5. book you wish you could live in

Enter Stage Left: the best thing ever.

(more or less) everything you need to know for your trip to the border. 

This is only one of the most recent books in the great grand shared-world anthology series that is the Bordertown books, but it's the one I got started on. First book I ever contemplated stealing from the library, as a matter of fact (I didn't). Now that I'm older and have something resembling a half-decent income, I've moved on to collecting them in (usually) more legitimate ways.

this happens.

It's a grey, drippy, moody sort of day. Considering the glorious red-and-gold autumness we had all the last week, this feels like a very definite turning point. As they say; winter is coming.
Under these circumstances, I have very little choice - I stay indoors and bake, and drink coffee, and clean out my desk, and listen to hours and hours of NPR.

I think I'm turning into my father, guys.

Source: greenlikebathwater.tumblr.com via Shel on Pinterest

4. book that makes you cry

All right, so I've put this off for long enough. Here's the next post in the on-again, off-again books series - no doubt the post that will make you all think that I am a crazy person who gets waaaaaay too attached to fictional characters. All I can say in my own defense is that this sort of thing rarely happens with me and books - I think the last time was The Hobbit, when I was, like, eight.

You suck, George.

because exploitation of traumatic adolescent memories is totally OK when they're your own, right?

Yeah, I definitely just spent forty-five minutes talking to a stranger about the hairy, pimply, socially awkward and clique-clueless exploits of my youth. She's writing her dissertation on Mean Girls. (Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like.)

But I did get a $10 Starbucks giftcard out of it. And at this time of year, when everything at Starbucks is all pumpkin-spicey and amazing, you can't tell me that's not at least mostly worth it.

NO REGRETS.

today is an excellent day.

For the following reasons:

1. My Amanda Palmer CD came.

It's just. So. I can't even. ACK.
GORGEOUSNESS.

things are looking up!

Happy Saturday, everyone!

This blog post brought to you by: I GOT A JOB.

Source: mizozo.com via Paige on Pinterest

Starting sometime next week (or whenever Human Resources contacts me about training), my days will be spent selling eco-friendly clothes to hipsters in Lincoln Square. I'm excited to start; my new boss seems like a pretty great person, one of the few that didn't look confused when I said "Yes, and I'm also a stage manager," in the job interview. Plus, the store is about 15 minutes (ten minutes walking, five on the bus) from my apartment, and it is surrounded by: a coffee shop next door, two bookstores across the street, a frozen-yogurt place down the block, and a Payless around the corner. And if you walk down far enough, there is also a movie theater. Across from the Starbucks. Because there's always a Starbucks.

(Sure is a good thing they aren't paying me in cash.)

sending up a quick signal

"Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more."

-Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Oh, hi.

Remember me? I blog here. It's true! I may tend to go AWOL when life stops being fun to write about (I mean, I like to think this is an Amusing Blog, and it's hard to find much amusement in the endless job applications, money challenges, self-doubt, and tear-inducing levels of exhaustion that have been filling my life of late), but I do still exist!

I don't have much in particular to say, except that I'm still searching for a day job, Piccolo's official run of Six Dead Queens is officially underway, and it has just started to get cold here. It was pretty sudden, too - one day it was all hot and sticky like usual, then that night, boom  - cold front. Somewhere, there is a trusty scarf that I really need to dig out and start wearing when I go out at night.

3. book that makes you laugh out loud

Once upon a time, I wished my Dad was Bill Cosby.

(Sorry, Dad. For what it's worth, I think you are at least as cool as Bill Cosby. And definitely better-looking.)

Then, I realized my father is Bill Cosby.

(At some point, we should talk about that whole sweater-vest thing.)

Several years after that, my boyfriend (who does a fairly decent Bill Cosby impression, although thankfully sans sweater vests) introduced me to a book written by Mr. Cosby, called "Cosbyology: Essays and Observations from the Doctor of Comedy."

In what was, for him, a remarkably poor judgement call, he decided to read to me from this book while we were driving home from school one day. Well, I was driving. But pretty soon I was laughing, so hard my face hurt, so hard, in fact, that I was gasping and crying actual tears and could not see at all and very nearly killed us.

(Sorry, Josh.)

It's a really good book. You should read it. But probably not while driving.

and now, the hard part. (or, GAH YETIS ARE EVERYWHERE)

Hello, my lovely readers.
While I have not actually been ambushed and devoured by yetis cleverly disguised as snowdrifts (or rather, it being 86 degrees in Chicago today, city buses), it is certainly beginning to feel like it.

We all know that moving to a new place - and following your dreams, and being a grownup, and blah blah blah all those associated things - is hard. People who have done so tell you this all the time. It is a widely accepted fact in most of the circles I move in, including but not limited to theatre people, middle-class folk, recent college grads, and In-Denial Twelve-Year-Olds Anonymous.
What most of us don't realize until it is much, much too late, is that simply being told this is not doing diddly to prepare us for the reality. We think, "Okay, it's gonna be hard. That's okay! I will be strong! I will believe in myself! I am a Strong, Independent, More-Or-Less-Grown-Up Professional, and I can totally do this!"

Hold up there, tiger. Here are five real for real things that you had better be ready for.
You're welcome.

2. least favorite book

This is a hard one. I’ve started a lot of dumb/boring/time-wasting books, but two in particular come immediately to mind, and I can’t decide which one I detested more. Both of them were things I had to read for school. Both have clueless, indecisive protagonists with bad attitudes. And they were both – to use my best, most thought-out literary academic language – incredibly lame.

Catcher in the Rye…do I even have to explain this? Cool cover art aside, Holden Caulfield is the proto-hipster (no offense to any hipsters in my audience, but seriously, this guy makes y'all look pretty bad). He doesn’t stand for anything. He doesn’t care about anything. He knows nothing about the world he lives in, and he drifts through it with a complete lack of motivation to do anything but take up space and smoke cigarettes. Just having to spend an entire book (albeit a fairly slim book) riding around in his head pissed me off so much, I had to go have a lie-down. I have a hard time putting up with useless, apathetic people. Especially when I have to write papers about them. 

yeti-free for all of six days now...

Hello, friends!

I've been in Chicago for a little over a week, but it feels simultaneously like it's been barely a day or two and like it's been years. I'm really glad that I didn't know beforehand how exhausting this transition was going to be, because there's a pretty good chance I would have chickened out!

Anyway, first things first: I have an apartment now! I have one roommate, but there will be three of us by October. I moved myself and my two travelling suitcases in on Monday, and my absolutely fantastic boyfriend came up on Tuesday with the rest of my belongings from home.

Here's the photo evidence:

My room, and the air mattress that is my new best friend.

Note the Lookingglass theatre poster. They seem pretty awesome.
I want to see ALL their shows this season.

onward and upward. please, God, don't let the yetis eat me.

Source: fun-gallery.com via Larissa on Pinterest

HOLA, COMERADES.

That is not usually how I begin my blog posts, you are probably aware. Honestly, I stole that just now from Amanda F. Palmer, who writes the rawest most exciting Kickstarter Project Updates ever. (Other Kickstarter-ers: take note!)
I am sitting at someone else's kitchen table, in South Chicago, at 7:30 in the evening (which for me, since I have hardly slept since for the last two days, feels like 2 in the morning), and I thought I was tired until I read her post about what she's been up to.

(Oh, and that link is, if you scroll down far enough, quite NSFW.)

I stand corrected. I am far from really, truly tired. I am merely fortitudinally inconvenienced, that's all.