Pure Evil.

Dear Haagen-Dazs,

Just stop it with the insane deliciousness. You are pure evil my friend, reeling me in with only five ingredients (all of which I recognize), making me feel good about not consuming weird, factory-made ingredients I can't pronounce. But your 3 servings per pint, with 22 grams of sugar per serving is what has me hooked. And my body does not thank you.

The end.

Of my waistline.

xx

About Nothing In Particular

Currently I am holing myself up in The Igloo (aka my new apartment, which is an English basement and retains cold very well). This whole week I'm going to be very busy working every day from about 11am till 8pm with two different jobs. This somehow equals me not getting anything else done. Don't ask me to explain how it works, that's just how it goes. If I don't start off my day hyped up on caffeine, plan in hand, then I putz around in the morning, then fall into work for the day, running late for everything, ending up frazzled and feeling unaccomplished. It really is a vicious cycle that I don't have a plan to end anytime soon.

So today, I'm in my room with the heat turned on (oh the luxury! who knows how expensive this heat will end up costing me...if anyone has some good tips to heating a basement apartment without running the window heater all the time, feel free to pass on the information) and I'm planning to sit and read through all my blogs I follow. I haven't done it in ages and I feel I'm out of the loop in my blogsphere. It almost makes me miss being a receptionist, where I was on the computer all day and had the time to keep up with some of my more frequent posting blog friends. I've actually thought about trying to get a third job as an apartment concierge at night just so I can catch up on blog and book reading.

Don't think I'm joking.....

Some semi-exciting things I haven't blogged about:

-Friday night I worked at the National Cathedral, which was a.maz.ing. Seriously, if you live in D.C. or are visiting and you haven't been here yet, get yourself out there. Especially if you love architecture, like I do (in a I-Know-Nothing-About-It-But-It-Looks-So-Cool kinda way), then you will enjoy getting lost around this place. Well, I don't think normal tourists can go running amok like I was able to, so you may now commence being jealous. And not too many people can go running around here at night. I had visions of Gothic tales running through my head as I lost myself in dark, winding staircases that lead to the balconies and other such destinations I did not pursue.

-Friday night after work I met some friends out in the U St area at Cafe Saint-Ex, located on 14th st nw and T st nw. I really liked this bar a lot. Upstairs looked reasonably classy (as in, not a dive or an "Ohmygod, what did I just step in?!" kind of joint) and a great place to talk and drink. Then you head downstairs to a tiny room for dancing! The room is really not that big which means that you're not really busting out all your sexy dance moves. Instead you just kind of shift your weight back and forth on your feet to the beat. Which I kind of liked. I think it helped that it felt the Arctic outside and therefore the sweaty dance floor wasn't really sweaty, more like cozy warm with fantastic music.

-After St-Ex off we gallivanted to Grand Central in Adam's Morgan ("amorg" is how the locals call it apparently), which was fun and we met some great people (outside of a few creepy, 40-year old men grinding up behind us on the dance floor repetitively....hello relocation-on-the-dance-floor...it's my favorite dance move.)

-Around 2 a.m. we were required, by Amorg law, to go consume a jumbo slice (of pizza). It was delicious. From what I remember.

-Saturday was a trip to Ikea for a round of disappointment. We always expect so much and then find so little. Afterwards, I had my first experience with Dungeons and Dragons. I'll definitely have to post more about this later. I think I'm going to like it though. And don't be all shocked. It's a role-playing game and as an actress, that's what I do. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Okay this is turning into an excessively long post about nothing in particular (exactly as I intended for this blog). Just a wad of randomness for your viewing pleasure. You are welcome.

And now, here's a random photo of the books I should be reading, with a few plays slipped in there as well.

(From Left to Right: The English American by Alison Larkin (finished reading it in a day and it was awesome. I'm pretty sure there were direct quotes in that book that I've said or thought before when it comes to acting and creativity), Constance by Patricia Clapp (a kids book that my BFF really loved and lent to me to read. I love it when people do that. I want to read something that's meant a lot to people that mean a lot to me), The Christmas Books by Charles Dickens, 101 Wines by Gary Vaynerchuk (Christmas gift from my brother, yeah wine!), the plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, Closer by Patrick Marber (already read a few years ago, but it's a favorite and now I own it!), The Three Sisters by Anton Checkhov, and The Women by Clare Boothe Luce (the one made into a movie. Never knew it was a play until my little sis clued me in, so of course I have to see if it's any good!). Then there's The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone (I like the idea of doing vegetarian and vegan foods some of the time but not full time and her book split it up very nicely in neat little categories. Don't judge me.), Dear Fatty by Dawn French (thanks to my Welsh friend, Louise, for sending this to me because I can't get it here and I luuuuvre Dawn French!), and finally, Sing to Me, Saigon by Kathryn Jensen (another lent one from the same BFF).

These are just some of the books I've been beating myself up over not reading yet. I still have about 200 hundred more, located elsewhere in this very room, that I need to read this year. Oh dear. I feel a new resolution coming on!!

xx

Dear Coffee, I love you.

Had my first cup of coffee in what feels like forever but is more like only a few days, maybe a week, and I am feeling goooood. Caffeine is definitely my drug of choice. I really should just go out and buy a coffee maker, but I am far too lazy and I love going into Cowgirl Creamery and sitting in the window seat with a cup of their coffee...which is just like crack. Seriously.

I haven't had much motivation to do anything productive in the new year, which may have something to do with the fact that I spent up my allotment of motivation on moving from one apartment to another on New Year's Eve. That was enough change for me, I didn't need to start any new resolutions on New Year's day. Right now I'm waiting till I recover from the move before I jump into my brand new, shiny habits, that I look forward to breaking in 2 months, per tradition. Yeah for New Year's resolutions!

Now that all my crap is moved I'll need all the coffee my stomach can bear to get pumped about unpacking and getting organized. You'd be surprised at what I get done when I have a To-Do list to avoid. I've spent hours watching crap tv (just got cable for the first time in MONTHS, oh dear god. good bye social life.), watching random short videos online (hello internet!), googling all the celebrity gossip I've missed out on by not having cable (good bye brain. it was nice having you for awhile.), and trying to dig up all the information on old high school friends who have made recent trips to the slammer.

Someone save me from myself, like, now.

All these lovely avoidance tactics have also helped me run from the fact that I need to find a third job. Ah yes. The joys of paying a rent I can't really afford. I'm too stubborn to get a real nine-to-five job, I love my two part-time jobs way too much. They are just too much fun to give up. When else in life am I going to say that someone pays me to play with puppies and theatre geeks? Never. While I'm in D.C. I am sticking with the dog-walking and theatre house management. Now I just need one more job to add like 15-20 hours onto my week, because as you may have noticed from the paragraph above, I have too much time on my hands. And too much time somehow equates to getting nothing done. I'm not sure how it works out like that, but it does. The busier I am means the more I get focused and in charge of getting shit done.

So as of right now, I'm signed up to help out at a bookstore of one of the big time university's in the D.C. area. It will hopefully work out quite perfectly because I'm only needed till the semester starts around January 19th. That will give me time to find some other third job to take on, when this assignment is done, that will be fun and flexible with the hours I keep at my other two jobs.

Also a goal: figuring out how to get involved in something creative before I go insane. It's been far too long since I've actually performed in any theatre or written anything (at least since my abysmal attempt at National Novel Writing Month in November). My natural reaction to not doing anything creative/dramatic is to create drama in my daily life. It's not something I purposely do, but just a reflex that occurs when I don't have a way of channeling my dramatic tendencies.

What can I say? I'm a Leo through and through.

xxLindsay

P.S. Just watched "(500) Days of Summer". Heartbreakingly awesome. I love the format in which they chose to tell the story. Go rent it, right now.