A Girl With a Sword

only connect

I'm open to suggestions as to the best way to get high speed/wireless internet at my new apartment. (Besides mooching off someone else's signal.) Earthlink? Comcast?

book covers

I hate it when Elijah Wood is in movies.

baby, you're a rich man

My dilemma—what’s better, a job I love that really doesn’t make very much or give me marketable skills or a job I feel indifferent toward that has the benefit of both? I got a job at a bookstore in Cambridge. I’m working with children’s books and fiction. I’m so excited and happy because I love children’s literature and it’ll be so much easier to keep up with it’s ever-changing trends now. The fiction I’m happy about because contemporary fiction is something I’m sadly behind in and hopefully this’ll give me a chance to catch up. So it’s a great job for me, but the pay is only enough for me to eat and pay rent and I won’t be able to save for grad school on this salary. I had some interviews with a staffing company this morning, but I’m just not excited about going out into the office working world. I’m applying for part-time jobs and hoping that if I’m happy at work it’ll make up for the 65-hour work week.

So far, instead of cream pies and baked beans, my tastes of Boston have been fresh tomatoes, peppers, and very salty Armenian cheese. We live in an Armenian section of Watertown and most of our grocery shopping is done at the local stores. On Saturday night I found myself going though piles of dried beef sausage at the corner market, wondering what on earth I was supposed to do with it. There are also blocks of feta and olive bars and the mysterious falafel (I love that word). I think it’ll be a good life.

in santa croce with no baedeker

Okay, yesterday's entry was going to be longer. I was going to use the library thing as a jumping off point to talk about my Boston experience so far, but then someone else wanted to use the computer and I had to go, practically in midsentence.

Today's been a long day, but right now I'm so happy to have a nice place to sit and connect to the internet that I actually forgot to put sugar in my espresso before I drank it. Woah, that's coffee. The Italians would frown on me. I'm in a great, little coffee shop near Harvard. It's like Greyfriar's without the couch. I was asking about free wireless at Starbucks and the nice Irish man told to come here. Take that, the Man. I spent today job searching in Harvard Square, lots of nice places with Help Wanted signs, lots of applications, lots of interviews. I am so tired of trying to impress people. I'm going to work on a more interesting, informative set of impressions for my next blog entry. Cocorosie is playing in here right now. They're coming to Boston next month. Okay, enough, my stream-of-consciousness is starting to bother me.

being in Boston

Welcome to Watertown, which may not be Boston Proper, but at least I don't have to pay to use the Boston Public Library (like I do to use the Omaha Public Library. jerks.). The three of us are here at a branch of Watertown Free (WTF) Public Library, conveniently close to our house and also one of the smallest libraries I've ever been in. I did manage to get a copy of Life of Pi, though, which is more than I can say for my last library.

happy assumption day

One of my favorite holidays. I know it's really about Mary going to heaven, but I just like the word "assumption" used for a holiday. And look, there are e-cards!

Anyone know any good Boston movies? Every other movie is filmed in New York or Chicago, but the only Boston movie I can think of is Good Will Hunting, and I'm not a big fan.

bloggin' for beantown

Welcome to my Boston Blog. It all happened rather suddenly. When I woke up on Monday I was on covblogs, but then I lost myself and after some puzzled searching I found myself here, my writings utterly dominating this peaceful green page. Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world. I'm not in Boston yet, my blog has arrived ahead of me, but I will be there on Tuesday. Praise God we have a place to live until we move into our apartment. Hopefully there will be a renegade wireless signal there that I can harness to my will.

In my last days here I've been soaking up the Omaha culture.

These two girls are from the Joslyn Art Museum's new exhibit called "Russia's Age of Elegance." I have done horrible things to their viewability. Please click on them and make them bigger. The first picture is by Zinaida Serebryakova who also had a lovely, golden bathhouse painting there that I have been unable to find on the prudish internet. The second painting is called "Supper" by Leon Bakst. He is trying to show the idea of a cat through this painting of a woman. I find it rather chilling, in a nice sort of way.

going to Blockbuster alone

Normally I hate going to Blockbuster. I find it a soul-sucking, time-wasting experience, but it's one thing that is actually better without a crowd of friends. I've been spending a lot of time in Blockbuster this summer, having a lot of time on my hands and a free movie pass. I like going in and taking my time. I hang out in the aisles, examining covers and half listening to the other customers go through the harrowing Blockbuster-with-friends experience. The most popular discussion is the "how scary is this movie?" But my favorite is when people summarize movies for their friends, with hilarious results. I like listening to the discussions about plot and actors, the game of "pick my movie" as friends compete for the prize of getting to watch what they want. I listen intently as a group tries to decide between Clue and White Noise and then Shaun of the Dead and Without A Paddle (Shaun of the Dead won, but Clue lost. I was bummed. The advocate of Clue even brought up Tim Curry. How can you lose with Tim Curry?). And tonight I also learned that you get strange looks from the Blockbuster employees when you ask for Hideous Kinky.

save those notes

Summer BEST workers, save those Student Life notes you find. Someone else is interested. I was watching CNN last night and saw this hilarious little segment that is available on CNN.com today. Click on the "'Found' highlights the unusual" video clip under the green banner that says "Watch Free Video."

If you miss the clip then you can go here to see what the clip was about, but you won't have the great experience of hearing the CNN anchorwoman say, "This note was written by someone who is obviously trying to decide between Andrew and Paul."

but sometimes I want answers

I just finished Nick Hornby's newest novel, A Long Way Down. It made me regret that I never got to Holloway in my travels in England, but I think Hornby's message of hope is getting old. Yes, no easy answers is all good, in a way, but I got kind of sick of hearing these four miserable people blethering on about their profound experiences with life and not coming up with anything worth saying. There is a short passage at the end of one of the chapters about God's deliverance and glorifying him, which caught me off guard, but besides that the characters had nothing to go on, and even that whole God thing was really portrayed as nothing. Nothing, that's what it is really, the characters have nothing, they end up with nothing, and somewhere along the way it becomes okay. But why it's okay is never really explained. When everyone was talking about there being something missing at the end of How To Be Good I didn't notice it so much, but this book was hard to read because there was something that was supposed to be there that wasn't. Ach, maybe it's just my suspension of disbelief making my cynical again.

laziness cuts me

It's summertime and I'm beginning to feel it. I haven't had an original thought in weeks. I've been living off sentences from the books I've been reading. This past week it was Gaudy Night, academic English women, lots of Elizabethan quotations. It didn't help me make small talk with my farming relations in Minnesota.

We took our last family car trip last weekend, up to the Northwoods to visit the cradle of our family's civilization. I always go up there feeling for some subconscious connection with the past and I end up looking confusedly at the white birches and wondering where I fit in. My relatives are like people I read about in books--waking up early to do the milking, going out at night to shoot coons and coyote. I'm amazed by them, but I can't feel the connection between our worlds. The milk and coffee, though, are plentiful and good and if that's our only connection, it's good enough for now.

Spent the second half of the weekend in Minneapolis where I hung out with an old roommate whom I almost didn't bother to get in touch with. Her enthusiasm about seeing me made me ashamed of my reluctance. And I don't know where that reluctance comes from. It's laziness, really, and it usually strikes during the summer when I'm getting used to doing nothing. It's that horrible feeling of being in a dream and knowing it's a dream, but being unable to get out of it. I can't even get up the motivation to research all the ideas that keep coming into my head. And that, for me, means I'm far gone. Help me, I'm stuck in summer. My brain is dying. I saw the name "Bjorklund" on a gravestone in Minnesota and I had to think for awhile to remember where I had heard the name "Bjork" before. What the hell? And I don't have the academia coming to my rescue this time, got to grow up and face the world, like Harry Potter.

are you my senator?

I signed a lease today. Movin' to Beantown. Does this mean Ted Kennedy is my senator now? I asked William what I am to Ted Kennedy if he's my senator, he said "absolutely nothing."

The downside of all of this is that we don't get to move into our apartment until September 1st and we're getting there in the middle of August, which means two weeks of vagabond days in Boston. If anyone has any Boston connections who might welcome three independent, fast-showering women into their home for two weeks, let me know.