charleston

just bought my flight to cathy's bachelorette party. why are flights so $$$? i can feel myself just entering the phase of life where i'll be endlessly jetsetting to weddings and wedding-related events for the next 8 years or so

eloise

this is how i generally feel these days. how many times can i listen to it on repeat?


the last thing i expected one year ago has happened and it looks like i'm staying in florida for the foreseeable future. i've been transitioning into my new group, doing 50/50 with my old job, all week. working two jobs at once has been rough but i like my new job a lot. i'm sitting in a fabrication shop with a bunch of men and at the end of my first day we sat in a circle and ate ice pops and listened to techno music. now i'm hard at work piecing together the logistics of how i'm going to get out of new york and shape chapter 9482992 of my life.

also, i lived in a hotel for for a few nights of this week, dropping off and picking up my car from the valet, and i felt like eloise.

bah revit

2 tired for 2torials

houses

Encounters with Houses

Wednesday night Sinay and I helped finish the food and alcohol belonging to three Norwegian boys on their last night in Orlando. They were staying in a sprawling vacation home rental, with so many bedrooms that countless beds were left undisturbed. The decor was decidedly 'model home,' with a fully set dining table with accompanying wine glasses for a formal dinner that would never happen. The living room was very interiorly decorated and the wall-mounted TV was playing TV Land playing Gilligan's Island when we walked in. It was comical that what looked like the perfectly crafted nest of the species 'suburban housewife' was actually inhabited by a trio of rowdy drunken vikings. They blended pitcher after pitcher of raspberry and strawberry daquiris and poured ersatz Moscow Mules made with Canada Dry instead of ginger beer and we sat on the kitchen bar stools and talked about American tourists, theme parks, the way Disney calls everything 'magic,' Florida, Norway, and the funny way Danes talk. We swam in the pool outside as the sun gloriously set and we attempted to climb on the pool floaties, one of which was a big yellow duck which would inevitably flip over as soon as you claimed your throne. We put on diving masks and swam to the bottom of the deep end - a cavernous 5-foot descent. I asked about one boy's tattoo of an anchor and he said it's because anchors are stable and they keep the boat safe. There was something magical about the way that strangers from the internet could so easily be friends for a day.

Vana is currently catsitting a 21-year-old cat named Sneetches in a house on Lake Jessamine. Last night we went out on the town, running around a bunch of bars and eating late-night barbecue, and then we came back and I stayed in the guest room of this most beautiful little house which belongs to an interior designer from our work. Everything, from each piece of furniture to every piece of art or shelf object was a quirky, precious thing, like the mid-century-meets-The Jetsons armchairs and the dining table's big bowl of blown-glass ornaments and the paintings with the same cardinal printed out in different sizes and pasted all over them. The back of the house opens to the lake, with a small dock leading out to a tethered kayak. On Saturday we spent all day watching cooking shows, eating popsicles, and watching Sneetches tip over a glass of water.       

honey bee

i had a fantastic time at my cousin's bachelorette party in los angeles this past weekend staying at the w hollywood and participating in an unprecedented level of debauchery. on the first day we lied in an expensive cabana by the rooftop pool, dined in a four-dollar-sign japanese/peruvian restaurant, karaoked in a bar hidden inside of a parking garage, and danced all night in unreasonable shoes. 

the next day our plans to go shopping were rained out by an unexpected thunderstorm and we relinquished any plans to do anything productive or classy. the day was spent boozing unreasonably in the hotel lobby bar, schmoozing with the bachelor party bachelors, dragging drunks back to their rooms and feeding them, watching people start fights, and looking for love in all the wrong places. i think we did everything right because the amount of scandal successfully achieved was enough to convince a bride why she might want to settle down for the peaceful, committed life. 

Traveling again

I'm in a new and sad position where I have no one to tell that I just boarded my plane and that I'll be taking off soon. And this teenaged girl on my left does not appear to be uncomfortable about the fact that her arm keeps touching mine.

ibis attack

Tonight I went to Epcot with Tom and Bobert for the last time before they move to California at the end of the week. We had dinner at the quick service restaurant outside of Mexico, where a white ibis, now also known as an ol' chopstick face, jumped onto the table and stole one of the pieces of fried fish out of my fish tacos.

Then we watched Illuminations together for the last time, which was bittersweet because we've watched it together so many times before.

rainbow springs

I remember the time before I moved to Orlando when the pictures of Central Florida's natural springs seemed like an unbelievable dream. They also don't disappoint in real life. Within an hour or two from the barren cultural wasteland of mini-golf courses and regular-sized gold courses, shitty chain restaurants, and tasteless souvenir shops, are some of the most beautiful blue bodies of clear water I have ever seen. So far I've visited Weeki Watchee, Wekiva, and Blue Springs, and today Vana and her friends and I went to Rainbow Springs, Florida's fourth largest spring.  It produces over 490 million gallons of water daily. The water stays 72 degrees year-round and made for perfect swimming temperature.

what is grown up

what is grown up? i worked until 5:30pm. i drove home and thought about my to-do list. i walked in the door and put my laundry in the washing machine first thing. i started defrosting chicken and touched all the cabinets with my chicken hands. i timed the rice to finish cooking when the curry was done. i browsed reddit as i ate. i had one beer. i was rejected from a job i applied to a month ago. i washed all my dishes. i moved the laundry to the drying machine. i cleaned my room and answered e-mails from work and my parents. i worked on a new job application for two hours but didn't send it. i put away my clean clothes. i watched true life: save my teen marriage. i wrote a postcard. i kept checking who was on google hangouts and wondered how long they would be there. 

rumble grumble

the thunder outside sounds like people dropping boxes all over the place

feelinvs

people stop having feelings nowadays, so i hear

weird cat

i'm trying to learn zbrush and i'm pretty obsessed with this cat i just made

closing time

i thought i saw the turtle dead on the side of the road today but i couldn't be sure.

this has been a terrible day and i'm glad it's about to be snuffed out of existence.

a new hope

My roommate and his GF (aka my dancercise partner) just got engaged this week on the teacups in Disneyland. In the meanwhile, the most monumental event of my life this week thus far is that I watched Star Wars Episode IV for the first time last night with Sinay, who has just moved back to Orlando from Ohio. It was fine.

A thing I feel terrible about is that on the drive home today there was a softshell turtle on the road again and there were a ton of cars around and no one had hit it yet as my other roommate and I passed by but it seemed like only a matter of time. The turtle had sucked its head into its shell so it was hard to tell it was a turtle. Afterwards I couldn't stop thinking about it and feeling like I should've tried to pick it up and move it and now I'm scared there'll be a dead turtle on the road when I drive into property again tomorrow. 

forest spirits

Uggg I'm going to try to make a comeback from my recent period of silence. The uncertainty of my life has been feeling sort of demotivating. I recently discovered that the key to enjoying the weekend is to do as little as possible. When you spend most of it lying around, it feels like it lasted a hearty length of time. If you go galavanting around, it feels like it never happened at all.

This morning I woke up unnecessarily early, so I visited the nature preserve by my house for the first time. It was really serene walking on a flat, easy trail guarded on both sides by saw palmetto. With every step I scared away unseen animals in the bushes, sent scrabbling with terror at the sound of my approach. I could never see them; I could only hear their violent thrashing and it felt like I was in a Miyazaki forest.

A person I know took this delightful photo of a perhaps perfect weekend spent on a platform boat in Venice, CA