L'estate e` bene

Summer is good.

On Saturday I tooled around and then went to the garage sale of my lovely lady friends, K, M, and C. They wanted to get rid of shiz and make some extra moolah, especially K, as she is going to Italy next week. It was sunny and we sat around on their front porch all day, sold a few items, and then rewarded our hard work by going out to the suburbs for a viewing of The Hangover (A-/B+), dinner at Chang's Mongolian Grill, and Target shopping. The Target was the same layout as the one by my parents' house. It's like comfort food, but minus the calories!

On Sunday I layed around the house until 2, then went to Presse with my gay husband T, where we ate too much and looked at all the beautiful couples who populate that restaurant. Seriously, do you ever see unattractive people in there? Never.

All in all, an excellent weekend. I just applied to be a volunteer at Hugo House, so cross your fingers for Team Lara!

Post-Grad Life

Since my last post, much has happened for Team Lara.

I moved.
I baccalaureated.
I graduated.
I skinny dipped.

My current roommate, my new roommate, and I all moved in to our new place this past week/weekend. We all have "L" names, and there are two girls and one guy, so naturally all our family members are making Three's Company analogies. The apartment has a great layout, it's totally remodeled inside, and is just steps away from everything I love in Seattle: Molly Moon's, Rancho Bravo, Vita, Victrola, Cal Anderson and Volunteer, Dick's...and the list just goes on and on. We're still getting settled in, but everything is just dandy so far.

My parents and grandpa came up Saturday afternoon to go to Baccalaureate at the cathedral. I'm very glad I went, even thought it was 90 million degrees inside. Heat + graduation robes = bad news bears. That night my family went to La Spiga for din din and we all got a little tipsy off some dandy gin & tonics and red Italian wine. We got a cheese plate, too! Nom nom nom.

Graduation was relaxed, fun, and full of good food. After graduation my parents and I went to a picnic with the families of several good friends, and we spent the day in Volunteer Park. We went out to La Cocina with my aunt, uncle, and cousin that night, and each drank one of their HUGE margaritas. I'm pretty sure we all passed out before 10pm that night from a food and alcohol induced coma.

Monday was spent at Ikea. The family left, and I began organizing all my shiz in the new place.

On Tuesday night there was a birthday party at one friend's place, and then a dance party at the house of L's little sister. L and I went for good times and to say goodbye to our friend G, who has to move back home for the summer :( We went out in style, though, dancing to 90s classics, and then taking an exhilirating drive down to Madison Park in a convertible to go skinny dipping. It was my first time. I wasn't nearly drunk enough. But I had tons of fun, and it felt like the exact thing we all needed to kick off Summer '09.

All in all, it's been a family and friends filled, booze-soaked week, and I'm enjoying being a graduate very much. It's a little weird to wake up every morning and not have anything to do, but I'm learning how to relax, and next week I re-start the great job search!

Final Finals Week

Thank the little lord baby Jesus that this is the last time I'll be crammed in SU's creepy study closests on the 4th floor of Lemieux. The creepiest thing about this quarter's study closet extravaganza is that the library is totally devoid of shelves and books, as they've all be transfered to the interim library. I feel like I'm in a post-apocalyptic world, especially since I'm holed up in my study cubby. I'm planning on being in here for about 4 hours today because I have 4 pages left to write. My paper compares the criticisms against the "autobiographies" of Black Elk Speaks and I, Rigoberta Menchu, and while this is somewhat interesting and would have held my attention back in, oh, say, fall quarter Junior year, I'm pretty over it right now. All I want is one of those awesome PB&Js from Watertown and maybe some ice cream from Molly Moon's.

I'll leave you with some literary food for thought. Even though the situation is quite disturbing (the massacre at Wounded Knee), I really like the imagery in this paragraph by Neihardt/Black Elk: "When we got into the timber, a good many Hunkpapas were there already and the soldiers were shooting above us so that leaves were falling from the trees where the bullets struck" (Neihardt 84). Isn't that a rich description of nature/man-made, life/destruction imagery?!

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln. 2004 ed.

Things I Like #9

La musica italiana.

I am mildly obsessed with Italian music. I stream Italian radio stations in the morning during my daily website checks. I watch Italian music videos on youtube. I memorize lyrics and hum them to myself. I work out to Italian electro-pop on my iPod. In short, it's love. Here are some of my favorite songs via youtube.


Jovanotti & Ben Harper, "Fango" (live at San Remo)



Antonello Venditti, "Indimenticabile" (super popular last year/summer)



Venditti, again, "Grazie Roma" (CLASSIC 80s cheese)



Luca Leoni, "Amore in Chat" (epico).



Gianni Togni "Giulia" (original version, not the remix)



Lunapop "50 Special" (Italy's 1990s boyband)



Simone Cristicchi, "Studentessa universitaria" (precioso)



Adriano Celentano "Ragazzo della via Gluck" (so damn catchy)

Here comes the Grown-up Express...And not all are aboard

Graduation is in one week. Although I'm staying in Seattle for the summer, it's still a strange, bittersweet feeling that my lovely little world is changing. I'm ready to do something else, as I am super burned out from all the school-work, but walking around campus today made me pre-nostalgic for my undergrad years. However, I won't miss those effers who were shouting drunken obsceneties out the windows of the dorms last night at like, 2 am. As it turns out, the word you were shouting doesn't get funnier the louder it is said. Trust me.

Sweaty Seattle

There are all these nice quotes about summer like "In summer, the song sings itself" and "The summer night is like a perfection of thought" and "Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language". But can we just cut the bullshiz William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and Henry James?! Because, let's be honest, summer is just fucking sweaty. I'm sitting in my Murphy after a lengthy happy hour with the italian class crew, reading the NYT online, and sweating without exerting any energy. Every few minutes I have to wipe the sweat from my upper lip. It's 87 deg. outside according to weather.com, and at least 10 deg. hotter in my Murphy, and I don't know how I am going to survive summer in the city. I like warm weather as much as the next person (I willingly traveled in Rome in August, for God's sake), but this week has been brutal. The combo of final projects, little sleep, and sweat has taken its toll on this Northwestern child. Bring back the temperate climate, please, weather gods!

Split personality?

I just saw my friend/employee G at a gala for Fragments, the literary magazine we help edit. He told me an amusing story. Let me recap, but first I have to backtrack.

As a student employee on campus, I often have two roles: supervisor/co-worker and friend. Occasionally it makes for awkward situations (parties, dances, non-work school events), but usually it just means I feel better about myself because I have lots of people to wave to when I saunter down upper mall on my way to Admin. However, today G showed me that perhaps those two roles are not melding together as well as they should be. G had a dream in which he was walking around campus with "Boss Lara" when we came upon "Lit. Mag Lara". He introduced the two of us, although he thought we already might know each other since we already knew G. Then Boss Lara and Lit. Mag Lara went their separate ways, and G woke up.

What does this mean?! Who does it say more about, me or G?!

Ladies

It was a week full of Ladies Time.

On Tuesday, the Ladies of Portland, K & M, came to visit for two days. We ate, drank, bowled, and bonfired.

On Friday, the roommate and our mutual friend C joined me in a beach house adventure. We went to the ol' homestead on the Long Beach peninsula, where we met up with our other mutual friend T, to have a relaxing, sunny weekend. We ended up drinking and eating a lot, and sleeping on the beach a lot, and getting a little pink from the surprisingly hot weather.

Lots of Ladies Time.