Hey Guys

I figured it was about time I put up a new post. I’ve been so busy with Boot Camp and my Boot Camp blog that by the time I think about writing a post over here, I’m already asleep. Somehow today though, I found a scrap of time. Here’s some things that are new in my life.

An adorable panda I saw while shooting at the zoo for school today.

• Graduate School. It’s taken over everything. It started out super easy while I was “learning” things I already knew like HTML and lede writing, but recently we’ve started using programs I don’t have much experience with, like Audacity and SoundSlides Plus. I am very excited to learn new technological skills- it what I went to grad school for! I’m loving the new way we’re learning to tell stories right now- audio slideshows. Here’s an example of one from the Star Tribune so you can see what I mean by audio slideshow.
• Awesome Things. I noticed that Andrew and I have very strong opinions about what is and is not Awesome. In fact, I would consider us experts on the subject. So I finally decided to start writing a list. Some things were easy to put on the list, like “bacon” and “80’s music.” However, some things are more subjective- does everyone consider “driving a car into a helicopter” awesome? We’ll see as the list takes shape.
  

  Tomorrow's lunch.

• Bento. I still somehow have been finding time to pack my lunch in a bento box almost every day for school. The trick is doing it the night before, while I cook dinner, and including leftovers from dinner in it. As a result, my bentos tend not to be very photogenic. Tuesday’s bento, for example, included a mash of leftover green beans and corn. Today is photographable, but not very healthy. It’s my favorite salmon and vinegar rice with vegetarian dumplings from the basement store. Having a cute lunchbox definitely make me enjoy lunch more!
• Living in the city. It’s different. I’m always amazed at the sheer number of people I see during my ten minute walk to class in the morning. At least ten at the bus stop in front of my building, several other students walking to and from the campus, lots of dog walkers and joggers. How so many people manage to keep big dogs in the city is a mystery to me. I like to watch the businesswomen walking to the Department of Homeland Security, which is one of my neighbors. They wear black jackets and skirts, no pantyhose, black flip-flops, and carry their heels in a bag. It seems to be the unofficial dresscode for coorporate DC.
• Metro-roulette. That’s a term I made up last week to explain my predicament. I don’t have a Smartcard and I keep missing opportunities to buy one, but I take the metro all the time, and I don’t like buying farecards over and over! So here’s what I do: I put something like $5-$10 on a regular metro pass, and see how long it lasts while I go about DC. It’s not really high stakes, since I just buy another card when it runs out, but it’s made life a little more interesting.
• Exercising every day. Coincidental that I’m writing this today, the one day I missed working out. But I had a good reason- I was held up at school an extra hour! But it’s been good to be running again, and maxing out on my weight-lifting sessions. My arms are getting bigger, I think. This time, I’m going to try to keep it up! After all, I have several gym buddies- it started with me and Andy, but now three and a potential fourth person from class are working out with us now.
• Soul Eater. It’s a great show. Before school started, I was watching it like crazy, but now I only have time to watch an episode while I’m eating dinner or right before bed. There’s 50 episodes and I have a break coming up, so I’m almost sure I’ll be able to finish this series. I bet it ends fantastically.

That’s all for now. How has your week been going?

The Weekend

The weekend was great because I finally got to go to Micro Center!

Here’s a picture of Andrew inspecting the tiny new external harddrive I bought. It’s light enough to carry around in my backpack, but still has 250 gigs and a firewire connection! Perfect for film work at school.

I also bought a new journalism toy: an apple-red digital voice recorder! My old one, which would normally be described as “trusty,” is unfortunately not compatible with my new Macbook. Snowy the cat was not impressed, but instead was absorbed in the plastic it came in. The above photo is of her licking the plastic packaging, though you can’t really tell.

Then we all went to a Harry Potter birthday party. His birthday was August 1, DUH! OK actually I don’t know much about Harry Potter but I still had a good time. In that first photo, we were playing a game where we tried to guess what was written on the notes on our foreheads.

On Sunday, my family had a party to celebrate my sister coming home from Spain! I wore an outfit consisting of her gifts:

Awesome scarf in my favorite color: Spain

Shirt and skirt: hand-me-downs from my sister

Bangle (pictured in mirror) and Spanish fan: you guessed it, Spain!

…And then I packed up and drove back to D.C. for another action-packed week of grad school. One final note:

Dear Lauren,

Please stop buying turquoise colored shirts. This is getting ridiculous.

Love,

Lauren

P.S. Mitch just sent me this awesome photo. This is how I feel most days.

The Situation Part 2 (aka The Joys of Living Alone)

So there’s this mysterious drawer under my oven. It looks like it might be a warming drawer.

But since warming drawers are luxuries not usually found in studio apartments like mine, I figured it must be a storage drawer. After all, without those weird grooves, it looks just like the storage drawer under my oven in my college apartment. So I decided to store my dishrags there.

This is what my dishrag looks like now:

Oh well. At least now I know it’s a warming drawer.

But the stove’s still good, so I decided to cook some goat cheese and basil ravioli from Whole Paycheck.

And I realized that when it was done, I’d want to put it in a bowl. Now I’ve been managing on just one plate and one mug for the last few days, but I decided it was time to open my box of super-inexpensive plateware from Big Lots.

Hmm, there’s 4 mugs, 4 bowls, 4 small plates and…. two dinner plates? Where are the other two??

Oh, there they are! Guess you really do get what you pay for.

My New Bento Box

About a month ago, I ordered the Sakura Koban Bento Box from J-List. About a week ago, it arrived at my house, wrapped in a cardboard box filled with Japanese newspapers. And finally, about an hour ago, I packed my first bento.

Here’s my order, before the packing. I was stunned by how small it was! My mom remarked that it looked like a child’s bento box (and certainly the sparkly pink flowers do nothing to refute this claim!), and I was concerned for a while that it actually was for kids. However, I found a very helpful site that allowed me to check bento capacity. Turns out this box, which holds around 600 ml, is the perfect size to hold the 685 calories that the average adult female needs at meals.

And here it is packed. In the top tier are baby carrots, radishes, and candied ginger. In the bottom tier is rice with salmon and nori furikake and pretty sakura carrot cutouts on top. It’s not very elaborate or pretty, but I’ve been incredibly busy with graduate school (perhaps you can tell from my grad school blog?), so this is fancy enough for now. When I get home from an eight hour day and then the gym, it’s a miracle that I manage to cook dinner at all! This is actually leftover from salmon onigiri I made for dinner, so I don’t have to make lunch tomorrow morning. I’ll get to sleep in maybe 15 minutes more than usual, but when you’re working as hard as I am, those minutes make a big difference.

I’ve moved!

If you’re reading this, then you’ve made it from my Livejournal to here! I think blogging will be much easier from this platform.

Today is my second day of graduate school, so I haven’t had much time to blog. Here, at least. Our first project was to create a professional blog in order to display our bios and resumes as well as document the course. We’re learning how to use WordPress through baby steps, which is a bit tedious since I learned all there is to know about WordPress in undergrad from the fantastic Jim Groom.  We’re learning about the internet from the ground up, including basic html brackets (which, ahem, I learned in middle school).

We’re also reading chapters out of a textbook written in 2007 called Journalism 2.0. It includes helpful lessons on how to use an internet browser, what an RSS feed is, and how to instant message other people from your own computer!!! Needless to say, I am learning a ton.

However, the purpose of boot camp is to get us all up to par, so I should be happy that I’m bored by lessons on basic HTML, grammar, and how to not plagiarize other people. It means I’m prepared to get started with the real stuff.

The situation

So… I’m putting all my stuff away at Chez Lauren (need to think of a better name!!!), and that includes my electric toothbrush. A recent purchase, my electric toothbrush has been the subject of numerous raves to family and friends. It’s fantastic, it’s whitened my teeth, it makes me feel like I just came back from a trip to the dentist, if you know me you’ve heard this already. So imagine my dismay to find that in my bathroom, there is only one outlet, and it is NOWHERE near the sink.

Here’s my improvisation:

I figure I can just unplug it when I shower and need a towel. I haven’t even thought about where to plug in my blowdryer. Yeah… we’ll see how this goes.

Three Things

1) Visiting the Library of Congress was a great time. All of us on the SOC tour got reader cards that will give us access to the library for the next two years. I can’t wait to use mine to browse through the library’s extensive historic comic book collection and view such movies as 1901’s amateur silent film, “Foxy Grandpa Teases a Tramp.” In the main hall of the library, I learned everything I never needed to know about the building’s architectural detail from our tour guide. Though he went on about everything, I have to admit some of the facts he provided were fascinating, like that somebody gets paid to turn every page of the Gutenburg Bible to “exercise” it every three months.

I spent the rest of the day after the tour in Tenleytown and on campus with three of my future classmates. We scored some extremely cheap and delicious lunch bentos just a few miles from the school. Then we walked around campus running errands while half the time it rained and half the time it was just intense, foggy humidity. I like everyone I’ve met so far in my class. It must be some kind of coincidence that they’re all as crazy about journalism as I am! And on that note, I’ve met people with such great senses of humour- I guess we need them in this low-paying field! I’m so excited to start class Monday.

2) I got my nails done today, something I’ve been doing bi-weekly all year. On January 1st, my New Year’s resolution was to stop biting my nails once and for all, and so far, I’ve been making it happen. I just make sure they’re covered with toxic chemicals- aka paint- all the time, and it takes all the satisfaction out of trying to gnaw on them. I’m amazed that after years of chomping- since third grade to be exact- they’re still very strong and don’t break easily. Today I had the nail lady keep my nails long and square, even though I usually have them cut short for easier cooking, knitting, gaming etc. I wanted to see what I look like with “grown up lady hands.” That’s exactly the way I’d describe these pink talons I’m typing with right now. I hope people look at them and think I’m more grown up and responsible than I usually feel. That’s why I wanted to stop- my first big reporting job began in January, and I was worried people would look at my hands as I wrote in my reporter’s notebook. After I stopped biting, I didn’t worry about this and just focused on my interviews. As frivolous as it is, long nails have made me a better reporter.

3) I found a tick on my pillow today. I was so worried it came off of my head while I was asleep, but then I realized it had come off of my poodle’s fur while she lay on my pillow this morning. We’re both tick free now, but I was worried for a bit. See, I haven’t been in the woods since my trip to Lake Anna two weeks ago, and I was worried it had been sucking my blood all this time. Luckily, it didn’t look like it had fed on anything yet. The whole ordeal reminded me of a quote from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

“In another book, I learn that ten percent of all the world’s species are parasitic insects. It is hard to believe. What if you were an inventor, and you made ten percent of your inventions in such a way that they could only work by harassing, disfiguring, or totally destroying the other ninety percent? These things are not well enough known” (Dillard, 232).

Good question. Now back to Soul Eater for me.

Facts

+ This is my first post from my new apartment.

+ I live in the basement. Kind of. I have windows! There are definitely floors below me. However, I do live below the ground floor lobby entrance. This is because the building is located on a hill. I see nothing but positives connected to this though, aside from having to say I live in the basement. For example, the garage where I park my car is right down the hall.

+ I need an air mattress. There’s a big plot of space in the middle of my room that would easily fit a twin air mattress for guests. I want to invite friends to stay with me. We could hunt wildlife in the traffic circle (it’s been known to happen) and go to the Asian grocery store downstairs for Pocky.

+ Tomorrow I am visiting the Library of Congress. If anyone is stalking me, this is a prime place to go for information.

+ Living in a high rise in the city is not as glamorous as I always imagined. For one, I don’t live all that high up. Second, despite that I am paying through the nose for this, I am living in a room where, desired or not, I can have breakfast in bed every day. Third, I don’t have soundproof walls and my neighbors really seem to like The Backstreet Boys.

+ I don’t think blogs are narcissistic. Even though all I write about is myself. For this to be narcissistic, I would have to have more than two readers. It’s really just a record for me. However, it’s much easier to write in than my Moleskine because 1) There’s always the *possibility* somebody is reading this, which makes me happy and 2) I don’t get hand cramps when I type like when I hand write.

+ I am at a weird point in my life where a lot is changing. I’m about to start at a new school, in a new level of school, graduate school, in a program I’m crazy about, surrounded by people like me who don’t think journalism is utterly dead. I’m about to meet new people, visit new places, and learn new skills. I know that at the end of this year, I won’t be the same person I am now. And I’m dying to see who I become.

On costumes

I’ve always liked to dress up. Up until I was eight, I would wear gittery tutus, mermaid tails, ribbon-festooned headpieces, and silk scarves over my clothes out in public. (That is, when my parents let me!) So it shouldn’t be surprising that at 22, I’m still going out of my way to wear costumes. For example, my last post included a picture of me dressed as Mako from Nerima Daikon Brothers, pink hair and all.

But that’s not the only costume I have! The extremely unflattering photo above shows me in my Civil War era camp dress. I wore this at a couple reenactments last summer. I haven’t been reenacting this year (I broke up with the boyfriend I used to go with and don’t want to go alone), but I hope to try it again sometime because it was so fun to dress up! I loved wearing a hoop skirt- crowds parted to give me enough room to pass! Tossing my shorts and t-shirt for a weekend to wear more a more restrictive style of womens’ clothing (still worn by the Amish today) made me really appreciate how comfortable fashion has become.

So naturally, upon seeing all the steampunk and Lolita costumes at Otakon, I’ve fallen in love with both styles! How unusual! How fantastic! How extremely ruffly! This coat pictured above, the Rocket Mistress Steampunk Victoriana Gothic Corset Bustle Jacket by Love Child Boudoir (click the photo to visit their shop), could fit for both costume styles, either over a loli-esque jumper or a pair of lady adventurer’s trousers.

One steampunk accessory that I would LOVE to wear is a proper corset. I’ve worn cheap corsets before, but in the Otakon dealer’s room I had my first opportunity to be fitted for a real corset. I went to the Scarlett’s Corsets (once again, click the photo for the store) booth, where a seller somehow shaped my usually wide waist (at 26 inches, it barely curves inward from my torso), into a mere 22 inches. It was not, as you would expect, at all like that scene in Gone With the Wind; it didn’t hurt, it didn’t feel uncomfortable, and my organs felt like they were all in their correct locations. The corset didn’t smoosh me, it just forced me to maintain straight posture instead of the usual slumping. I not only felt like I’d gone down two dress sizes, but taller too. When I have $135 to spend, it’ll definitely be at Scarlett’s.

In fact, all of the costume components are pretty expensive. Most on brand goth lolita dresses go for $260 on average, off brand go for at least $99. Then there’s tons of accessories (more is more seems to be the encouraged view here). Since I expect to make well under ten thousand this year in my meager TA position, all of which should go towards my rent and books, there’s no way I can afford to buy costumes right now. Still, that’s not going to keep me from window shopping online…

Post-Otakon

I had a pretty great time.

I love going to cons in a huge group. Even though none of us see everything, we all see something. I loved when we went back to the room at the end of the day and I got to hear what everyone else had done.

Personally, I went to more panels at this Otakon than I usually do. Gundam Guy and I learned about the cheapest places to drink in Tokyo (from a panel of self-proclaimed “not alcholics”), and about making onigiri during a cooking panel (nothing I didn’t already know). The next day we joined up with Andrew and Michelle and went to two far less educational but way more exciting panels- first on Videogames that Push our Buttons, and Dubs that Time Forgot.

I also got to meet up with Rinny, who I haven’t seen in person since high school! She was sweet enough to offer me a VIP seat to watch the AMV contest with her (she was an entrant). Rinny went home with second place in drama, but it was still incredible to sit through the whole thing.

On Saturday morning, Bunny (pictured left), Michelle and I went to see the Lolita fashion show. The clothes were so sweet and pretty that I ended up joining the LJ egl community when I got back.

Some of my photos of the fashion show and some great cosplays I saw are on my Flickr.