Wow hello?

Golly you guys! I had nearly 40 people view my last post. I feel super popular considering that it wasn't about anything more interesting than how I had rented an apartment and work a lot... so that is both awesome and motivating.

I do forget sometimes that I really love to write. It is calming (or energizing depending on the topic), and a really good way to get myself out of the daily grind of life. So I suppose that I'll use this new found motivation to start writing more often.

At the moment my biggest project is trying to suss out grad school. Which means applications, working out funding, working out who I need to beg for letters of rec (beginning the begging), and generally non-fun things. On the bright side I believe that I will not have to re-take the cursed GRE. So yay there!

I'm only just beginning the process really. I'm still narrowing down schools, trying to be reasonable about it, not apply to too many... you know. But I think really the biggest battle I'm fighting in all this is staving off waves of retrospective panic.

Some of you may remember, some of you may not know, but I loathed applying to colleges. I mean, really, truly hated the whole process. And now I am voluntarily putting myself through all this again? Really, I think, honestly it won't be so bad this time through. But I viscerally remember all the stress and worry associated with doing it the first time around, and I'm having to work really hard to not let myself slip back in time 6 years. Fighting those demons, oh yeah.

Also: why is applying so FREAKING EXPENSIVE? It's already expensive enough just going to grad school, why do we need to cough up an additional $90 + dollars ($150 for UBC guh) just to apply? It doesn't seem fair. I mean, I know universities have to go through a lot of work processing applications... but isn't that just part of their job? Or maybe I'm just cranky.

Anyway. Narrowing down schools and starting to look at funding. Won't this be fun?

Answer... not really.

At all.

But the end result (providing I get in somewhere) sure should be!

So, lucky you all just got a couple hundred words on my anxiety about graduate schools. Would you be interested in reading other things? I can back-track through past travels I never rambled about? (Istanbul, London, more being a teacher-ness) I could give you tales of "city living" (buses. I have words.) What do you want to read people? I love it when you read, so I want you to read things you would actually be interested in! That way you will keep coming back... muahaha!

Seriously. What?

Jobs and studios and interns oh my!

Well, as shocks utterly no one at all, I'm a terrificially bad blogger. Show of hands for who is surprised?

...

No one?

...

Nope.

So, I'm in Seattle, and guess what I've done? I've committed to a relationship! Be amazed and awed. I'm entering into my first long-term relationship. It was a rocky start, and I wasn't sure how we would suit... but a couple of weeks in and the jitters are wearing off. I'm adjusting, making some changes, and making plans for future improvements. I think we are going to be very happy together.

I am talking, of course, about my little studio apartment and the fact that I signed (for the first time ever) a 12 month lease. I'm here until the end of next August, barring massive changes of course. As one never knows what the universe will throw one's way.

But frankly my wee little studio and I are getting along rather well. I'm in an old 1920s era building, smack in Capitol Hill (a happing spot. What?).

The studio has its quirks of course. But by and large it's lovely. It fits my bed, will fit a small desk if I can find one, has hardwood floors and trees outside the windows. My radiator turned on recently, my kitchen sink occasionally spits out strange colored water, and one of my floorboards cracks at random intervals. It's got a walk in closet, a bathtub, and an oven. (This last is not to be sneezed at... the housing market here is NUTS. I heard from someone recently that Seattle is only behind Manhattan and San Francisco in the "finding housing is a task of epic proportions and impossibility" field. And I would totally believe it. Really. Finding this place was a trial.)

It's walking distance to both my jobs (more on those later), near good foods, and quite close to Century Ballroom where one can go dancing pretty much any day of the week. Whee!

So that is that.

I'm working in a Bagel Deli and as a waitress in a Lebanese restaurant.

I love the Deli. I wash a lot of dishes, am becoming brutally efficient at our new ipad cash register, and have made friends with lots of our regulars. I also eat a lot of bagels.

I may also be learning to say bagel correctly because nobody has given me any funny looks over my pronunciation.

The Deli is pretty much the perfect set up for a TV sitcom. The cast of characters is allll there. We aren't really close friends, but everybody comes in with different stories or issues. And working service is... full of "hilarious life moments." But yeah. Some day I'll write my own show. I've got the long-suffering, I've been working here too long character. The attractive, works too much, big-city savvy heart-breaker. The I'm only working here until I can get my CD launched and I'm playing gigs every weekend in December, my girlfriend is too pretty for me guy. The just out of college, recently back from India, spacey but hilarious girl. The girl who's been around forever, loves babies and small dogs, and is just waiting for her spot at the perfect job to open up she's already been hired there was just a misunderstanding about when (if) they actually needed somebody new. And me.

The waitress job is new. Jury is still out on how I feel about waitressing. Though increased respect for anyone who does it (and I already had high levels of respect) is a thing.

Aaaand internship joys.

I start an unpaid internship in a week. I have feelings (mostly negative) about unpaid internships. But that is sadly the reality of the world right now. And at least this one sounds like it will be a total blast! It's also not a full-time, unpaid internship so I don't have to get all up in angry arms.

I'll be an editorial intern at a small, but decently well renown comic publisher called Fantagraphics. They actually are the people who republish all the Peanuts cartoons. They are also the publishers of one of my old favorite graphic novels from high school called "Castle Waiting." If you like comics, check that one out! Great stories, cool art, and awesome world-building. Sort of like a new fairy tale. AND volume two just came out! I am so excited!

Yeah, anyway. Editorial internship. I fully intend to buy red pens. Even though I suspect it's going to be all computer works these days. And I'm really quite excited to get going. I'll be learning new programs, ins and outs of a publishing office, and get to climb around in their dusty store room from time to time. Sounds awesome? Sounds awesome!

I'm making some awesome friends up here. Wei the sweetest sexy salsa dancer, Pauline the French girl interning at the Alliance Francais of Seattle, meeting some of kiddos really lovely friends, getting to hang out more regularly with Logan, a friend from UO. Seattle is treating me pretty well!

So~! What do you want to know? Ply me with questions and I shall reply in a (hopefully) interesting and (possibly unintentionally) hilarious way!

Life in the big city: Installment 1

In Seattle:

Hi guys. I’ve moved to Seattle (for those of you who didn’t know), but that is TOTALLY NOT THE IMPORTANT THING AT ALL.

Guess what the important thing is?

It’s the Seattle public library. I’m sitting in it right now. And you guys. You guys. MY MIND SHE IS BLOWN. Like. Boom blown away gone not here come back in a week blown away.

I actually can’t believe this place. It is ten stories tall. TEN STORIES OF BOOKS. I may weep.

And it’s a very modern building. Lots of white, and the escalators are in neon green, and the top floor has weird pillow padding on part of the ceiling… which is a bit odd… So it’s not exactly my typical idea of a library (rich wood, paneling, muted light, you know), but it has all of the important things; books, nooks, and helpful librarians.

Can we talk about the nooks? This place totally falls into the maze category of libraries. And I love it for that. I can’t wait to work out the weird little stairwells, and the “book spiral”. Yes, they have something called a “book spiral”- it’s basically a never-ending walk upwards through non-fiction. For realsies. With alcoves, and hidden reference librarians, and it’s just so cool.

I’m currently sitting on the very top floor. Tippy top tenth floor. Under a wall of light, glass, and honeycombed metal that slants above my head like the roof of an attic. There is light, and sunshine (and blessed air conditioning, because Seattle is totally feeling the west-coast heat wave too). I’m sitting at a desk in a reasonably comfortable chair, with a light above it. There are other tables with power outlets on them, deck chair seating near side-tables, and did I mention the light?

Now, I’ve only been here an hour. And far be it for me to deem this a perfect library. I can already tell you that their circulation is vastly different from what I am used to. I’m not sure if it’s better… there are certain advantages to how they have it here clearly, but also some significant drawbacks. I’m sure as I familiarize myself with things here there will more differences, better or worse.

But for the moment you guys I am totally floored. It is so modern, so sleep, and just so pretty… And for sure whoever designed it decided to make it as bright and light as possible. A wise choice for the Pacific Northwest.  Very wise.

Yes. So, I may stay in Seattle, even without a job, just so that I can come and oogle this library on a regular basis. I already have a collection of classic short stories at my left hand, ready to be checked out and read, and my volunteer application form was dropped off before I even made it past the first floor.

Ten stories of books.

I can’t even. 

Nature of Trains

So I wrote this thing. And I think it's rather nice. And so I feel that I should share it. For those who are interested.

This may eventually be part of something longer. But for now, I think it stands rather well alone. There are some word tweaks I may do, but for now it seems like a good way to break the hiatus here.

~~~~~~~~~

There is something special about trains. It’s maybe how, by their very nature, they are transitory- yet familiar. A train is a train, the whole wide world round. There is no hiding the swaying nature of a train, the faint clickity-clack that never seems to disappear from under the carriages, even long after iron wheels have fallen off, behind, out of favor and into the foggy past. A carriage may be open, with benches, or closed with cushioned seats. There will almost always be a dining car- maybe just a bar with soggy sandwiches wrapped in plastic, maybe a small restaurant with roses in china vases, silverware and deferential waiters. The lavatories will always be small and cramped, you will never get enough water out of the sinks. Conductors will always be cut of the same cloth, friendly, memorable in the moment, yet utterly forgettable; an unusual skill that, I suspect must be inherent and cannot be learned; only honed. Like the slow careful cutting of a precious gem.

We see trains in our future. Peek into science fiction and there are trains. Perhaps now they fly, perhaps they travel to different dimensions, or ever onwards towards the end. But there will always be trains- ever since the first train took a flat-bed of humans along less than a mile of track at a whopping 5 mph, trains have become ingrained in our subconscious. More so than even individual vehicles they allow us to encounter humanity. One is not apart, one cannot stop where one wills, on a train you are on a ride of destiny. You never know who will sit next to you, who will be a conversationalist and who won’t be. It’s a nearly pure sort of experience. It reminds me something of the pilgrimages of old. You didn’t get to choose your walking partners, you simple fell into step. Each time you embark on a train journey you become a character in your very own Canturbury Tales.

Humans, even the solitary ones, need (at least for a time) that crush of humanity. That reminder of otherness. Perhaps of sanity, or of the madness that exists, or that people can be decent and good, or that they can be angry loud and selfish. I think that a journey on a train allows us to see what our next steps should be, allows us to evaluate ourselves as we are crushed and combined next to some other random survey of our kind.