febtober is nigh

Summer is too rapidly drawing to a close. We’ve already had warning of impending rainfall — so far, mostly idle threats, but I can see it in the clouds. That’s a good thing, though – we haven’t had our pollution washed away in months.

Today was my last “real” day at my summer job. I put quotes around that because a) I only worked half-days half the time anyway, and b) I might continue to work there, intermittently, through the fall quarter, and maybe thru the year if both parties are so inclined. I’m personally invested in these index cards now, dammit!

Plus, the archive never got around to doing all the projects it’s had planned for at least two years, so I wanna be there when/if things finally/ever get off the ground.

So all I’ve got left before school starts is to read over some preliminary syllabi to decide which classes to take; write up a learning agreement for the new internship I’ve got; finish moving in the rest of my things, and buy some furniture to make life livable. And maybe try to find some more internships for the rest of the year, since everyone else in my class already seems to be set as far as that goes.

First, though, I have to pack stuff again, because I’m going to Rochester next week. Rochester, NY is the home of George Eastman House, and also the site of this year’s annual conference for the primary professional organization in my field. I’m also hoping it might be the site of a few kick-ass breweries; I have no reason to hope for this, it’s just that, darn it, I’d really like some beer before school starts! You know, to get warmed up for the rest of the year.

I might just add here that Stephen Fry is so talented he’s practically a higher life form, and just where does he get off??

Filed under: personal

moving back

At the very last minute I was offered a spot in student housing again this year, and I decided to take it. On the one hand, I feel like a lame-o because I totally took the easy way out. On the other hand,

1. I don’t have to look for housing! This is a big one. I’d been looking half-heartedly all summer, and even had a few places in mind that I’d gotten tips on from friends. Another friend even lent me her Westside rentals account, but that expired last week. So the offer came just in time. And seriously, at least I know what I’m getting with student housing, since I was there last year!

2. Although this year, I’ll be getting a two-story townhouse to share with a roomie. The layout is a little less nice than I’d like, since our rooms are right next to each other, but I’ll have stairs! Almost like a real townhouse!

3. So it’s quite a bit more expensive in terms of raw numbers, which doesn’t even include parking (ayy! the first downside to my Yaris!). It does, however, include cable, internet, and all utilities, including the campus shuttle.

4. Which I hope not to use too often. The biggest advantage is that living so close to campus will mean I can walk to school, ie continue to get the only exercise I ever got last year.

5. Location, part II. Move-in day is a week from now, meaning I can move OUT of my parents’ house, just when it was starting to pall. Also, less of a commute for that last week at my summer job!

6. Location, part III. I don’t have to learn how to live in a different neighborhood! And it’s Westwood!

7. I don’t know why, but I think I’ve subconsciously been hoping I’d be able to live in student housing again all along anyway. Here’s to the path of least resistance!

Filed under: personal, school

Practicing appraisal

While cleaning my room today I realized I had every bank statement I’ve ever received from my bank. I opened my account in 2000, as soon as I started college, and I never switched to online statements, forests be damned. So it’s quite a stack of paper.

Maybe it’s the archivist/pack-rat in me, but I still don’t want to shred these, or even throw them out. A quick skim through the years reveals a depressingly informative record of how my life has passed. It’s kind of like that short story, “Ordeal by Cheque,” only more boring.

Like, the first years’ worth of bank statements contains mostly entries from Amazon, half.com and deepdiscountdvd.com, along with the occasional Southwest Airlines ticket (not enough, I’m sure). That was a bad year.

In junior year I went to France and had to take out a ton of loans, so the deposits column looked healthy as the disbursements arrived from UC. Of course, the subsequent withdrawals negates that, in addition to providing another form of depressing: in September, when I withdrew 300 euros from a Paris ATM, that was equivalent to about 298 US dollars. By the following May, though, 300 euros cost about $360. Today, if I were to withdraw the same amount, I’d be out a clean $400 or more.

In any case, after that my statements are more or less completely mundane – jobs I’ve had and left, clothes that have long since worn out, etc etc, but of course those are the ones that are recent enough for me to have to keep.

Should I shred the historical ones?

Filed under: personal

meerschweinchen!

I’ve been entertaining the idea of adopting a guinea pig (aka cavy) or two, once I find a new place to live (if I do end up finding my own place, and if that place allows small pets). I spent a few days browsing cavy sites and reading the Wikipedia article on cavies. Now I don’t think I can afford one, because apparently they need a lot of good, fresh produce, which I have trouble even getting for myself. Plus there’s the cage, the hay, the vet, and all that stuff.

Still, it’d be so nice to have a pet around to cuddle and play with. Cavies are especially cute because they’re so expressive. They whistle (or “wheek“), and purr, especially when they know food is coming, and even dance when they’re happy (it’s called “popcorning“). So cute!

I’ll have to keep thinking about it, but in the meantime, I’ve got plenty of adorable pics and videos to look at….like vicariously owning a pet (pro: not having to clean up cavy doodoo; con: no actual furry animal to hold).

Filed under: personal

i already miss westwood

So yesterday I finally moved out the rest of my stuff from my apartment. My parents came to help with the Ford Explorer, and by the time we were done there was hardly enough room for me to sit in the back.

Then, because we were in a hurry to go places that day, we went straight to El Monte, and after about 3 hours (fudging with finance and insurance snafus) I drove home a brand-new, dark-grey Toyota Yaris! WOohoo! I’m thinking of naming it Elvis, but I’m open to suggestions.

Why were we in a hurry? Because my dad had bought tickets to go to the “Sound of Music” sing-along at the Hollywood Bowl. So after we got home and unloaded the old car and parked the new car, we made sandwiches and drove out to Hollywood. We got box seats, meaning we…sat in a box. It was reasonably far from the stage – definitely better than the nosebleeds. Someone brought over a portable table, and we had a picnic dinner.

The sing-along was preceded by this torturously long parade of people who’d shown up in costume. It went on forever and it didn’t help that the MC went super slow at the beginning and didn’t pick up the pace until well after the movie itself was supposed to start.

The movie was fun though. It was projected on a ginormous screen, and although there seemed to be a few print-decay problems at the beginning (if that’s what that patch of bubbliness was about), the movie looked good, if a bit dark. They put the lyrics on the screen whenever a song came on, and a lot of people sang along. (A lot of people also shouted key points of dialogue before the characters did). And whenever the Baroness appeared on screen some idiots with laser pointers kept playing around with them. A pretty asinine thing to do, but for some reason I couldn’t stop laughing the first couple times it happened. And then it just got annoying.

Also, the movie is like 90 years long, and we didn’t get out of the Bowl until almost midnight. And then we had to wait in the parking long for the people in front of us to leave because we were stuck in their horribly designed parking lots.

Anyway, it was a tiring day. If I didn’t do a single other thing for the rest of this summer, I’d be perfectly fine with it.

Filed under: personal

look! famous!

I’m at my parents’ house tonight. When I came home, I saw the computer was on suspend. I turned it back on, and the first thing I saw when the monitor came back to life was an Internet Explorer window (boo!) open to this article in the Korea Times.

Now, I’m as good as illiterate when it comes to Korean, so unfortunately I have no idea what the article says, or what it’s even about. But I could still see why the window had been left open: if you scroll down, you’ll see that that lady in the picture is my mom! Oh, what the heck, I’ll just copy it here too:

I should go ask her what the story is all about, and who that strange man is. I also love that the KAL HQ has 9 gazillion of those model 747s strewn all over the place – this definitely isn’t my mom’s office, but I know she has one behind her desk too.

update: My sis tells me it’s about Korean Air’s plans to expand service – not coincidentally, there was an article about this in last week’s LA Times. The article even explains who the white guy is. Not that anyone cares.

Filed under: personal, photo

uncelebrified

A syzygy of circumstances led me to spend chunks of time at LAX, WeHo, Beverly Center, and Santa Monica today, the day before the Oscars.

Number of celebrities I saw?

0.

One factor may be that I am completely celebrity blind. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but one time while walking home from class at night, my friend and I passed by a limo parked near the Ackerman parking lot. Naturally, it was only after we were well away from the limo that my friend turned to me to ask, “was that Will Arnett?”

I whipped my head around, naturally, but the limo was long gone. That’s right, GOB Bluth was standing in front of me and I MISSED him!

Rahhhh.

Filed under: personal

there’s no “I” in “object”

Dude, if I have to read one more sentence containing this error, “this and that happened, causing a rift between my friend and I….”

Listen: “She and I were eating lunch outside” is not the same as “Petey sat by me and her.”

The difference? No, actually, they’re both correct. It’s something else.

In the former instance, You and your Friend are the subjects. You guys are doing stuff.

In the second example, You and your Friend are the objects. Stuff is happening to (or for, or between) y’all.

I know how when you were little a kid, your teacher probably corrected you whenever you said something like “Me and her were eating lunch outside when…” And so you were conditioned always to use the phrase “She and I” or whatever. But their pedagogical zealotry has led to half a generation of grammatical misusers, and it’s starting to drive me nuts. People are even quoted in the New York Times doing this.

Just to hammer it home: “My mother and I went to the mall.” “Petey bought flowers for both my mother and me.” Petey did NOT. FREAKING. Buy flowers “for my mother and I.” Or “for she and I.” Or even for “her and I.”

It’s not even that hard. You would never say “Petey got this for I,” or “Petey got this for she,” so why in the world would you switch to using the subject pronoun, just because there’s suddenly more than one of you? Petey may be a no-good rotten two-timer, but that’s no reason for you to become Grammar Ape.

And you’d never say “This dispute is between he and they,” because that sounds ridiculous. Well, lemme tell you, “this is between she and I” sounds even worse, because you think you’re being all correct, but in reality, you just sound like the unedumacated person your teachers made you become.

Filed under: personal

roll call

there are twelve people living in my house right now. two old people from canada, two old people from korea, my family, and four people from Vegas.

twelve people, 2.5 bathrooms.

it’s gonna be a long weekend.

Filed under: personal

i, consumer!

It’s two weeks after Christmas, but this week my family has gotten some nice new stuff for ourselves.

- I got new glasses! They’re Calvin Klein frames, but nicer looking than the ones I got at Target last year (what was I thinking?). I went to this new shop that opened in K-Town that the guy my parents knew from their old eyeglasses place opened up for himself not long ago. I ended up picking the very first set of frames he picked out for me, that’s how good he is. It’s called Eyeland Optical, inside this building on New Hampshire and Wilshire.

- For a late Christmas present, my sister and I pitched in to get our parents the Simplehuman coffee maker. It’s a single-serve coffee machine, but it makes much less noise than the Tassimo, it has a much smaller footprint, and it’s much easier to use and better-designed. And the coffee that comes with it in a sampler pack is really good (Molto). I already wish I could have another cuppa but that’s probably bad for if I want to sleep later tonight.

- My sister got a MacBook!!! It came at closeout prices, because it’s the first dual-core model from last May, but still! I’m using it to write this right now (setting it up for her, and, you know, making sure everything works *wink*) and it roooooooocks.

- And pretty soon we’re gonna have to buy a new car, now that the insurance money has come in. We like Allstate, by the way.

All in all, a very wallet-draining week. But I think (hopefully) that the stuff we got is good enough to keep us satisfied, materially, for a good long while.

Filed under: fun, personal