In a momentary lapse in judgment, I signed up for twitter. @rachnotrebecca (is that even proper format?). Much to my own disgust, I actually already have a twitter account in my real name, that I am using in half-hearted attempts to capitalize on the social media aspect of job hunting. Which means that I follow Cato and remember to sign in every couple of weeks.

I don’t even have a cell phone that is capable of being twitter-compatible, but maybe this will be one more factor in the “stop being lazy and upgrade your phone.” I don’t think I read enough blogs (and I definitely don’t have enough readers) to make twitter useful but maybe it will give me something to do.

Because guys? It’s going to be a really long summer. And I am nowhere near where I want to be, and there is nothing I can do about it. Because all the things I’m doing (scouring job boards, obsessively tweaking my resume, and my most hated task of all, writing cover letters) is stressing me out and making me  miserable. Brent told me he thinks my job search is stressing me out more than my actual job, and he’s right.

And after a few weeks of being good, I’m back to eating too much ice cream and not going to the gym, and really, I feel like a slug. I’m sick of obsessively reloading my email and not even getting a response from networking emails. I need to focus on something else, even if it is socializing via the internet. Because for the summer, I’m stuck here all day.

Real post coming later today.

Duke won last night and I’m thrilled. Not only did I have them to win in my annual Arbitrary-Picks pool, they beat Butler, who I always root against because of my dislike of Judith Butler. (Note: the school has nothing to do with the feminist theorist, but that is why this is called Arbitrary-Picks.)

Normally, I love an underdog story, but since I was already rooting for Duke, I found it amusing to watch the barrage of Facebook statuses about how Duke is evil, and Butler must win for the good of humanity. Apparently, hating Duke is like hating the Yankees. How educational!

It’s unseasonably warm here, which bodes unwell (for me) for summer. Last year, it rained for most of May and June and I think even into July. Sure it started to make me a little cranky, but I’ll take that over heat which makes me A LOT cranky. I suppose the positive to not being able to find a job in DC is that there’s no chance of me winding up down there for this summer. Looks like I won’t have to be taking the Metro in the sweltering heat. For all my love of city living and the ability to take public transportation everywhere, I must admit that it is nice to go from air conditioned office to car to air conditioned home. In New York it was always air conditioned office to sweltering subway station to 10 minutes walk to the apartment to unairconditioned 3rd floor room.

Bright side to everything, right? Plus there is no way I could commute in these 3 inch platform sandals. There’s walking and then there’s those really long ass escalators at certain DC stops, such as the one at Foggy Bottom (I think?), which is downright terrifying.

But I’m not moving to DC this summer. That is ok. This summer will be post-office move at work, and it should be nice, and maybe they’ll even let me work from home a few days (although with the traffic around here dies once the kids are out of school. So it’s not a hardship to commute.) Do you know what would really make my summer? Bon Jovi at Giant Stadium tickets. Anyone want to get them for me?

Win: discovering the size that you HAD to start buying a couple years ago, because nothing smaller fit, is now definitely too big
Fail: a complete inability to put on eye-liner correctly
Tie: I actually considered buying one of those fake nail kit thingies, but quickly remembered all my messy experiences with nail glue when I was younger. (My nails are too ragged and messed up to even get acrylics put on. I did this once for job interviews immediately post college and it was a mess.)

Win: Finding a power cord for my computer on line for 1/4 of the price of the official Apple Store
Fail: The fact that I manage to mutilate my power cords in the first place

Win: Getting rid of one more box of mementos/junk.
Fail: Most of it was stuff related to The Ex, stuff that I should no longer have in the first place.

Win: Michael says that if he is still in DC when (if) I move there next year, we can get an apartment together
Fail: The chances of this happening, even if we are both in the same city, are about 1 million to one.

Win: I managed to forget about work all weekend and not even check my email

Fail: I just checked my email and I have to make a travel arrangements change. I hate doing travel arrangements more than anything.

Win: I am 29 for 29 in NaBloPoMo. One more day to go
Fail: I have written nothing of substance.

Win: I managed to finish this blog entry.
Fail: It took probably 3 hours of having the window opened, and procrastinating via other things.

I’m gonna start moonlighting as a copy machine repair person

And unlike seemingly everyone else on the planet, I don’t have this Monday off. WHINE.

I did have a fairly good Saturday though, which I will write about in greater detail when I am cranky and dismayed at work tomorrow. I cleaned my room and have three giant garbage bags awaiting disposal. I also got rid of two bags of clothes. I did not, however, do my second load of laundry. I also stayed up late watching Arrested Development DVDs and Raise Your Voice (starring Hillary Duff. Shut. Up)

This is what suburban Jersey will do to a person.

For all my love of Russian history, Carl Schmitt, and obscure European wars, I do like my brain candy. I watch Degrassi – The Next Generation marathons. (I blame Jill-IAN on this one) I like People mazgazine. I’ve seen the movie Chasing Liberty about 1,000 times.

I didn’t think things like this were problematic until I dated HWSNBN near the end of college. He was fairly well read, a news junkie, and looked down on my more ‘shallow’ habits. I felt I had to hide them, and perhaps that is where the obsession with being well -read/ educated/”sophisticated” came from. I encountered it again, earlier this year, when I was spending time with this guy who was extremely well-read, and he was just too…much.

So while I’m in the process of getting back into reading, I am also vowing to broaden my horizons on the music/movie front. Maybe, just maybe one day I’ll wind up well-rounded

On Sunday, I went to a Mets game and got a sunburn. Yeah, I was dumb for not putting on sunscreen, but it didn’t really hurt, and whatever. But Monday morning everyone I saw had to comment on it. “Looks like you forgot to put on sunscreen, heh heh.”/”Oh, someone got burned!”/”Ouch that must hurt” Etc, etc, etc, all day long. Luckily, I was in a very calm mood so this didn’t bother me at all, but it reminded me of the now infamous umbrella rant.

Two songs stuck in my head for almost a week now:

Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own: U2
-a shame I never really listened to the song years ago when the phrase “I don’t need to hear you say, if we weren’t so alike, you’d like me a whole lot more.” would have been scary-relevant

and
I Wonder Why: Curtis Stigers
I have not heard this song in years, but it was around this time four years ago that I was listening to it a lot. Hooray for deja vu!

Considering I don’t care about football in the lease, I am way too happy that the Giants won the super bowl.

1)       They are technically the NEW JERSEY Giants. They play in New Jersey

2)       They beat Boston. I HATE  all things Boston

3)       They were the underdogs. I am a sucker for the underdog, because I am such a girl.

Yesterday was a kind of stressful day at work, but it was all okay because there was a new House and a new Law & Order SVU.

Shameless shot of Elliot Stabler shirtless = my night is automatically better

A co-worker mentioned once about barely noticing celebrity sighting. I confess, I’ve probably seen, but not spotted, a lot of celebrities, because I am a) pop-culture deprived b) tend to walk with tunnel vision c) am uncertain and generally bad at recognizing people in the first place.

Of course there was the time I ran into Jon Stewart

Apparently, Jill-IAN and I saw George Clooney last spring, as onlookers around us insisted, but we were indifferent and never clarified. I also saw Michelle Williams (the Dawson’s Creek one, not the Destiny Child’s one) but my list is paltry in comparison to most people I know. But honestly, there are very few people I’d actually recognize. Maybe I need to find the next neighbor the L&O franchise films in and try to track down the smokin’ Christopher Meloni

The point of this entry was that I’m eating my lunch at Starbucks, oblivious to my surroundings and in the past hour, apparently Chris Rock has come in (as all the baristas bitched about him not leaving a tip) and so has some Desperate Housewives lady, but I cannot confirm nor deny either as I probably wouldn’t recognize either and my back was turned anyway.

The point is, being pop-culture deprived can also be awesome; for example in my unemployment and boredom, I could pick up any recent TV show (say, Grey’s Anatomy, because I’m heard its good), watch it on DVD from Episode One on, and be completely surprised by the story line, because the only thing I know about Grey’s Anatomy is there is a hot guy on it who is referred to as McDreamy? Or McSteamy? Or maybe that’s just a joke of People magazine?  Whatever it is, you can believe I”m continuing my to do nothing of intellectual merit.

Michael: I’m in Penn Station and I’m going to catch a train up to Boston, want to come with me?
Me: NO! I hate Boston!
Michael: But if you were meeting me it wouldn’t suck
Me: I can’t anyway, I have my libertarian gathering.
Michael: Hmmm… interesting Anyway, I’m going to buy you a present in Boston, since I know you love it so much
Me: You’re only buying me something to spite me you obnoixous prick.
Michael: It’s out of love, babe, LOVE FOR BOSTON.

I am in good spirits, but caffeine always does seem to imbue me with optimism.

I’m still cat-sitting for Chris & Zena, and their apartment has air conditioning and a DVD collection that is just my type. So I’m wasting time here till I have to go over to Em’s and take care of her cat. And so I just watched Saved! and cried my eyes out. This would be acceptable if it were late night and I were drunk, but instead its like 10 in the morning and I am hanging out at my friends apartment and cannot keep myself from bawling over a stupid movie.

Em’s cat is overly affectionate and the cat here is excessively bitchy. I had my brother with me on Wednesday, and the cat was horrid to him. So I might take a nap here and then travel over to Emily’s place. But Chris and Zena are the best people ever for allowing me the most perfect Saturday morning ever. I love hanging out with Xavier, we get along apparently.

Anyway, clearly I am way to L&O SVU obsessed

Other things. Chris and Emily are awesome people for talking me through the academic drama last week. Because at the end of the day, this program is almost over. I’m going to be done and I’m one of the few graduating in June and I’m very happy with that. 

I still have tons to do for my two finals and no motivation. And it seems like further to go then it really is, I think. I’m less than 3 weeks away from being just another unemployed Masters Degree!

(During a commercial break)

Jill-IAN: …
Me: I KNOW!
Jill-IAN: That was like…
Me: I know! Why?!??!

Elliot Stabler is still incredibly hot. (Hello shameless camera shot.)  But the latest development in the storyline is completely unacceptable! It totally intrudes on all shipper-ness. I am 14 years old, clearly.

Well I slept later than I meant to, because I took Tylenol PM to get to sleep, then didn’t go to bed until one, and then I kept waking up from really short, realistic dreams. The kind of boring, realistic dream that tricks your mind into not knowing its asleep until you wake up. I am still kind of groggy and am gulping down some coffee before I go over to campus for work and getting mass amounts of readings done. (Well, that’s the plan. My level of productivity has dropped to zero since turning in my draft.)

So I’ve started looking for jobs, just tentatively since I can’t do much until I’m back in the New York area. You know that song from Avenue Q, “What can you do with a BA in English?” Well what can you do, with an MA in Social Science? Although I’m told a social science degree is infinitely more valuable than an English degree, which seems silly. My undergrad degree is in Government, not Political Science, and there IS actually a difference, but in most of the fields in my program, unless you’re doing heavy quantitative stuff, everything seems more like a humanity than social science, with the exception of maybe Psychology. 

Oh, and when did I forget how to write? it used to be I could write a paper by pulling quotes and stream of consciousness explain them, etc, and then go back and edit and make the writing fairly solid. I don’t think its a matter of Skidmore grade inflation — when i read stuff I wrote three years ago it still sounds better than what I’m producing now. I had both Brent and the younger-wiser-sibling look over parts of my thesis because I was just staring at, knowing it wasn’t good writing, but not knowing exactly what was wrong or exactly how to fix it. Brent’s diplomatic comment on the thesis as a whole was “Well. It certainly has potential.” I don’t know, I guess a year and a half out of school is enough to destroy your writing skills? Blah. I cleaned up the draft of the thesis the best I could and I’m trying really hard not to think about it until I get the comment back. Although I should probably be working on the “Schmitt was a total Hobbesian” section that I plan on adding. That and, making the younger-wiser-sibiling read the WHOLE thing and paying him in the form of cheap scotch. I am the best sister ever. 

I was thinking today about The Tempest. I don’t know why. I hated it when we had to read it freshman year of high school, because I hated my freshman English and the way he taught it. Loved it when we read it for Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom and now for some reason I’m in the mood to read it. Or if nothing else, find my notes and see what I thought of it three years ago. 

And on that completely unrelated note, I’m going to head over to campus