Archive Page 2
I was going to let this die gracefully (and by gracefully I mean stop writing in it and never mention this endeavour again), because it’s been nearly two weeks and I’ve done approximately 938462 things (more on this later: Testosterone Weekend in Delaware, then My Brother and I Hit DC: A Mother’s Wet Dream), but haven’t written about it. I’ve been busy doing my usual: not sleeping, then oversleeping, then spending an inordinate amount of time discussing the sleep I did or did not get, usually on gchat. It’s also really easy to neglect this when I have told a total of 3 people about it, so no one reads it.
But this morning I decided I was going to keep writing because I almost missed my bus. Well, not because I almost missed my bus, but what happened. See, I couldn’t fall asleep last night. I’ve had this problem since I was a kid, elementary-school-aged: I’ll be really tired and still not be able to fall asleep. There have been nights at school where I’d get back from McTrib at 3 a.m. after having slept just four hours the night before, and still it will take me an hour to finally fall asleep. So the end result is today I overslept.
I missed the late-but-still-ok-to-make-my-train orange line train by 30 seconds — it was pulling out of the station as I pounded my SmarTrip card onto the turnstile and dashed to the escalator. Great, the next train wasn’t for 9 minutes. I sat tapping my feet, not unstereotypically, on the train. And when the doors opened at West Falls Church and I could see my 425 bus about to pull from the curb, I did something that made me want to write again: I ran like hell.
I sprinted, arms flailing, heels feverishly click-clack-click-ing, dresh all ablur around my knees and thighs, out the train door, up the escalator, through the turnstile, down the escalator, into the bus loop, across the sidewalk, and right to my bus.
“Wow, way to run,” my mildly sketchy bus driver, who would probably kidnap and have his way with me if given the chance, said.
“Yeah,” I exhaled.
Thing is? I was grinning the entire time. I think that in this 9-5 humdrum work week I’ve become accustomed to, where every morning I need to carefully match my dress to my shoes to my cardigan to my bag… something lost its color. And the truth about some random, over-detailed run I’ve sketched out, is that these things have always made me feel ALIVE. That was the inspiration for my overhyped article, “Why I Chose Northwestern”: the line about running at night to catch shuttles. Unabashed sprinting outside a runner’s circle is a very brief but very total loss of self-consciousness. You don’t care what anyone thinks about you or what you’re wearing or what time it is, you just have to catch that damn bus. Maybe that makes me smile so hard because that’s what I’m always chasing after — not a shuttle, not the 425 Fairfax Connector bus — but the utter joy it was to be 5-years-old and not care if your shirt was tucked in or what strangers thought about you.
Today will be a good day, I’ve decided. It’s Day 4 of breaking my caffeine addiction: this morning, I replaced my cup of coffee, two sugars, two creams, with a chocolate-glazed donut and a carton of skim milk. It feels good to be five.
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Tags: 425, bus, running, writing
[Backstory: I'm currently digging through 15,000 contest entries to rewrite the first verse of a very bro-tastic song.]
Include lines about: fake breasts, softcore porn, your inability to pay for your children’s education, grenades, your father’s unexpected death, your sweet sweet stash of Mary J, how miserable your desk job is, how your marriage is failing, how you’re going to kill the judges if you don’t win the contest..
Rely on cliches such as: rising gas prices, global warming, the joys of alcoholism
Make sure to forget that: after you send your genius limerick into the mysterious web of the Internet, it arrives on the computer screen of a sallow 20-year-old chick who’s much more concerned with Sushi Tuesdays and the sexy rash on her shin. Win her favor by following your sample lyrics with such notes as “I think I did a good job here, this is some great rhyming.” Oh. Oh, okay.
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Tags: today this blog is run on hate
The J-Intern Encyclopedia
Project (PRAH-jekt): noun. A project is an assignment that takes at least two weeks, requires the brain activity of a crippled lemer, and is important enough that it absolutely must get done — but not so important that anyone but the intern should waste their time on it. See also: bitchwork.
You will be assigned a project in the following fashion: While you are sitting in your cubicle (minding your own business, googling “recipes that won’t catch on fire, promise?”), someone will approach you from behind and clear their throat. At this point you will jump three feet in the air. Be sure to quickly pull up an Excel spreadsheet — any Excel spreadsheet. This will make you look like you are busy doing something important, like counting to 10.
At this point, the person (it could be anyone, as everyone ranks higher than you) will smile. You will wonder why that smile looks so familiar, and it’s because it’s the same smile your sixth-grade teacher gave you when she said she suspected you were deaf; the same smile the doctors will one day give you when they say you have six minutes to live. Basically, it’s the grin of knowing they’re doing something absolutely terrible to you.
The project will often be ridiculous in nature (“I’d like you to find out some quirky things about cancer.”), but no matter what, by definition the project will be absolutely mindless (“Enter the birth year of every celebrity in our data base into the spreadsheet.”), and often downright painful (“Remember that contest we held to rewrite the first verse of ‘Margaritaville’? There were 15,000 entries. So I have this project for you…”).
Also, you will get absolutely no credit for doing this whatsoever. Good luck, and have fun!
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Tags: j-intern encyclopedia, project, quirky cancer
Today I’m sort of a badass. I’ve been on the phone with the Chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Committee, the President of the League of Women Voters, and the head of the CDC. If I’ve learned anything from my internship, it’s to go after primary sources, because they’re more accessible than you think, and they want to get their name out there.
I have also learned to make coffee and catch the wrong bus.
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Tags: badassery, hundo, internship, mad fundo
Happy Friday, indeed.
It’s always a fun day at the internship when I get to spend four hours on http://www.cancer.gov.
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Tags: cancer, friday, internship
I think I’m getting sick, which is weird, because my diet almost exclusively consists of Gummy Vites. Oh wait, actually, that makes sense. Carry on, illness.
Anyway, today I mingled. I hate mingling. I hate the word “mingling” and everything each of its inbred syllables connotes. I had this don’t say cult don’t say cult Cult Council of One Hundred NU networking event in the Fulbright building today and, minus the part where I want to be Facebook-married to brie cheese, it reminded me vaguely of the bar-mitzvah scene I so loathed eight years ago. At least back then I couldn’t see anything (oh yeah, when I was in junior high I used to go blind instead of wearing my glasses in public places… I’m an idiot). But I guess on the whole it was harmless.
Earlier I got to go to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History for a press conference with the creator of the X-Files (whom I’m fairly and uncomfortably certain checked me out), which was pretty sweet. The museum’s been closed for renovation for two years, so I felt super-cool-journalist getting shuttled through it. Oh, and I wrote a blog post. But you know, because I’m the intern, I don’t get a byline. They didn’t change anything (except to make the intro third-person), so that’s probably a good sign.
New theory: if my life was like The Truman Show, there would be a backstage specialist called the Metro Odor Technician. He (or she, we’re equal-opportunity) would be responsible for inventing smells, brewing them in vats at metro stations, then dipping actors into the vats and sending them to sit with me on the metro. Today’s Odor du Jour: Three-Day-Old Corpse Marinated in Campbell’s Chicken Soup (With Stars!). I wonder what the Metro Odor Technician’s intern would have to do…
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Tags: cough, soupy corpses
Drink coffee, stay sane
I thought I was dying, but as it turns out, I just have a mental disorder. A delicious, roasted, slow-brewed mental disorder. Thanks, National Geographic!
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Tags: too delicious, two creams, two sugars
I’m starting this blog because I was wondering how many alcoholics go to aa.com looking for help but instead just find the American Airlines Web site and just take a trip and keep being alcoholics.
I should be kidding. I’m not. I went to aa.com — because I wanted to price my brother’s trip, not because my-name-is-Lisa-and-I-have-a-problem — and thought hey, that would make a great lead. Too bad my internship thinks my time is best spent alphabetizing applications for a High School Musical contest from, like, 87 years ago. You know, and not writing actual articles.
So long story short, I miss writing. When I started the fire in the basement of my dorm (because pouring boiling water into a pan of boiling olive oil equals fire. A modest fire, kind of Sims-sized, but very real), and the alarm went off, I had no where to write about it. When the homeless gentleman on the subway berated me for speaking through his lyrical interpretation of “I Am the Walrus,” no where to write again. I’m getting bored of justifying this — I just miss coining stupid phrases and making people laugh.
I leave you with my favorite quotes from my weekend in New York:
SK: Has a person with a tattoo ever died?
–
Boy on street: Ladies! Half-price tickets to improv, want ‘em?
Me: No thanks. [keeps walking]
Boy on street: Okay. Want to make love?
Me: [turns around, stares]
Boy on street: …Too much, too soon?
–
JK: [imitating baby in stroller] Waaaaah! Where are we going? Waaaah my life is so hard! Waaah we’re crossing the street.
–
All right, goodbye forever.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed
Tags: aa, babies, is this really my life, new york, quotes
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