It's the Final Countdown

In less than 14 days, I'll be in Seoul.

That's absolutely terrifying, you guys.

I picked up my visa on Thursday from the consulate, after having already trekked down there earlier

that week, waking up at 6AM and rushing to catch the earliest train possible, expecting I could get it back in the same day like every website on the internet was telling me they could do. What I didn't expect was the paper sign hanging on the door that said "just kidding, come back Thursday now."

Full of Fall

As of today, I am no longer a barista.

It's the home stretch for me. I'm supposed to be in Seoul on November 9th - that's so close! I've been running around in a tizzy trying to figure out how to make everything work out in time.

Fall is my favorite season. Hands down. There's something about the not-too-hot, not-too-cold weather that I love. I love sweaters and boots and scarves and I'm such a sucker for everything seasonal. I could mainline apple cider at this point and be a happy camper. So imagine my anxiety when I realized there are no pumpkins in Korea.

No pumpkins? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get through autumn without my continual imbibing of pumpkin spice lattes, devouring of pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin anything I can get my hands on? 

Going Forth Unto the Fourth

Happy Fourth of July everyone! Remember, be kind to your baristas tomorrow, because none of us actually want to work and yet got stuck with 8 hour night shifts we have no interest in being present for.

Such is life.

So my actual holiday is really Friday, and then Monday, because I work 3-11 on the actual holiday and Saturday and Sunday. Which is a nightmare. But that's not going to stop me from enjoying myself. I'm starting a bit early, and currently brewing coffee in the kitchen to make some sweet ice coffee before spending the next couple hours trying to work on this rewrite. Yes, rewrite, because I finished the first round of editing and now have this massive list of things to change - real things, writery things that make me believe I can do this because I came up with them myself - and absolutely no idea how to start. I feel like the first animal to grow thumbs, looking at them and going "now what?"

I have a 15% off coupon for Barnes and Noble also, AND there's a summer sale going on, AND of course I'm a member - so I'll likely be stopping by there either tomorrow or Friday after my interview to pick up at least Neil Gaiman's new book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which I'm super excited to read! I hear amazing things about it, and I'm so happy that this year has been filled with amazing books for me, with Graceling and The Handmaid's Tale topping the list so far. But it's only July and the list of books I've been meaning to get (still waiting for ANY kind of a price drop on Bringing Up the Bodies) keeps on growing.

This humidity is getting to me, the cafe I write in doesn't have air conditioning. Which normally isn't an issue, except the loft area was closed today so I ended up sitting down on the first floor in the sun and dying of heat. I wish it would just either rain all the time or be not so humid. One or the other.

The woefully wilting writer.

Other things I'm excited for - I've recently discovered a whole host of DIY blogs and with the pile of old oversized tshirts I have, I'm totally going to stop at Michael's when I go to Barnes and Noble and pick up some stuff to rework them. Hopefully I can get some nice stuff out of it, though I've always been nervous about cutting up my clothes.

Also, sometimes next week I'm getting a new blog theme! Stay tuned!

I hope you guys all have yummy barbecue things and read good books and sleep a lot this holiday. You deserve it.

New York - Or, the Best Milkshake I Ever Had

I live for my days off at this point. They are far and few between, and generally never when I actually need them to be - I rarely get to see my friends and often just sit and watch the photos and statuses pile up on Facebook of all the things I wish I was doing. But this past week, I had enough. I got fed up from work and stormed into the back room for a moment, just long enough to send out a single text message.

"Let's go on a date this Friday."

It was a little more ballsy than I normally get, but a few minutes later my phone buzzed again.

"When and where and how?"

And so that Friday, Dan and I met in the middle. We spent the day in NYC.

Making the Most of Summer

My favorite season is some kind of weird amalgamation of autumn and spring. I love the cooler part of spring and the warmer part of autumn. I love sweater weather and leggings and not necessarily having to wear that coat to be able to step outside the door. I love apple cider, I love pale flowers among new green leaves. Pumpkin picking, puddle jumping, I love so many things about those two seasons...except that somewhere in the middle I have to deal with summer.

Taking a Necessary Break - a Review

I've reached a point in my editing where I'm almost done with a first pass-through, and really I just want to get writing again.

I think that's really exciting for me, because it's been so rare the past few years where I've actively wanted to write, and not just felt like I should because I hadn't in a while. I have ideas I'm excited to get down on the page and it's killing me that I made this dumb rule. I'm actually thinking about discarding the dumb rule - I'm editing stuff at this point that is going to change completely once I start fixing the things in the beginning.

But I've gotten so much done with it that I decided to take a day off. I was planning on going to to edit yesterday night, but a Facebook message completely derailed any plans that I had. I ended up heading out with a college friend to a trivia night at a local brewery - a brewery I didn't even know existed until a few months ago, and had never been to.

Newburgh Brewing Company is definitely one of the coolest places in my relatively inconsequential area. I wish all my friends lived closer so we could go there on a regular basis...the great big taproom has a dozen heavy wooden tables, ping-pong, Donkey Kong, and a stack of board games in the corner that would be perfect for pulling out and nursing a beer over. I don't even like beer that much - any other time I've been given it it's been a lot of sipping and making funny faces like a dog licking a lime. But I ended up drinking an entire glass of their riverBREW Crown Maple Irish Red, sampling the Chile Lime Stout (which burned like chili chocolate and is one of the weirdest/coolest things I've ever consumed) and tried a sip of my friends Brown Ale. Honestly I wish I had had more cash on me, because the Brown Ale was delicious and I should have at least bought a growler of it. I'm disappointed I didn't. I might go back soon and get one anyway. I've never been this into beer before.

Maybe Friendship IS Magic

Hey guys, I'm back again.

I had all these awesome plans for posts to write these past couple weeks. Unfortunately, I had basically the equivalent of an entire Degrassi season's drama dumped in my lap out of nowhere and things got a little tough. (Lots of lying around in bed and listlessly watching anime instead of doing...like...anything else.)

But I'm here now, and that's what matters. Or rather, that's not what matters, what matters it that this is probably what'll stand as my Valentine's Day 2013 post - belated, which is funny, because I celebrated Valentine's Day early to begin with. So this post is twice as late than it would be if I ever actually did anything ON TIME.

How I Spent My Weekend Vacation (A Slightly Irrelevant Food Story)

Clearly, you can see that I took all these pictures from the last entry with the intent of posting them sooner than four days later. So what happened?

Japan happened, you guys. Japan happened.

I went to Purchase for the weekend again, and in between a bottle of chocolate wine and my very first trip to the gym (which I remember fondly every time I try to lift my arms over my head) I took a trip with the apartment dwellers to a Japanese shopping center somewhere in New Jersey. (I don't know where because no one listens to me and we always get lost.) (You know who you are.)

"Oh, Sam," you might be saying to yourself, "I didn't come here to listen to you talk about anime."

Well, good, because I haven't decided if I'm doing that yet. No, my friends. Today I would like to talk to you about our lord and savior, omurice (オムライス).

But first, a foreword.