 98 2020 or whatever, and saying either 1. out loud, or 2. in his head (the audible option lending a certain air of the surreal to the whole picture which I personally find appealing)

"gee, that's odd. It didn't work. I'd better try again."
"Hmm, still no luck. I'll try again."
"Didn't work, I'll try again."
"what could be wrong? I'd better try again." for a full THIRTY MINUTES. That's some serious stamina.

I was absolutely incredulous that someone could be so idiotic, so oblivious to what was going on around them. At first, it irritated me that he printer was non-functional, but I became curious as to just how long and to what extent he'd tried to print this thing. As I saw the print log multiply before my eyes, I got this strange fascination with how utterly ridiculous the situation was. My film readings couldn't be that far behind, because I recalled that I'd glanced at my watch to see 10:58 after I'd deleted the first few files. It was now 11:22, and I'd gotten through Bob's 10:55 printings (there were three that minute). On the third one, the poor, exhausted, confused printer peetered out and jammed. I'd have to re-send my film essays anyway, so I used the one working printer and let some other altruistic soul finish recessitating the Canon Laserwriter for the good of the rest of the community. I'll never know just how many times he printed his lecture notes, nor what in the name of everything sacred inspired such mechanical non-thinking behavior.

Livid, but with my readings in hand, I left the library, amazed once again at the stupidity of my fellow human beings.

Who does that? Honestly.

non-Halloween

I didn't do anything for Halloween this year, which was mildly sad, but since there's never anything fun to do at Haverford for Halloween, survey says that I turned the weekend into a *very* fun non-Halloween instead. So much so, that I have muchísimo trabajo for tomorrow, and shouldn't even be wasting my time blogging. That said, I'm going to bed. Or to work. Can't decide which.