"Come On In!"

This morning, I cut work and went straight to school. I don't have class on Wednesday, but I needed a letter from a professor whose office hours are 9-11 on Wednesdays. The plan was to get to school by 9:30, get the letter, and leave for work and/or just go take care of other things I had to do.
I took the elevator to the eighth floor and found myself dying of dehydration on the hot, dry floor before even reaching this professor's office door. By the time I got there, my scarf and jacket were shoved into my bag and I had my sleeves rolled up. I knocked twice on the open door. When no one answered, I poked my head in and gave a little, "knock, knock?" There was still no response. I peeked into the messy office only to be greeted by a maze of bookshelves filled with Biology books, journals of science, and chairs hidden under piles of paper. Resigning myself to waiting in the overheated hall, I looked around for clues of the professor's whereabouts. The professor across the hall had a permanent note on his door stating, "I have no idea about where Professor ____ is nor do I know when he'll be back." Clearly, this professor has a habit of not being around during his office hours, I thought.
I kept myself entertained by studying the pictures the professor had hanging on the wall, reading the article about Touro Synagogue the professor across the hall hung on his wall, and calling five friends--none of whom answered their phones. All of that only managed to fill ten minutes. I found a chair in the hall and tried sitting down. The chair was either too high or too slippery or too high and too slippery because every time I tried settling myself into it, I went sliding off. It took me two minutes to fully anchor myself down. There was a large poster across the hall with information about a study a few professors did together and I tried reading it. All I understood was that there were two spelling errors. Another five minutes down. I turned to the second large poster but was too distracted by the 112* air to even understand the objective, so I just concentrated on balancing myself in the chair in the hall for the next fifteen minutes.
A short girl passed me by and knocked twice on the professor's door. At about the same time I said to her, "oh, he's not here," a loud, "come on in!" came from inside the empty, cluttered office. Apparently, the office wasn't very empty. Another fifteen minutes of battling gravity to stay put in the impossibly tall, shiny chair, the student was finished with her meeting and I got my turn.
And the moral of this story is that professors should keep their offices more clean.

Tomorrow, I'm Going to School in Lederhosen

I was standing near the train doors in anticipation of the next stop when a woman got out of her seat and came to wait beside me.
"Is your skirt really from 1969?"
My right earphone was broken, so I heard what she had said, but it took me a second or two to register what she was talking about. Then I remembered that my skirt has an embroidered 1969 on the backpocket seam.
"I think GAP was just established in 1969."
"Oh! Hahaha, well then. I guess I know that now."
"Ha, right."
"And I was thinking that that skirt must have been taken very good care of to be in that condition for 30 years!"
I smiled and the train pulled into the 68th Street stop. Getting off the train and skipping a foot ahead of the lady, I wished her a good day.
"Y'know, I still have some clothes from 30 years ago! I guess maybe I should throw some out."
At this point, I was halfway up the steps and she was just at the base. "Do people ask you that a lot? Most people probably think your skirt's from 1969, too, don't they?"
I was tempted to tell her that most people probably don't study the side of my tush and those who do don't comment, but I smiled and told her that she's the first.
"Oh, wow! Really? I'd think that--"
"Have a great day!" I called down to her and skipped some steps while making my music louder.

QOTD: Relationship Advice Edition

We're On a Disney Kick
"JUST BE YOURSELF. I got that advice from Aladdin."
-Zahava

Shoferblosen

I finally got to go hiking today and all I have to say now is "lederhosen."

Professor Plum with the Candlestick in the Billiard Room

Night after night, I've been having bizarre dreams. The only common factors are that the set-up is like a real story (with foreshadowing, build-up, etc.) and the storylines include murders. Actually, there's another one too, but I'm not going to share it because I don't need anyone reading it the wrong way. Oh! And also, there are countless strangers. I've rarely had stranger dreams--the characters were always people I knew. I didn't think much of that, but now I've had another dream like that and I'm starting to question my sanity. Literally--foreshadowing--in my dreams! It's the weirdest thing ever. Shabbat shalom l'kulam.

Don't Say Turkey

No one ever told me that the words to A Whole New World are "soaring, tumbling, free-wheelin'" and not "soaring, tumbling, free-willy." And don't think that people haven't had AMPLE opportunities to correct me. I've sung Disney songs with far too many of my friends for this to have slipped everyone's radar. All my life I've been singing it wrong--all my life! It took a subway ride at night with three other friends for me to find out the true words and that "free willy" is "just the name of a movie" and not, as I was lead to believe, the same thing as moving willy-nilly.
In other news it's Thanksgiving Day and my father has the kitchen smelling like something between Heaven and higher Heaven. Did I ever mention that I love food?
Also, if you want to know what's on my mind, here's a story I can't stop thinking about: I was listening to the traffic the other day when they reported that the West Side Highway had been closed for four hours due to a horrendous accident. Apparently, a 31 year-old man was driving a car very fast on the southbound side and hit an SUV. The SUV hit the barrier and bursted into flames. The car went a little farther and then crashed and flipped over. The driver was taken to the hospital and arrested on DWI charges. The man who had been in the passenger seat, 44 years-old, was also rushed to the hospital. The woman who had been in the backseat, the 44 year-old's 41 year-old wife, was killed. And the SUV driver was taken to the hospital as well. Don't you always wonder how things ended up happening? Were they all drunk? Did they not care that their driver was drunk? Was he drunk but didn't want to tell them because it was only 4pm? Did the woman who ended up being killed protest against letting the driver drive because of his inebriated state? Or even worse, did she want to protest but didn't want to feel like the stick in the mud? Did she have any kids? Can't I just let it go and move on?

Title Goes Here

I ordered green tea with steamed milk today and it tasted like eggs. I don't know why. On another note, I'm going through a midlife crisis right now. Say what you will about me not being "mid-life" but I have about 20 childbearing years left and I'm twenty-something so that's a midlife mark right there. Apparently, my frantic midlife crisis phone call to Zahava today threw her into a midlife crisis too, so now we're both just stuck somewhere...midlife...without a stable friend. I need my sleep because my haircut appointment isn't for another week.

THEY ARE SO DISGUSTING

Tonight I found the real me. And I should warn you that the real me isn't pretty. The real me involves pants tucked into high socks and sweatshirts tied tightly around my neck. Lest you think this behavior is all for naught, allow me to explain.
There is no concept in this world that scares me more than the idea that bugs can crawl into my crevices at night. As an open-mouth sleeper, I've developed techniques like holding my arm across my mouth or forming a blanket tent over my nose and mouth to prevent such disasters from taking place. In the summertime, when all sorts of creatures of the outdoors (note: I live in the country) come inside for the air conditioning, I sleep bundled up.
There is also nothing more concretely scary to me than pincher bugs, aka earwigs. Earwigs, in case you don't know, are long, flat black bug with pinchers instead of tails. They scare me not only because they have sharp pinchers but because they like hiding in tiny, hidden places. I once got onto my bike and pulled the brake only to watch three pincher bugs crawl out from inside the brake. Another time, I flipped open the garage door code cover and a pincher bug crawled out from the joint thing. You never know just where they'll show up next.
And tonight, I was minding my own business like there was nothing wrong in the world while cleaning up my room. One step in my organizing method is to make separate piles of clothing on my bed. The next step is to put those piles onto the shelves in my closet. After having made the piles, however, I felt that I needed a break and came downstairs despite the clothes on my bed. When I went back up, I turned my music on very low and started transferring my tee-shirt pile into my closet. I noticed a black mark on one of my shirts and at first thought it was just the label showing through since the shirt is fairly sheer. A closer look couldn't hurt anyway, so I looked closer. What I found was this:
On my shirt. On my bed. Right near my pillow.
Lest you think the little bugger is cute, I am going to inform you that this tale is not yet through. You see, I used to be afraid of pincher bugs for their pinchers and sneakiness. Now I'm afraid of them because they are also--get this--spawns of the Devil.
Frantically looking around my room, I came to realize that I didn't have a single tissue anywhere (and I hate killing bugs with tissues because I once did and the one I killed crunched in my fingers and I felt it crunching). Desperate times call for desperate measures and I pulled a shirt I had just thrown into the garbage an hour earlier out of the garbage to use to squash the pincher bug. The pincher bug merely crawled away and under my shirt.
I threw my shirt across my bed and no bug fell out. I threw the next shirt in the pile across my bed and no bug fell out either. My sense was slowly setting back in and it occurred to me that perhaps I should be throwing my shirts away from my bed. The next one I threw onto the floor and, lo and behold, the bug went with it.
With the fetched-out-of-the-garbage shirt placed on top of the bug, I started squishing it with a water bottle. If I were the size of that bug and had a water bottle squished onto me, I would have died. But that's because I'm not a spawn of the devil. Next, I tried pounding it with my blowdrier. A full 60 seconds of pounding later, it was still, if not slowly, crawling around. Eventually, I got it to die.
So now here I am, after having cleared my whole bed, in pants tucked into socks and a sweatshirt tied tight up to my neck. I shook out my blankets and pillows and moved my bed from against the wall. I am minutes away from sleeping in the guest room and seconds away from sleeping with my sweatshirt on backwards so as to cover my face with the hood. Clearly, insanity isn't attractive and I'm afraid I won't ever fall asleep tonight.

A Baby?

Last night, while babysitting my cousin's kids, I thought I heard a light pitter-patter upstairs. Warned that I might need to help one of the kids if she wakes up to use the bathroom, I went up to see if that was the case. It wasn't. But on my way back to the kitchen (where I was studying for a test), I passed the baby and stood watching him sleep for a couple of minutes.
When I got back to my books, I noticed that I had a missed text message from a friend. It read: "stop watching the baby sleep, it's just creepy!" Anyway, I thought that was pretty funny.
Aaaaaaaanyway, I'm looking forward to the short week ahead. Yay!

QOTD: Timeless Movie Edition

On the Immortality of Disney Tunes
"People who lose their entire memories in car wrecks wake up from their comas humming "A Whole New World.""
-Michael

Now Start Looking!

While bored in class the other day, I realized* that if I marry someone whose last name begins with an "O," my initials will be DO, or do. Because that is just plain ol' awesome, I beseech everyone to find me men whose last names begin with O so that I can systematically date them and choose the best. Thank you.

*The way I realized was by writing out my initials with every letter in the Alphabet and seeing which looks best. DMV is also pretty cool, but it has horrible connotations. DMX is awesome but the Jewish X is too difficult to find. dmb looks cute, as does dmq. If I drop my first name, I can be mw which doesn't look half as awesome in this font as it does in my handwriting, but the only person who calls me by my middle name is Michael, so I couldn't marry someone else and then just use my middle name. Well, that's all.

Newsflash!

And in other news, Starbucks add palm trees to their hot drinks.

No, We Do Not.

I needed to purchase a book for one of my classes this past weekend. I knew that the bookstore across from Hunter ordered it, but I was staying at my cousin and would have preferred not to have to go crosstown. After calling a couple of bookstores in the area, I called Chip's Bookstore.
"Hello?"
"Hi. Is this Chip's Bookstore?"
"Yes."
"I was wondering if you have a couple of books I've been looking for--"
"No, we do not."
"Oh, okay. Thanks."
"Good-bye."
It was just that amazing.

Growing Up is All About the Things You Learn

Let's review the lessons I've learned these past two weeks.
If you lose your cellphone on a Jewish bus, someone's bound to take it and make sure it gets back to you within three degrees of people.
If you see a price tag that says $1069 on a dress that doesn't seem all that special, you might drop your phone.
If you dropped your phone and the part that holds the antenna in cracks, it's bound to break off later that week and leave your phone antenna-less.
If you use Caps Lock too often in your IMs, it's only a matter of time until you start shouting at people in real-life. For example, you might be standing in a circle with your cousin and two guys and upon hearing that one guy is looking for a job in something having to do with markets, finance, you might shout, "I TRADE!"
If you try multi-tasking, your skirt will inevitably get wet. This applies to any sort of multi-tasking whether it's transferring water from a water bottle to another water bottle while sitting in traffic/driving slowly or trying to put a dripping wet umbrella down on the passenger's seat floor while holding ice cream and your keys and wallet. Like I said, any multi-tasking situation.
Etc.

Where's Andre?

This is my 800th post, but 114 of them are unpublished so this really only 686.
I drove 420 miles this week and I didn't go out of my way or anywhere special. Just thought I'd share the number because I don't think people quite understand what I mean when I tell them that I "drive forever every week" and that it makes me tired. My car averages 22 mpg between both highway and traffic. Sometimes on the highway it gets up to 31 mpg, but I do a lot of city driving too so it evens out. This also makes a lot of sense because when I fill my tank it usually takes about 14 or so gallons and I never wait for it to fully empty. Someone recently told me that I'm obsessed with numbers and I was surprised because I didn't know it was noticable. Then he was surprised because he meant it as a joke and I realized that it isn't noticable. Carry on.

Sundays Bore Me

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon helping my seventh grade brother with his homework. The assignment was to write over perakim aleph and bet of Shmuel Alef as if it were a newspaper article. At first we wrote it like a news item, but after calling a friend and finding out that we needed to include everything that happens, we rewrote it as a feature article. And I will be very honest, I'M VERY PROUD OF MY BROTHER. After we were done, I printed it and gave it to him with a pen so that he could edit it and his edits were mamash adorable.
Once, after spotting his name in a story I wrote on here, my brother let me know that I should write more about him because "your audience loves me." So, here is the article I helped my brother put together. And by "helped" and "put together" I really mean those in the loosest sense. It was really 98% him.

The Shiloh Times

Hashem Answers Barren Woman’s Teffilah

By Josh P.

SHILOH – Only a few years after being accused of coming into the Mishkan drunk, Chana, the wife of Elkana the Navi, is sending off her first son. The boy’s name is Shmuel and the intention is for him to have a life dedicated to Hashem.

Chana had entered the Mishkan to daven for a child. She was so upset by Penina’s (her co-wife) mocking, that she poured out her heart to Hashem. Eli haKohen, the manager of the Mishkan, saw her behavior and accused her of being drunk. In reply she said, “no, my master. I am a woman of heavy-spirit and I have not drunk wine; I poured out my soul before Hashem.”

Eli, greatly taken aback, gave her a bracha that Hashem should listen to her teffilah. (Some miforshim say this was a prophecy.)

After Chana released Shmuel, she wrote a song about Hashem’s power. In the song, she writes lines such as, “there is nobody as holy as Hashem and there is nobody like You,” and “Hashem brings death and brings life, lowers to the grave and raises up. Hashem could make the poor rich and the rich poor and so too, Hashem can make the barren give birth to seven.”

So you might ask, where is Chana now? She is on her way to Shiloh for her yearly visit to Shmuel bringing along a new coat for him and her two other sons and two daughters. But wait—why does she say that Hashem gives seven children to the barren if she only has five? There are four possibilities. One is that every time Chana had a child, two of Penina’s were niftar. By the time she had only two left, Penina begged Chana to daven that her children should stop dying. Chana davened and it stopped. Therefore, the last two children are considered part of her family. Another reason might be that she lived to see two of her grandchildren. One might also say that the seven is referring to Shmuel alone because the gematria of his name is the same as the gematria of sheva. And lastly, one meforesh says that seven is just the generic term for many.

He insisted on putting that last part in, something about maybe getting extra credit for it or something...

It's Much Too Late to Save Myself from Falling

Last night, someone threatened me into going to a couple of parties I was invited to with an article about singles' events that she cut out of a magazine. I can also say that I'm pretty sure my night can be summed up and properly explained by these next few sentences.
(Zahava and I were driving back home, singing terribly loudly to Elton John.)
"Did he just say 'frozen hair on the ladder of my life'???"
"Yeah."
"What?! OH! Here. H-e-r-e."
Yes, that was amazing.
Also, this means that Zahava is plain ol' awesome because the drive home Thursday night (for which she accompanied me) was amazing, too. I'd tell it over, but I've been told that it's not funny unless you were there. But I still want to tell it over, so I'll just tell you a little part.
I have this new habit of shouting randomly when I really don't mean to act so excited and the habit's starting to become very embarrassing for me. I don't know when it developed, but Thursday night, after a long debate over a song, Z started singing it to me. My justification for my argument immediately became apparent and I shouted, "THAT'S BECAUSE HE'S THE--" and I didn't have to shout further because Zahava jumped so high that I started laughing and she was laughing so hard from it herself that I just kept laughing more. The only problem was that when I laugh very hard, I cry. And when I cry, I close my eyes. Luckily, I was turning into the gas station, so I kept driving five miles an hour, stopping when I had my eyes closed, driving five miles an hour again, stopping again, etc. until I was able to successfully park. All the while I was laughing hysterically and Zahava was looking like she was having a seizure because she was laughing so hard. The gas station attendants were cracking up at us and we realized after we drove away that they probably thought we were high...which I blame on Zahava's hat.

QOTD: Edited Edition

I don't often copy and paste conversations onto the blog, but Sara thought part of this should be qotd, I can't turn down a request and just a part didn't work without the rest. So, without further ado:

Sara:self richeous bastards

Me: and self-righteous, too!

Sara: haha

Sara: i wish they had mavis beacon teaches spelling

Me: ahahhahahaha

Sara: i would really benifit from that program

Me: BENEFIT!

Me: you're amazing

Also, I would like to mention that I was recently speaking to a friend about my habit of being a mean editor and was told (more or less) that being a mean editor is not cool. However, I must point out that just today, someone who was in my workshop group last week came into class, sat next to me, and then let me know that he really appreciated the editing/critiquing I did for his piece. And the mean parts? Everything I wrote was what he needed to hear. Thank you, I'll be here all week.

I Need a Personal Assistant

I have a lot of work to do, so I will tell you all the things I would have my personal assistant/slave do for me. I'd have her do my laundry complete with folding and putting my clothes back where they belong in my closet. I wouldn't make her get me coffee because I happen to like taking breaks from work to walk to Starbucks, but I would have her put my stuff away after I'm done. For example, she could put the hair things I use away after I'm done because as far as I can tell, I use them at night and in the morning, so why should I put them away? But if I had a personal assistant, it would be her job to do things for me, so why not keep my bedroom floor clean? Let's see...she could be my fashion consultant so that I wouldn't have to try on and go through an average of four outfits a morning. She would be in charge of my gym bag which means that she'd have to make sure it always has my sneakers and fresh workout clothes so that I wouldn't have to start looking around for all the things I need at the last minute when I'm rushing out of my house. She'd keep a calendar of all my events and papers and remind me approximately every ten minutes about what I have coming up for that week so that I could remember. Of course, my mother already does that, but I wouldn't mind when the assistant would because it would be her job. She could also drive me to work and school so that I could take that time to do my studying. And for days when I just want to drive alone because I need to think, she'll have a scooter. It wouldn't be all bad either, because I'd give her off while I'm at work. She'd have to be there while I'm in class, though, because sometimes I need someone to keep me busy or awake. I can't think of anything else right off the top of my head, so I'll have to put more thought into this before I write up a job description.

QOTD: School Edition

Dreamboat, Zahava, It's Dreamboat
"I totally saw your Professor Steamboat."
-Zahava

Schoolyard Politics Take on The World
"This kid is a bully to the 7th and 6th grade and picked me as his prime target."
-Josh