Blog From The Balcony: Bon Jovi And A Noisy Neighbor

It's a Friday afternoon, and I'm sitting out on my balcony. It's probably around 80 degrees and breezy, and I came out here with a vision of writing and listening to Bon Jovi and having myself a lovely day.

But then my upstairs neighbor decided to come out on his balcony and practice his guitar.

See, several days ago my roommate came home and told me she ran into said upstairs neighbor, who told her that he'd just gotten an electric guitar and apologized if we heard him practicing all the time. And, yes, I heard him playing that electric guitar ALL DAY yesterday and was going a little bit out of my mind. I like to think I'm a pretty patient, tolerant person, but sheesh, take a break, man!

I hadn't realized an acoustic guitar was also in the mix until, after about a half an hour of silence today, I decided to get iTunes going. After less than a song had gone by, "Thank You For Loving Me" was suddenly being overlapped by some random strumming from above my head. With a sigh, I hit pause.

Several minutes later, the strumming stopped. After several more minutes of silence, I figured he'd given up his practicing, so I happily went back to iTunes. But seconds -- literally, seconds -- after I hit play, he was back at it. It was like a bad sitcom.

So I paused again, and decided to just let his guitar be the soundtrack to my writing instead of Bon Jovi. And y'know? He's not really all that bad. I was pretty content with my decision. But now he's talking on the phone (on speakerphone) really freaking loudly about girls and getting high, and I know I should be annoyed but I'm actually really amused.

What's the point of this story, you ask? Hell, I don't really know.

Completely unrelated dog selfies for the win!

But it's nice to not be annoyed. Being annoyed sucks. And maybe it's just because the weather's nice and I'm still feeling inexplicably positive about my life despite all the uncertainty, but I'm kind of realizing that annoyance is a choice. I could choose to be angry that I can't listen to Bon Jovi right now, or I could choose to laugh silently to myself about this dude talking to his friend about various tips he's read about how to pick up girls. (Did you know girls all fall into certain "tribes" and only look for guys that fit into the same "tribe"? I know, my mind is BLOWN. Obviously we can all be pigeonholed like that! I'm learning so much about my gender, guys!!!11!!1!)

And I think the same sort of attitude can be applied to life. Right now, the Bon Jovi playlist of my life is on pause, and I'm currently stuck listening to my neighbor of questionable intelligence talking going to bars and getting high and such. But if past is prologue, eventually he'll shut up (metaphorically speaking, of course) and I can get back to rocking and rolling. (How's THAT for some introspection for ya?)

Oh, bless, he's off the phone!

...Nope, wait, the guitar is back. So close.

Brightly Colored Shoes

Today I had a site visit for my Architecture in London class. I overslept (my lovely alarm decided to take the morning off) and it was a bit of a trek on the tube, so I ended up getting there about five minutes into the lecture. When it was over, I told my professor that I'd be hanging around for the beginning of the second group's lecture.

There was a bit of a lull in between the two, so two other latecomers and I chatted with Professor Abbott. He's a bit of an eclectic kind of guy; for example, today he was wearing bright red corduroy pants and teal shoes. It was freezing out and one of my classmates was wearing really thin cloth sneakers. Professor Abbott mentioned that his shoes were really warm, and that got us onto the topic of their color.

He said he was forced to wear suits and black shoes for a really long time at his previous jobs, and when he was in school he wore a uniform.

"I vowed to myself that as soon as I could rebel, I'd wear things that were bright colors," he said, grinning. "I do have a black suit, but I don't wear it very often."

I looked down at my wardrobe. Gray shirt, gray scarf, brown coat, jeans, black boots, brown bag. Yawn. All the colors of the rainbow at my disposal, and I stick with neutrals because... why? I absolutely love my blue coat, and my coral shorts, and my purple boots, and my yellow scarf. So why don't I have a jewel-toned pair of jeans? Or neon sneakers?

Why am I not more adventurous? Why do I care so much about choosing the "safer" option?

So I complimented Professor Abbott on the color of his shoes and vowed to get out of my comfort zone more often.

Leave it to me to get philosophical over a pair of teal shoes.

(I'm not sure how this is relevant to anything. But it is. A real, update-y post is coming soon!)

Catching Up

Ya know, when you write blog posts for multiple hours every day for your internships, it’s very difficult to find the motivation to write blog posts in your free time. Who woulda thunk?

But anyway, hey there stranger! I’m kind of bummed that I let June fly by without writing an entry here, but that’s the thing… June flew by. As opposed to last summer, when I was counting down the days until I went back to Miami, I’m wondering where an entire month has gone. It’s amazing the difference that having something to do makes! That being said, I’ve got some updates.

1. Internships.
Heh, I never wrote about the internships I ended up getting! And yes, that is internships, as in plural! :) Internship number one is blogging for Scholarships.com. It’s virtual, and I write one 300 post a week about college-related issues. It’s super easy, and a lot of fun!

Internships number two and three are technically not separate, since they’re for sister websites. I’m blogging for lovelyish.com and healthkicker.com, which are blogging communities in the Xanga network. I have to work 15 hours and write at least eight posts total per week. So, like I said, after blogging for at least two hours a day, the last thing I want to do when I’m done is blog more. But it’s been really awesome! I make my own hours and can work from home (aka in my pajamas) or go into their office in NYC. I’ve never had an office to go to before! It’s really exciting! I’d be there all the time if it wasn’t so damn expensive to get into the city. Even though not all interns are local, we’ve had a team day for each site, and everyone is so nice! I have absolutely nothing bad to say about working at Xanga! Except the lack of income, but hey. ;) You can read all my stuff at lovelyish.com/contributors/darci and healtkicker.com/contributors/darci.

Remember how much time and effort I spent applying to internships, only to get none of them? I’d resigned myself to another summer of boredom when I got an email from Scholarships.com about applying for their virtual internship. I shrugged, thinking ‘what the hell?’, and sent my resume and writing samples. A day or two later, I got an email from the woman that’s now my boss, saying I was hired as their first virtual intern. Woo!

Similarly, I’ve had a blog on xanga.com since like seventh grade, and had been seeing posts about ‘get to know our interns!’ and I thought… hmmm, ya know, that’d be really cool. I couldn’t find any info about applying on their website, so I googled it, and sent my resume and writing samples to the email address I found. Within a few days, I had a phone interview and was told to write a couple of sample posts. A week after that, I found out that I was hired!

After all that stress and strife, I got two awesome internships that I applied for on complete whims, with minimal effort, doing something that I’ve been doing for fun since seventh grade. It’s kind of funny how life works out sometimes. Lovin’ it. :)

2. London 2012.
Let me tell you – getting tickets for the Olympics should be an Olympic sport. Neither Chandini nor I got tickets in the first lottery round, so we set our sights on the first-come, first-served second round. Then came the lies about the start time, crashed website, massive stress, blah blah blah… but Chandini got tickets! Not the ones that we originally wanted; both ceremonies were completely sold out, and track and diving were both obnoxiously expensive. But we’re going to synchronized swimming on August 6th, 2012! WOOOOO! :D I’ve never seen synchronized swimming before, it should be a fun experience. But even if the event itself isn’t, tickets were only around $65, and we’re going just to be there anyway. Now I’m going to try to contact all the Olympics people I’ve spoken to to see if I can swing anything else. I’m so excited! Eeeeek!

The money aspect isn’t something I’m looking forward to, though. Flights are going to cost us an arm and a leg, but hopefully we can find somewhere cheap to stay. So, if anyone knows someone in London that wouldn’t mind having two very quiet, very polite, very grateful houseguests that will spend most of their time away from the house, please let me know!

In a nutshell, I’M GOING TO THE OLYMPICS! YESSSSSS!



3. It’s weird not having to worry about keeping this short, or writing in a format that is understood by hundreds (or thousands, in some cases) of people. Stream of consciousness and self-centered ramblings for the win! (And yet I still do this in list form…)

4. Other fun things.
At the end of last semester, I applied for a sports journalism field experience program, and I got accepted! I think it’s a total of 40 or so hours of “skilled volunteering” over the course of the semester. We do things for the various pro teams and their special events, working with the media and such. I’m still pretty fuzzy on the details, but it’ll be really good to stay in the sports field while I’m doing opinion for The Hurricane.

The Olympics are going to be awarded to a city for 2018 pretty soon. I think it’s down to Korea, Germany, and France. Exciting and all, but I’m just waiting for the US to make another bid. *taps fingers impatiently*

Hmm, what else? Well, I’m camping out with Brianna this weekend in Lincoln Center in preparation for the Harry Potter premiere on Monday night. Yes, this isn’t Olympics related at all, but I’m obnoxiously excited that, in a week from this very moment, I may have gotten Alan Rickman’s autograph. I’ll probably have to wait until the fall (when he’s doing a Broadway show!) to actually speak to him and/or get a picture with him, but still. I’m starting to fangirl already. This is a slight problem.

It’s nice blogging about happy Olympics career-related things again! :) Happy Fourth of July!