sleepinghead

Another close call - this morning I was supposed to be at work at 7am so we could take a van out to the cruise ship in Port Canaveral to see some recently completed projects and to take measurements for documentation. However, I was a dummy and forgot to even set an alarm and woke up in my bed, in downtown, at 6:40am. I woke up in complete shock and horror and ran out the door like my hair was on fire and luckily my manager held the van for me as I ended up being 15 minutes late.

Spent a really nice day in perfect weather on the ship and now have a lot of productive work hours to make up this weekend. After work I met up with my old mentor and his wife, who are back in town for a Halloween vacation. We went to the campfire singalong at Fort Wilderness and watched the annual outdoor screening of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and roasted oversized marshmallows over the fire pit. After that I gorged myself on food at their cabin and we went out at midnight to see all of the campsites decorated for Halloween. The families at Ft. Wilderness create an incredible Halloween spectacle every year, with inflatables and ghouls and projections and pumpkins and lights strewn everywhere.

It's almost 3am, the witching hour, when drunk idiots haunt the streets and hallways of my former hotel.

license and registration

Yesterday I got pulled over on my way to lunch for doing 51 in a 35mph zone. The officer must have taken pity on me and the two intern goons I was driving and let me go with a warning. I've never felt so washed over with joy and excitement as I did in that moment. Now I feel at least $200 richer

here's the competition

sticker shock

sunday is the day when i look at my bank account and all my expenses and think, oh my god

when you were small

slow go

is there a word for the kind of love you have for another human being when you realize you're driving and softly as you can so you don't wake it up in the passenger seat

boxes o' bits

i hereby dub myself the most ultimate queen of trinket hoarders

we're doomed

"sexy men under the age of 35 are all scary dickheads"
- aijia 

welcome to the metro

night two in my new apartment in dtwn orlando. im sleeping on the floor until i can figure out how to get a bed and i have the place to myself until vana gets back from working on a cruise ship in the bahamas. yesterday on my first night i opened a beer with a pair of nail clippers. sinay had helped me move in and then we went out to my favorite orlando bar and two strange men bought me a shot even though i kept saying not to and then it turned out that one of them lives on the floor above me in my new building.  

spinach rupaul

i literally went back to the office/trailer at almost 10pm to check on my fish and make sure his heater wasn't making him too hot because i've never left it on overnight before. the thermometer reading seemed okay. i've decided to name my fish spinach rupaul, though i will probably keep calling him booboo most of the time.

neverending to-do list

i really don't recommend moving (set up cable/internet install, buy router, jump on all friends' old beds that are for sale, turn on electricity, get money order for rent, get locked and unlocked out of bank account, pick up keys, change all addresses), starting a new job (end old insurance, find new insurance, set up 401k), participating in a week-long focus group (record videos of self talking about beauty products, make millions of blog posts about beauty), and taking up a health insurance claim dispute (fight with clinic, fight with insurance) all at once unless you're cruisin' for a bruisin'. 

old prune

1. i've had no alcohol today
2. i totally randomly picked funds to invest my 401k money in from 34 options
3. i feel like my life is the neverending to-do list

every day is an uphill battle with store clerks of florida to not give me plastic bags and let me use my hands and arms to carry things

tonight i watched house of flying daggers. like most other wuxia films that i've seen, it was beautiful and entertaining but the plot was totally bonkers

grown woes

i just looked at all the charges on my bank account and went through all my bills and thoroughly stressed myself out. good morning, saturday

the former harley hotel

i signed a new lease last week and vana and i are moving to downtown orlando in two weeks. it's gonna wreak havoc on my commute but it's going to be almost like living in a city again. and i'm going to be living in the former harley hotel, an infamous party hub from the 60s, now a run-down converted apartment complex that smells weird. mostly i'm excited that the building probably has ghosts and that i'm going to have my own bathroom.

then:

"I just loved the whole vibe; it was so old and so creaky and so weird."

"I think I had one of my best dates ever on one of the balconies of one of the rooms."

"But what I always wanted to say about the Harley was that the Harley was the Orlando rock hotel. L.A. has the Hyatt Regency, Atlanta has the Highland Inn, and Orlando had the Harley. I don't know where we're gonna go."

"I was in the pool at 5 in the morning one time, but I don't remember much about that. I was clothed, and I think that's the point."

"We played music really loud and drank beer and nobody said anything to us. We smoked pot, and, um, I think the place is haunted. Crazy noises were coming out of every wall! Every orifice! When I left there, I felt like I had been touched by spirits."

"I was like, "You're staying at the Harley?" And they were like, "Yeah!" Just their reaction was like, "Of course! Where else would we stay in Orlando?""

" We did our band photos in the elevator at the Harley. Five guys in the elevator, wearing polyester, as was in fashion at the time, sweating through make-up, which is not something I'm used to or comfortable with."

"I just remember having great times, with parties and with people. It was a great common ground for downtown. People who didn't want to drive and drink could just get a room there at a fair price, and you never knew who you were gonna see there."

now: 

hmmph.

this will be my eleventh move in recent herstory.
revised list:
08/2010 Pudong / Shanghai
11/2010 Normandie Ave / Los Angeles
09/2011 Bach Way / Cerritos
02/2012 South Point View / Los Angeles
04/2012 West View Street / Los Angeles
09/2012 Butler Street / Brooklyn
10/2012 Thames Street / Brooklyn
09/2013 Willoughby Avenue / Brooklyn
08/2014 Cropping Street / Winter Garden
12/2014 Overstreet Road / Windermere
10/2015 East Washington St / Orlando

thoughts on tomorrow

i appreciate each coming day as another opportunity for something interesting to happen

i've been up and making content since 8am this morning

starbucks history

yesterday i randomly pulled over to pop into a starbucks i'd never been in before and ended up spending two hours talking to two men there. one had been an officer in the US Army, stationed in korea right after the korean war, and the other was a man from ethiopia who had just moved to LA from africa during the rodney king riots. the latter lived in koreatown on ardmore, just one street over from where i used to live.