poza

Hair

I'm planning to get a haircut. If any of you, my friends and lovers, have suggestions about a hairstyle for me, please let me know. I am now at a boring length, below my shoulders.

Salivated

I drool when:
- I see renovated small houses (we're planning to buy a house)
- I read pretty Romanian blogs with pretty fonts
- I have analytical work ahead of me
- Monday, Wednesday, & Friday come and I know I'll work out with P & F.
- I think of baking stuff for people
- I think about going to TIFF (11 hours of Lars von Trier!) this summer with Catalina
- I think about Friday nights with M
- I think about my (potential) wedding
- I see Speedo swimming gear
- I see people sleeping in sleeping pill ads.
- I think about buying a $4 specialty coffee (even if I seldom do)

The Swirling Vortex of Death*

It's been a while since I posted on my bloggie woggie. I was getting tired of that "I love you Michael Triplett" cake picture whenever I visited my blog for links to other blogs I read. Speaking of the cake, it was so huge that we could not eat it, so Michael, who is a middle-school teacher, took some to school to give his students. And they refused to eat it! Apparently they saw the nuts inside and said "Ewwww... What are these? Buggers?". Little brats... I'm gonna show them some buggers!

So I didn't post lately because I WAS BUSY. I bet most blogs have this sentence posted at least one time throughout their blogging history. But yes, I've lived that too. I should be working right now, but I just realized I don't have access to a drive where I save my files, so I took it as a divine sign that I should stop working (instead of getting my computer fixed). I hate being busy like this. I don't feel that this semester I'm being busy in a personally meaningful way. I feel I'm not doing things for my personal growth or pleasure (except working out with Patti). I feel like every morning I get up and I am being thrown into this whirlpool and I keep spinning without control until the night comes and then the spinning stops until the following morning. And when the spinning stops, my crazy thoughts are still spinning like crazy and I am just too tired to stop them or to control them. I have no energy for beautiful thoughts, for happy future plans, for listening to music. I need to figure out a way to stop this. Regardless of the rewards of working obsessively, I don't want to live like this. I want to not think in one-hour increments and just let time flow once in a while.

* I do not hold intellectual property of this phrase. But I don't want to spell the name of the person, since he's a faculty member in my program. What if he googles himself?

IMPORTANT LATER EDIT: Michael just informed me that I misspelled BOOGERS. Boogers, this is what I wanted. Dried nasal mucus.

Good

Something very good happened to me today, and I just want to say this: PATRICIA ANNE MCCORD IS AWESOME.

For my Valentine

I cut my head out because I looked awful, but just look at that pretty cake! It's a hummingbird cake with cream cheese topping.

Stella & Moi

oh, the fun we had...

That CD from Ioana

For Christmas 2002, my friend I. made me a compilation CD. It has danceable stuff from Arab Strap, Depeche Mode, Kraft Werk (KRAFTWERK, I.!), Unu' vs. George Niculescu, Gabin, Ingrid, The Avalanches, Air, Muse, Saez, and more. We were supposed to spend the coming New Year's Eve together in Timisoara (my college town, also the town she's from) and we were supposed to dance all night on that music and a lot more she's gathered over time. I. is very good at doing that. She has this special little notebook, usually with flowers, ladybugs, or glitter on the cover, in which she writes down a song whenever she hears it and thinks it would be a good one to dance on. And then she goes home, searches for it online, and finds a way to get it. My CD was la crème de la crème of all these songs she gathered. It’s one of the only CD’s I brought with me to the US and I’m still dancing on it (by myself).
But I didn't keep my promise to spend New Year’s Eve with her; instead I stayed in Arad (my hometown) and went to a small party at a friend's house. It was just me, my sister, our host, and another friend. After midnight, another friend came and brought with him some other people. One of them was this American guy who used to live in Romania. It was awkward when they came, because we had just started dancing and we kind of felt they were intruding on our private party. The intruders were nice though. They started dancing within ten minutes of their arrival. It was turning into a real party! But all we had was the CD from I. and a tape (yes, a tape) with Manu Chao. Oh well, we replayed those all night... until came the morning. I danced quite a lot with (and secretly for) that American guy. I think he liked me. I also think that's the night he decided he would come with me wherever I go. Tonight we're going to a Mexican restaurant.

Later edit: Muse and Saez are not very danceable.

Plane tickets question

For all you Romanian students in the US: how and where do you usually buy your plane tickets from? And how well in advance? I feel I am inefficent at this, so I would appreciate any advice.
Thank you!

Frozen Ionuka

It is so cold inside our house that I decided to not underline when reading anymore. Taking my hand out of the covers is a price I am not willing to pay.

P.S. Posting this was a challenge too.

Razna

It's been a year and one month since I've been home to Arad, Romania, and I'm going crazy. Bonkers. Astray. O IAU RAZNA. I noticed that I can do fine for a year, but once a year has passed, all hell breaks loose. I get significantly more pimples (p<.05), my body's rythmicity gets screwed up, I cry for no reason, I get hypochondriac, I can't concentrate, and I day dream about packing and going to the airport. It's happening now, and it happened in the fall of 2004, when it had been more than a year since I'd been home.

For me, going home is not all fun though. It's being dizzy for the first week because of the time zone change and staying up all night ruminating about where I belong. It's being dissapointed of how small and grey everything is. It's being looked at disdainfully by aquaintances because of the weight I put on. It's being treated like a child by my parents, even though I'm living an adult life here. It's having to readjust to the dryness of the weather, lip balm by lip balm. It's being confronted with all the sad things I chose to run away from.
But still, there is nothing like it. There is nothing like the masterful use of the Romanian language by my talented friends. There is nothing like my dog Vivi instanteniously recognizing me after a year and a half. AND THERE IS NOTHING LIKE BEING CLOSE TO MY SISTER. .

I'm going home in May.

A Trip to the Balkans, 1987

As every weekend, Michael and I drove around Atlanta. We shopped, ate, changed the oil, and looked at houses for sale. Michael, being the culturally sensitive guy that he is, took me this Eastern European Market in Decatur (east of Atlanta), where I could potentially get Romanian stuff such as zacusca, ciocolata Poiana, napolitane Joe (sorry, no worthy link available), or vin Murfatlar.
We got there and my heart was filled with disappointment and nostalgia. First, the market is not a real market. It's just a weird smelling room with three rows of shelves. Second, entering that place was like entering a store in Romania before 1989 (for the ignorants, that's the year we've overthrown the evil communist government, and along with abstract gains like freedom of speech, we also gained access to Toblerone, Nike shoes, and other such worldly things). As in communist Romania, this store was almost deserted. Half a meter of a shelf was filled with loosely arranged Milka chocolate bars. Another meter of a shelf was filled with Vegeta , the universal Balkan condiment. The rest of the store mostly contained fruity Bulgarian soft drinks in a variety of shades of pink. At the bottom of a shelf I discovered a small coffee pot that we use to make Turkish coffee (ibric, in Ro). After a brief internal struggle usually associated with my purchases, I decided to buy it. So we proceeded to checkout, only to discover that nobody was there. Upon inspection, we discovered a group of middle aged Bosnians in the back of the store. They were chatting, smoking, drinking, and eating donuts, not giving a shit about us being there*. We finally got a woman to come out. This conversation followed:
Me, with an accent: "Do you accept Mastercard?"
Bosnian woman, with a stronger accent: "Yes. But only for amounts of 10 dollars or more". Then she looked at my ibric ($8.29), and said with a satisfied grin: "Sorry. Cash only! But because of this, I won't charge you any tax. 8 dollars and 30 cents, please!"
Michael had cash and gave her the money. We left confused, the way I always felt after going to the store when I was little and my parents sent me to buy stuff. I definitely want to go back. It's like a leap back in space and time. A good deal.

*I totally agree with this, by the way. The social aspect is more important than the business aspect.

the night I missed Zulu

it's not that I'm tipsy or anything, but right about now I could just kill for some Zulu King Cake from Ambrosia Bakery on Perkins Rd., BR.

truly OBSESSED

Today, during my stats quiz, all I could think about was the background color of my lil' blog. As soon as I got out of that class, I came back straight to the lab (the computer here is faster than in my office) and changed the whole thing. Hope you'll like it.

Speaking of lil' blogs, I just realized that when Michael wants to annoy me, he just uses obnoxious diminutives when referring to my activities. "Are you reading a bookie wookie?" I was reading Flaubert, for God's sake! or "Are you updating your bloggie woggie?". hmmm... Unfortunately, it will take me quite a while to come up with a strong comeback.

I digressed. I just hope you like my bloggie woggie.

The Bakery

I know I should be studying for stats and reading for social emotional development, but instead I wanna say this: I whish I had the courage to quit gradschool.


I wish I had enough money to go back to Romania with Michael and open a bakery in Timisoara. It would be an American bakery. We would make fresh bread, rolls, muffins, scones, cookies, cheesecakes, pies, lemon bars. We would also have sandwiches for lunch (made with our own fresh bread) and we would serve a large variety of coffees. You want a latte, I'll make you a latte. Later, after people get t know us, we could cater business meetings for lunch. It would be hard at first, starting the business and all. Also, we would have to bake stuff ourselves at the beginning, before we have enough money to hire somebody. But that's ok, because our clothes would smell like bread and coffee. Every day, we would close early, say around three or four. In the evenings we would hang out with friends, go to European movies at Studio, drink beer in Piata Unirii, and experiment with new recipes. Who cares about tenure?