Moore Please

Julianne Moore in A Single Man trailer.

She. Looks. Breathtaking.



Directed by Tom Ford, naturally I'd trust that man with the costumes and makeup for this movie. It's supposed to be very spot-on.

I want to see it soon...





Not tonight though. It's an evening out with some of my very favorite, beautiful girlfriends on the face of the earth.

I'm sitting in my room drinking a bottle of white wine and listening to Seal (gorgeous voice). I simply do not understand how I am fortunate enough to meet the people in my life that I know. They are just too remarkable for words.

Sometimes I imagine what if. What if I came here two months too late? What if I did not have that job? What if I had decided to walk into a different building half an hour too early? My life would have dramatically altered. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed the change. Maybe I would have.

Love to you all,
Heather

Heads Will Roll

WiFi has been down for a couple of hours making it difficult for me to download a song I wanted but now we are back and running and I am loving the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Heads Will Roll"...which I do realize is in a "The City" commercial but oh well. Sometimes those in charge of the marketing for reality shows do find truly catchy songs.

I'll be totally honest right now. If I had my way, there would be a trail of decapitated heads lining from the admissions building to the furthest residence hall, Trinity. I woke up this morning with a mouthful of bitch pills and have been in a sour mood for the majority of the day. There isn't a particular reason either...I just haven't been feeling like myself for awhile. All I want to do is sit outside in the sun and let the sunlight and wind hug me. Instead I'm in a cold classroom, mindlessly scribbling in my notebooks and locked in a perpetually bored state where I'll just say anything even if it isn't related to our topic of choice.

Senioritis has struck...only the second week in.
Oh boy.

At night I like to sit alone in the bleachers and stare at the stars and the various shades of the night sky while listening to Liv Kristine and The Arcade Fire. Thoughts about the past, present, future, images, colors. It's becoming one of my favorite sweet escapes from just general life and education.

I wonder why I am the only one who does this? Or at least the only one I see anyway.

Moving on, if we're getting slice and dice friendly, inspiration must follow.



Cliche I know to include some Alice in Wonderland but just look at Anne Hathaway...she's ethereal. Ah, 2010 you are gonna be great.



As it turns out, all of my best friends and I were absolutely obsessed with Sleepy Hollow when it first came out. Who wasn't? This was a movie that globally affected young girls everywhere. I watched this over and over in the 6th grade and developed a huge crush on Johnny Depp and the wardrobe of Christina Ricci. Colleen Atwood is too good...her costumes make me blush, they are so top notch.



Back in high school, I used to get dressed and watch music videos for hours until it was time to go to school. I stress hours because I used to wake up at 6am just to watch whatever the MTV/MTV2 or VH1 channels had to offer. Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For" was one of my favorites. Trippy and pretty.

Love to you all,
Heather

Mighty Kids My Ass, It's a Straight Up Happy Meal for Me

This is how my train of thought works. I read an article about Starbucks testing new stores with alcohol to get people away from McDonald's McCafe. I talk about the McCafe with my boss and then bam! I think about Happy Meals.
As you can see from the picture above, this was what I and every other kid my age ate in grade school. It was a simpler time. There were no calorie and saturated fat warnings on the wrappers. Everybody drank soda or apple juice. The boxes had this sweet little handle to make them easily handy. And our favorite incentive was always nestled next to the cheeseburger in plastic wrap, a toy, usually TV or movie themed.
You couldn't have given it a more spot-on name.



This is not a Happy Meal.
Granted, I'm aware that this is the adult version of the meal and that they're trying to follow a similar childlike formula of the box having a handle and what I assume to be a step tracker as the "toy" incentive. Eating something like this, with the box reminding you, "Hey buddy, ya gonna drop those pounds?" is far from a happy experience.
I look back on my childhood which wasn't too long ago as opposed to that of the kids of today and I feel kinda sorry for them. Today, it's all about options. McDonald's offers apple slices, fries, milk, juice, soda, water, parfaits, you name it as a side choice. The toys are nowhere near as good and the boxes have for the most part been converted to bags. Bland, dull, grease stained bags.
But a true child of today won't even go to McDonald's. Instead, they'll head to Panera Bread or Starbucks and order a pesto dried artichoke and gouda cheese panini and drink a Cappuccino or Frappe. All they need now are the notes on the Zergen case and an iPhone.
The latter of which they probably already have.
8 going on 34.



When the boxes were good at McDonald's, they were very good. Activities were all over the box so while you sat there and ate, you could connect the dots and make a Snow White crown or play a crossword puzzle. If you were stumped for an answer to the riddle, the answers were always on the bottom of the box. And sometimes the little folds had activities underneath them! Brilliant!



One cannot forget the gleaming beacon of light if you went inside to order from McDonald's. I even recall some that did not have drive-throughs. The display cases were filled with all of the toys included in that particular set.
I remember the Snow White case. I desperately wanted her and the little green wishing well and forced my parents to go to McDonald's an abnormal amount of times to get it (which was only a sneak preview of what was to come when Beanie Baby mania hit).
I got the witch and the dwarf in the crystal caravan. Snow White was always, always out no matter where we went.
A boy in my class Eric, he got Snow White.
The universe can be quite mocking.



A Ghostbusters happy meal circa '87. This is really cool. Slimey actually looks really cute and happy and a Stay Puft marshmellow man toy as well as stickers?
Bravo, Mickey D's, bravo.



I would not rest until I had the Dot driving the ice cream van racing toy.



McDonald's did alot of miniature Barbie toys. Usually they did them alongside Hot Wheels cars. This was probably due to the fact that Mattel was the corporation behind the two but also, little boys did not want to open their boxes to find a smiling blonde doll inside. Cooties man. Cooties.
This Barbie was one of the very first ones I ever had! Her thing was a little plastic dress that snapped on and off. As I was already highly engrossed in the wardrobe of my regular Barbies, even going so far as to purchase the Fashion Avenue line of clothing, it seemed perfect that this was one of the first ones for me.



I also really liked this one but was highly disgruntled that she was molded to the sleigh. And now that I look at her some more, there's something odd about her eyes.



On a unrelated note, this is a can of RC Cola from Japan starring my favorite superhero, Sailor Moon. Fucking amazing!

Love to you all,
Heather

Happy 4th!

This picture is too perfect for one of my favorite BBQ Days.
Does anyone remember Rocket Pops? The red, white and blue popsicle that I couldn't stand as a child or even as a teenager. As I recall, I wasn't even big on the regular tri-box of grape, orange, and cherry ones either.
I kinda wish I had one now.

Love to you all,
Heather

The Three Albums That Influenced Me Most (thus far)

Leaves Eyes Lovelorn

Now I understand why sailors fell victim to the siren's song. Liv Kristine is just how I imagine angels to sound. I started listening to Leaves Eyes in high school, when I was sixteen actually thanks to that Cradle of Filth Nymphetamine music video with Liv as a guest vocalist. I own all of their albums which quite sadly is a small 3 in total but I also have her solo work and some Theatre of Tragedy as well.
Liv has the most incredible voice and on Lovelorn in particular, you can catch all the lilting upward high notes which have an almost lullaby esque quality to them. I have almost dozed off a few times despite all the drums and guitar riffs. 'Into Your Light' is my favorite because it is romantic and heavy in sound all at once.
The entire album has the theme of the ocean, particularly the seas of Norway and of mermaids and of bewitching temptations. There is so much Medieval and the occasional Celtic influence to the songs, like somebody penned them hundreds of years ago on the moors. Each song is a story and as an album, Lovelorn is a continuous tale of love with a great rock influence.


Arcade Fire Funeral

The closest I have ever come to having a religious experience, I started to listen to Arcade Fire after I graduated from high school and was in a musical rut. One afternoon, I happened to hear 'Rebellion' and the next thing I knew, my Mom and I were canvassing various Borders locations to find a copy of the CD, a quest of near-biblical proportions.
There's like six or seven people in this group and they can all play instruments (and very well, a rarity in today's music world). The lead singers are Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, who happen to also be married to each other which I absolutely adore, because it is once again, a rarity.
The songs themselves have a dreamlike quality. 'Haiti' makes me feel like lying in the grass somewhere by a stream and just dangling my fingers in the water. 'Crown of Love' makes me feel completely broken in the beginning with those lovely lonely violins but it takes on a completely different tempo midway that livens the piece up.
That has always been something I love about their work. You never really know which way they're going but the result is always splendid and rich.
I was also smitten with their follow up Neon Bible just as much but with 'Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)', I actually woke up in the middle of the night with no power once and instantly I put that song on. It was very fitting. Then I called the power company.


Delerium Chimera

It was a Christmas gift in the 8th grade that I requested after I saw the 'After All' video on MTV2. I have been a Delerium fan for so long, I wonder what I listened to prior to them (actually, I know but it was crap so let's not talk about it).
Chimera is the ultimate in chill out, trance like experiences. It is mood music at its finest, the kind of songs you can play at an art gallery, listen to with the windows of the car down, and fall asleep to. Every piece is gorgeous, particularly the ones without words like 'Serenity' and my favorite, the 9 minute masterpiece 'Eternal Odyssey' that will literally put you in a music coma. I am always investing in Delerium because it is just so so beautiful.
I can't describe it any better. Listen for yourself.

Love to you all,
Heather

The Good Quote

"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love."
-Goethe

I've changed a lot over the years but everything above remains consistent in my life. I wouldn't be Heather without these characteristics.

Love to you all,
Heather

Eye Like It (So Much)

As a former four eyes, I distinctly recall my decision to go contacts. It was the summer before my junior year of high school where I was scheduled to take a chemistry class. This class required goggles.
I did not want to be a four eyes on top of a four eyes so I adapted to plastic (the future, according to The Graduate). Good choice for the time but all the ladies and gents rocking the glass, I am pro that all the way.


From the spread by Lula magazine on why guys should make passes at girls who wear glasses.



Working tomorrow, writing a little, waiting on some mail to arrive and watching some crappy TV as well. I'm ashamed to say that there is a tiny part of me that is truly enjoying Daisy of Love on VH1.
I am missing all my summers of the past though when I used to stay up watching completely godawful but really fun movies on Showtime Beyond though. It was a channel on Showtime that specialized in showing horror/suspense films with the occasional anime cartoon tossed in the mix. It was where I caught many Roger Corman movies, my first Klaus Kinski film (Crawlspace) and Pinocchio's Revenge (it is exactly how it sounds).
But sadly enough, that is all just a fleeting memory in my head. One that I dream about now more than ever and while I do love my life now, I grasp harder for the past.
If I start watching The Hills, do not hesitate to slap me silly.
;)

Love to you all,
Heather

She's So Not Into the Holidays: The Story of My Disenchantment with Major Holidays and Why Frank Day May be the Best Concept I've Heard in a Long Time

Isn't my title lovely? It looks like I'm about to embark on a thesis for a capstone course.

Frank Day was never my idea, that credit goes to the magnificent Rachel Cohn and her novels Gingerbread, Shrimp, and Cupcake. This threesome feature my second favorite female protagonist since Jessica Darling, the spunky spirited Cyd Charisse. She's got the verbal lingo of the Gilmore Girls coupled with some badass behavior that lives with the motto of "I'll be as wild as I wanna be." Her parents are Sid (stepdad) and Nancy, she lives in a huge Pacific Heights mansion that gets dubbed Alcatrez on more than one occasion and has bunches of half-sibs and real dad, Frank.

Despite Cyd's wild child demeanor and anti-school attitude, she is unbelivably relatable, or at least to me she is. Cyd's got mad love for her man Shrimp, a short surfer stud and carries her stuffed doll Gingerbread everywhere despite the fact that everyone has got to put in their two cents on how a 16+ year shouldn't be toting ragdolls in their backpack.

I've worshipped these books since I was in grade school and it really hurts to know that both Shrimp and Cupcake are both 2200 miles away from me and totally need to be mailed to me pronto. That aside, in Shrimp the second in the series, Cyd and her family celebrate their own kind of holiday because the parentals various religions make it impossible to do both Christmas and Hannukah.

The holiday is Frank Day, a day devoted to Ol Blue Eyes himself (not to be confused with Cyd's real dad). Everyone watches Sinatra films, listens to his tunes and even stepdad Sid reads all the headline news a la Frank News.

Why does this matter so much to me? This single day sounds better than Christmas could ever be. And I'm growing a little more sure each day I won't be celebrating Christmas when I'm older.

This isn't something I woke up one day and decided upon out of grinch-esque feelings over not getting a phone in the eighth grade for Christmas. I've done a great deal of thinking about the holidays in general and I've noticed a pattern.

I just really don't like any of them (with Halloween being the exception of course).

Why is Halloween the exception?
1) Celebrated in the evening so you have the whole day to prepare adequately for it.
2) The one day of the year where we encourage children to accept candy from strangers and go into their houses even if they're scared shitless.
3) You get to dress up. As anything you want.
4) Free candy and money depending on the neighborhood.
5) If you're at a party and you meet an attractive guy and never get their name, they will fondly be remembered as "Hot Dracula"
6) The Slut Rule
7) Catholic high schools take the day after off for All Saint's Day. The perks of life at DB.
8) Somebody in my family gets me another stuffed ghost
9) I love dark colors
10) Late night horror movies are the best!! Watch Hostel II all alone in a dark room really loudly, its pretty sweet.

This beautiful day aside, the rest of the holidays I just can't get into. Christmas is probably the biggest of these evils, a holiday that over the years has been commercialized to near-death but still manages to crawl over to you and gasp out, "PIER ONE...SALE...FLATWARE...20% OFF" before collaspsing under a tree riddled with ornaments.

Some other fiendish friends include:
Valentine's Day (where the entire world decides to go Noah's Ark on your ass for 24 hours)
Easter (eggs and children across the country get into some baby blue and Pepto pink for a rabbit)
and jumping back to:
Christmas (Kriss Kringle attempts to put you in a chokehold with a candy cane crowbar until you buy every single Bratz doll on the shelf)

Frank Day is so much less stressful and much more original than celebrating these holidays which have been around forever and are a nightmare to plan. When I was younger, I used to get stomach cramps in the gift wrap aisle trying to decide on a color scheme for the Christmas monster. It's not about the message anymore, the message is clear on Monday mornings when the teacher makes you write an essay on what you got and read it aloud. The kid with the baseball mitt gets trumped by the spoiled brat whose father bought him something from the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog everytime.

Haha, no. I'm gonna go my own way. I'm really not sure what a holiday from me would entail and obviously I'm going to try to make one up Johnny on the spot (though you can count on good clothes and for some reason my head is saying a boat should be involved.)

Love to you all,
Heather

Week, Day, Year, Month, Eon, Yeah...We'll Settle on Week

* "Dita Overload" is the best phrase I have heard all week.

*Jesus Jonahboy, you been drinkin' the Stupid Sauce?
I'm way addicted to The Black Book series again, this book series that I read religiously throughout my freshman and sophomore years at DB. It's like falling down the absolutely amazing hole that transplants me back home and with my library memories again.
We lived within a short distance of both the library and B. Dalton (before it closed) so it was hardly uncommon to see me running out of the house to scramble up to get some good reading material.


*In my heart, I will always remember the first time I saw Natasha Richardson. I was at the AMC theaters with my Dad seeing The Parent Trap and she played Lindsay Lohan's mom. She was beautiful and elegant and radiated this nearly awe-inspiring glow. I will always remember the fashion shoot scene where Natasha and Lindsay are playing with the top hats and the model.
RIP Natasha Richardson....

*A sandwich + an unidenitifed package= a bomb threat on the CLU campus.
I really wish I was making that up but as my life is usually filled with ridiculous happenstances, this is just another tale to tell and tease for later years. They actually evacuated the library and had the campus security block off the overpass.

*Being referred to as a favorite person
Aww, shucks. How sweet!

*Conjure One is turning into a religious musical experience
Best. Album. Decision. In. Several. Months.
I will follow Rhys Fulber into whatever black hole or star drenched galaxy he decides to travel to. Delerium has been my great love since 8th grade and Conjure One is nothing short of a stellar beauty. I have a tendency to get really "into" my music on my iPod and apparently people can tell on my face.

*Ellen Show!!!
I got tickets and at the end of April, my girlfriends and I will be part of the audience! Yeah!!



*This Handsome Man
Do not cut your hair again Rob. It was a bad move. This picture makes me forgive you.

*Moms are the best
They mail you all of your Teen Vogues that somehow never got transferred to your new address. I squealed like a stuck pig when that package arrived today, I really missed them, you know? Not on the Nylon status but still an important religious piece of work. Gotta get reading on those bad boys...

*"You are capable of getting an A in this class."
How would you like to get an e-mail from your professor that spoke these cruel words? Especially if you assumed that everything was cool in this class...ugh. Details are the death and best of me.

*Breakfast with Tiffany
It's not with croissants and Givenchy gowns but we talk poking sticks, calculators, hanging chickens in the fog, screaming on the mountains, and cereal as crack. Oh yeah, and we study too. 8am is turning into a guaranteed good part of my day.


*New Work
How completely lucky is my school to get a large-scale video installation installed featuring lamps from Megan and Murray McMillan? So, so lucky! It is going to be so awesome! I'm skipping out on the Ventura County Star that night to go and gettting together my red dress and heels-I'm red(y), haha awful pun! God, I wish my Dad was here. He would just love the gallery!

*Late Nights Studying Can Suck It
I would lump writing in the same category but that's sacriligious.

*Streamingsoundtracks.com, Filmspotting, The Starter Wife, South Park
A weird but effective method for me to focus on my work and write.

*CNN says "Why You're Likely to Marry Your Parent?"
My Dad-hilarious, cultured, easily angry, driven.
My Mom-elegant, charming, musical, easily offended.
I don't even know what I want. It can change so easily....um, I guess someone stronger than me who is very funny?
But I'm young and stupid. At this age, I think I want it all.

*But if love is in short supply, send in the clothes
Ordering clothes online late at night and waking up the next morning believing it was all a fantastic dream and discovering it wasn't? Why, that's a great feeling!
I believe in the power of retail therapy, the healing touch of cloth to my skin, and as Laurie Halse Anderson so eloquently put it "the holy trinity of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express."



*Hello GG!
I gotta get back to my roots...I started reading Gossip Girl back in 8th grade when nobody had heard of it. Evidently, I did lots of stuff in 8th grade to alter myself then and now.

*My other two dears, Amy and Melissa
I was destined to meet these two, no matter what. Love them both.

*Damn it Earl...
Send me a ghost and Big cartoon, stat! Or I'm gonna fly home, lop a tentacle off of Big and hold him for ransom.

*SUMMER 2009
It ain't gonna be typical for sure.

Love to you all,
Heather

KAY NIELSON

Kay (pronounced as high) Nielson is an illustrator for children's books and I think he is absolutely exhilarating. Looking at these pictures is like taking a fantastic trip back in time before computers became so dominant and the Photoshop tool enabled us to constantly perfect everything.
This is from "Powder and the Crinoline", published in 1913 (!!) So gorgeous.


The Shepardess and the Chimney Sweep
*The chimney sweep reminds me quite a bit of V from V for Vendetta, uncanny resemblance, huh?


"I have had such a terrible dream" she declared. "...a pretty bird swooped down, and snatched it from my hands and flew away with it".

This just might be the best line from a novel I have ever heard.


"Don't drink!" cried out the little princess, springing to her feet; I would rather marry a gardener!"

These are so amazing, I feel like a little girl all over again.

Listening to:
-Air Playground Love
-Air Cherry Blossom Girl
-The Stone Roses I Wanna Be Adored

Love to you all,
Heather

The Bitch is Back

What do Karl Lagerfeld, Jonathan Adler, Nylon Magazine, and Bryant Park have in common? They're really digging Barbara Millicent Roberts.
Check it, she even got her own show at Spring '09 Fashion Week in Bryant Park.


I am not one of those freaky "Barbie does not promote healthy body image in girls" blah blah protesters. Those women never knew the luxury of Barbie and the Rockers and the light-up bracelet that came with them. When I was little, I had lots of Barbie and Disney Princess dolls and I enjoyed dressing them up and making up stories in their one-story house I had (and later added on some additions with some arty shoesboxes).
I like Barbie but the older I got, it disturbed me that for a woman of such a versatile resume, her wardrobe was largely composed of pink. Pink dresses. Pink shoes. Pink shirts. Pink skirts.
Yikes.



Nylon magazine has a spread on how to look like Barbie in this month's issue but surprisingly, nowhere is the fact that MAC had a line of Barbie-oriented cosmetics out for a short while there. That's okay, they're attempting to promote their new Hello Kitty tie-in right now which judging by the commercials, looks like an absolute eyesore.


Designer Jonathan Adler took it into his own hands to create an actual Barbie "Dream House" in Malibu, CA for Miss Roberts upcoming 50th.
"Barbie was a dream client because she doesn't exist as a person," Adler said. "She exists as fantasy and is the perfect client because she's always happy and fun and loves everything. I thought to myself, 'How would Barbie live?' What I thought was Barbie would have a house that is glamorous, kittenish, chic, colorful and happy — as well as functional."
-Jonathan Adler
I don't think Barbie would love her house decked out in solely blacks and whites with a coffin instead of a canopy bed though. Me likey that idea though.


A colorful house huh? This bedroom makes me want to go running to the nearest toilet and hurl. This much pink is just not right.

Ken who? Model Baptiste Giabiconi steps in for the blonde dud's shoes with a new line of Barbie dolls as photographed by Karl Lagerfeld.

That's love, dollface.

Listening to:

-Kate Ryan Surrender

-Ercola Deep At Night

Love to you all,

Heather

Rant, Rave, and Praise

This picture never fails to crack me up. These are a couple of footlongs that look a tad too happy, don't you think? Luckily, nobody ever had to stuff me into a Subway costume during my 4 years working there. It was bad enough I had to wear a visor.
Congrats to my good friend Melissa on getting hired at a Subway in Florida! I'm very happy that she was able to find a job and like I said, at least she knows how to make a proper sandwich. It's not that hard people. That's directed to the guys working the TO Subway's moving at the speed of warp snail.
I really don't like to write about little things going on between my family and I but I'm tired of turning my issues into problems for the characters in my stories.
My family and I are definitely more close than most families I know. You know those families where the kids and the parents are kind of cold and conduct the most mundane, dull conversations possible with one another? Where they even sound disinterested in each other's lives? Oh, and where the kids have the gall to demand and boss their parents around with their parents meekly taking it?
I tell you, shit like that does not fly in my family.
We scream to get a point across. We get excited over a sale on ice cream sandwiches and buy 6 or more boxes. We chase each other around the house with dead cockroaches. We listen to music so loudly the floorboards shake and the walls vibrate. We tease each other with spot-on imitations of one another's walks and mannerisms. And if you mouth off to Dad or Mom(and I have tested this limit to new lengths), if anybody asks, you're crying because your contacts hurt. You also accidentally tripped and scrapped your arm on the concrete.
That aside, we're close.
Or are we?
My brother Earl has been making noises for ages about going to a comic con type gathering only with anime characters or something like that. He wants to go to the one in August with his friends in Orange County. Mom told me the other day on the phone, "He said maybe I'll visit Heather."
Maybe? Maybe?!?!
What? You have got to be kidding me! I expect this kind of bullshit from my extended family (4 cousins altogether, both sides combined) but then again, I'm not close with any of them and never have been. My intermediate family is where it's at for me and to hear Earl say that enrages me. Who else does he know out here but me? Nobody.
The kid brother has another think coming luckily. You can't drive a rental car until you're 25 so unless his buddies and he bring along somebody older, they're screwed over on transportation.
Ah, but the sister you might maybe deign to grace your presence with would solve all that...just saying.
That's not all...
"I just feel like we've lost you Heather." Mom told me over the phone.
This one was kind of creeping up on its own. I'm far from them and growing farther from the girl who first arrived here. I'm really not lost though. I know who I am and by knowing this, I am able to restrain myself from making all sorts of mistakes that could truly ruin me. It's my inner Jiminy Cricket. Sometimes I shut that conscience off and it fucks me over royally.
"Are you happy now?" Jiminy will ask me to which I sigh and say no. He nods and I switch the conscience back on, "Let's take that pain and write it out. Let's make our happiness come alive in the lives of others. Let's storm rage in a fictional life."
So I get my music cranked up and the document comes alive under my fingertips.
You haven't lost me. I know where I am. I know where I'm going. I know who I am. We're just a distance from each other in length. In our hearts, where it matters most, we never left.

Listening to:
-Theatre of Tragedy Venus (I heard Leaves Eyes is working on a new album. Sweet merciful crap, please be true. I'll never have enough of Liv Kristine's voice in my life.)

Love to you all,
Heather

500 Days of Summer

Fuck all the May/June/July blockbusters, I am an indie girl through and through and this is the only movie I care at all about right now (even Watchmen is taking a serious backseat to this).

I love Zooey and Joseph and they look utterly irrestible together. Cuteness squared.

I'll definitely have a longer post about this one with more photos later but I'll tell you what I love the most about the movie (other than the actors, plot, trailer, and Sundance favoritism).

The title.

I know it's about how he dates Summer for 500 days but to me, it also got me thinking about summertime in general. Honestly, no matter how much you work, no matter where you live, even if you're enrolled in a zillion classes for summer school, summer is the best. Nobody ever says anything bad about it and why would they?

It's lazy, warm, and filled with endless possibilites on how to spend your day and who to spend it with.

I've never had a bad summer (well okay, skipping any family road trips and the surgeries I had during high school).

It's always been 3 blissful months of (in my experience) ice cream eating, running up and down the flights of stairs at the library with piles of books, thrift shopping, movies and overpriced Icees, friends dragging you to their houses or to the park to chill, Sno-Cones down the street, lying around sticking to the couch, waking to the sounds of the birds chirping and the cars honking, sweating, playing at the park, swinging on the swings, going out in the hot hot 10:30 at night, late night shitty horror films, listening to LOUD music in the car on the iPod on the stereo, drive-thrus for greasy food (calories don't exist anymore), swarms of bees, flowers in bloom in the backyard, open windows, open back doors, air conditioning, water fights at work, 4 cans of Red Bull chugged in an hour to go faster, flying practically home on a post-Monster drinking binge, sundresses, long hours wandering the malls, cute shoes, cute boys, cute boys, cute boys....

I love summer.

I want it to be 500 days long.

Love to you all,

Heather

Very, Very, Very Tired

Karen Mulder has the right idea. Time to get ready for bed (though she could be getting ready to go out, hmm).

So yeah, sleep. It sounds like pure perfection to me. This whole week has just been non stop WHAM WHAM WHAM and the sad thing is, it's actually been a lot tamer than my usual weeks. Next week is when I go back to my two jobs. I haven't found my balance yet and it's kind of annoying. All I want to do is sleep for awhile.

Even things that should by all rights enthuse and excite me (i.e. ordering some clothes in the mail, magazines, reading funny books, the fact that I have two internship offers that I can't really decide between) just kind of make me feel tired to even think about.

Whoa, I just reread that last sentence and I sound like a big pussy. Why are my joys making me feel tired? Why?

I'm attributing this to STL syndrome. STL stands for Saint Louis, aka the home state. Every year at this time, the weather back at home is really snowy and sleet filled and super cold. Last year at this time, I would go to school until 6pm in the evening, wait shivering at the bus stop because as usual, I refused to wear suitable cold weather clothes, get off at Taco Bell for dinner (I never ate lunch at Meramec), then one of my parents would come pick me up and I would go home eat, lie in bed propped up on my Herbert pillow while watching Arrested Development, venture out to make some pleasantries and bitch about my day with the family, fall asleep hoping to never wake up and snap alert to the chimes of the Hawaiian ringtone on my phone at 5am to go to Panera Bread for work.

It was an awful bleak period of time in my life.

So every year at this time, I just get overwhelmingly empty and sad. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not lacking anything in my life, in fact I'm very blessed and well aware of the wonderful opportunities I have and damn grateful for them. I think it's just that I spent 20 years in a cold place and now that I'm in a warm one, my body and mindset need some time to adapt.

Reprogram.

The most vivid STL syndrome day I recall was in my junior year of high school. It was February. There was snow on the ground and ice on the streets making a blue shadow cast over everything. I watched Thirteen in my room in the dark and once it was over, I felt mildly sick. Not at the movie, that was great. Just the weather. And the fact that I was having my epic fight with a bunch of my former friends. (You know it's bad when one of your former ex-friends writes a fucking poem for class about the fight and cites your name in it and you have to read and critique a copy). And that I kind of wanted to tell my parents but I really didn't want them to know that I was having problems at my dream high school. I preferred that they thought everything was fine and so I acted like nothing was wrong. Anytime I was snippy I chalked it up to work (my two jobs) and just being tired. So I left my room, I ate dinner with a couple members of my family, and I did my very best to act engaging and witty without looking/seeming glum.

Bleh, all of my old issues look so insignificant and small now. I've come a long way baby. Some days anyhow. Others I've barely progressed.

Listening to:

-David Guetta Stay

-Ian Van Dahl Just a Girl

-Sophie Ellis Bextor Mixed Up World

Not listening to:

-The Smiths Asleep (It's practically a lullaby, my head would drop faster on my keypad than anything)

-Delerium Eternal Odyssey (9 minutes of gorgeous pianos and chanting? I'd be out like that.)

Love to you all,

Heather