AMENDMENT TO FUTURE GOALS
or
LINDSAY TO TRY HER LUCK AT AMERICAN IDOL

grad school: i want to start in fall of 2005. to be honest, i REALLY want to start in fall of 2004, but i didn't have the money to apply for the schools or register for the GRE's this fall, so it had to wait another year. worse things have happened. a year will zip past. and i suppose it's valuable to have that "real world" experience just so i can really know that there aren't a whole lot of places in this world for me other than the stage, academia, and coffee shops. and only one of those might make me any money. i am, however, going to be sending a tape into american idol as well, because why the hell not?! i can sing just as well, if not better than, all those kids on it now, and if all i have to do is send in a tape to get me started, than sign me up. what is the worst that could possibly happen? i have nerves of steel, and i've stood up to some tough audiences. i could take the brutality.

my dear friend kal-el who is a brilliant film student at emerson college will be filming my audition tape, and my mother actually suggested it. isn't that awesome?! i have been working on creating an image for myself with my co-worker. everyone at work is all into it, and now, so am i. in my head, i have been compiling a list of appropriate songs. i'm thinking the soulfull songs that emphasize my range, vocal control, and above all, ability to belt it out give a damned good performance. i'm thinking some of the more soulfull pieces by joan osborne...and then i'm drawing a blank. HELP! please comment and give me lots of moral support and suggestions on popular enough songs that are appropriate to my voice.

Long time no see

This past week has been very eventful for a number of reasons:

1. I was in Maine last weekend for the President's Day "break," and had a wonderful time chilling with the Bogs, watching a movie or two, making coffee, taking a long walk down to the ocean, and generally kickin' it back and relaxin'.

2. When i got back on Tuesday, i had my review at work. It went very well, and i will be getting a raise almost enough to cover the cost of health insurance, which is great because...

3. I have been fighting off a sinus infection for two weeks, and it's finally got the better of me. No amount of ibuprophen could stay its wrath. The week has felt really long as a result. I've been groggy the whole time at work, days have dragged even though they've been busy, and the whole week has felt like that.

4. I found who i hope to be my primary care physician down here. I have an interview there on Tuesday at 6pm, and i am very excited about it. It is a family practice with lots of women that is around the corner from Davis Square (an area i adore). I have had the same doctor my entire life, so it's important to me to have a personal relationship with whoever my doctor is. Furthermore, i have had a woman doctor the whole time as well, so i have just gotten to be more comfortable with women doctors. I want them to sincerely understand when i tell them that my sinus problems might be related to the time of the month.

5. About a week and a half ago i went to Bally's Gym to investigate the free three month membership. I had to decide right then and there whether i wanted to just take the free three months and then get the membership at full cost if i want it, OR to get it for about half the membership price right then and there for the next two years, and then it would be 12 bucks a month after that. Well, i wasn't going to do it until she told me that i have a thirty day trial period where i can cancel it after that many days if i'm not happy -- as long as i go at least 12 times within that 30 days. SO. I took it. The difficult thing is that i'm not feeling great right now, and it hasn't been easy to go that much. Especially since i had that long weekend in Maine. So yesterday i went in, swiped the card, took my jacket off in the locker room, peed, and ducked back out without putting the jacket back on (so as not to look like the same person that walked in 4 minutes previously)(yes, i know, i'm paranoid).

6. Another thing that went on this week was a meeting where Laura, Matt, and i went to confront the landlord about the mess underneath the kitchen sink (HUGE leak, no cabinets, and the entire thing was slanting toward the wall because the wood underneath is broken). Well, she knew what we were coming down for, and she called up to get the contractor over here. So he did. And yesterday he and his son came to tear up the kitchen and put a new set of cabinets on the floor. YAY! The only bad thing being, of course, the kitchen is tiny, so i couldn't just go out and make tea or anything. So Dan and i hopped in the car and went to Davis Square to hang out at a coffee shop. He brought paper and pens for drawing, and i brought my GRE workbook. The coffee shop we were going to hang out at was packed and hoppin', so we opted for the other one that's chiller. Well, what do you know, but two people from my book group were there, as well as Kate Frederick, a friend from HAMPSHIRE!!! It was so awesome! She came right up to me and hugged me, and we chatted, exchanged phone numbers, etc.

6A. Dan and i took the table at which Kate and her boyfriend were seated, and Dan and i did what we went there to do. It was a nice time, until the cold medicine wore off. Back we came to Allston. The guy was still working on the kitchen. We snuggled and waited patiently. He was still there when we were getting hungry. We wanted to go out to rent a movie anyway, so we stopped and had dinner at the Chicago Bar & Grill, which isn't awesome, but you are there for the atmosphere. We rented "The Pianist." I HIGHLY recommend it. Story about what happened to Warsaw during WWII, Jews and Poles alike, through the perspective of a highly respected Jewish pianist. I won't say any more, just that it's very heavy, powerful story with fantastic cinematography and emotion.

7. The kitchen was done around 10:30pm last night, and that's when Dan and i started to be able to really pay attention to the movie without stops and starts (except for pee breaks). So this morning, Dan and i spent about two and a half hours cleaning this place just about top to bottom. He vacuumed, brought things back into the kitchen that had to be moved, and i scrubbed the kitchen vigorously and put everything away. And it's so exciting! It actually looks like a kitchen! Out pots and pans and tupperware are no longer relegated to live under the table! And now, we might even be able to use the table to eat at sometimes. WOW. I know. This is a big development. It looks incredible.

8. However, after all that, Dan and i are not feeling so well (i hope he's not somehow catching whatever cold i might have), and we're hoping to laze the rest of the day away.

Statements

i love the weekend. i love long weekends even more. how i miss hampshire college where i had a long weekend every weekend.

I'M SO EXCITED TO GO TO MAINE AND SEE THE BOGS AND Q!!! i'm going to the second read, too, and i am also going to visit susanne and patrick at their house on sunday late morning.

my job is going alright. i don't really know what my job description is, and je suis ainsi passionate pour les temps quand je peut parler avec le president au sujet de ma travaille. (which means i am excited for the time when i can speak with the president about my job.) i can't wait to see what he thinks my job description is. and what the title is, for that matter.

i love coffee.

i love making coffee in my stovetop cappuccino maker.

i must pack.

A Sense of Accomplishment

The other night, while i was laying out a scheduling for myself by which to study for the GRE, i felt compelled to compile a list of the books i have read in the past year. It got me in the right frame of mind to study, feeling as though i were coming from some knowledgeable and educated background and had the priviledge to study for the GRE -- yet another right of passage.

Reading Q's blog tonite, (THANKS, by the way, for linking me to the presence of Playboy at Bogland.)(That was sarcastic.)(So was that.), she also compiled a list of books. I now feel inspired to share my own list with all four of my readers.

Books i have read in the past year:

Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare
Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture by Stephen Greenblatt
Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination by Richard Mathews (yes, only one "t' -- weird, eh?)
A Game of Universe by Eric S. Nylund
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Harry Potter: The Whole Dang Series by J.K. Rowling
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
Dry Water by Eric S. Nylund
Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry P.
Eric also by Terry P (are we noticing a theme here? as to be expected.)
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
White Noise by Don DeLillo
The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (read aloud to me by Dan)

Started but am still in the middle of:

Anna Karena by Leo Tolstoy
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

Currently reading:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham (reading it aloud to Dan)

I have also read the one i wrote a couple of times. Does that count, too?

THIS JUST IN

Lindsay got off her ass and did something with her evening.

Tonight at approximately 7:32pm, Lindsay was seen getting into her car sporting athletic clothing and carrying in her right hand a discman.

Later sources reported her walking into the Bally gym in Porter Square, and it is rumored that she may have also spent about half an hour on an elliptical aerobics machine.

More to come.

the lovely saturday. a tale of two ladies, a baby, and an oven.

not THAT kind of story, you sick fuck.


One of my co-workers invited me over to her house in Norton in November or December so we could bake bread together. That was obviously several months ago. After having been snowed out twice and holiday-planned out a couple of times as well, we finally got around to it today. It was great! First of all, it was great to get out of the city. She kind of lives in a rural type area that she insists is the boonies, but it's quite residential for boonies, if you ask me. We started a loaf of French bread that eventually turned into hard rolls that are going to be GREAT. While the dough was rising, we made banana bread that turned out wonderfully, and some brownies that also turned out wonderfully. I also got to play with her nine month old baby girl, who is a marvellous little angel who giggles and is curious and smart and terribly cute. Her smile is infectious just like her mother's. I had a great time. We got to talk about some important things, and some not so important things, and we got to bake a whole bunch of important things. MMM. The rolls took longer than we had planned, and since i wanted to be home to eat dinner with Dan, she told me she would bake the rolls and bring some in on Monday. It would have been lovely to stay with her and eat dinner there, but i did not want to wear out my welcome (her husband's father was going over to visit), nor did i want to skip out on a promise to Dan.

Dan and i had a fun time bickering fiendishly like an old couple who can laugh about the bickering, while we kissed and teased each other about our obvious flaws in our arguments. It was great fun. We eventually settled on a plan for the evening, as well as a plan for tomorrow (going to check out some art downtown -- hopefully La Galerie d'Orsay on Newbury Street. But we don't want to have to pay anything, so we'll see.

On the life goals side of things, i brought some flashcards with me on the T to study GRE words, which is good at least, and i dug out the GRE exam book as well.

But i am off to great things. Dan and i ate at this phenomenal Thai place around the corner -- a real prize hole in the wall -- and shared some tofu drunken noodle that was the best i've ever had, and some coconut lemongrass soup. Mmmm.

Time to read another chapter of Wind in the Willows to my lovely Dan.

TO-DO LIST
and other life goals...

1. Study and register for the GRE's
2. Make sure that i get time off from work somehow to check out classes and talk to admissions directors at my top picks for grad schools.
3. Read up some dead white guy classics, and perhaps find someone to read them with for discussion's sake. Start with Milton's Paradise Lost?
4. Go to the Bally's gym in Porter Square. I have a free membership for the next three months, for Gods' sakes!
5. Hang out with Annie, Claudette, and Kal-El more, who live in the Boston area.
6. Experiment with a new recipe every week.
7. Carve an article about William de Worde and Prospero out of my Div III.

There is nothing but laziness holding me back.

An Unexpected Party

Dad is here now (well, not now -- he's at his hotel room not to far from here. Yesterday i called him up on my break at work around 4:30 (i was just getting around to it), and he said, "so what are you doing this weekend?" I said, "Uh, the SUPERBOWL," as if i couldn't believe he was asking. Then he said, "What else?" Well, the plan was that if The Davinci Code didn't come in the mail on Friday, i was going to spend all day today in a Barnes and Noble reading since i have to have the book read by Tuesday. He said, "I was thinking of coming down this weekend to visit and bring your shelf." AWESOME! I have been wanting him to come down and see my for a while, and now that he had this beautiful shelf he got me for Christmas stuck at his apartment because it wouldn't fit in my car, he had to make it down sometime soon. So he did! Today he came down around 3 or 4 ish, we sat around and talked and drank a lot of water, got him checked into his hotel in Brookline, and had a couple funny experiences there. One, the elevator smelled like someone had taken a dump on the carpet and then someone had tried desperately to get the smell out with bleach -- but all the bleach in the world could not rid the elevator of the smell of dump. Furthermore, his room overlooks a dining room -- an atrium type thing the Holiday Inn has set up, which, while not unattractive, is not the most comforting view. So we tried to close the heavier curtains on the sides of the light feather thing in front of the window. They didn't move. They were solely for decoration. But Dad discovered a third set of curtains (THREE DAMNED SETS OF CURTAINS) behind the feathery ones. How to close them? Well, there was no chain or rope or anything. You actually had to go behind the feathery set and walk it all the way along through, and then negotiate your way back out again through all the curtains. It was so needless it was comical. When we made our way back to the elevator, the smell of poo was no longer so strong, nor was it even present. Yes, someone who was carrying a lot of bleach had cut a raunchy one in the elevator and left it with us shortly after we got on. Not a pleasant thought.

Dad, Dan, and I went out to dinner at the Common Ground Bar and Grill not to far off from here, and tonite i tried a great beer called Stovepipe Porter by Otter's Creek in Vermont. It was incredible! It was good and dark, while at the same time being smooth and remarkably light in weight. I loved it. I'll have to see if i can find any of that around here for retail. Mmm. And it was fun just sitting around chatting with Dad and Dan about movies, music, dopplegangers, where we saw ours, if we have seen ours, and whatnot. It was great fun. Not to mention the profundity of pub food. Mmm. I'm liking the nouveau American palate that many pubs are adopting these days. We ate some incredible nachos, a spinach feta roasted garlic pizza, great beer, Dan got a good looking cheezeburger, Dad got a plate of penne pasta with a surloin steak, and the two of them also split some buffalo chicken wings. There was SO MUCH FOOD on that table. It looked ridiculous.

So he did bring the shelf with him, and i have spent the majority of the evening re-arranging the room to get things on the shelf. It's lovely! The shelf is cast iron and simple in design. I love it. And it's so nice to have something to put the rest of my books on other than milk crates. Tasteful vertical space is crucial.

Tomorrow, breakfast with Dad, more reading of the impossible-to-put-down Davinci Code (i'm telling ya, it's a real page-turner. Not to mention it being full of fun bits of latin and French since it starts off and so far takes place mostly in Le Louvre. France me manque, mais peut-etre c'est possible pour me retourner quelque jours. Alors.) Then,

GO PATS!