Seven things

1. My funding problems for next year have been solved. I don't need to teach. Happy I am.
2. I realized this is not a real blog. I don't have a theme, unless the theme is whining.
3. Now that Michael decided he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, I should tell him that these are the places I want to go with him: Chile, Croatia, Iceland, Vietnam, Canada, Columbia, Greenland (inspired by Smilla's Sense of Snow), Estonia, Lithuania, Albania, Ukraine, Morocco, Turkey, Armenia, Bangladesh, Portugal, Australia, and New Zealand. OK?
4. My tickets to Budapest are here. I am officially going home from May 9 until June 8. I started lifting weights every evening to impress family and friends with my triceps. It's been almost a year and a half. It's been too long.
5. I love blogs. I love well written blogs. I could spend a lifetime reading well written blogs.
6. I think I am totally jaded about school. Too many administrative problems I've been worrying about, too many managerial responsibilities, and too little time to read, research, and talk about social psychology. I do my daily chores, but my mind is elsewhere... I need to find a constructive way of being critical of this situation.
7. PATTI'S GETTING MARRIED in less than 10 days!

Lovesick, my new obsession

I hereby recommend the trailer (and of course the movie itself) of the new Romanian flick "Legaturi bolnavicioase" ("Lovesick" in engl.), which you can see here. I can't stop watching it and I can't wait to go home and see it.

are you scanning it?

ok, I may be just drunk right now (Abita Amber, I luv you), but I had this blogish epiphany that I wanna share. What do these 1 2 3 posts have in common?

michii & alex, remember september 2001? we were the pioneers...

michael plus ionuka egal iubire

Dear blog,
my boyfriend asked for my hand in marriage yesterday. I was taking a bath and reading a Rolling Stone article about Heath Ledger. He came in, kneeled by the bath tub and said "Marry me" in a very authoritative way (which is sexy). I immediately thought: "Oh my god, I haven't shaved my legs yet. This is a historic moment and I haven't shaved!". And he gave me a pretty pretty necklace he knew I liked. I said yes. Then I shaved my legs and drank some port from Patti.
Ionuka

Aripi ranite. Caderi in lut. Zbor frant.

Remember my post about the little bakery I'd like to open in Timisoara one day? Remember my dear dream, my escape from the world of multiple regressions and useless articles? Via Alex, I found this article. My dream is dying. I need another one.

Now here's something cool

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Prolux got published in Romanian, and I am proud to say my friend Bogdan translated it from English. Congratulations!

C o o l

When in my Master's program in Louisiana, my adviser used to make fun of me because I was using the word "cool" too much. I tried to substitute it with "groovy", but I failed miserably.

Cool is still in my vocabulary, especially to describe my sister. The thing is, instead of sitting back and criticizing my estrangement from the Romanian ways, my sister keeps me updated, by sending me links and keeping me informed about what's going on in Romanian culture. The latest she sent is a collection of articles about what is cool today for young Romanians. Reading them, I realized that I am relieved to be out of there. Young hip Romanians have very strict ideas about what it means to be cool, and they are not very tolerant towards those who deviate from that. Unconventional theater, drum & bass, 0% body fat, pot, advertising, blogging, Sziget festival, Firefox, Nokia, and iPods are cool. If you're not into these, you're just not cool.

I am not saying American life is free of preconceived ideas about coolness. In fact, as in other areas, it is probably the world leader of preconceived ideas about coolness. However, the advantage of being here is that the world is a lot more heterogeneous. There is a diverse pool of ideas about what it means to be cool, from the suburban soccer mom who appreciates a sturdy SUV to the young professionals who think PC's are the devil. I am fortunate to have found a group of people who, not only consider roughly the same things to be cool as I do, but are a lot more tolerant toward what is not. I don't know if this comes with education, with reading a lot, with living in diverse environments, or with having "tolerance" as a cool value. What I know is that I consider myself very lucky to know (in chronological order of meeting them): Michael, Megan, Jimmy, John, Frances, Patti, & Jay.

c h a n g e

Our cool friend Guzty has arrived yesterday. He's very tired and overwhelmed, and since I have this huge capacity for empathy, I am now tired and overwhelmed. Worse, I feel I am on vacation, as he is, although I'm far for being there...

Meeting old friends is wired, because I am being confronted with how much I changed in the last two and a half years, since I came to America. I changed a lot, from the rhythm of my speech to my ideas about friendship, hip people, a good life, fashion, health, and much more. I am starting to comprehend all these changes within me, and I hope that one day I will find a way to let my friends know what I feel about all this without talking too much, without explaining myself, without feeling guilty because I've changed. Change, change, change... I feel it every second, I feel it in every inch of me.

roblogfest_usa

Toate discutiile despre RoBlogFest mi-au facut pofta de o editie pe teritoriul american... Eu voi face primul pas in August cand ma duc la New Orleans si Baton Rouge si sper sa o intalnesc pe Raluca. Mai vine cineva?

What would Tori say?

I woke up in shock, with Michael screaming "Stella's gone, Stella's gone". We dressed up and went to look for her. She knocked over the mosquito net in the window, and jumped down. Ugh, I don't even want to think about all the time she spent there. As we were looking for her, I was trying to go through all the photos I have of her, and decide whether any of them would be clear enough to put on a lost kitty sign. And then I heard a miau (meow, in Engl), and there she was, dirty and smelly. She started crying like a madman when I got her, and then Michael held her and brought her in. So we decided to keep the windows closed from now on. Who needs fresh air?

This weekend:
-- we saw two good movies (Prozac Nation and Kontroll).
-- it was hot as hell, and everybody was out in our neighborhood. I had the feeling of living in a seaside resort (Costinesti), with all the skirts, tank tops, tanned legs, and perfumes in the air.
-- I got a cold and I feel stupid, since the damn summer just came.
-- I read Freud's Dora and had fun reading all that outrageous stuff. Now I can interpret yall's dreams, yall! Just tell me about that jewel box...
-- I got really angry with some of my former friends from Ro (and still my sister's friends), who are mean, prejudiced, and don't qualify as good friends to my sister. I wanna smash the faces[...]

Lou's world

Michael has an ear infection, so he took the day off work. He saw a doctor yesterday, who told him he has a lot of hair in his ears, huge tonsils, and otitis. I told him he might have otitis a few days ago, but he mocked me and said "That's I. Unda's boyfriend".

Which left us with a free work-day morning... so, obviously we went to Thumbs Up, the best breakfast place in Atlanta. I had scrambled eggs, a bagel, a pancake, and Lou's coffee (coffee, hot chocolate, and whipped cream). There was a lot of stuff going on at Thumbs Up, and we enjoyed watching it for a an hour and a half while we were there:
- we signed in as Candy, party of two. For the rest of our stay there, the waiter kept calling me Candy, enunciating it very well; he told me that because of me, he cant get Iggy Pop's Candy out of his mind.
- we saw the owner, Lou (from Lou's coffee). He had dirty jeans and tennis shoes, and he looked like a very good man.
- Lou's wife was there too. She was wrapping cookies, and she looked like she runs 4 miles every day.
- some bank guys came to talk to Lou. They had the cheapest suits I've ever seen. They were also very creepy, one of them looked like he's using Rogaine. You could see that Lou didn't really want to talk to them. By the way, for all you Thumbs Up lovers, we overheard that they are extending, so maybe the wait time won't be as bad.
- this guy with broad shoulders was telling everybody how he had just came back from Italy where he saw the Winter Olympics. Yuk.
- there were two guys with Boston accents who were flirting with the waitress; they had Red Sox shirts, thick gold chains, thick necks, and they looked Romanian.
- an old lady (Michael was convinced she had a British accent, even though he could not hear her) was trying to get this tall African guy to sign a contract. He had corduroy pants and a bright green shirt, and he looked like a nice person. He signed in the end.

Slow days

It's spring break 2006! No, I'm not at at the beach drinking pina coladas. I am at home and I am happy. I sleep 12 hours during the night, which is just right for me. I still have work to do, but at least I don't have to be in class or in my office.

On Sunday we went out to drink for Cata's birthday. We discovered this awesome place, some of you may already know about: Six Feet Under, the upstairs deck, overlooking the old cemetery. So we sat there getting drunk on beers and oyster shooters and looking at the cemetery at sunset. It was probably the first time since I was little that I could be near a cemetery without freaking out. Alcohol, amazing boyfriends, and juicy burgers can do wonders.

La Multi Ani, Cata!

Everybody in the world should acknowledge this date, BECAUSE IT'S MY SISTER'S BIRTHDAY! Everybody in the world should drink a shot of something to celebrate 29 years of her life. Everybody in the world should dance, hop, and cheer!

If you think I am a cool person, know that, in great part, this is due to my sister.

La multi ani, Catalina!

Nasty

Stella just farted!

Morning

So I realized my Bitch post was posted under February 27 or something and I don't know why. And I can't seem to change it. If you know, let me know. I don't like to be inaccurate.
I woke up this morning, and like every morning, I found Stella in my bed, sleeping her life away. And like every morning, she brings her little toy with her. Her toy is a pink fluffy something that resembles a fake rabbit tale, which is tied to Michael's high school yellow honor cord. I suppose Stella wakes up when Michael does, plays around with him, and when he leaves, she comes in the bedroom to get me to play with her. And then she just adapts...In fact, I think that if Stella likes me for something, that's my ability to sleep long long hours. She likes Michael for all the other good reasons: he gives her food, water, he scoops her poop, changes her poop stuff --- see, I don't even know what it's called, and he plays with her for hours.