Author Archives: Julia

Good morning starshine

Posted in random by

1. Would you bang your neighbor?
neighbor to the right: no. she’s a little old for me. neighbor to the left: no. she’s a little to weird for me. though i’ve heard her bang her boyfriend many a time. i think joyful orgasms are the most magical noise to wake up to.

2. What describes your relationship status?
happily taken
3. Where are you?
work
4. What’s the last movie you saw?
me you and everyone we know. it was one of those independent films that tried way to hard to be independent, which ultimately was its downfall.
5. Do you live with your parents?
i’m an independent woman.
6. Who have you talked to most today?
well, since it’s only 9am and i’m not too chatty before i finish my coffee, just the mira doggy. she never gives me morning sass.
7. What color is your underwear?
pinkish redish
8. Color of your shirt?
blue
9. How many years of language have you taken?
9.5 of spanish
10. Who’s the first person in your Contacts List in your phone?
Abrams, my eye doctor.
11. Do you wish on 11:11?
sometimes i do yes. also sometimes on 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55 and 12:34
12. Good advice if you ever go camping?
bring a flashlight, and fire starting paper
13. Are you a bad influence?
bad? i don’t know. i’m an influence of some sort. my friend just told me she’s “pulling a julia” by picking up and moving to go live with a friend. i’m incredibly excited for her.
14. Do you enjoy Diet Rockstars?
I prefer coffee for my caffeinated beverages.
15. Would you rather have your name or your sibling’s?
well mine, since my sibling has a boy’s name.
16. Favorite color?
mauve
17. Do you like cookies?
YES. pretty much any kind of cookie. i can eat entire packages of cookies in one sitting, which is why i do not allow them in my apartment.
18. What song is playing right now?
the boxer, simon and garfunkel
19. What would you do if the person you loved moved across the world?
i would follow him
20. Last time you went out to lunch?
Sunday at the zoo with adam.
21. What is to the right of you?
a pile of manuscripts that i need to read.
22. Who is your favorite character on Friends?
tricky question. i’m leaning towards ross or rachel honestly.
23. What’s your favorite band?
not a fair question, similar to the favorite book/author question. i have about a million. there are a few classics that i can always put on though: matt nathanson, guster, the beatles, ben folds, tristan prettyman.
24. Do you watch Family Guy regularly?
yep
25. Do you read trashy romance novels often?
nope. chick lit is my trashy romance novel. i could never stoop that low.
26. Favorite drink at Starbucks?
i don’t drink starbucks. i drink local coffeeshop coffee. it’s much tastier.
27. Do you sing obnoxiously in the car?
yes. with all the windows open for the world to hear.
28. What are you?
a fool in love
29. Would you rather freeze to death or burn to death?
would you rather wonder how you’re going to die or how you’re living?
30. Have true love or be a millionaire?
i’m shooting for both right now. I aim high.
31. Give up alcohol or marijuana?
marijuana
32. Are you ever a freak about cleanliness or organization?
i can be. i’m not obsessively clean, but i cannot live in filth and when it hits that point i clean like a crazy woman. i also organize random things, like my closet and some things at work. mostly i’m an unorganized mess.
33. Have you ever been to South America or Africa?
yep, ecuador. it was amazing. i’d love to further explore south america.
34. Are you high?
on life, wahahaha.
35. Do you swear?
my new favorite is shitballs. i also use frick a lot in place of the f word, which i am trying to use minimally.
36. Baskin Robbins or Coldstone?
baskin robbins. specifically the clowns they made in the upside down ice cream cones.
37. Physics or chemistry?
i have a liberal arts degree and work at a magazine. do you really think i like science at all?
38. Who was the last person you yelled at?
mirabelle, to get off the couch.
39. Roadtrip or fly?
roadtrip. flying and airports stress me out.
40. What’s your favorite Disney movie?
robin hood and aladdin
41. How’s your day?
so far, ok. coffee’s done, music’s playing, haven’t done any real work yet.
42. Would you rather eat sushi or escargot?
suuuushi!
43. Do you ever want to get married?
yes
44. Are you happy?
well. yes and no. i’m being positive about things that are not ideal right now.
Real post to come later, i promise!

fuel me up

Posted in cars by

Reading about alternate fuels in my CNN morning email. I like what Robert McCormick, the principal engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado says. He “believes that ‘just making more’ is not enough. ‘I think that the answer to reducing our petroleum-import problem and reducing the carbon emissions from transportation is really threefold. It involves replacement fuels like biofuels, it involves using much more efficient vehicles than we use today, and it involves driving less.”

I could probably rant and go on about alternate fuels and vehicle emissions and saving the planet all day. I’ll refrain. If you know me at all, you know where I stand on that topic. I’m waiting for the day when I need a new car and can buy a hybrid:D

What you say?

Posted in quotes by

Ah yes, quotes of the week.

Adam: OK, you’re on ice cream patrol.
Me: I’m looking for the ice cream place?
Adam: No you get to hold the ice cream. But be on the lookout for exotic cars.
Me: I always am.
Me: Hey yay! Guster has baby girls!
Ian: Guster mated?
Me: They’re all married. They all had babies.
Ian: They’re gays. They mated
(for the record my brother is not homophobic, despite how he may sound here.)
Me: I thought you voted for the good George W.
Ian: I did, and don’t regret it…nor am I educated enough on the subject to have the knowledge to regret it – so for me voting is a win win
Me: that is truly amazing
Ian: I try
Me: You could make some serious money publicizing that quote.
Ian: That’s all I’m out to do anyway {make money}
Me: Isn’t everybody? the day I’m rich I’m gonna stop working and buy 10 horses and lay in a field with them all day.
Ian: I’m going to buy a bunch of brand name shit and cars that fuck the environment!
Take your balls out of your purse. {general them and saying of last weekend}

Hippies, hipsters, and rock n roll oh my!

Posted in 717, mini trips, music by

Lollapalooza 2008.

Sam, Marnie, and I spent the weekend in music heaven. We’d talked about going for a couple of years and this year we’re finally all in the area at the right time. So we got our tickets and personalized our band schedules on Lollapalooza’s website. Generally speaking, when I have incredibly high expectations for something, especially a mini trip, I am usually disappointed. This weekend proved me so very wrong. I had the most amazingly wonderfully time with my two beautiful friends. We talked ourselves out about boys, old friends, gossip, work and tons of other random things. On top of the fabulous company, we had fabulous music. Two days of band hopping in the most incredible setting. Every time I looked up at the Chicago skyline that surrounds Grant Park, I was amazed. This festival full of dirty, music loving people plopped down in the middle of a huge city. It’s pretty cool. Prime people watching. Plentiful tattoos and dreds.
Friday night Sam and I got into town just in time to meet Marnie outside of her apartment and book it to Grant Park to see Radiohead. They’re a pretty diverse band and I was very impressed with the show. (as a side note, I’ve never listened to a lot of Radiohead.) We then met up with Jannson and some of his and Marnie’s friends plus Meredith and spent the night dancing and singing at a bar called the Hang Up. We didn’t get to bed until 5AM. When the girls of 717 party, we do it right!
Saturday morning we woke up with a little bit of our voices gone (what happens when you try to talk in a really loud bar) and kinda hungover. On our way to the park we stopped at Walgreen’s where Sam bought Bounce sheets, which are supposed to work like bug spray when rubbed on your arms and legs. Not sure if they kept the buggies away but they smelled really good:) Our Lollapalooza line up for the day was as follows
Dierks Bentley (yeah country at Lolla!)
MGMT
Explosions in the Sky (OK, kinda, we heard them as we stood in line for the bathroom/ice cream)
Okkervil River
Broken Social Scene
Wilco
Wilco was great. Also really enjoyed MGMT and Okkervil River. Despite the hangovers and minimal hours of sleep the day was still good. Thank God we went to bed at a decent hour that night. It made all the difference on Sunday I think.
Sunday morning we had breakfast with Marnie’s old roommate (most amazing cheese grits I’ve encountered in the north!) and then took off for the last day. Line up
What Made Milwaukee Famous
The Whigs
John Butler Trio
Amadou & Mariam
Iron & Wine
Gnarls Barkley
The National

I really enjoyed all the bands we saw on Sunday. What Made Milwaukee Famous was a really great accidental find. John Butler Trio absolutely blew me away with incredible guitar picking and jamming. The National, well they’ve been my new favorite band lately and they did not disappoint. Unfortunately Sam and I had to leave to get home and missed Kanye West. Even more unfortunately we screwed up the I65 detour and ended up driving all the way to South Bend on I80/94. Awesome.
I’m dragging a bit today thanks to getting to bed at 4AM on top of all the walking and sitting out in the sun we did, but it was all so very worth it. I can’t wait to really investigate all the new music I discovered. Yay for my ever expanding music collection! Can’t wait for Lollapalooza 09 ladies!!

Barack the politically apathetic vote

Posted in politics by

The cover story in this month’s Vanity Fair announces the “Class of 2008,” the up and coming young stars of Hollywood. I excitedly turned to the article because it promised photos and interviews with the cast of Gossip Girl, my favorite smutty teen drama (it’s like Dawson’s Creek of the new millennium!) The article started out with a discussion of how dramatically being a rising young star in the entertainment business has changed over the past five years. I do wonder how any 20 something’s reputation can stay spotless under the magnifying glass-like eye of the media these days. My friends and I have gotten into some pretty crazy things since we’ve entered, survived and left college. And we’re just normal kids. Our reputations would be completely tarnished though.

Anyway, of course, being Vanity Fair and never wanting to pass up an opportunity to remind readers of its liberal political views and support of Obama, the stars were asked the 2008 election question: who will you vote for/do you support Obama. Most carefully avoided the question. Stating your political affiliation seems almost as detrimental as stopping at Starbucks or Taco Bell these days. Penn Badgley, Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl, did have an opinion. He said, “with a wordly, weary not of disillusionment, ‘I’m politically apathetic. We were raised in a time when we never had a leader who was a role model at all. Every president has gotten worse and worse – it doesn’t make you want to engage.'” Now don’t get me wrong, I love Dan Humphrey and therefore the cute actor who plays him, but this kind of a statement absolutely kills me. Politically apathetic, in my opinion, is just another term for being lazy. As if our generation needs to look more lazy than it is already accused of being. We are already pegged as a generation who doesn’t want to vote and who has always had low turnout numbers in past elections. Why perpetuate that if you’re someone famous? And do not make excuses about poor role models. I’m obviously no Bush supporter, but honestly that makes me want to get out and vote all the more. I want to engage, I want to have a voice in changing our government.
I don’t know, that attitude of not caring and labeling it as something other than being lazy and THEN blaming it on bad past administrations drives me crazy. How much of an effort would it take to go to each candidate’s website and read up on their platforms? Or even to just turn on the news, read the paper or go to cnn.com once in awhile? I don’t care who you vote for honestly, just don’t give our already labeled as apathetic generation more of a bad rap.
Rant done.

prisoner swap

Posted in politics by

The bodies of two Israeli soldiers, missing for about two years, were returned today in exchange for the freedom of Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese man who murdered an Israeli while his four year old daughter watched and then bashed her head in, killing her. It’s easy to look at that situation and say what really did Israel get from this trade? They freed this horrible man and got back two dead soldiers. Prime Minister Olmert, who I don’t always agree with I’ll say, said this, which really made me understand Israel’s point of view, “The Worry over the fate of every one of our soldiers is the glue which binds us as a society, and it is this which allows us to survive in an area which is surrounded by enemies and terror organizations.”

One of the things that I took away from my trip to Israel last winter was the incredible respect that soldiers got and the incredible pride that every Israeli seems to have in their army and their country. They believe so strongly in what they fight for.
Another quote I found incredibly true: “The power of a nation is not dependent on what the other side says, but rather only on us.” (that one’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni)
The whole article can be found here on the Jerusalem Post’s website.

So far away, doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?

Posted in friends by
It would be so fine to see your face at my door
Doesn’t help to know that you’re just time away
Long ago I reached for you and there you stood
Holding you again could only do me good
How I wish I could, but you’re so far away.

I think there’s some kind of saying that says having friends in far away places makes the world seem smaller. I disagree. I hate having my friends so spread out. Even Marnie and Meredith, who are just in Chicago, seem lightyears away. And that’s not even counting anyone in North Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, California, freaking Ireland. I know that far away friends give me prime excuses to go on mini vacations and long weekends to visit people but I what I really want is to be able to go have drinks with them in the middle of the week or play in the summer weather with them.

I remember when I was little and my friends lived in the same city as me. Ian’s friends lived right up the street. I was so incredibly jealous that he could walk or ride his bike to their houses. In middle school I became friends with a girl who lived a few streets away and I thought my life was complete. Mostly though my friends were a car ride away. I hated that. I thought driving to the other side of the north side of Indianapolis was a tragedy. 20 minutes? I wanted 2 minutes! I lived in a tiny circle back then. Between my friends, the barn, school, temple, the JCC, my Indianapolis grandparents, Blockbuster and ice cream nothing was farther than 20 minutes away.
What I wouldn’t give for that right now. My circle has expanded considerably these days. Oh wells, guess you can’t always get what you want right?

I love the American government

Posted in North Carolina, riding by

Only because I should be receiving my stimulus check in the mail within the next few days! I’m going to put some of it aside to use during the Lollapalooza/Hollapalooza weekend. I plan on throwing down. Plus beers are expensive at concerts.

Adam wants to move to South Carolina someday maybe. That’s so close to North Carolina that it makes me squeal like a little girl! Not that I’m planning somdays with Adam, I’m just saying, I like the possibility.
Last week I broke a lace on my left tall boot, rendering it useless. This week I broke my right half chap, rendering it also useless. No foot/legwear left to ride in. So I grudgingly went to the only tack shop in the city to buy new boot laces for the tall boots. The girl who “helped” me was the smuggest and rudest girl I’ve encountered in a while. I don’t know why I’m so surprised. That I’m better than you attitude abounds in the hunter/jumper world and it disgusts me. Anyway, the girl sold me the wrong kind of laces despite the fact that I told her they were for tall boots. They’re too damn fat to fit through the lace holes. So now I have to drive all the way back up to the north side and exchange them. Frick.

100 years of imagination

Posted in books by

This year my favorite redheaded girl, Anne Shirley, turns 100. A 100th anniversary edition was published in February with original cover art and what appears to be a mostly original version of the manuscript, not perfectly edited and all:) I’m tempted to buy it, just as a tribute to my childhood and my favorite books growing up. Anne was my absolute hero between the ages of probably 9 and 15. I read every one of the books in the series probably at least 10 times. Anne’s wild and free imagination only encouraged my already overactive imagination. I spent countless hours wandering through the woods behind my house, naming trees and paths and special spots, just like Anne did.

I haven’t really thought a whole lot about these books recently but now that I am I’m realizing that maybe they had more of an effect on me than I knew. I read an article about the series today that focuses mostly on what kind of a heroine Anne is and if she fits into today’s feminist heroine. Today’s novels, young adult and otherwise, seem to be filled with high powered, highly motivated and driven girls and women. They are cut throat, whether it be while climbing the social ladder in school or the corporate ladder in the work world. Anne doesn’t fit into this world at all. Her world appears almost antiquated in comparison. She abandons the real world for her imagination far too often and she gives up her ambitions to be a writer to raise a family.
I must agree with the Slate article in thinking there’s more to these books than flowery descriptions of nature, a sentimental story about an orphan winning over a town, and a young woman giving up her dreams for her husband and family. Anne has an incredible independent streak. She does what she wants and says what she thinks. Of course that ends up getting her in trouble lots of the time and the great thing is that when it upsets or hurts the people she cares about she goes to great lengths to fix things. She doesn’t let the class cutie, Gilbert, turn her to mush, at least not until he almost dies and she realizes she just can’t live without him (that book, Anne of the Island, was my favorite, especially as I got older, because of its sweet romantic undercurrent.) Anne’s imagination must encourage her readers to get lost in their own imaginary worlds. It certainly did for me. I loved disappearing into books and creating and acting out stories in my backyard. Anything that gets kids away from already completely fabricated stories on t.v. and mindless video games gets five stars in my book.
Now back to the feminist aspect of Anne. I strongly believe that a girl should be told she can do anything she wants. She should be able to go out there and have the same career as any man, she should be given the same respect and women have worked very hard to get close to that point today. I also strongly believe that if we look at media in general today that is all girls are being fed. High power, high fashion women dominate t.v. and books. They run around big cities in their Jimmy Choos and whatever other fashionable shoes they can buy, frantically trying to make it. Young adult novels and t.v. shows seem filled with these images too. Girls fight to be in the top clique in school, kids vie for the best and hottest internships that will launch their careers.
What’s wrong with Anne’s path? Girls could use a reminder that they have more choices and that they do not have to pick the crazy career over the family. Now I sound super old fashioned or something. I am all for having a job, a career, making my own money. Eventually though I would be the happiest girl if I could just stay at home with my kids and raise them. That, in my opinion, is an incredibly admirable job. Anne goes to college, something not too many young women did in her day, she even works for a bit until Gilbert is ready to get married. Then she takes on the job of raising her six kids to be imaginative, independent people just like herself. Through everything she faces each and every challenge head on and with a positive attitude. Why not remind today’s youth of the importance of that? Why not remind them to slow down, be yourself, think for yourself and enjoy the beauty in the world around you? I think the Anne of Green Gables books are timeless and are filled with lessons and characters that I can still relate to as a 24 year old in 2008.
Hum, this all sounded very logical and well thought out in my head. God only knows if it ended up that way. Let’s just finish with the statement that I am a huge advocate of the imagination and anything that encourages it.

Purple Wandering Jew

Posted in family, weddings by

Oh my goodness, I am a giant hypocrite. We went to a wedding (two of Adam’s friends got married) this weekend. Lovely time overall. I loved meeting all of Adam’s friends from school. I know how important they are to him and I’m glad that I finally got to see that part of his life. Anyway, I kept my camera tucked in my purse most of the night since I had just met the majority of these people and felt inappropriate snapping lots of pictures. I did want a picture of the two of us though since I thought we looked all nice and dressed up. Plus my hair was miraculously straight! So end of the night rolls around, we’re waiting for our ride back to the hotel and I ask if one of the girls would mind taking a picture. She did, and then told us to do another one, this time kissing. And this is how I became a hypocrite. I’ve posted it on my Picasa page because, much like this blog, I think only a few people look at it. Oh what have I become?

(ok secretly, but don’t tell anyone please, I think it’s a cute picture! Eek!)
My dad continues to be my hero. He raised money for the relay for life in Zionsville this past weekend. To entice people he said he would paint himself purple if a certain amount of money was donated. He then told the Zionsville Merchants Association that if they could raise $1,000 he would shave his head. All necessary money was raised and my dad spent Friday purple and bald and insanely hyper. Plus he was able to donate at least $1,300 to the Relay for Life. Kicking cancer’s ass one purple bald dude at a time.