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.