Yuck

While I was home this past week for Thanksgiving, my mom made tacos one night. Now, I was pretty excited about this because I love tacos. I was even more excited when I was the container of what I assumed was guacamole out on the kitchen counter, along with all the other tacos fixin's. I LOVE guacamole, and I've been in avocado withdrawal since I moved to DC.

So I spoon some of the "guacamole" onto one of my tacos, but there's something kind of off about the texture. It feels really. . . .thick, and almost. . . .gelatinous? This makes me suspicious, so I taste some of the "guacamole" off the spoon. Hmm. Doesn't exactly taste like avocados. So I finally look at the container and discover I'm not eating guacamole at all, but "Guacamole-flavored dip"! And as I look at the list of ingredients, my stomach churns a bit. Because of the 23 ingredients listed on the label, avocados are number 12: well behind water, salt, dried onion powder and several chemicals I cannot pronounce.

I guess I'll be waiting for my next trip to CA before I attempt to feed that craving again.

When your pet surpasses you in popularity

Many of you know that I come from a family of dog lovers. As long as I can remember, we've always had at least one dog (always a dachshund--or weiner dog), and more often than not, we've had two or three at a time. Right now, we have three dogs, one of whom has made it to the ripe old age of 17 1/2 years old.

I'd never really stopped to think about how amazing it is to have a nearly 18 year old dog, until a friend of my parents called the local paper and suggested that they write a story about it. The paper jumped at the opportunity, and early last week, an article profiling my parents and Rudy--our dog--and talking about the challenges more people are facing in having older pets appeared in the paper. And mind you, this was no small, single column newspaper story. There was a small picture of Rudy on the front page of the paper. There was a HUGE picture of Rudy on the front page of the Lifestyle section. And then there was the actual article--complete with more pictures of Rudy and our other two dogs on an inner page of the Lifestyle section.

A good month

I realize it's been a long time since I blogged. This last month or so has been really fun, but sadly, I have virtually no pictures to prove it. So what have I been up to?

In the last month, I:

Went apple picking twice. Once we went in the pouring down rain, but we got lots of yummy apples. And a pumpkin. And some cider. The second time we went when it was sunny and beautiful, but didn't actually come home with any apples. (This is partly because I already had plenty and partly because there really weren't many left on the trees.)

Carved pumpkins for Halloween. My pumpkin was a landscape of Colorado. My friend carved his to represent the way that capitalism--like a boiling cauldron--consumes us.

Got lost in a corn maze (or maize maze, as I like to call it) and watched people shoot pumpkins out of a cannon.

Mike and Claire try valiantly to find their way out of the maze

Dressed up as a "Smarty Pants" for Halloween, while my friend Brianne dressed as a "Fancy Pants."

Brianne has the bling and ruffles to make her pants fancy, and I've got the Smarties

Finished my first short film--an autobiography.

Went to my dear friend Abby's beautiful wedding.

Becky, Abby and Claire at Abby's wedding

In addition, I have not been bitten by any small animals (or large ones), and there has been no more flooding, so that's been good. All in all, not a bad month.

Datey-dates

So I'm going on a very "datey-date" on Saturday night. It occurs to me that I can't remember the last time I went on a "datey-date." It has definitely been a couple of years.

Now don't get me wrong--I've been on plenty of dates. But they've tended to be lower-key dates. "I'll meet you there" dates (or even more common--given how many people I've dated who didn't have a car--"I guess I'll pick you up" dates). "Play it by ear" dates. Or sometimes, "I have a general idea of the plan" dates. And as a general rule, the content of the dates I've been on has been pretty low key and non-datey also. We'd go hiking, or have a picnic, or go for a motorcycle ride, or just kind of wonder around and see what happened. Hanging out as dating.

And really, non-datey's been good with me. The formality and planned-ness of datey-dates makes me nervous. I feel like staring at each other from across the table of a fancy restaurant isn't a very natural or organic way to really get to know someone. And it's certainly not representative of how I really like to spend my time.

And yet, this datey-date's got me intrigued. There is something to be said for a guy with a very clear plan. Who's going to pick me up in a car. And take me out on a Saturday night (not a Thursday night or Sunday afternoon). I don't even know what to make of it. But given my penchant for new experiences (particularly if they're awkward), I'm looking forward to it.

Here's to hoping we don't decide we hate each other mid-way through the appetizer, because it would be a really long night after that!

The Upside

So I've spent a lot of time on this blog lately complaining about things that are bad, but very little time talking about school or the stuff that's going well.

And I promise, there ARE things that are going well. School--for the most part--has been great. It's really challenging, and I spend at least half of my time feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm still really enjoying what I'm learning. I'm taking a writing class where we're writing scripts for fiction and non-fiction films. I'm taking a production class where we're making short films. And I'm taking a design class (for reasons I still don't quite understand) where I'm learning all about Photoshop. I will soon be sticking my head on all sorts of other people's bodies.

On top of that, I've made friends. I've learned my way around DC well enough that I can give directions to people who have lived here longer than I have. I've reconnected to Abby and Becky's DC-based parents. I've got an in for what I think will be a great internship, AND the weather here has not been as bad as I expected.

See? All good things.

There is hope for me and DC yet.

Washington, D.C.: 4, Claire: 0

A month and half ago, when I was (fairly calmly) dealing with the flood that put good chunks of my apartment underwater, I rationalized that everyone needed something bad to happen to them upon moving to a new place, and it was better to get it out of the way. After all, the damage from the flood was minimal, and if that was the worst thing that befell me while living in D.C., that wouldn't be so bad at all!

Foolish, foolish Claire. What on earth made me think that would be THE ONLY bad thing? What on earth made me think that would be the worst thing? Now, I know better. I will now wait in calm dread for the next ridiculous, bad thing that is going to happen. I'm very sure the bad luck is not over.

Why so sure, you ask? Why so pessimistic? Here's why:

I have had what I presumed was a cold pretty much since I moved to D.C. This past week it occurred to me that 6 weeks was kind of a long time to not be getting better from a cold, and that my symptoms (stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat) improved drastically when I was away from the apartment for long stretches of time, only to return with a vengeance when I walked back in the door. My friend Brianne--who would know a thing or two about this--has pointed out that it probably means I am allergic to something. Yes, that's right. I'm ALLERGIC to my apartment.

And, all the nose blowing I've been doing has triggered yet another problem: nosebleeds. Yup. All throughout the week, my nose has spontaneously erupted blood at the most inopportune moments, forcing me to walk around (although thankfully not in public yet) with a twisted up Kleenex shoved up my nose, as I try to staunch the blood. This makes me feel like the geeky loser I was when I was eight and had to stop taking swimming lessons because the chlorine made my nose bleed. There is nothing sadder than being the 8 year old who has to sit with the teachers while all your friends splash away in the pool.

But I digress. As if the allergies and the nosebleeds weren't enough, there's been another problem. It seems that earlier this week, a brown recluse spider bit me. For those of you not up on your spider hierarchies, the brown recluse bite is extremely dangerous, second only to a black widow. In worst case scenarios, the bite gets infected and all of the surrounding skin rots off. I'm not even joking. It's really disgusting.

Now, I've been bit by a spider before, and it was annoying and it kind of hurt for a few days, but then it faded away and left me with this stupid lumpy scar. Not a huge deal. So I didn't worry too much when I noticed the bite. I didn't worry too much when it still hurt several days after I first noticed it. I started to worry yesterday, when I realized that the redness and swelling looked worse than when I first noticed it and that my entire leg was throbbing with pain.

The advice nurse at Suburban Hospital was pretty worried, too, when I described it, and she ordered me to haul my ass ASAP to the emergency room, which I did with the help of said friend Brianne. There we proceeded to wait for 4 hours until I finally got seen. They loaded me up with antibiotics and painkillers, took blood, gave me a tetanus shot and told me that if the swelling and redness hadn't gone down substantially in the next few days, I'd have to come back in and they would need to carve out the chunk of infected skin to keep it from spreading. I'm hoping they just said that to scare me into taking all the antibiotics.

So yeah, that's been my week. Allergies, nosebleeds and spider bites, oh my. And I don't even get to enjoy the tiny silver lining of having a spider bite that hurts like a motherf---er: They offered to prescribe me percocet for the pain, and I had to turn them down. Even extra strength Tylenol makes me feel like I'm on a tilt-a-whirl and about to throw up, so I definitely can't handle big-time painkillers.

I feel like these experiences have made me wiser, more prepared for whatever other bad things will come my way. I am completely expecting to find out that mutant killer crickets live in the laundry room of my apartment, and it would not surprise me at all to find that a school of pirhanas has taken up residence in my toilet bowl. Bring it--nothing would surprise me now!

D.C. is Finally Looking Up

Since I last wrote, things in Washington, D.C. are going much better. We never did discover the cause of the crazy flood waters that overtook my apartment (and my mom, the neighbor, the plumber, the contractor working on the house where I live, the landlords and I all made a valiant effort to figure out where the water could have come from, to no avail), but we did tear out the old, wet carpet and go crazy with a couple of fans and a dehumidifier. (Note: I have never seen a device that sucks water OUT of the air before. Being a nose-bleed prone child from an arid state, I had no need to be taking any more water out of the air. Ordinarily, we were looking for ways to put moisture back INTO the air.)

But anyway, right around the time the apartment dried out, the movers showed up with the rest of my stuff, the carpet guys came to lay down new (and much prettier) carpet, and I finally got to unpack, put together my bed and stop sleeping on a mattress in the kitchen. And somehow--luckily--the only things that suffered any damage from the flooding were my cable box (ironically, I'd been really hesitant to get cable, fearing it would suck up too much of my valuable time) and the biography of Richard Nixon, which promptly started to mold. HA. Karma's a bitch. (And no, I don't really want to explain why I have a copy of Nixon's biography. It's a long story.)

So now, relatively settled, I'm getting into the process of making new friends, reconnecting with old ones, and poaching other people's D.C. friends. Orientation for my graduate school program was Friday, and so far I've managed to stay more excited than scared. I'm not a) the only person who doesn't have film experience or b) the oldest person in the program, although I'm not that far from it.

I realized how old I am, and just how long I've been out of college, when this librarian came to orientation and started talking about appropriate research methods. She said: "I know when you all were undergrads, it was OK to just do all your research for a paper on Google, but now you should be using different methods to research." She says this, and it suddenly occurs to me that I'm not completely sure Google even existed when I was an undergrad. And so my slow descent into old age begins, at the ripe old age of 27!

I guess that's about it for now. I start both class and work tomorrow. I hope it goes well. I hope I don't discover that I'm in over my head. Or really, I guess I'm OK with being in over my head. Everything I've ever really learned from, grew from or been challenged by involved me feeling like I was in WAY over my head. I hope I learn, grow and am challenged by this!

I'm Living in a Swamp

And at the moment, I mean that quite literally.

So my mom and I got to DC on Monday night, and we've been staying at a hotel, and running around trying to get some of that move-in stuff done (e.g., visits to the DMV, buying groceries, multiple trips to the hardware store and the Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) Last night--despite the fact that none of my furniture is arriving for about a week and they hadn't delivered my new bed yet, we decided to stay in the apartment on an inflatable mattress I'd brought along.

One small problem: while I can inflate the bed no problem, the cap that keeps the air IN the mattress is missing. So we slept on the very hard floor on top of a deflated air mattress with no pillows. Awesome. (Mental note to me: DO NOT travel without your thermarest camping sleep pad and sleeping bag.)

After a very sleepless night, I got up early, spent about 4 hours at the DMV and car inspection place and ran some more errands. With those out of the way, my mom and I headed out to actually do something fun, like be tourists.

So here comes the swamp part. On returning to my apartment 5 hours later, we found that something, somewhere had flooded, leaving the carpet soaked, everything that had been on the floor drenched (and I do mean DRENCHED--I was wringing water out of clothes I'd left in a suitcase on the floor), and a good half inch of water on the floor in the bathroom (which we had to clean up using a dustpan, because we don't have a mop, buckets, or towels to use yet). That's bad enough, but the amount of heat in the air coupled with all the water in this apartment has given this place the feeling of being a swamp--thick, muggy and utterly disgusting. Add to that a bunch of slugs bigger than my index and middle finger combined and the 30 or so mosquitos who have bitten me in the 3 days that we've been here (leaving behind huge red welts, because I'm incapable of not scratching), and I feel like I've landed in the Everglades. And it's just made me miss California all the more.

I'm hoping that, with the really bad thing out of the way, Washington D.C. can only get better. Seriously, I'm looking for something--anything really--to like about this city.

The Free Lunch? It Really Doesn't Exist.

I've been home in Colorado for about a month. That's been nice, but kind of. . . well, boring. As a way to alleviate some of said boredom, I went with my parents a couple weeks ago to volunteer with their service group--The Lions Club--at a sporting event for blind athletes. At the event, I got to talking to another member of the club--Jim--about my future plans and why I was interested in pursuing documentary filmmaking.

A few days later, my mom asked if I wanted to come to the bi-monthly Lions Club meeting that day. I wasn't really interested, but she said there'd be free lunch, and who passes that up?

So I went, ate my free lunch and politely listened to the club members discuss the orders of business, one of which was a proposal to start inviting non-club members to come and talk about whatever it was they did. At this very moment, Jim-the-guy-from-the-other-night pipes up and says he'd really like it if I could talk more about what I was doing and why.

Suddenly, every head in the room swiveled to stare at me. The president of the club announced that HE thought it was a great idea (with my dad very thoughtfully seconding him) and asked if I'd be willing to come back and present at the next meeting. Before I could try to back out, my dad had assured them I'd be happy to do it.

So much for free lunch.

So yesterday, I came back to the meeting, got up in front of this club of mostly old, slightly cranky Republican men and talked about how JVC and the union had turned me into a crazy lefty commie who believes in obscene things like empowerment and equal rights for all and how I was going to take all of those beliefs and use them as the basis for propaganda. Ahem, I mean documentaries. (Or at least this is how I am sure what I said--which I really tried to make as neutral and non-partisan as possible--was perceived. Seriously, when I mentioned--JUST MENTIONED--Michael Moore in passing, eyes narrowed, lips curled, and I thought at least one guy might attempt to jump me and shake those liberal values right out of me.) Needless to say, it felt like a tough crowd. I definitely earned that damn lunch.

Who Needs Kevin Bacon?

So I was in D.C. last weekend, searching frantically for an apartment that I can move into when I get to D.C. in the middle of August. After looking at what felt like a million apartments and trying to navigate the many flaming hoops that apartment management companies feel are necessary to determine whether or not you're worthy of living in their apartment (you want the application fee as a money order and the deposit as a cashier's check? You need to see my 3 most recent pay stubs and my W-2s? You need to know the balance of all of my bank accounts and you need to see my actual social security card as well as my passport and my driver's license? Um. . . Ok), I found a place that I'm excited about. (And didn't require any flaming hoops at all!)

I also managed to find time to take in a Nationals game. I went with my friend Brianne, who brought her friend Rachel, who brought her friend Fred, who brought his friend Alex. Alex, like me, happens to be a former HERE union organizer, so we bonded over that. After the game the group of us headed out to a dive bar on U Street that soon got overrun by a bunch of drunk rugby players who'd just won the Mid-Atlantic Rugby championship in their division, or so they drunkenly told us. Repeatedly.

Anyway, Alex and I continued to chat, and in the process of talking, discovered that his dad grew up next door to the mom of my very dear friend, Miss Abby Levine. Wow. Kind of random. And yet, somehow, I am not surprised at all. And neither was Abby, when I told her about it.

You see, Abby, was the link that led me to meet nearly everyone I know in San Francisco. So of course she would somehow be connected to the friend of a friend of a friend that I meet at a baseball game. Also, Abby was my introduction to San Francisco's progressive Jewish circle, so it seems fitting that she would manage, inadvertantly and without even needing to be there, to be my introduction to that exact same circle in D.C.!

With friends like that, who needs Kevin Bacon to play the "6 degrees" game?

Heard on the streets of D.C.

While walking down a street in Washington, D.C. last weekend, I heard this little piece of a coversation:

A 30ish woman talking to her family: "I mean, I don't know. When I have the baby, I'm gonna have to sell it for more than it's cost me."

Wait, what?

It took me a good 5 minutes more of eavesdropping to realize she was actually talking about selling her mustang convertible, not her baby. That's what I get for not listening to the conversation from the beginning!

Missing California

When I first made the decision to move to Oakland (was it really 5 years ago?), my friend Erin made me a mix CD of songs about California. It is a testament to Erin's spectacular taste in music that the CD wasn't overly campy or kitschy (as theme mixes often are), and that I still listen to it occasionally even now. In fact, I listened to it the other day. It, along with a number of experiences I've had in the past two weeks at home in CO, has made me miss California even more.

So I thought I'd write up a little list of some of the (non-people) things I miss most about California--it should go without saying (although I suppose I'm saying it right now) that I miss the people I left behind in California.

Alright. With no further ado, here's what I'm missing most about California at present:

1) Falafel. There is one--I repeat ONE--place that sells falafel in the greater Colorado Springs metro area. What I wouldn't give for some falafel, fresh pita and minty lemonade from Holy Land right about now.
2) Produce that actually tastes like something. I had forgotten that produce, by the time it makes its way to the middle of the country, has lost both its flavor and texture, and thus everything tastes. . . .sort of mealy and watered down. I didn't really appreciate tomatoes (or most vegetables, for that matter) until I moved to California.
3) Recycling. In fact, I miss the whole Reduce/Reuse/Recycle concept. It hasn't quite made it here yet. I went to an ice cream place the other day where they gave me my scoop in a styrofoam cup. I couldn't even enjoy the ice cream because I felt so guilty about the damn cup. This is what happens when you get used to cups (and spoons) being made out of recycled materials, and knowing that if you throw it away, it WILL biodegrade.
4) Independent movie theatres and "arty" movies. Landmark cinemas, how I miss thee. And the Parkway: I miss you too. I'd pretty much kill to see something with subtitles right now. Or that starred Parker Posey. I still read the SF Chronicle's movie reviews every Friday. It's really just an exercise in masochism, because all it accomplishes is to remind me of all the movies I wish I was watching but that will never make it to Colorado, much less Colorado Springs.
5) The ocean. Water in general, I suppose. Colorado doesn't have much in the way of water. Even though I'm not a big beachy person, I miss the smell of the ocean, the sound of waves. Hell, I even miss the crazy seagulls who try to shit all over you.

But just because I don't want to sound like an ungrateful wretch, I'm gonna add one thing I've missed about Colorado that I'm happy to be near again: mountains. Big-ass, craggy, timberline-sporting mountains. Because if it doesn't have a timberline, kids, it's just not a mountain; it's a really big hill. I suspect that being born and raised at the foot of a mountain that shoots up more than 8,000 feet has made me into a mountain snob, but so it goes. For the next few weeks, I'll be trying to get my fill of mountains, while I hope and pray that in Washington D.C., it's possible to find a tomato that actually tastes like tomato, and that someone, somewhere, might be willing to compost the part that I don't manage to eat.

Port of Oakland, deconstructed

When I decided that I was leaving the Bay Area, I made a list of things I wanted to make sure to do before I left. Some of the items on the list involved re-visiting old favorites; some were new things I'd always meant to do but hadn't ever gotten around to. High up on the list was taking a boat tour of the Port of Oakland. I have a deep and slightly obsessive fascination with the Port and had always wanted to go on the tour, but the part where they only run the tours during the summer on weekdays at ten in the morning made it challenging, given that whole job thing.


But with a departure date set and a more flexible work schedule made possible by temping (and my temp placement's complete adoration of me--heehee!), I was determined to go. I called for reservations, argued my way off of a waiting list, told the movers that I was sorry, but they just could not show up for my stuff on that particular morning, and cleared my work schedule--nothing was getting between me and the Port of Oakland.

You know how sometimes, you build things up in your head until there is no way they could possibly meet your inflated expectations?

Definitely not the case with the Port of Oakland boat tour.

It was fascinating and informative and beautiful and great. So great, in fact, that I found myself rejecting the advances of a very charming Romanian man (the only other person on the boat even close to my age--be warned: this is a tour that is overrun by 6 year olds in day care and 85 year old retirees) because he was trying to flirt with me while the tour guide was talking: "So, beautiful lady," he said to me, "what brings you here on this lovely day?" "I'm sorry," I replied, "I'm sure you're very nice, but I really just want to learn about the Port."


And learn I did. I learned that if you stacked the containers on a ship end to end, they would stretch 17 miles. I learned that enough containers come through the port every year to reach from Oakland to South Korea. I learned they had to deepen the estuary leading into the Port by 35 feet to be able to fit the newer Panamex container ships (and I learned that a Panamex container ship was designed to be exactly as large as possible to fit through the Panama canal). I learned that Alameda wasn't always an island, and that they dug the channel between Alameda and Oakland in the 19th century. I learned that Alameda used to be the headquarters for Skippy peanut butter and cornnuts. I learned that there is a gigantic gun hidden in one of the pylons of the Bay Bridge, in case enemy combatants in WWII ever attacked the Bay Area. And my awe and obsession with the Port is more intense than ever.

People often ask me why I'm so interested in the Port. There's a two part answer: 1) I think the Port is beautiful and enthralling. It's definitely not pretty, but there is something striking and yes, beautiful--in an urban, industrial way--about the bold lines of the cranes, the way the light catches them at sunset, the way they glow eerily amber after dark. They look like post-modern trojan horses, and it's easy for me to see how they could inspire creative flights of fancy (just ask George Lucas!) 2) Shipping has existed in a relatively unchanged way for thousands of years. We live in such a modern, fast-paced, technologically-advanced world, and yet we still depend on boats--ON BOATS--to move our goods around the world. When you think about the amount of stuff that we sell and consume every year--every day--and it all comes into and out of a Port somewhere . This amazes and humbles me every time I think about it. My only regret is that it took so long to learn more about it. For all of you left in the Bay Area, I highly HIGHLY recommend going on the boat tour. If you don't come to share my obsession, you'll at least be better situated to make fun of it, no?

Closure

Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do today was blog. It's hot, I'm running on two hours of sleep and I've spent the last 13 hours cleaning, packing and moving. (Moving definitely sucks, but moving by yourself is SO much worse.) But I couldn't bear the thought that a whole month would pass without me writing anything, especially when I have tons of things I want to/should blog about: the Port of Oakland boat tour I went on last week, my run-in with a psychotic seagull earlier this week, the insanity (mostly in a good way) that has been my last week in the Bay Area, and most especially, my thoughts on leaving.

Because as soon as I finish writing this blog, I'll pack up my computer, stick it in the car with all the rest of my crap, and head out. Crazy. And sad. And still completely unfathomable. Even though I am sitting in an apartment with literally nothing in it, even though I have met the woman who is moving into my apartment tomorrow, even though I've been saying goodbye to old friends and sadly admitting the impossibility of maintaining relationships with people I just met, I still don't think my head really gets that I'm leaving Oakland--the place I've called home for 5 years--and probably won't be back as anything but a visitor for a long, long time.

I think it will probably hurt like hell when I finally realize that truth.

And then the stupid

So here's the dumbest thing I've been asked to remove from the website since I started working there:

Why, you ask? Because--and this is a direct quote from the email--"he has no clothes on and thats my bad report." It's a cat. It's a FUCKING cat. And you're a 35 year old man who should really have something better to be concerned with.

Grrr. Have I mentioned how this job is making me hate people? Because it kind of is.

First the Bizarre

I'm really coming to hate this job I have where I remove inappropriate content from a website. More on that in my next post. For now, I'm just gonna post this link to one of the stranger things I've been asked to remove lately. I can't help but think that the person who came up with this is well on their way to being a sociopath.

Goal-Setting

I'm about to leave the Bay Area and start a new life, so it seems like as good a time as any to make some goals. So far, I just have one:

The next guy I get involved with will be physically and emotionally available. I think it will be a nice change of pace.

Drumroll Please

Last summer, while suffering through the first pains of my quarterlife crisis, I complained to a friend that I felt really overwhelmed by the number of options I had to pick from to determine what I wanted my life to look like: What to do? where to live? I said that making a decision felt really scary, because by deciding you had to turn your back on all the other options, and what if I chose poorly?

He said I needed to change my perspective on decision making. He said he thought about it like swimming. When you're out in the open water trying to swim, it can be really hard to get anywhere, because you have nothing to push off of. But once you had a limit--made a decision, if you will--like a wall in a swimming pool, you could push off it and get so much further.

He's right. As much pondering and deliberating as I've done in the past few months, once I made the big decision everything else seems to be falling--easily and not at all scarily--into place.

So with no further ado, as of August of 2007, I will be starting my MFA in Film and Electronic Media at American University in Washington, D.C. They have a great documentary program, really accomplished faculty, and they threw quite a bit of money at me--so all really good things. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm sad to be leaving. But we can talk more about those some other time. For now, I'm just excited to finally be pushing off the side of the pool!

Who needs a drink? I do. Yes, I definitely do.

After a week of worrying about falling down an open drain, my third bad thing finally happened. While driving to the REI this afternoon, I got into a car accident when a woman ran a red light and I smashed into the side of her car. The impact of the collision literally tore the whole front end off my car, and took a good chunk off the back end of hers (including her tire). I think we're both really lucky that the accident wasn't any worse, and that neither of us was injured.

The other (very small) bright side of this wretched day is that the first responder to the accident was a ridiculously hot fireman from the station around the corner. Have we discussed that I have a thing for firemen? I think if I hadn't been in complete shock, I definitely would have tried to flirt with him. My friend Abby thinks I should drop by the fire station with some baked goods and say thank you. I think this would be a good idea if 1) I owned the ingredients to make baked goods, 2) I was actually capable of making baked goods, and 3) I weren't sure that I would feel like a complete jackass doing something like that.

Oh well. Like I said, at least he was a small bright side to what has otherwise been a kind of traumatic afternoon.

I don't know what to do

Large life decisions MUST be made this weekend. And I really don't know what to do.

That's really all I have to say about that.