it's very interesting

I e-mailed my parents the side-by-side comparison pictures from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids MSA 1990 v. 2014.

work week 1

babysit the makerbot via network camera, learn solidworks

 lana on repeat

when i was shrunk

Something strange that happened this week was that I went back to a place I've been before but only remember from pictures. After my first day of work I walked around the park and stumbled on the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set Adventure. People go back to places they haven't been in a long time all the time, but it was like I'd entered a land that had previously been pure myth and felt the eerie presence of my past self.

baking powder

I came home today and one of my roommates, Engineer2, was in the living room with her friend who is also a professional intern living in our complex, who also happens to be a 'music producer' and was 'mixing' his electronic music in our living room at top volume. This was finally the inspiration I'd been looking for to send me to the gym post-work posthaste. Afterwards I was determined to spend the evening working hard and learning Solidworks but after I successfully stole and installed a hacked version I was too tired sore and sleepy to actually use the software.
Bedtime baby oh yeah

wendy

Meaning, Origin and History of the Name Wendy:
In the case of the character from J. M. Barrie's play 'Peter Pan' (1904), it was created from the nickname fwendy "friend," given to the author by a young friend.

Sandra in the sun

Today I've been in Florida for one week. I'm loving my job but still missing my favorites something terrible.  One thing to note- in my first two days I heard "Mambo Number Five" twice, which is I think two more times than I've heard it in the last ten years.

raft

my school friend just got married in vermont. wow.

sunglasses head rebel

'Valerie, the [company] Look does not allow us to wear sunglasses on our heads.'

Today I went through my eight-hour [company] orientation for the third time, the first two times being in 2006 and 2008. I was grumpy and fidgety through all the videos and safety/behavior talks and couldn't stop whirling to the left and right in my chair and repeatedly hitting the people seated on either side of me. The worst was when we were dragged out for a stroll around the theme park dressed in business formal wear during the heat's most stunning peak of the day. I couldn't imagine anyone having fun in such horrendous weather conditions. In the late afternoon when I was on my way to meet khenkel at the Waldorf I drove through a tropical rainstorm for the first time. It was like trying to drive through a hail of bullets. Our backcountry roads were filled with deep water and at times I thought I would cry because I felt so intimidated. The skies poured blurry water so hard that I couldn't read any of the signs and ended up far far off my intended path. When I finally made it, I had a delicious ham/cheese wafflewich at the Waldorf lounge with khenkel and later ended up watching Bridesmaids in his hotel room while he was out to dinner, which I think was good because the movie really rang true with feeling a little bit like a quarter-life fuck-up. Afterwards I really didn't want to go home so I went to the Wilderness Lodge for the first time around 10:30pm and walked around by myself.

Waldorf Astoria

In a bizarre twist of events, I am currently alone in a 2-room, 6-bed (suite?) in the Waldorf Astoria Orlando.

welcome to cropping and pleach

Yesterday I moved into my new home in Winter Garden, Florida for the next few months. I had a strange day inhabiting an empty apartment while my three mystery roommates were all at work. I went to Target and bought tons of groceries. Toto, we're not in Brooklyn anymore. It was supposedly one of the hottest days that Florida has seen in years. I surprisingly appear to live in the backwoods, near cows, horses, falcons, large stagnant lakes, dragonflies, and a swampy jungle that croaks at night. The country driving roads are all sinuous and intimidating. After getting home one of my new roommates, Sinay, invited me to join her and her engineering intern friends at the complex's swimming pool, which was piss warm at 10pm at night. We bobbed around while the Big Dipper was large and low in the sky and mosquitoes ate millions of holes in our faces.

i didn't do this to our window

using my blanket from undergrad because that's the last time i slept in a twin bed

guess which side of the dresser is mine?

sigh where'd my wardrobe go

balcony

snail on our balcony

more red-throated lizards than you can shake a stick at

always nice skies

big magnolia trees

crazy jungle marsh next door

stagnant water lake at the end of the block

real air plants growing on everything

more marsh forest

goodbye court

pictures cerrito took from when i held court in our backyard the night before my great flight

when people started arriving i was still in the bathroom haphazardly dying my hair 'darkest brown' because appearance guidelines at my future work dictate that 'hair color and highlights must be natural looking, well maintained and complementary to skin tone.'

cerrito brought many hats

we made a still life using the light-up Shanghai Expo Finnish Pavilion that xuedi recently relinquished to the junk shelf

the hair dye doesn't quite work under all lighting conditions

off to be princess of orlando

steps for moving to orlando

3am, woke up hot, couldn't sleep anymore. looked at things in the dark

6:30am, woke up anxious 

7:30am, woke up anxious, looked at things in the light until alarm at 8am

8:15am, said goodbye to aijia 

9am, said goodbye to jed 

cried

9:30am, said goodbye to weaver, jumped in car service to queens

10am, arrived at LGA

10:50am, boarded plane

cried

11:30am, plane started rolling around on the tarmac

talked to seatmate to the right, a NY lawyer who used to be an intern at Universal Studios

talked to seatmate to the left, a professional racehorse trainer, did the in-flight crossword together

2pm, plane landed in Orlando

took train to baggage claim
claimed bag

2:30pm, took taxi 11 miles to towing company to pick up Snoopy the car

drove to hotel in Lake Buena Vista

promptly got on the internet, ended up videochatting cerrito

6pm, walked around Downtown Disney in 100-degree weather

drank a margarita while walking 

drank a beer in an outdoor Irish pub

8pm, had dinner at a brewery, talked to barmate, a welder who works on cell towers and goes to techno concerts

went back to hotel, watched reality tv about botched plastic surgeries and child dancers

Plane again again

Everyone on this plane appears to be a family going to Disney World and it's sweet. I might be the only person on this flight who feels sad? I cried on the plane and the stewardess wanted to move me out of the exit row but managed to keep my spot.

last day

I just sent my new subletter, Fran, who's in London (we met on Craigslist), my bank account wiring info. Things are getting really real!

winter-garden-bound

I have one day left in NY before I take off for my four-month job in Central Florida. I know that I should feel excited about nabbing a job I've always wanted and I had a wonderful going-away party in my backyard last night with tons of school friends congratulating me on making good life decisions, but I'm currently feeling only very sad, lonely, and heavy-footed. I've historically enjoyed putting myself in new and uncomfortable situations, but as I age I must be losing some of my taste for adventure.

Plane again

On the runway on my way back to New York! During the security check I randomly got pulled into the pre-check line so I didn't have to take off my shoes or take my computer out of its bag, but the pre-checked people had both of their palms wiped and then the TSA ran the wipe through a machine to check for explosives! what?

I'm in the window seat and there's no one in the middle seat and the guy in the aisle and I just rejoiced together.

phone person

It's finally happened - I've become one of those phone people. I am always compulsively looking at my phone. I was hiking in Oregon on the Mirror Lake trail today, stepping over rocks embedded in the ground, trying to take pictures of beams of light between firs, and texting and checking my e-mail and my Facebook at the same time. I justified it by thinking that it's kind of cool that it's at all possible to do these things at the same time and also that my happiness is ultimately the only thing that matters, principles be damned?

Twitterpated

It's 2am and I'm thinking the worst. For every topic of ongoing situation in my life, I can't stop imagining and anticipating the worst case scenario.
Why does this always happen in these late-night hours? The first possibility is that when everything is quiet the fears that you've been too busy to nurture begin to manifest themselves. Or sometimes i feel that life is so unexpected that if I get as far as imagining something, it won't come to pass. Maybe by the end of the day I'm just crabby, because somehow optimism is something that becomes spent through the course of the day whereas pessimism comes in a steadfast supply. Otherwise, is it really that this is somehow the time of day when I like myself the least? Makeup-less, tired, and in nobody's company?
I always feel better in the morning.

Lgb

I'm at the airport again. There's free WiFi here! It happens to be Chinese father's day and we are going on a family vacation to Portland. Ma just took a picture of me and told me I look like a pornstar. Pa grimaced and looked awkward.

shoe shopping

The way Frances sits in the passenger seat of my car, with her bare feet perched on my dashboard, playing Candy Crush on her cell phone and ignoring me as I navigate our way through unforgiving rush hour traffic on the 405, makes me feel strange, like I've entered a reality warp and I'm Mom.

Some moments from our shoe shopping trip at Macy's on Tuesday:

picking up a display shoe with a woven texture:
Ma: THESE SHOES LOOK LIKE A DIAPER BAG.

at the cash register - the credit card terminal shows a screen asking for your e-mail address:
Ma: WHAT IS THIS?!
Salesguy: If you put in your e-mail address, we'll send you updates on your order.
Ma: WHAT! JESUS CHRIST.

on the drive home:
Ma: What are you doing for this job anyways?!
Me: uhh.. rapid prototyping.
Ma: 兔子?!?!!? (RABBITS?!?!!?)

Ma: Do you know if your roommate will be a boy or a girl?
Me: It'll definitely be a girl.
Ma: Well that's no fun.