The Blurgh

Gretch and I are doing something we never ever do–have fun over spring break!  Usually, mine is spent catching up on work that I didn’t do during the beginning of the semester, but hell, it’s my last one, so I might as well make it memorable.

Gretch also has some vacation time saved up (thinking about having to save vacation time kind of blows my mind, but I guess it won’t when I get into the real world!), so we’re going to San Diego to visit some family and friends.

See you next week!

So there I am, hanging out at my favorite little café after work, waiting for Andi to show up so she can tell me all about her law school classmates’ drama and I can tell her the cute things my girls did today. I’m leafing though this magazine we got at the office this week and totally loving it. It’s called Femiyinz – awkward name, but awesome mag. It’s a new publication (this is the first issue ever) and it was started by three English/women’s studies majors at Chatham to highlight feminist issues with a bit of local flavor.

The barista walks by my table on her way back behind the counter, arms full of plates and coffee cups. She stops, backtracks a few steps, and stands right next to me. I look up to see her smiling broadly.

“You’re reading Femiyinz!” she cries. “My friends are going to be so psyched. They started that magazine. How did you get it?!”

I tell her about the PWF and how everyone was really impressed with it. She asks me what my favorite articles have been.

“I loved the piece about unions offering free childcare to mothers who are working to get off welfare and learn some trades,” I replied. “And the profile of the new president at the zoo was really cool.”

We talked for about twenty more minutes, long enough for Andi to come and join the conversation. It’s so cool having all these little outlets for feminism in Pittsburgh – from what my mom tells me, it was not exactly a feminist haven when she was my age. And how much do I love just randomly running into people who have a hand in all the cool stuff that’s going on around town?!

It’s that dreaded time of the semester again–midterms.  This time around it’s not too bad, but I am afraid that my biotech test is going to royally kick my butt.  There’s nothing like hoping everyone else in the class sucks at it as much as you do so that the curve will be enough to save you…it’s kind of like betting on who’ll lose a game instead of who’ll win it!

Otherwise, everything is going pretty well.  I had to tell CRR that I needed some extra time for studying last week, which they were cool about.  They’ve started hinting at some possibilities opening up after I graduate, which also makes me happy.  They’re good people and they do good work–it’s hard to get much better than that with an employer.

My directed study, though, has come to a bit of a roadblock.  We’ve done some interesting demographic research, which I’ll try to put up here sometime next week, and that shows some interesting trends.  What makes it hard, though, is trying to find a good measure of that nebulous thing we call “community.”  Some people have used things like fraternal organization membership and local sports clubs, but those plummet pretty much across the board nationally after the 1970s, even in places where there’s lots of “community,” so that doesn’t seem like it’ll provide a constant measure.

It’s also possible that what we call “community” has actually changed over the past hundred or so years.  Anyway, Dr. Lemley has a really good time thinking about this, but it’s starting to make my head spin.  Anyone out there have any ideas on the subject?  What does community mean to you?

Last night, at about 8:30, I finished the first draft of the first third of the book project I’m working on right now. I felt happily exhausted, pleased with what the characters had done in these first several chapters, and excited that I would now be moving even deeper into the story and what I want to say. Shutting down my computer, I walked away from the desk feeling complete.

For about three hours.

At 11:30, I was lying in bed next to the soundly sleeping Frank obsessing about my project. Should I change the main character’s name? It’s kind of trendy and her parents are very old-fashioned people – it doesn’t make sense that they’d give her that name. And the explanation I’d given for it, in chapter two, was pretty clunky. No way would it ever work. But is she too much ingrained in my mind with the name that it would be suicide to change it now? Or am I still early enough in the draft that I can change it?

From there it just got worse. Do I need to include more scenes and, by extension, characters to show the protagonist’s evolution into a more assertive, true-to-herself individual? Is the secondary storyline with her best friend enough to carry it through the entire book, or is it a complete dud? Will readers identify with the story? Will it help them realize something about themselves?

I realized that lying in bed and being consumed by these questions was getting me nowhere. So I did what a writer would do: I dragged myself out of bed and pounded out these questions, my thoughts, crazy ideas, anything I could think of that might help me see myself through this story. It helped, it really did. I have a clearer vision of what I want to accomplish in this book, and even though I’m still not exactly sure how I’m going to get there, I’m a little bit further on my way.

I ended up crawling back into bed at 2:45. Good thing I didn’t have to work today.

Gretch and I were conspicuously absent from posting last week because my cousin Andrew, who had been living in DC, has moved to Pittsburgh.  He graduated from American University the year before and had been working as a temp, but then he got a great finance job in Pittsburgh and he decided to make the move.  Being the good family members that we are, we offered to help with the move in any way we could.  Little did we know what we were getting into…

Moving to a different state amplifies the suckiness of moving by at least ten, but when moving from a DISTRICT, or, as my cousin likes to say, an occupied territory, it reaches a new level altogether.  Example 1: did you know that you’re not allowed to drive a moving truck within a mile of the white house?  We didn’t, but the Secret Service was well aware.

Gretch and I have moved several times in Pittsburgh, and we know a couple truck rental places that have always treated us well, so we offered to rent the truck up here so that it would count as an in-town rental.  My cousin decided against it because he’s getting reimbursed and wants it to be in his name, so Gretch and I borrowed my parents’ van and drove down.  We arrived last Saturday night, and went to bed as early as we could so that we’d be at least a bit rested for what we knew would be a crappy day.

We all woke up early and went to pick up the truck.  Two hours later, we were still waiting at the truck place because they had lost his reservation.  Even though we got there when they first opened, they were out of the trucks he had originally reserved, so he could either take a smaller one or one that could have fit three of his apartments into.  By the time we got back to his apartment in a frighteningly small truck, it was 11 AM, and we needed to haul ass loading the truck if we had any chance of getting to Pittsburgh before dark.  Andrew had a couple friends over to help, but he was on the 7th floor of one of the ubiquitous cookie-cutter apartment buildings in DC, and we spent half the time just waiting for the freight elevator.  It was a good thing we brought my parents’ van, because by the time we were done it was stuffed to the brim and there was a mattress strapped to the roof.

By 3 o’clock, we were finally on the road, but on our way out of town we got lost and ended up on Pennsylvania Avenue about a block from the White House.  After discussing our national origins and purpose in life with the Secret Service for an hour, we finally got out of the District and on the way back home.  We arrived in Pittsburgh at 9 PM.

Thank god unloading a truck takes about a quarter of the time that loading does, but still, it was one loooooong day.  The rest of the week we’ve been showing Andrew around town and helping him get unpacked, along with working and schoolwork.  It’s been nice, but utterly exhausting, and it’s great to have more family back in Pittsburgh!

Hey Folks! Gretch and I are dealing with various real-life stuff for the moment, but will be back in full swing next week.  In the meantime, check out our lovely cat Luna being especially coy.

Frank and I like to talk about all the ways Pittsburgh’s changed since our parents were our age, and there’s a lot to be said for the city’s development. Good jobs abound, better opportunities leap at you from every corner, you can get from Downtown to the airport in fifteen minutes on the train. But then there are the things that don’t change about Pittsburgh, comforting things that you know you can always come back to, like the kielbasa and cheese at Primanti’s or observing that even during the off-season, approximately 30% of the population is wearing some sort of Steelers paraphernalia at any given time.

The reason I bring this up is because a good friend of mine got married a few days ago. We’ve been friends since high school and were roommates for two years during college. I was the maid of honor and she was a beautiful bride, but going into the wedding I didn’t really know what to expect. I mean, she was really taking a giant step forward into adulthood. Sure, I guess I’m an adult, what with being almost 24 and renting my own apartment and holding down a full-time professional job, but marriage? Marriage just seals the deal, totally solidifies the fact that you are a true adult.

I needn’t have been so worried, though, as usual. The wedding was lovely, everyone was happy, and there were those little Pittsburgh things that kept me feeling like I really belonged there. Things like the big steel tubs of tortellini and roasted red potatoes at the buffet table. Or the fact that one of the first songs played during the reception was “Here We Go Steelers” and everyone in the place knew all the lyrics. Or that, even though I knew only her immediate family, everyone in attendance was good-natured and friendly, striking up conversations with Frank and me at every turn (not unlike the people who ask you, upon arrival at the bus stop, if their bus has come by and then proceed to tell you all about their day).

It made me happy to realize that even as Pittsburgh grows and changes, there will always be those small things that I’ll immediately recognize as part of my roots.

As you may know, in addition to my internship, the other big thing going on this semester is my Directed Study with Dr. Lemley.  The project is on tracing the development of community in the South Side over the past 100 years, and it’s been difficult so far, but interesting.  One of the first tasks I had to do was get census information on the neighborhood going back to 1920. Easy, right?  Not so much.

Well, that’s not exactly true. The census data for modern decades is easily attainable online.  Further back than that, however, and it gets real dicey.  The choices are to either scan through a million and a half scanned records that are unsearchable, or go to Hillman’s microfilm collection.

Now that’s an adventure…

The machines must be 50+ years old, and they look like something out of a really bad late 20th century sci-fi movie.  They’re located in the back room at Hillman, and when I went back there, the employee was immensely surprised to see me.  Oddly enough, people don’t use the machines very often…

We had to look through shelves upon shelves of little boxes to find the right one, and then I had to scan through the film until I found the right information.  It felt like I was in a movie doing research in some weird alternate universe…I can’t believe that at one time people used them a lot.  It’s kind of like when my mom told me about how they used to use some kind of number system to find books in the library, and there were cabinets upon cabinets of little cards that would tell you where the book was.  Weird.

We still have a long way to go before we get enough information to build a good case, but I’ll keep you posted!

When I was in high school, I had a habit of staying up all night just for fun from time to time. I would get these great bursts of creativity, get a whole ton of stuff done, and then be in a wacky mood the next day which didn’t really matter because it was just high school.

Yesterday I found out those days are looooong gone.

I pulled an all-nighter the night before last because I had two essays due and a mid-term that required major cramming. I was very confident that it would be just like the old days; I would get a second wind around 1:30 am and by the time 6 am rolled around, everything would be done. Well, as it turned out, by 3 am I was on my second pot of coffee, I had one essay done (poorly), an outline of the other one (also bad), and I’d been staring at the same two sentences of my textbook for at least 20 minutes straight.

I decided to crash for two hours, and then I somehow buckled down and got everything done. The rest of the day I felt slightly hungover. My body was in full-scale rebellion against my lack of planning, and the confidence I had felt a mere 12 hours earlier seemed like a distant memory.

Since then I’ve pretty much done nothing but sleep. This morning I felt better, but I’m afraid to look at the essays I turned in. Does this kind of stuff happen after college? Does a secret spell come along with your diploma that suddenly makes you organized? I really hope so, because otherwise, I’m screwed.

One cool thing, though, is that for the first time in what feels like an eternity, Gretchen and I are planning on going out to enjoy a night on the town. First we’re going to hit up the new Jamaican place in Bloomfield (have you seen all the crazy new restaurants going up around there?), and then hop the train downtown and catch a show. Although maybe the tickets would be better used as a bribe for my professors..

I should have worn pantyhose under my pants because this thin cloth is just not cutting it.

I hope the office isn’t still out of tea and coffee.

What’s the freezing temperature of snot?

I wonder what it’s called when the wind blows so hard on your forehead that you get a headache from it.

Why did I buy a white coat when all my winters are spent in Pittsburgh? Seriously.

I think that dude just saw me wipe my nose on my mitten and then nonchalantly drag it across the thigh of my jeans. Very classy.

She’s wearing a skirt and boots but no tights. How is she not dead?

Goddamn it, does the walk usually take this long?