Insert witty blog title here.

Things that make me :)

You can't help being at least a tiny bit amused by cute kittens in funny poses with poorly-spelled, dorky captions.

Smile Rating: :)





Of course, I'll always love John Mayer. But I particularly love "Wheel" from this album, Heavier Things. In it, John says things I would like to communicate to the world, but his lyrics are so much more articulate than what I would've come up with. Plus, it reminds me of one of the best summers ever, when we made a trip to see John Mayer for the first time.

Smile Rating: :) :)




And finally, Kathy Griffin. I don't care that she's on the D-List, or that she's highly offensive to many groups of people. She is hiliarious, and always makes me laugh. Tonight she hosted Bravo's A-List awards, and managed to find a happy medium between class and crass. But you know, sometimes you just need to be entertained by a woman who's not afraid to go there. "Get freaky, Lance Bass, get freaky!"

Smile Rating: :) :) :)




And on the opposite end of the spectrum - two things that do not make me :)

Good morning, Baltimore!

"...Every day's like an open door!
Every night's like a fantasy!
Every sound's like a symphony!"
- Tracy Turnblad, Hairspray

I have been released from the pit of despair known as boredom. Okay, that was a little melo-dramatic, but I'm very excited because (drumroll, please)... I have a project! With just less than a month left until I move to the city, I was starting to go slightly crazy from a lack of productivity. I mean, my little aspirations of expanding my piano repertoire and dabbling in new languages could only keep me distracted for so long.

But I digress. I got several emails from a lovely lady named Kelly at TFA - though I suppose I shouldn't assume it's a woman, since the only two Kelly/Kelys I personally know are men - with some information and (here comes the best part) action items. :)

Prep work, books by Wendy Kopp, and starter kits, oh my! All that, plus the ever looming task of apartment hunting should keep me busy, interested and excited up until the big day.

P.S. The blog title refers to the only thing I know about Baltimore, MD. This is relevant because that's where I'll go the second week of work for a big recruitment conference. I suppose after that I'll know a lot more, right? :) And I think the sentiment of the lyrics is quite appropriate for my sunny disposition.

P.P.S. Prior to receiving said emails, I intended for the post to be Part 2 of my Places I Love series. That will have to come later, but here's a hint about where it is: "Brand new state, gonna treat you great!"

Decent Days and Nights

This is a brand new problem, a problem without any clues.
If you know the clues, it's easy to get through.
But you look confused and you don't know what to do.
It's hard to get an answer when you haven't got a clue.
If you work it out, tell me what you find.
We could have a few decent days and nights.
- The Futureheads, Decent Days and Nights

After a short span of time in which my days oscillated between the very good and the very bad, things have reached some sort of equilibrium, resulting in a series of decent days and nights. The only downside is that I seem to have the two confused.

I try to go to bed at a relatively normal hour, really I do. But even the soothing sounds of Rufus Wainwright and a couple of Tylenol PMs don't lull me into a sound enough sleep to prevent the nightmares. I wish I could explain them, but I can't. Sometimes I can't even remember what happened, only that it woke me up with a pounding heart and watery eyes. And nobody wants to go back to sleep when that's the kind of thing they have to look forward to.

So maybe I should rephrase the title. Decent days is right, but nights... not so much.

--edit--

Sunday night I got to bed by 1 a.m. (a significant improvement), and I had one of the funniest dreams ever. It involved a very unusual location for U-Sing auditions, Peter Pan, two of my friends from high school moving into a certain Greek house, baseball games in New York City and a very interesting coffeeshop. Now let's just cross our fingers that last night wasn't a fluke and that my bad luck with sleep is over!

You're the marigold.

'Til you're yelling, "How we living?" 'Cause you got the ball.
Then you rock on baby, rock on, you rock on, on and on.
You're a summer time hottie with her socks in the air.
You're screaming, "I don't care, baby, I don't care!"
-- Third Eye Blind, Wounded

Isn't it weird that the day I feel most like a summer girl is one when it's drizzling and grey outside? I'll walk you through it.

Roughly 11:00 a.m. At some delightful hour this morning, I pleasantly stirred from a sweet slumber SANS nightmares. Gosh, that was exciting after a week of no good, very bad dreams. I had errands to run, so I got ready for the day and then headed out to experience the day. Only, the day was not as bright and shining as I would've liked. My mood is often closely linked to the weather, and today's forecast was hazy, with a chance of bitchiness. Pssh, but who needs weathermen anyway, right? I wasn't going to let this slight setback get in my way.

1:00 p.m. So I headed over to the salon to get my hair cut. This was something I was very nervous about. You see, in Norman, I found the best hairdresser ever, so there were great expectations going in to see this new girl. After it's all said and done, I don't love the new cut - so I won't post any pics of it yet - but I'm going to give it a couple of days and see if I can work some styling magic on it. I mean, it's just hair. It'll grow out.

1:40 p.m.
After that experience, I went for a little retail exercise. It was most definitely not an impulse buy, however; I had been planning this purchase ever since I laid eyes on the item and fell in love... yesterday. But seriously, you guys, these sunglasses were calling my name. White Ray-Ban Wayfarers, if you're interested in that sort of thing. So freaking awesome.

Sometime around, oh I don't know, 2:00 p.m.
I spent the afternoon working on various projects, getting little things accomplished, reading letters from some of my lovelies, etc. And then I got to hang out with my sister. She's a pretty neat kid. I mean, there's no one like her. (Seriously, she's, um, "quirky." It's presh.) We played around on Photobooth, listened to MIA and Katy Perry, and basically just acted like the weirdos we are. (Reference the evidence below.)


6:00 p.m.

It's day two of Vacation Bible School at the church where I'm helping out, so I headed that way. The drive is worth mentioned because I love riding around town with the windows and sunroof open, blasting the CD Ross burned for me. :) So, at VBS, my job is basically to wrangle a group of 4-year-olds, to make sure they get from place to place in one piece. It's harder than it sounded, ladies and gentlemen. But they're so adorable, I can barely stand it. My favorite is probably this little darling named CJ, who, when asked, "Can you tell us who wrote the Bible?" quickly shot his hand into the air and proclaimed, "I did!" Aww. Working with these kids has been so refreshing. However, it was neither adorable or refreshing when a woman today asked me which of the kids belonged to me. No, thank you. Not right now, at least.

9:30 p.m. VBS wraps up and Katie and I race to the movie theater, making it into our seats just in time for the beginning of Sex and the City. I know, I can't believe I hadn't seen it yet, either. I don't have much commentary, except that every time Carrie mentioned the 20-something girls who move to New York, I kept thinking, "That's me in 36 days!" :)

12:00 a.m. I've just been hanging out, reflecting, Facebooking, reading blogs, and now sharing my amazing summer day with you guys. Kind of neat what a change of perspective can do for a girl's mood. Now I'm going to hopefully drift off to sleep without having to employ the lullabies of Rufus Wainwright, as I have the past few nights. Ciao, lovers.

P.S. If you got the reference of this post's title without even a second thought, then you are truly a person after my own heart. Loves.

Hello, lover.

Remember when Carrie Bradshaw in Sex in the City saw those perfect shoes in the store window and cooed those now famous words"? Yeah, that's the relationship I have with my shoes too, which is why it pained me so to go through the gut-wrenching procedure of paring down my collection of prized pumps, fabulous flats, wonderful wedges, stupendous sandals (and even a few snazzy sneakers).

I began the afternoon with a mildly-impressive 70 pairs, and now I'm down to a somewhat satisfactory 43. I'm sure that will be quickly remedied when I get to the city, however. I'm forcing myself not to shop until then - you know, being frugal and everything. It helps that there's no such thing as Shoetopia in Tennessee.

Taking a turn to a completely different topic, I've started on my second summer playlist, which reminded me that I never posted my first. Check out these songs and tell me what you think!

Emily's 1st Summer Mix of 2008:

1. Handlebars - Flobots
2. Any Way You Choose to Give It - The Black Ghosts
3. Blankest Year - Nada Surf
4. Graveyard Girl - M83
5. Holiday from Real - Jack's Mannequin
6. Elvis - These New Puritans
7. That's Not My Name - The Ting Tings
8. Rain On Young Folks - Phillip Dillon
9. I Wanna Deadbeat You - The Night Marchers
10. Rich Girls - The Virgins
11. Sour Cherry - The Kills
12. Head Rolls Off - Frightened Rabbit
13. Ladies of the World - Flight of the Conchords
14. Love on the Rocks - Sara Bareilles
15. Daft Punk is Playing at my House - LCD Soundsystem
16. Abandon - French Kicks
17. Impossible - Shout Out Louds
18. Big Guns (Dave P. and Adam Sparkles It Hot Remix) - Holy Hail

By the way, all of those wonderful free links came from this cool Web site called Songza. It's "the music search engine and internet jukebox." Pretty cool. Unfortch, I couldn't find the last song on there, but it's on iTunes.

I figure I'll forego the lyrics on this post since I gave you a lot of music to listen to instead. :)

--edit--
This is hard. Twenty days down, but nearly 40 to go. I thought the longer I was here, the easier it would be to deal with not having my people close by, but some days it feels like it's just getting harder. Missing people hurts worse when you don't have a countdown to count on.