She needs to straighten out her priorities.

I went on a camping trip this weekend and enjoyed "roughing it" in the woods in Northern California. And by roughing I mean there was generator, toilets, and wifi. But I was in a tent, dammit, so pretend with me.

While I was there, I was reunited with a friend of a friend, a lovely girl I'll call Jenny. Jenny is a delight to talk to, and she goes to school at UC Berkeley, so she's obviously a smarty pants. I was taken aback, however, when she started talking about her goals and future.

She was telling me about the internship she got for this summer, and mentioned that in deciding what she wanted to do, she always thought, "If I can't put it on a résumé, I probably shouldn't be doing it."

I think this has to be one of the single most erroneous statements I've ever heard coming from a smart person. If the only reason you are doing something is so you can tell others, "Yeah, I've done that," or to add it to a checklist of achievements, it loses its meaning. What is the end game if you're just trying to pad a résumé? What happens when you run out of people to impress, when you get to the top? You shouldn't set goals merely to flaunt them. Do them for their own sake. Because at the end of the day, if all you can say is that you have a perfect résumé, what have you really accomplished?

Maybe I'm wrong. Heck, I'm a lit major, so I'm certainly not looking to cure cancer or make lots of money. But I still don't think that this sort of thinking is helpful for anyone.

In other news, indoor plumbing is possibly the greatest invention ever.

Mirror Image

I sat across from her in the cafe of my hometown library.  She had been studying for hours, trying to prepare herself for final exams she would be taking three days after she broke up with her boyfriend of two years.  She told me that she knew she loved him.  That they would get back together in time.  That she was just waiting for him to show he could change so that they could get back together without going back to that same dead space of withered dreams of the honeymoon period's graveyard.

I sat across from a replica of myself, circa three months ago.  When this all started: the reinvention of Claire as an independent woman that could handle not knowing who she was and where she was going.  When I asked for a "break" with the Ex that turned into a "break-up" of life as I knew it.

I had never broken up with someone before.  I had never had an ex-boyfriend before.  He was my first and my one and my only for two years.  But suddenly I lived in a world where the one you're with may not be the one you're with tomorrow, and this technicolor reminder sitting across from me tore at the seams of my cross-stiched heart.

I started crying before she did.  I started crying for the pain she would feel.  Not today, not tomorrow, but for every day after she realizes that they would never get back together.  At least not in the way they had been before.  I cried for the days when she would look at her life and ask, "How did it all come to this?  I was so happy before.  What happened?"

I told her to stay strong.  That it gets better.  That it gets easier.  That things will work out, when neither of us knows any of this for sure.  I've learned that it does get better; that it does get easier.  But in exchange I've lost something I can never replace.  I've lost the feeling of a first love.  I will never look at another person the same way.  Suddenly the thought of falling in love is tinged with fear and guilt and a bemoaning sense of the loss I will feel when the love fades to dust.  As someone who has love for everyone I've ever met and the occasional passerby, this has been incredibly difficult to come to terms with.  It makes me want to run from anything that even hints at love wrapping itself around me--to rage and thrash until it loosens its grip enough for me to escape.

The only thing we know for sure is that one day we will die.  The rest, whether or not we actually live or love or find happiness, is up to us.

Farewell to Wands: Harry Potter and the Death Hallows

I am a Harry Potter Die Hard Fan. Yes, I went to midnight movie premiers, read the books in 24 hours, have worn costumes, the whole nine yards.

I can’t explain exactly why I am so in love with this series. I was 9 years old when the first book was released, and I wasn’t completely in love with reading yet. I struggled all summer to finish the first one. But when I did, something magical happened. I turned into a book worm. I thirsted for reading, devoured books like I’d never done before. I finished the other two soon after, and waited painfully for the fourth book to come out. As I grew as a reader (and as a child), the books grew with me. Now, I still love reading, but I can almost pinpoint that summer (and that book) as the origin of it all.

I know that already, the series has lost some of its magic. My sister is 11, and though she’s read some of the first few books, she’s already seen the movies for all of them. They don’t hold the same magic for her. To her, they’re just another series of fantasy novels.

Today, the trailer for the 8^th movie came out. I got goosebumps as I watched all of the scenes in my head translated into a visual form. The trailer ended and something weird happened: I cried.

I’m not a very emotional person. I’ve cried in maybe 3 movies total, and certainly never for a trailer. But this preview made me realize that this is, really and truly, the end. 7 books, 8 movies, and 1 theme park later, we’re at the end of the journey. There will be no more midnight premiers, no more book launch parties, no more crowding around a computer screen to check out the new trailer. This is it.

This may sound melodramatic, but I’m not sure what I’ll do with my life when the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 comes out.

Let's Pay Our Respects

I recently realized that I don't know if I want to be a teacher anymore.  This spurred a downward spiral of hysteria and despair, and not without any casualties (I'm sorry Mr. B, Mr. C, and Mr. D for having to put up with all the different ways I take my crazy out on you).

The past few months have left me stripped of the identity I came with to Los Angeles last Fall, and since the moment I realized I needed to end things the Ex I've been forced to constantly reinvent myself.  After three months of this all I can tell you is that I'm really fucking exhausted, but better for it.  I'm more confident.  I'm more adventurous.  I'm more aware.  I'm also more unsure, unsettled, and scared than ever before.  I know I said I was ready for the world, but that's a big thing to take on.  Today I told someone that I was fighting life.  He replied, "I don't think that's a fight you're going to win.  I would rethink that."

So here is my rethinking.  Instead of clawing my way to the nearest life-plan to cling to for security and life-support, I'm going to try and float for a while.  Without strings.  Without a plan.  This is quite possibly the single most terrifying idea EVER, but I realized how much life I haven't lived because I've never sought out experiences that didn't adhere to THE PLAN:
By age 20: Finish my Bachelor's and begin graduate school
By age 21: Finish my Master's/teaching credential and start teaching
By age 23: Get married and put a down payment on a condo
By age 25: Become pregnant with Child #1
By age 30: Become pregnant with Child #2
By age 35: Become a principal at an elementary school and never do anything more with my life again

Can you begin to see how psychotic I am?

This is my official memorial service for THE PLAN.  Let the bagpipes play because I'm killing it dead and starting fresh.  Here is THE NEW PLAN and it has nothing to do with what I'm going to do with the next ten years but what I'm going to do right now:

-Visit Jenna in Santa Cruz
-Finish the first draft of the book Jenna and I are writing
-Plan a formal dinner so I have an excuse to wear a new dress
-Get a fake ID with Jenna

-Use said fake IDs to go clubbing with Jenna

-Tan all day, err day this summer
-Get a full-time job over the summer
-Use summer earnings to pay for a plane ticket to Paris, France

Ready.  Set.  Go.

Yes, We Are That Nerdy

Jenna C: "The best part of today's lit discussion: stressed and unstressed syllables in the phrase 'common fucking post.'  Yeah, we read dirty poems in class, and yes we giggled the whole time.  2011 ain't got nothing on the 1600s."
Claire J: "LOVE ME SOME ROCHESTER."
Jenna C: "I knew there was a reason I love you best."

Vicious Circle

Vicious circle (n): any sort of circumstances where the last person you want to see is the first one name on everyone's lips.

Jenna and I coined the term "vicious circle" our junior year of high school in response to some uncanny and upsetting situations that occurred.  Exclusively used for the situational irony that occurs when that bitch who's ruining your life or that boy who's toying with your heart either appears in the flesh or in every other conversation you seem to have.

Take Mr. J, for instance.  Half-way through Junior Homecoming Mr. J had lost his date and I had lost sight of my friends.  We had been introduced earlier that night through the mutual friend of a mutual friend, and after running into each other at the bar we decided to make the most of it by heading out onto the dance floor.


Two things: Firstly, Mr. J was British--his mother had married an American and he had come to California earlier that year, so his accent was damn sexy; secondly, after deciding to dance, he grabbed my hand and led me through the dance floor.  And I think we've been over this before: the only two things you have to do to get me into bed with you is hold my hand and take me out onto the dance floor*.  We had incredible chemistry and I was hooked for the next six months.  Admittedly not my best.

Per usual, I made a stand-up (read: desperate) attempt at making a move (I've always been very...eager...about what I want).  And while I did eventually figured out I didn't have a chance in hell, I wasn't allowed to really move on.  Suddenly everyone seemed to have a class with him.  He was in every hallway I passed through.  At the bike racks.  At my favorite downtown store.  He was everywhere.  All day.  Err day.

Jenna and I began to catalogue the number of times Mr. J would appear in my daily life and it was staggering how someone I had never known was suddenly all up in all my business.

So skip ahead a year after we met.  I was finally over Mr. J.  In fact, that summer had finally allowed me to escape his omnipresence.  Senior Homecoming rolls around.  In the throngs of the festivities I made my way to the bar to recuperate; and who else is standing there but Mr. J himself.  He had lost his date and I had lost sight of my friends, and after running into each other at the bar we decided to make the most of it by heading out into the dance floor.

Life has a funny way of repeating itself.  I like to think it's offering you a Mulligan, saying, "Now, I know you've fucked this one up before, but here's a chance to reclaim an iota of your dignity.  Not that you'll hold onto it for long."  And after Mr. J summed up his summer in an anecdote of the time he visited his brother in York and took so much ketamine he sat on a couch and thought he was dead for seven hours, I smiled, and nodded my head.  I took him back to the dance floor to enjoy the last few songs of the night and never really had the desire to talk to him again.

*I'm not that easy.  But sometimes I worry that I'm close to it.

I might be a bitch, but I think that's okay

Since most of you don’t know me, I’m going to preface all of this by saying that I’m actually a very nice person, and a fiercely loyal friend. Talk to anyone who knows me well, and they’ll (hopefully) tell you that I’m a sharp witted, snarky, girl who has a tendency toward shyness. To outsider, this snarky, shy attitude undoubtedly comes off as bitchy.

This comes as sort of a shock to me, because honestly, I can count the number of people I hate one hand. In the general sense of the word, I’m not a bitch. I don’t seek vengeance, I don’t spread rumors, I don’t tell secrets, I’m not out to ruin people's life.

I am not, however, afraid to talk shit about everyone behind their back. I think of it as “getting a second opinion” not “telling everyone about that time you hooked up with that German exchange student”. In my mind, I’m doing you a favor.

But the real evidence comes clear to me when I look back at high school. Granted, it wasn’t that far ago, but hindsight gives me amazing insight into my own life.

(An aside: these stories revolve around a boy that Claire and other friends like to refer to as “The Idiot”. Needless to say, she doesn’t approve. Its kind of a long story, and since this isn’t Claire’s story, she doesn’t get to make any snide remarks about my love life.)

Let’s start with example #1. Example #1 involves a boy who we’ll call The Boy. The Boy was happily in a relationship of 6 months when we went on a school trip together. During this trip, I realized that there was some chemistry between us, and that The Boy was kind of a cool dude.

But I knew his girlfriend, and she was a pretty nice person. I didn’t want to ruin her relationship ship for my own selfish gains. But I decided that just talking to him couldn’t hurt…

Let’s stop right there, and examine that statement. I didn’t start out with terrible intentions, or even really want to hurt the Girlfriend. I didn’t even really want to steal the Boy away. But as time went on, and The Boy I were talking more and more, the inevitable happened: the Boy broke up with the Girlfriend. I was officially a homewrecker.

Example #2 involves the same Boy, but this time a girl I’ll call the Girl. The Girl and I were friends. The Girl was COMPLETELY in love with The Boy. The Boy knew that, I knew that, pretty everyone knew that. But The Boy wasn’t too keen on the girl. She was persistent, and well, persisted. On top of that, I was in love with The Boy. No one knew, except for maybe The Boy. But he certainly wasn’t telling.

Prom was coming up, and both the Girl and I had our hearts set on having The Boy take us. The problem being, of course, that there were two of us, and only one of him. Thus we were at an impasse.

I then did what can only be regarded as the bitchest move in my short life: I asked The Boy to prom. The Girl never saw it coming. She could have only regarded it as a betrayal of the most heinous kind. And I really can’t say anything to defend it. I’m sure she never forgave me.

Thus, at least part of my bitchiness is revealed. A shy, mild mannered girl suddenly and inexplicably becomes a bitch, totally by accident. All I can say is at least I’m in good company.

Back to you, Claire.

Happy Birthday, My Love

In less than an hour, Pacific Standard Time, it will be Jenna C.'s birthday.

I wanted to leave this as a surprise for her and say I love her dearly and would be lost without her.

Happy Birthday, my dear.  We'll make up for the lost partying when I see you in five weeks <3

Things You'd Rather Not Happen the First Week of School

MONDAY
You arrive late to your first class because you hadn't realized the building its in actually existed during the day until that morning (having only been to that side of campus between the hours of 12:00 A.M. and 2:00 A.M., you had it in your head that it wasn't actually a real part of campus, but a magical fairyland of the night).  The only seat available in the class is RIGHT in front of the professor's podium, explaining its vacancy, permitting you to be up close and personal with the professor as he says things like this:

"Mathew Barney will be at the conference- he's an amazing artist.  He has a very athletic build.  He does a lot of art with his body.  He does a lot of art with vaseline.  Vaseline is a fascinating medium.  Especially in his hands."

TUESDAY
You have a twenty-minute period of time every Tuesday afternoon in which you are scheduled to be in three classes at once.  Wonderfully enough, you fail to be in a single of one said classes because you spend the entire time lost on the wrong side of campus.  Finding yourself at a parking garage that is notorious for not being nowhere near anything, you call the front desk of the lab school you are trying to find and humbly ask the nice lady on the telephone to give you directions as you walk there.

Upon your arrival to the lab school, more than fifteen minutes late to the first day of your teaching internship, you realize that you had started walking out hardly twenty-five yards away.

WEDNESDAY
You cross paths with one of your new professors on the way to their class.  In order to make your mark as a student she should know, you approach her and introduced yourself; only to refer to her by the name of another professor.  You walk to class in shame.

THURSDAY

You enter your discussion and sit down in an empty chair.  You realize that the room is full of women who are absolutely silent.  Trying to break the ice, you say: "A discussion entirely of girls?  I've never seen this before...I guess all of the boys are late, per usual?"

Sixteen pairs of eyes stare blankly at you until the mouth attached to one of them says, "Well I hope not-- seeing as how this is the Girl's Leadership League;"

You race out that door so fast that your things almost fly out of your hands in the hallway outside the door.  Checking your notes, you see that the sign besides the door matches what you've written down as the room number of the discussion.  Cue mini emotional breakdown at the realization that you've written down the wrong room and have no idea where the hell you need to be.  Suddenly a boy walks down the otherwise empty hallway, and fairly certain that he's not going to the Girl's Leadership League, you ask him (with a quiver in your voice and clearly in distress) if he's here for the discussion.  He replies, "Yes," and opens the door to the room next to the one you just left, where the rest of your discussion peers are sitting.  You hang your head, collect yourself, and give him an embarrassed smile.  He holds the door open for you and says, "Enchanté, mademoiselle."

You may be well over your head here, but at least you can say you're never bored?

Santa Cruz is a weird place to live: Part 1

Santa Cruz is a beauteous and wonderful place. If you aren't familiar with it, you can always Google it, but in short, its a beach city located about 80 miles south of San Fransisco. Its full of old hippies and general interesting characters. Living here is very different from Southern California, and its definitely taken some getting used to.

It does make for some great stories though.

A friend came to visit me, and I took her on a tour of my campus. While wandering near the science buildings, a man started talking to us. 

"Anyone work here?" he asked.

"Not on Saturdays," I answered, hoping to getting away with just that answer.

"Oh. Well I sort of thought this looked like the place to be. I've got an albino earwig that I can produce in a lab," he continued.

"Um..." I replied.

"Yeah, I'm hoping to trade a bug for a degree. I love this place. Its so beautiful. I was hoping to take my honeymoon here, but that didn't work out, if you know what I mean..."

No, frankly I don't, but good luck with that. And in a few years, when I hear about the albino earwig epidemic plaguing America, I can say I met the man who master mind it.

Catchphrase

Have you ever met someone who uses one really big word, and uses it over and over again, in a sort of sad attempt to convince you that they are smarter that they really are?

The new quarter starts today, so this week is the meet-and-greet, here’s your syllabus week. One of my (lit) professors had the unfortunate habit of using the word “adjudicate”. I’m always happy when my teachers use big words, but this was a bit excessive. She used it at least 5 times within an hour period and I’m fairly certain that she used it wrong at least once.

I get very annoyed at people like this.

In my history/debate class in high school (I’ll explain that in a later blog post (maybe)), you would always run across student who had that one word and would run it into the ground. “Collaborate”. “Integral”. “Interdisciplinary”. Words that don’t really add anything to what they’re saying, but sound really good in combination.

I have a big vocabulary. I read voraciously as a child, and I still do today. These big words slipped into my every day speech. “Pulchritude”. “Infinitesimal.” “Voracious”. To many people, I am “the walking dictionary”. So in a way, I’m as bad as those “catchphrase” people.

But unlike them, I tend to make ALL of my words concise and meaningful. I like to believe that using precisely the right word enhances my speech, instead of detracts from it.

Or maybe I’m just a pretentious word snob, like all the rest of them. I guess you can be the judge.

We Are A Hurricane: An Update On Life After Spring Break

Today marks the last of a glorious twelve-day reprieve from life as we know it. Jenna and I barely made it out of Finals alive, and before we take a second breath we plunge into another term tomorrow morning.

I don’t know about Jenna, but I consider this past week the last of my sanity. I’m registered for 25 units next quarter: 15 units of upper-division English courses; 4 units of a teaching internship *giddy squeal of excitement*; and 6 units of choir. I have so much class that there's a twenty-minutes span every Tuesday in which I'm scheduled to be in three different places at once. Insert Psycho Violin Screech and Wilhelm Scream for added effect.

We’ll see if I make it through Week 1 without dropping a class…or five.

This past week was filled with this season’s Supernatural and the obligatory family/friend/co-worker reunion extravaganzas. Everyone’s just as I left them and it’s a little startling how quickly we resume the regularly scheduled programming of our lives pre-college-exodus.

There was that the 12-hour span in which I worked out the kinks with the Ex, Mr. D1, and Mr. C. Can I take a moment to give props to myself for taking all three out in one fell stroke? Actually, let’s not; it was terribly exhausting and resulted in so much emotional trauma that I ended up with tonsillitis. Yeah, no, you heard me right.  I’m just weird that way. 

Regardless, things are said and done with the two former, and alive and well (I hope?) with the latter. We’ll see what kind of surprises I’ll find in my goodie bag this quarter.

Also, I asked my stepfather to adopt me. No biggie.

As for Jennalove, we enjoyed a lovely morning donning beautiful dresses and having pictures taken of us like the stars we are, damn it. We’ve only gotten to see a few (two of them are posted in the “About” section, if you’re curious about the faces behind the masks) but we’re (read: I) excited (read:anxious/eager/impatientlydyinginside) to see the rest of them. We also enjoyed a lovely dinner with Mr. S and Mr. T (two of my best friends from high school) followed by Jeopardy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and cuddling.

We are such cultured, young adults. We deserve a fucking medal for our ever-present displays of maturity.

Long story short: I return to school tonight, and between this week's panic attacks concerning surviving this quarter, grad school plans, my adoption, the boys, and what I'm going to eat for breakfast, I've decided that no matter what happens, I'll be okay. I'm no longer afraid of making mistakes; just missing opportunities*

Bring it on, Spring Quarter. I'm ready for everything you've got.

*Excluding opportunities brought on by too much tequila, especially those resulting in things like a Snooki tattoo on my shoulder or waking up in bed with a tranny hooker. I'll be okay to miss out on shit like that.

The Winter Concert: Mission Statement

I realized I hadn’t really explained what was going on in “The Winter Concert” posts. So here goes:

I’ve sung in various choirs my entire life. We’re talking since the primetime of chubby-tomboy-with-frizzy-hair-mess Claire, who moved to a new elementary school and had no friends, so she sang in the choir during lunch on Wednesdays to give herself something to do.

Now back in those days, and even throughout middle school, there weren't many boys in choir. But as we all grew older and entered high school, the boys realized that the ratio of Cute-Girl-Who-Sings-Pretty-And-Will-Be-Nice-To-You to Awkward-Boy-Who-Sings-In-His-Spare-Time (probably somewhere around 47:1) in a choir room gives a guy a pretty good shot at finding a girl to ask out who won't give them a blank stare in response.

As the boys are coming to that realization, the girls start developing breasts and a hormonal desire to mate for life. And all that makes one dangerous combination.

Which brings you to here and now, where I sing in multiple choirs at school and find much of my spare time worrying over the explicit and implicit interactions I share with the boys in the choir room. Especially in the Chorale, where you're guaranteed to find one with a face-melting voice who looks killer in a tux.

So yes, I might be a Choir Ho. Actually, let’s say a Choir Tease. Actually, let’s say I’be being teased? Oh I don’t know anymore. I’ll make you a chart or something to explain later.

The Winter Concert: 6:30-7:00 PM

6:30 PM-7:00 PM: Mr. C pulls his hand out of mine as we come in sight of the concert hall.  Cue my cringe at the standard protocol I've helped create.  As of now, we've kept everything extremely hush-hush.  You know, the kind where only your closest dozen-and-a-half friends (which becomes everyone else in the room faster than you can fall out of a chair) know and just proceed to not talk about in front of you two.

We walk into the choir room and join the rest of the University Chorus.  Mr. D1 is dancing at the front of the room besides the piano to The Accompanist's jazzy tune.  I walk ahead of Mr. C and join in, only swaying back and forth because my hands are full with my music and a jacket.  Mr. D1 takes one look at me and pulls my belongings out of my hands, sets them down on the piano, and offers his hand.  I take it and we begin dancing.

You have to understand: the last guy I danced with I dated for two years; the guy before that I fell in unrequited love with for over six months (He was British, give me a break).  I have somehow gone on considering dancing with someone as the equivalent of getting a promise ring.  Actually, I’m forgetting the drunken fraternity boy I met at my first college party a couple of weeks ago, but that’s another tale for another time.  I never called him back so that kind of screws with my analogy...

Regardless, this scene becomes even more loaded when you consider the fact that I’ve been in love with Mr. D1 since I met him.  Or soon thereafter.  It’s hard to tell because I was dating the Ex at the time, so those damn things called emotions were all over the place.  The official word from Mr. D1, who is well aware of my not-so-undisclosed crush, is that sometimes he feels it and sometimes he doesn’t, and that he wouldn’t feel it fair to pursue me without having his whole heart in it.  And sometimes I wish he wasn’t such a goddamn nice guy.

As Mr. D1 twirls me around the floor the entire room stops and watches him lead me through different twists and turns.  The chemistry between us sets every nerve in my body alight.  Mr. C just takes a seat in the middle of the room and watches.

The Birth of a Blog

The reason this blog exists is finals.

Claire is a world class procrastinator. I mean, she makes you and I look like well adjusted adults with the way she pulls things off. To give an example, she wrote a 12 page term paper in less than eight hours earlier today. She just can’t function unless there is a deadline breathing down her neck and staring at her cleavage.

In one of her fits of listlessness in the dead week before finals, when she should have been writing papers or studying, she started talking to me.

The conversation went something like this.

Claire J: I’m bored.
Jenna C: Sorry, I’m trying to finish this paper.
Claire J: Entertain me! Give me something to read.
Jenna C: Fine! Go look at Hyperbole And a Half. She’s like us, but more adult and less functional (I love you, Allie!).

Claire was silent for a few minutes, and I got some writing down. Soon:

Claire J: That’s brilliant!

Jenna C: She’s hilarious.

Claire J: We should do that.

Jenna C: What?

Claire J: Write blogs.

Jenna C: Alright, after finals.

Two days later, Claire had a blogger page with our names on it.

In a way, this situation is a allegory for our relationship. I’m the one with the fairly sensible suggestion that Claire listens to then rejects for a more exciting plan filled with hookers and blow.

And I’ve got to say, she’s hardly ever wrong.

The Winter Concert: 5:30-6:30 PM

5:30 PM-6:15 PM: My parents arrive at my suite, needing to change their clothes after spending the day hiking at Griffith Park. They invite me to join them on the drive to the concert hall on campus where I will perform two shows with the Chorale and the University Chorus at 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM. Mr. C, also in the Chorale and University Chorus, texts to ask me if I'd like to walk over with him instead. That morning I'd mentioned the opportunity for my parents to drive us, but he showed reluctance to meet them. Disheartening, but understandable. We haven't been seeing each other for very long, and we've decided to keep it from being official. I also didn't want to meet his parents; but that had more to do with the fact that he told me they wouldn't like me because I'm Filipina. Way to set my sights high for that one, Mr. C.

6:15 PM-6:30 PM: Mr. C and I walk to the concert hall together, hand in hand, he looking dashing in a tuxedo and me in a beautiful, black gown. Absolutely picturesque.

Let's Start From the Beginning

Jenna and I are writers. In fact, she's the reason I write today. This is our experiment in long distance relationships. Until a year and a half ago we spent almost every day together. Now we find ourselves separated by 350 miles of California coastline. Now we find ourselves dependent on Skype, text messaging, and Facebook to keep the spark alive. And let me tell you, cybering just isn't the same as the real thing.

I imagine this will become a forum reflecting the ins and outs of our daily lives. At least the ins and outs of which we can make cutting, critical witticisms. And if our own dialogue is any indication of what that might look like, then this will be filled with sexually sordid affairs and comedic anecdotes made at the expense of those around us. If we do our jobs right, you'll come to realize that she's the brains of this operation and all I've got to offer is a dirty mind and wise cracks.

Oh yeah. Mom, Dad, you two shouldn't read this.



Until next time, kids.

Love,
Claire