"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time."
 
Edith Wharton
American author

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Damn, it's been at least a month since I last blogged.  I took a break since I went home for Memorial Day weekend and never recovered.  So much I could've written, but here goes.

Sunday, May 18 - Saturday, May 24

The office was closed Friday, the 23rd and Monday,the 26th in observance of Memorial Day so I wanted to take advantage of the 4-day weekend to go home.  I haven't been home since the Winter holidays.  I took Thursday off as well so that I could fly out Wednesday night and have a little more time.  I was rushing a little bit at the end of the workday on Wednesday because I obviously didn't wanna miss my flight.  I went home and headed to Laguardia.

This time, I packed a lot lighter and have figured out ways to streamline my process when travelling, ha ha.  I also bought Dramamine which really alleviated my airsickness.  Whoo!  I remembered it from the YAWP! road trip to the Spoken Word summit in Minnesota.  I didn't know Dramamine existed or how it worked.  Unfortunately, I popped the tablet before realizing we were still scrambling around for a drink to wash it down.  My tongue numbed out.  Ha ha.

Anyway, I flew home safely without incident.  I got one of the planes with TVs and music when you plug your headsets into the armrests.  I got all excited but it wasn't all that cause the music and what they were showing on the TVs was wack.

That Wednesday was the finale of American Idol and I was like wtf.  This is finally the first season I get to watch regularly and I would be 10,000 ft in the air while the finale was airing.  Ha ha.  BTW, I don't think I'll ever get over flying.  It just blows my mind.  And flying out of NYC was at night was amazing, with all the lights.  The moon over the water was beautiful, too.  Anyway, I had my brother record AI for me, ha ha.  When I went home, it was pretty late and we watched it together.  Everyone was already sleeping and I didn't wanna wake up my parents to say hi.

The next morning, I realized I forgot my charger, like a dumbfuck.  It's just funny to me cause I'm always that person who's very prepared and reminds other people not to forget their chargers, ha ha.  Luckily, my bro had the charger I needed.  Whew.

I watched Indiana Jones with Pat at Crown Theatres at Village Crossing.  The movie was what I expected it to be.  All politics and memories of Anthropological lectures aside, it was entertaining, enough.  We went to Portillo's to stuff our faces and man, do I love me some fucking Portillo's.  Chi-city style all the way after being in NYC for 4.5 months.  We also went to Garcia's that day but had our experience ruined a little bit by particularly bad service that day.  We hit up Hype at DePaul that night to watch Allana perform.  Nonstop won, whoo!  I have to say, it did make me feel a little old with all those college students.  I even saw a couple of people from Northside and UIUC, which I was expecting anyway.

My parents were kinda upset since I hadn't seen them yet by Thursday.  I felt guilty but I'd already made plans to hang out (I really only had 4 days) and whenever I was home, they'd be sleeping and I didn't wanna wake them up.  By the time I woke up in the morning, they'd be gone already for work.

On Friday, I was supposed to meet Carolyn in the morning but something came up.  Pat, my bro, and his girlfriend, and I went to Pequod's for some delicious deep dish pizza for $5.  Hell yeah.  Afterwards, Julie picked me up from my crib and we went to Margie's Candies.  This was my first time being there and it was a cute little joint.  We just had some sundaes and caught up on our lives.  It's crazy that we don't get to talk as much as we used to.  I made it a point to get home around the time my parents would be home from work.  It felt good to see them after they got over making me feel bad, ha ha.  Allana came over and we just talked.  Then Cindy came over and Allana left and we chatted.  I think it was also that night that my brothers and I watched The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe because we had plans to watch Prince Caspian on Sunday.  It was overall a pretty chill day.

On Saturday, my mom cooked tapsilog.  Yuuuummmm.  Pat took me to get my haircut at the salon I always go to, Sanela B. on Peterson.  I never used to go to salons like that for haircuts but my bros got my mom a gift package there when it first opened and she took me with.  From there on, we kept going there because we like our hairdresser.  It's hard to find someone you trust and now I'm just so used to her that I'm a little skeptical to try someone else, ha ha.  But they recently renovated and there prices are even more expensive than before.  Plus, I'd always have to wait til I came back home to cut my hair, so at this point, I'm thinking I'm gonna have to find a new place.  Though I doubt I'll find a much more affordable place in NYC.  Blah.

Anyway, this time, aside from my usual trim (my hair had gotten pretty long) )my hairdresser gave me long side bangs.  I'd actually asked for these types of bangs the first time I went there and she told me it wouldn't since I have this cowlick.  So I was surprised she suggested it this time.  I'm pretty open with my hair, so I was like, ok.  After getting the bangs, I wasn't too sure if I liked them or not.   I didn't love them at first because they made me look even younger, which I don't need.  But I did like that I could put my hair up in a ponytail and there was still some kind of style to it.  It wasn't just boring and I'd never been able to do that before.  The last time I had bangs was as a child and those were not sexy, ha ha.  Anyway, I kinda like having the bangs too when I wear my fitted.  I think they've grown on me.  Whenever I try to pull my bangs back into the rest of my hair like I used to do, it weirds me out cause I'm not used to it anymore.  Ha ha.  At this point, the bangs have already grown out.  My hairdresser said that the next time I come in and I'm more used to the bangs, that she'll cut real ones (not the long ones I have right now).  But since I'm not even sure if I'm gonna go back to her anymore, who knows?

OK, really wasn't expecting to write that much about my haircut.  And moving on...

Afterwards, Pat and I went to visit Ahlonko.  He lives off LSD on the Southside.  Then Pat and I went to get some Harold's Chicken.  I mean damn, it's been a quick-ass minute for me.  Then Pat and I just chilled the rest of the day.

Sunday, May 25 - Saturday, May 31

I'd already made plans for Sunday to be family day.  Which my mom took advantage of by making us clean up during the day, ha ha.  We also went to grab some ice cream from Village Creamery.  Hell yeah.  Then we had dinner together.  It's weird though because my brother is still in Miami so this is really like the first time someone other than me wasn't at a family dinner thing.  Anyway, after dinner, us kids went to watch Prince Caspian at Century Theatres in Evanston.  It was very disappointing.

After being home that week, I realized that I'm not gonna make as many plans next time.  I was concerned about being able to see everyone in the short time that I was there.  You know how it is.  Friends will get upset if you're home after months and you don't even see them.  I wanted to see people I haven't seen in so long but I think it just made it more stressful than it needed to be because I had to plan everything to the tee.  And you're so concerned with seeing everyone that you don't necessarily get quality time with them  I don't know how but I'm gonna do it differently next time.

I flew back to NYC on Monday morning.  Of course I wasn't looking forward to going back to work but as always, I made it through the week.  Friday was finally a gorgeous day.  I did my laundry and met up with Natasha, a friend of Shara's who also did MAIP (in another city) and recently moved out here.  I'd met her once at the Spoken Word event I went to where Kelly performed but never really hung out or anything.  Natasha and I had been discussing possibly rooming together when my lease is up but wanted to meet and chill and discuss.  We hit up the Crocodile Lounge, which is this bar that gives you a free personal pizza with every drink you order.

I'd also recently been talking to Yen, a friend of Mawee's from Carleton.  She's moving up here soon and they have another friend, Erica, who's interested in rooming as well.  I completely trust Mawee's opinion and when I talked to Yen on the phone, she seemed like coo peeps and we were on the same page abvout everything so I got a good vibe.  I still have yet to talk to Erica but Yen has conveyed that she's on board.  Nothing's set in stone, less so with Natasha, so if all goes well, we'll be looking at 3 or 4 bedroom apartments in Manhattan.  It definitely beats getting a studio, ha ha.

Sunday, Jun 1 - Saturday, Jun 7

I watched Girlfight on TV, which I haven't seen in a while.  They also had behind the scenes interviews at Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn, where the movie was at.  It's kinda coo finally getting a lot more references in movies now that I know NYC better.  Anyway, all my high school fantasies of taking up boxing came rushing back to me but then were dashed when I started looking up training and realizing how damn expensive it is.  I mean, I can'teven bring myself to take dance classes right now, ha ha.  One day, though.  One day.

Monday was the MAIP Kick-Off Party.  I cannot fucking believe it's been a year already!  I volunteered to be a MAIP mentor and have 2 mentees.  One of them actually works here at DDB (Jennyfer) and the other one is in Chicago and went to U of I (Whitney).  We'll have to correspond via email and phone.  The first batch of DDB summer interns are here as well.  They turn the Glassroom, one of our conference rooms, into cubes for the interns and it's so weird seeing it all over again.  I run into Jennyfer a lot since we sit in the same area of the office.

This marks a year of major change for me.  It's been a year since I graduated.  It's been a year since I've been in NYC.  It's been a year since I technically broke up with Pat.  It's just crazy how quickly it all flew by.  Well, obviously, some parts felt much longer than others, ha ha.  What a trip, though.  What a trip.  Oh, and I'm pissed off that my U of I account has been disabled.  Like a dumbass, I still had a lotta emails that I wanted to save but never forwarded them to my other accounts.  Now they're gone forever.  Ugh!

On Friday, Shara invited the MAIP girls to Public House, this bar in Midtown East, for a free Happy Hour.  That's what I'm talkin bout.  It was Shara, Natasha, Jacinta, Mollie, Lauren, Steph, and Ida.  Everytime us MAIPers roll together, we're always the only POC up in the joint, ha ha.  It was fun as hell, though.  We started getting into the dancing mood (of course) and bounced out after the hour.  At first we tried going to 40/40, even though I obviously wasn't dressed for it (and some of the other girls had flip flops as well).  After getting rejected, I got pretty sharp with Mollie after she made a comment about the way I was dressed while everyone else defended me.  But we all ended up going to Slate instead and just danced.  Fun times.

So season 2 of America's Best Dance Crew is starting, whoo!  But somehow I doubt loving any crew more than the Jabbawockeez, ha ha.  I wanna be their groupie f'real.  I wanna buy their t-shirts and everything.  And they're blowing up after the show, which I love.  Thanks in no small part to MTV, which is such a huge media vehicle.  Jabba was on this Walk It Out show with Shane Sparks (Hip Hop choreographer and ABDC judge) where they break down moves from music videos.  Then I saw them randomly appear in a Pussycat Dolls peformance at the MTV Music Awards.  Ha ha.  Props to them.

Sunday, Jun 8 - Today

Sunday was the Puerto Rican Day Parade.  The weather was incredibly hot and muggy.  Natasha and I were supposed to meet at noon (Shara cancelled on us) but she just woke up at that point.  So we decided to meet at 1PM instead but then Natasha had to go back home and change into shorts.  It was admittedly kinda annoying because if I'd have known, I would've been able to do a lotta things already instead of waiting around to find out what was going on.  Anyway, Mollie and I met up over there and waited for Nastasha.

It just wasn't as fun this year though.  Last year, Carolyn and I went and saw quite a few celebs.  Then again, it was our first time in NYC.  This isn't really something I'd do again.  But I realized that they had a festival on Saturday, which is more what goes down in Chicago.  I shoulda went to that instead cause that's where the food was at!  Oh well, at least I'll know for next year.  After the parade, we met up with a friend Natasha was just getting know who was also from Miami but moved up here.  We just ate at Subway and talked for a little bit.  I was planning to get home sooner than that so I could cook but that didn't happen.  Blah.

Sleep ain't so hot lately.  Well, it really hasn't been in NYC except for those first few months when I made it a point to sleep early.  I honestly cannot sleep in anymore, no matter how late I go to sleep or how tired I am.  I still wake up around 6 or 7 in the morning thanks to my internal alarm clock.  Also, the weather's hella hot lately and I refuse to get an AC unit.  It costs too much and it's terrible for the environment.  People look at me like I'm a martian when I tell them that but I grew up without an AC and I just use fans.  But I do get up sometimes to adjust the fan or turn it off if I'm getting too cold, etc.  Also, I guess NYC peeps really love to open the fire hydrants during the summer.  They did that last summer when I lived in Morningside and they had it going here for most of the week.  That's so bad!  It's loud and it's right outside my crib and all these kids play with it.  These dudes was hangin out in front of the barbershop (which is only a couple of doors down) late as hell on Monday night all loud and shit.  I have to admit I was jealous cause I'd rather be doing that on a hot summer night than worrying about work the next day, ha ha.

Speaking of work, the past few weeks have been pretty busy.  Especially with these rush newspaper ads I'm taking care of.  It's good experience for me but it has kept my at work until 7PM for quite a few days.  Our Summer Fridays have commenced.  This is when our hours are extended to 5:30PM Monday-Thursday instead of 5PM in exchange for leaving at 1PM on a Friday.  Well, this is pretty damn annoying because it never works.  A lot of times there's still work to be done on Fridays since it's not like our Clients have the same hours.  You're expected to stay and finish until your work is done but of course people dunno how to act.  Some departments close down by 1PM and it's like wtf?  The way a lotta accounts do it is that instead of taking half days, they'll alternate full days and days off so that there's always coverage.  This is what we do.  But it's never a given that you'll get your day off if you still have work to do.

This past Friday was supposed to be my Summer Friday but I ended up having to come in.  It was also Jim's birthday so I took care of most of my stuff,we went out for lunch to celebrate his birthday, then I went home afterwards.  At least I got about 2 hours off of work, which is better than nothing.

I wanted to go out Friday night but it seems to be the trend that people can't/don't wanna go out when I do.  It sucks!  Shara invited me to see The Happening with some of the other girls but I didn't wanna do that so I passed.  Movies are way too expensive in NYC to be seeing something you don't really wanna see.  So I have to admit that Friday night sucked for me because I wanted to go out but there was no one to go out with.  Wack.

It just sucks because I've been out here in NYC for a fair amount of time and still don't have any close friends here or anyone that I can chill/talk to on a somewhat regular basis.  I wanna do all these things but have no one to do them with.  Yesterday night, was another day of me trying to plan things with people but it fell through.  When I eventually was gonna go to this BBQ in Brooklyn, it started thunderstorming like crazy.  Not coo.

As for the SmartQuote at the beginning of my entry, I get what it's saying.  I know that a lot of times when you have certain expectations to having fun, you end up doing yourself a disservice instead of being more open.  I'm not sure how this applies to my life right now since I feel like I've tried a couple of different strategies and they never seem to work.  I've definitely had fun when other people plan things and I go along with it and that's great.  But that means I always have to wait until I get an invite or other people wanna do something and that sucks.

So here I am on Sunday morning.  I woke up early, as usual and decided to finally blog.  It just becomes more and more intimidating to do as the weeks go by and I know there was so much I wanted to say.  I need to make more of an effort to blog more regularly.

Oh, and Happy Father's Day.  That reminds me I gotta call my daddy.

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

Annie Dillard,
American author

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This week was busy at work again.  The Client pulled some "emergency request" shit 2 days in a row, which means we end up dropping everything else we're doing and running around like crazy.  Still, I really can't complain about my hours on this account.

I never really got a chance to catch up on my sleep from the week before so I was feeling more tired.  This also results in me being lazier and less productive, ha ha.  I haven't made any attempts to cook.  Granted, Carolyn visited me last weekend, which threw me off and I'm going home for Memorial Day this Wednesday night so those are my excuses.

On other random notes, I found out that Marlon and I are looking for new apartments at the same time (July 31 lease end date).  For a split second, we were considering looking together but then we were like better not...  Ha ha!  Weird.

I also called Ahlonko this week.  Haven't talked to him in a minute and even though we always seem to have some issue, he's just one of those people I think my paths will always find their way back to.

Sarah (a coworker) and I planned to grab some drinks after work on Thursday but she ended up staying a lot later than we anticipated.  I waited around for her until about 8 PM (what a friend, ha ha).  In the meantime, just chilled with Andrew in his new office (he recently got promoted and rotated to the Lipton account).  We just listened to some music and drank some booze.  We get free Bud Light since it's a DDB client.

Finally, Sarah was done so we went to a bar nearby called the Volstead.  Nice place, interesting music, though it was way too loud for my liking.  Seamlessly blended between Top 40, Hip Hop, 80s, and Oldies, hehe.  I got the hugest plate of nachos that I couldn't finish and a Heinken Light.  We just chilled for a little bit but I was ready to go home by about 9:30 PM.  I was already tired.  Oh, and some random older black guy tried talking to me.  Weird.  Some guys lack some serious follow-through, though.  Not that I wanted him to.

On Friday night, Mollie invited the MAIPers out to Pig N Whistle also near my job.  My floor was getting kicked out at 5 PM since they had to do some work on the cooling unit or some shit, which also happened to be right next to my office.  Asbestos had never been taken care of so now I'll be fearing for my life when I go back in to work tomorrow.  Anyway...  I had time to kill before I met up at the bar so I went to chill at Barnes and Noble.  It was rainy and gross.  They were pretty late.  It ended up just being Mollie, a new friend of hers, Tiff, and one of her friends.  Not much went down.  Just had a mediocre sandwhich and bounced out.

Since I didn't get a chance to do my laundry Friday night like I prefer, did it yesterday morning instead.  Then I watched Pretty Woman on TV.  Haven't seen it in years and it's amazing how much your perception of it can change.  Don't wanna get into the politics of it so I'll leave it at that.  But Julia Roberts really was captivating in that movie, which surprised me since I've never been very interested in any of the other work she's done.

Yvonne and I were supposed to have dinner then meet up Tiff, her friend, and Mollie at Zereoue for some birthday party.  After looking up the place, I found out it was a restaurant and bar, not a club.  So Yvonne and I planned to go to Zereoue instead, then head out to BLVD.  Well Tiff & Co. weren't gonna make it until 11 PM, which is when Yvonne and I were planning on leaving for BLVD anyway so we were like there's no point; let's just go to BLVD.

Yvonne's roomie's friend, Steven, was in town.  Unfortunately, Yvonne's roomie ended up having to go to a wake/funeral for another friend who'd died in some tragic car accident, leaving Yvonne as tour guide for the friend in town.  After spending the day taking him around, she couldn't manage to break away so she brought him along instead.  Awkward... yes.  So to alleviate the third wheel tension she invited her other friend/roomie, Matt along as well.  I'd met Matt before and he's coo but the situation was still kinda awkward.  Yvonne, Steve, and I chilled at Mickey D's for a bit, while waiting for Matt and so that I could also have an excuse to drink my Corona, ha ha.  (I dunno why I was drinking so much beer this weekend, very odd.  I never used to like it but I guess I'm trying to learn how to drink it.)

So the four of us end up at BLVD.  There's yet another male revue for some girl's birthday party.  Yvonne and I go in the room and there's not one male stripper, but two!  None of them were the foine one from last time (sad) but this shit was hella raunchy!  What Carolyn and I caught a glimpse of the last time was R-Rated.  This was like X-Rated, yo.  They took their junk out and it was getting really crazy and I have to admit I was surprised.  But thinking about it, female strippers go completely naked and rub their goodies on people too, so hey.

One of the guys sat this girl down, then he cleared the area and did some crazy tumbling thing and landed right smack on her... facing down... and just started workin' it.  I wonder how long somebody practices to get that shit down.  At one point, he grabbed this really big womyn and picked her up like nutin and proceeded to... make her night, ha ha.  The crowd went wild, then they made it rain.  Seriously, dollar bills everywhere up in the mug.  I lost Yvonne in the midst of it but was too afraid to try to walk across to get her because the strippers were just pulling any girl, even if she didn't have money.  It was bananas.

Took me a while to recover from that.  Anyway, I'd been afraid to dance on the floor for a while because I didn't want nasty guys trying to dance qwith me like last time.  Eventually I got over it and as Yvonne and I started trying to dance, some guy started talking to me and asked me to dance.  Yvonne said that I should since he was kinda cute.  He was pretty average in my opinion but he was very sweet and polite so I was like, why not?  I was trying to improve from last weekend and at least try to talk to guys, even if to just be friends.  Long story short, I gave him my email address since he was a promoter and made it a point to be nice enough not to ask for my number (which I didn't wanna give).

I also told him my name was Celeste, ha ha.  We pick a different name every time we go out.  Last weekend, I was Cassandra.  Before that, Yolanda (I think) and Esmerelda.  Ha ha!

Eventually Yvonne came back because the guys were getting bored and wanted to leave.  Of course, I didn't wanna go home by myself so that was my cue to bounce out too.  I didn't want to cause at that point, I was ready to talk to other guys, ha ha.  As we were walking out, there was some cute guy standing by the bar.  Definitely cuter than the guy I was dancing with.  He started checking me out too and then came by to stand next to me.  Yvonne was trying to get me to give him my number but we had nothing to write on or with.  We could've done the cell phone thing but in all honesty, I like to at least talk to a guy a little before I give him my number.  And since we were on our way out, I didn't have enough time to chat him up.  Eventually, he walked towards the dance floor with his boys and that was the end of that.

So we continue walking out and some guy walked in near the entrance.  And this guy was even cuter than the last one.  I mean he was cute.  As we passed each other, he grabbed my hand.  All I could respond was that I was leaving so we went on our separate ways, at which point I proceeded to kick myself.  Uggghhh... so much ass... cute ass... passed up...  And I didn't even have to work hard for that last one.  *sigh*  If we had time to be there I definitely woulda turned my game on.  He had my name written all over him.  So Yvonne owes me now, ha ha.  Seriously... I'm cursed.  The cute ones are always unavailable or turn up at the worst times.  Even though I'm kinda mad about passing them up, I feel like I'm slowly getting better at this whole guy thing.

I went to sleep about 4:40 AM and still woke up about 10 AM.  I have this inability to sleep now and it sucks.  I definitely need to catch up on my sleep.  I don't want all this partying to catch up with me.  I went out 3 days in a row, too, which is rare for me.

But that's also party why I chose the SmartQuote for this entry.  It seems like such a simple notion but makes so much sense to me put in that way.  I was always taught that I should work hard and make sacrifices now so that they'll pay off in the future.  I could have fun every once in a while.  I've pretty much lived by that my whole life because I want something bigger for myself but I've also come to realize that I've passed countless experiences that would make me appreciate life so much more.  To create a life for myself that was worth all that sacrifice and hard work.

I look back on high school and college and even how I started out in NYC.  I was always planning for the future, being practical, trying to be amazing at what I do so that I could eventually help my fam.  I didn't let myself have as much fun as I definitely could've.  It's almost like I felt I needed to punish myself for the hardships and struggles my fam has experienced because I couldn't change things in a big, immediate way.

People always say that when you look back, you're not gonna remember an exam or a grade or a paper.  What's gonna matter the most are the people and experiences.  I always believed that but somehow still never allowed myself to create more of those memories.  I don't wanna make the same mistakes again.

I definitely wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for the hard work I put in but now I also question at one point will I ever be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor?  The mentality I grew up with led me to believe that I would get to some pivotal point in my life where I could just rest on my laurels.  But now as I think about it, I realize that moment will never be that clear cut because we're programmed to keep striving for more.  Especially someone like me.  At what point can you say that you're content?  That you're truly happy?  That you don't have to make those type of sacrifices anymore?

I like the place where I'm at right now.  I like not always worrying about what other people need and want and how I can help them.  I like thinking about my own pleasure.  I like allowing myself to be selfish.  I like feeling as if there's still so much out there for me, in all aspects of my life.

And I can finally say that I'm glad that I'm in NYC.  I remember returning here from the Chi after Thanksgiving Break with Marlon and seeing the NYC skyline.  I had the most nauseating sense of dread for what lay ahead of me here.  I felt miserable at that point in my life.  And even though I've always known and said that I wanna take advantage of this city as much as possible while I'm here, I feel like I'm finally on my way to putting that in action.  I've already overcome so much in such a short time and I should be damn proud of myself.  More on that later.