Things I Hate

Hi friends.

Alright, so this post is going to be particularly complain-y. Everyone has things that bother them, and I decided to list them all out. But this isn't an original thought. This guy did it first. And then Tosh did it better (sorry for the awful video quality, couldn't find a better one). Below you will find a list of things that piss me off. But don't worry! It's not all negativity up in here. My next post will highlight things I love.

Things I hate: 

People canoodling at the bus stop at 8am. I don't wanna see that shit. Not at 6pm. Not at noon. And especially not at 8am. Get a room.

Women (key word here) over the age of 12 who wear their hair in pigtails. You're not cute. You're not in a porno. And you're not a child. So wear your hair like an adult.

Carrots. Though I do very much like cooked carrots. Weird? Probably. Get over it.

Scary movies. I value my sleep waaaaay to much to put myself through this torture.

Southern accents. I'm sorry, but I just can't take you seriously.

Birds. See original things-I-hate video. He sums it up pretty well.

Big Bang Theory (the TV show). I could mock how dumb it is all day long. It's not funny.

Paper cuts. Who knew such a common office supply could be so deadly?

Figuring out how much to tip. I chose a career path without involving math for a reason. Why can't we just adopt Europe's no-tip policy?

When you leave a Kleenex in a clothing item and then it goes through the laundry. I just had to lint roll my entire bed set. Uh-noying.

Buses. This is my #1 thing I hate right now. They never come on time, they're inconsistent, the drivers are rude, people are sneezing all over the damn place. They put a serious damper on my day, and I'm always cranky after taking the bus. Next year my apartment will be very close to the train.

Hopefully this was more entertaining than offending. Duces.

The Ginger Exchange (It Has a Soul) & Harvard Square

Sup, boners?
 

Guess who had three, count it, THREE friends this weekend?! Well, at least for Friday night. Caleb (Lauren’s boyfriend) came down from New Hampshire for the weekend, and Mark ventured to good ol’ Somerville for the night. And Lauren counts as a friend too. BOOM.

So my numerous friends and I decided to go to a place in Inman Square called the Ginger Exchange for a riveting game of trivia. We, of course, managed to show up late, but we still snagged a table and a spot in the game. After little discussion, we dubbed ourselves…. THE AMERICAN DREAM. Predictable, I know. But it’s hard to think under a time crunch. We ordered ourselves a beer tower of PBR—America’s beer—and got down to business.

There were questions regarding astronomy, geography, TV, cars, sports, and music. Your typical game of trivia. Aaaaaaaand we KILLED it. On opposite day. We sucked. But that’s ok, cause we really weren’t playing to win, just to fun. I’m preeeeetty sure we came in last place with a whopping 50-something points, and the first place team was in the 90’s. It’s whatever, we had a great time. We finished off the night with some bar hopping and turned in just after 2:00. We’re so hardcore. And get this: we drank the next night too. Look who’s still trying to be young!

 

Saturday night was a bit more eventful. Caleb, Lauren, and I traveled to the faraway land of Harvard Square (it’s really not very far… like, 10 minutes on the bus). We started at a great dive bar and then wandered to a more hoppin’ (as the kids say) area. We were immediately offered free underpants by a British dude, to which I smoothly replied, “No thanks, I’m already wearing some.” I know, I have a way with words.

Saturday night marked the start of a very fun, and widely popular game: gay or straight. It’s just so darn hard to tell sometimes with the upswing of dudes wearing skinny jeans and cardigans… which, unfortunately, is right up my alley. Lauren was convinced this jacked short guy was hitting on Caleb at the dive bar, but I’m pretty sure he was just a bit tipsy and was trying to talk to us through Caleb. We also played this fun game at our last stop: a dimly lit hipster bar. I probably don’t need to explain, but I will just for shits and giggs. I spotted a very tall, very cute, very nicely dressed guy posting up by the bar. Skinny jeans, TOMS, t-shirt, and zip up hoodie. I was in love. But I’m not so sure he was. Either I’m hideously ugly, or he was batting for the other team. I tried pretty hard to make eye contact, but nada. And I thought I caught him checking out a dude. I'll just count my losses and move on.

Gay/straight confusion aside, said hipster bar was a pretty sweet spot. And I could not have felt more at home. Although, I definitely could have done without the five dollar rather small beers (even though they were super delicious). But THE best part about this bar was that they somehow hijacked my playlist. Each song that came on I got progressively more excited, and I eventually had to make a trip to the little girls’ room so I wouldn’t embarrass myself. 

Here’s a sample:

Lissy Trullie-- Ready for the Floor

Yeah Yeah Yeahs-- Maps

Peter Bjorn and John-- Young Folks

The Knife-- Heartbeats

Grizzly Bear-- Two Weeks

Two Door Cinema Club-- What You Know

Miike Snow-- Animal

Discovery-- Swing Tree

Peace out, home slices.

Fruit Flies and Psychic Abilities

Yo dawgs,

Just a few rants before I forget about them. So something very interesting happened to me last night. I couldn't fall asleep right away due to the fact that I had a few things on my mind: first day of work on Tuesday, my exciting day in Salem, and a very long list of things to accomplish on Monday. That, plus a strange feeling that something I'd hung on my walls would fall in the middle of the night and scare the poop out of me. I'm not quite sure why I thought that would happen this night in particular. I mean, Lauren and I hung at least 10-15 pictures on the wall and not one fell down during the minor earthquake Boston experienced last week (granted, a few have fallen since then). I tend to get rather irrational right before going to sleep, so none of this really surprised me.

I slipped into my usual very unusual dreams. You know, weddings, saving the day, tripping, forgetting my locker combination in high school. I was dreaming that my friend from home was asking me whether or not I'd heard from a friend I'd made this summer. I told her no, not really. Then BAM. A loud noise woke me up at 5:30am. I flipped on my light, checked my walls, and two pictures had fallen down. Coincidence? Yeah, probably. Still very odd that what I fleetingly feared before falling asleep actually happened, though. Naturally, I then checked my phone to see if I'd missed any messages/calls/to check the time. I had a text message. From that person my friend had asked me about in my dream. Coincidence? Yeah, probably. But I accurately consciously and subconsciously "predicted" two things that happened.

I guess I kind of understand how some people might think they have some special "gift" and are psychic or something. Actually no, I still think those people are insane. I have deja vu all the time, and certain things from my dreams happen in real life and vice versa, but I'm not about to quit my day job and tell people whether or not they'll be rich some day.

Rant #2: We have a lot of fruit flies in our apartment. And it's starting to piss me off. They're not the really tiny, slow ones that you can easy clap-murder. They're slightly larger, much faster, and seem to know when you're trying to kill them. They can actually dodge your seemingly cheerful murder attempt. And let me tell you, they're everywhere. They're in my face when I'm cooking dinner. They're in the shower when I open the door to turn on the water. They're in my room when I'm about to go to sleep. They're orbiting my head when I'm watching TV on the couch. But when I furiously clap my hands to try to kill one, they're definitely not on my palm when I check to see if I was successful. Instead, my clapper light is turning on and off, and my neighbors must think we're really excited all the time. I'm definitely not looking forward to finding all of their tiny dead bodies when it gets below freezing around here.

The end.

The Thirsty Scholar Pub

So Mark, Lauren, and I ventured out in Somerville last Friday night with the end goal being to make friends. Let me break it down for you: Today is the 19th. Which means we now have only 12 days to make friends and get invited to some sort of Halloween festivities. Otherwise, Lauren and I will be spending the holiday in a bar surrounded by oddly dressed strangers. Which, actually, wouldn’t be all that bad. But friends are good. And we need some of those.

Back on track now. We spied a bar called the Thirsty Scholar just around the corner from our apartment (which I will refer to as the “American Dream” from now on), and decided that would be a good place to start our adventure. Rewinding for a sex: before we ventured out to the bar, Lauren and I cooked our very first dinner together! Yay for girl things. We made pasta with vegetables. I was very pleased, and Mark was impressed. Grown upssss in the house!

Anyway, after about four beers while attempting to decorate my room, we popped the champagne (no joke) and christened the apartment. It was only natural to then draw a mustache, tape it to the TV, and drink any time it matched up with someone’s face. I was definitely the most amused (no surprise there).

After polishing off the champagne, a few whiskey cokes, and a shot of good ol’ Canadian Comfort (we drink only the best at the American Dream), it was time to socialize, or attempt to socialize, with the Bostonians. So I navigated us to the Thirsty Scholar. Which, in the process of investigating the hours online, we learned is the bar in which the opening scene of the Social Network is filmed. Bad. Ass.

We grabbed a high table and let the people-watching and friend-hunting begin. As we looked around the bar, we realized we were almost certainly the youngest people there. There seemed to be quite a few tables occupied by people my parents’ age. Which is fine, because people that age are actually really fun to hang out with. But I figured we should shoot for the 20 to 30 age range. There also seemed to be quite a few tables of people on dates/double dates. Leave them alone for sure.

I was hoping since we were a very approachable mixed-gender group that perhaps friends would flock to us. Not quite how things went. Another thing was I wasn’t sure how to dress like an adult. I didn’t want to attract college students (there were none to be seen anyway), I didn’t want to look boring, and I definitely didn’t want to go full-on slut. How the hell does one dress like an approachable adult in need of friends? But not in a desperate way. Still trying to figure that one out. Take two to come tonight.

To make a long walk short (ish), we spotted three super hipsters walk in and sit at a neighboring table. Then we obviously spent about 30-45 minutes debating whether or not to approach them, what kind of strategy to use, and conversation topics. We decided bringing an offering of alcohol would be the best method. I mean, who denies someone bringing gifts in the form of booze?

So Mark made the move and brought our targets a bottle of Miller Lite. Yep, just one. See, our strategy was to introduce ourselves and teach them a new game to play. Which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the most mature/alluring thing in the world, but hey, we’re trying here. And they didn’t tell us to GTFO so I figured we did alright. We played the game where everyone puts one finger on the beverage to be drank, one person counts three, two, one and then you can choose to either leave your finger on, or take it off. After counting down to one, the person guesses how many digits will remain on the bottle. If they’re right, they take their finger out for the round and they’re safe. Repeat until one person becomes the loser and has to drink. Not a bad game, right? Also not a super well-known one, so we taught our hipster friends a cool, entertaining game whilst showing them how awesome we are/sending out friend vibes.

Unfortunately for us, we chose to approach them a bit too close to closing time… so we only hung out with them for about 30 minutes. But better than nothing, I suppose. Also let me address how intensely hipster these individuals were: all three of them were wearing the typical hipster glasses. They work at an architecture firm. Both guys were wearing some sort of striped shirt+jacket combo. The girl was cute in a weird way. And they live in Boston. ‘Nuff said.

Overall they seemed like fun, decent individuals with a good sense of humor (a must), so I wouldn’t mind running into them again. Not sure they’d say that much, but who knows.

Our hipster friends left about 15 minutes prior to closing, and we deemed the night a decent success. However, we didn’t get any numbers. BUT they said they go to the Thirsty Scholar pretty often, so we should run into them again. I feel like Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man. How the cheesecake do you make friends in a new city? Do you go on friend dates? You definitely don’t go on Craig’s List. I know that much.

That's all.
(Can you tell I'm watching The Devil Wears Prada?) (Side note: 00:40 Ohhhh god I love that movie.)

Greetings, Friends

Hey party people. So due to my recent move from the 'burbs of Chicago to the 'burbs of Boston, I thought it was only fitting to start a blog to share some of the shenanigans and interesting things that will inevitably occur. I'll do my best to keep things brief, snarky, and entertaining.

Keep in mind: I've never had a blog before, and this may turn into a massive failure. But it's worth a shot. Plus I've had virtually nothing to do for the past five days since I don't start work until Tuesday, and Lauren (roommate) already started work last week.

Here are the interactions I've had with people other than Lauren this week:

Place-- Public Garden downtown
Day-- Monday afternoon
Dialogue-- Bearded Man: Hey. Are you looking for a friend to smoke weed with?
Me: Uhh... no... I don't smoke. Sorry.
Bearded Man: Ok then, have a nice day!
Me: Thanks, have fun smoking weed.

Place-- Public Garden downtown
Day-- Wednesday morning
Dialogue-- Business Man: [whispered, on phone] do you mind if I sit here?
Me: No, go right ahead.

Place-- 1369 Coffee House
Day-- Wednesday afternoon
Dialogue-- Woman With Stroller: [looks at drawing I'm working on] That's really nice.
Me: Thank you.

As you can see, I'm TOTALLY racking up the friends. I mean, I really felt a connection with the Bearded Man who offered me weed. Our relationship really has substance, you know?

That's all for now. I'm going to post again in like five minutes, just so's you knows.