the lost soul

midnightdew @ 2008-05-04T22:51:00

2008-05-04T20:57:05Z

So my landlady just kindly informed me that I have to be out by the 28th because her granddaughter is moving in....great. Now I have to find a place to stay for the last few days of school, buy tickets earlier than planned (thank god I hadn't paid for any yet), AND spend three months at home. My plan for not dying:

1. Try being completely vegan for three months. NO CHEATING!

2. Join a gym.

3. Study many, many hours for the LSATs.

4. Take online courses to bring GPA up.

5. Explore NYC when not interning.

6. Ugh...learn something new? Sewing? Cooking? I'll figure it out.

midnightdew @ 2008-05-04T00:34:00

2008-05-03T22:43:32Z

So today I called my mom....and eventually the eternal question:

Mom: "So does your landlady still buy you pastries?"

Me: "No...I stopped eating them cuz i'm scared to gain too much weight" *expecting Mom to be supportive and be like 'Honey, you're in Paris! I'm sure a couple French pastries won't hurt!'* Instead, it goes like this:

Mom: "How much do you weigh now?"

Me: "Ugh......like 120? I'm not sure."

Mom: "Good, keep it up! I've got a whole new diet and exercise plan waiting for us to do together once you're back!"

So my summer is gonna be like high school all over again.....obsessing over food, eating disorders, way too much time at the gym and feeling like shit. Will it ever end? I just want to cut all ties with America once and for all. How can you be normal in a country where half the population is overweight, no one even walks to the grocery store five minutes away, but yet all compare themselves to starving celebs who spend 5 hours of the gym? I can't take a life of this. And it only gets worse once you get older and have to worry and wrinkles and Botox...

travel blog!

2007-06-05T23:19:03Z

IT HAS ARRIVED!!!

http://pretentiouspoverty.blogspot.com

midnightdew @ 2007-05-30T18:39:00

2007-05-30T22:48:17Z

So two days ago was officially a week of sleeping in the Voice Newspaper office. It's developed into a routine. Like every day (or almost) we have to go to the gym because otherwise we can't shower. We'll do some cardio, then some weights, crunches, pushups, go to the sauna and sweat our troubles aways, then a nice long shower, do our hair, put makeup on...the whole process takes around 3 hours. Food-wise we've gotten quite good at turning raw spniach leaves+various scavenged food articles into some pretty decent dinners. I don't know what will happen once spinach stops being on sale at Safeway.

But the best news...

WE GOT TICKETS!!! And only $413, for NYC-Munich!! We were freaking out, because two weeks ago those tickets were $535, and we were waiting to get enough money for them, then the price went up to $620 from DC, then we looked today and DC-Munich was over $700. Luckily, I decided to check out the NYC-Munich flights and it turned out there were 3 seats left on a flight for only $400! It was like the God of Airplanes had smiled down upon us. So now its official. We've got plane tickets and tickets to the Southside Music Festival. And we'll find a way to survive once we're there, even if we have to live off of canned chickpeas for two months.

problems arise

2007-05-26T01:33:02Z

Life has been pretty crazy the last week...we've spent 5 nights now at the office, or "townhouse" as we call it so as not to arouse suspicion from eavesdroppers. The first night we decided to have a mini-party to celebrate our move-out so both of us were drunk and just passed out after we got to our room. Second night, Sarah decided to go over to JB's apartment, so I was sleeping alone. I was sitting in the dark, watching Desperate Housewives on my labtop, when suddenly I saw a light go off in the space between floors 4 and 5. Some of the tiles from the ceiling were missing, so whoever was there could have easily peered in. Actually, its not even high enough there for a normal person to stand up. Anyway, suddenly the light up there went on and I heard workers speaking Spanish. That was kind of scary....fortunately about 5 minutes later the lights went back off and what I assumed was a few maintenance workers left.

The next morning, I noticed my GoCard was missing. I immediately went online and saw that it had $10 less than it did two days ago on it. All I remembered getting was 2 cups of coffee and a snack from the vending machine. I suspended it and hoped that it would turn up somewhere. The next day, Sarah's card was missing, as well as her two credit cards. The GoCard office found that someone had been using them to try to buy vending machine snacks at the science building. Thankfully, the credit cards were cancelled before any major damage was done. We think we've figured out who the asshole from Darnall was who did this to us-there's a very suspicious-looking guy who we've seen walking by and peering into the common room a lot-but we have no evidence, so there isn't really much we can do. Asshole-he cost us around $70-$25 for each of our GoCard replacements, $10 from my balance and then $10 that he used to buy something with Sarah's credit card. Our plan is to use Sarah's pepper spray and a baseball bat to get him when we see him getting his late-night snack from the science building next time.

So last night was another freakish nighttime incident. Around 11:30pm, me and Sarah were sitting in the dark in the office on the computers, when suddenly we hear the door open and the lights go on. Our hearts stopped for a few moments. Then a maintenance workers who clearly spoke no english walked in, said "Ola!", to which we replied with a hesitatnt "Hi!", checked the garbage containers, and left. Sarah decided to bolt the door shut that night, which proved to be a wise decision, because at 5:30 am we heard someone trying to get in.

Today was pretty low-key. We went to the gym, mostly in order to get a much-needed shower. People must think we're really weird: I was putting on sunless tanner and brushing my teeth at the sink. I got a weird stare from one of the Yates workers. Then Sarah mad some lentils for lunch (it turns out lentils are mad cheap-80 cents for a whole bag and we only needed half for both of us). With some spinach, we managed to make a whole meal for like $1.50. Then we went to the post office to mail our ebay sales and stopped by Gap, which was having a pretty good lingerie sale. We made yet another dinner consisting mostly of Spinach, which has been our staple food the past week. This time it was raw spinach leaves, black beans that we had scavenged from some dorm, and granola that we got from the floor below. With some lime dressing that someone had left in the fridge, it became a rather tasty salad. Total cost-$1 for the spinach. If anyone knows how to do healthy vegan for cheap, it's us. Now Sarah's meeting some kid for coffee (she IS the author of the recent "Dating for Food" article, after all). and I'm in the dark voice office, wasting time online.

More updates to follow....

Pretentious Poverty

2007-05-22T15:22:30Z

And so begins our life as homeless people....

Let me clarify how this all started. One sunny day during finals week, me and my friend Sarah, in one of our never-ending efforts to procrastinate studying for finals, were smoking sheesha on the front lawn. We were both musing about summer plans, and neither of ours offered much excitement. Her dad had decided to surprise her with a nice present: a full-time summer Kaplan LSAT prep course. I was either to spend 40 hours a week sitting at a student guard desk, or else return to New York, where my mom had the equally pleasant surprise of arranging for an internship at her friend's law firm. Obviously, we had to come up with something different. And so we did. At first, we got profiles on aupair websites, and received numerous requests from families all over the world, from nearby New Jersey to China, Turkey and Dubai. That got us excited, but watching someone's bratty kids for $50/week wasn't quite the perfect summer yet. Then we realized that perhaps we could afford an apartment in a country with cheap rental prices. So we found a place in Prague that we could afford for 2 months. But why go to Prague, when there's a wonderful country called Spain, filled with magical architecture, hot spanish boys, open air markets and a lively nightlife? We found a room, with two beds, that was only a little more expensive than our one-bedroom Prague flat. Now all we needed was money. Which was where homelessness fit in.

You see, my friend got financial aid to attend pre-session. To pay for housing, they offered her an interest-free loan. But what if, instead of paying for housing, you could live for free and use it for a plane ticket to Europe instead? I was getting an extra week of housing for helping at graduation, and would have an extra bed. After that, there were three couches in the Voice office, where we could crash as long as we made sure no one noticed that two girls had made it their home. Then I got a pleasant surprise from the Student Guard Office: apparently, they had decided to pay for my housing until June 2nd. Which left us with only 13 days of homelessness. Excited, we grabbed a cart and started lugging our belongings to Darnall. Unfortunately, it turned out I had a roommate. And it was a girl whose real name I shall not mention here, but we have decided to nickname her poulet. Poulet had been my next-door neighbor last year, and I wasn't too found of her because she would start practicing singing at 2-3am almost every night. And we could hear it quite well through the cardboard walls of Darnall Hall. Plus I had de-friended her on facebook. And when we walked into my room, it was completely filled with her belongings, including my side-on my bed, on my desk, and in my closet. So it was decided that we would revert to our original plan.

To be continued....

midnightdew @ 2007-01-24T02:24:00

2007-01-24T07:40:39Z

My life's been kinda hectic lately, I can't wait to just relax this weekend. Alternative Spring Break meetings and such are taking up a major part of any free time I have. Hopefully we get enough people to apply by friday. and I convinced Sean to drive, so we need only one more driver. I didn't really want him to go, because I'm probably gonna have to put up with him awkwardly hitting on me for 7 days but I guess I'll have to make the sacrifice for the betterment of the trip. Ahhhhh. And my friend started the Dining and Cuisine club, which is kinda awesome. Oh yeah, I also went to a Ballroom Dancing class which was really fun. And there were a few hot guys there as well. A few awkward and geeky-looking ones as well....and today while I was interning Stephen Kim IMs me and is like "I'm here"...he came back to Gtown for a few weeks apparently. I can't wait to actually see him! I didn't realize how much I missed him until I realized how much it made my day to know that I could see him again and hopefully this timenot have such an awkward goodbye moment.

On the bad news side, my labtop appears to be dying. I dont know if re-installing windows will even fix it. I was looking at IBM labtops and they start at like $600...so with my dads discount thats like 400 with tax so like $450....plus prob $100 for exras and stuff so like $550...I need to save money to go to Egypt/Paris for all of next year since I wont be able to work....on the other hand this computer is having serious issues and I'm gonna have to invest in a new one soon anyway. I was just hoping it would be after I graduated so I could spend more money on a really nice model. Hmmmm...I shouldve gotten one of the ultra-cheap ones dyring pre-Xmas sales.

midnightdew @ 2007-01-01T14:54:00

2007-01-01T18:54:09Z

Things that i did in 2006....

stayed single for the whole year? almost

kissed someone new: Yeah

made-out in a car: no

made-out on a car: not that I recall

had sex with someone you barely knew: Yup

went to a party: Lots

did drugs: Uhgg yeah

kissed the opposite sex: yes

kissed the same sex: ugh kinda

had sex more times then you can count: Sadly no

kissed in the snow: no snow this year!!! :-(

celebrated Halloween: yup :)))

kissed in the rain: no

fell in love: nope

had your heart broken: no

broke someone else's heart: perhaps

had a stalker: well...kinda

had a good relationship with someone: yeah...quite a few

came out of the closet: noooooo

gotten pregnant: haha never

gotten someone else pregnant: impossible

had an abortion: no

gotten married: no

had a divorce: no

done something youve regreted: yeah...like every day

lost your true love: no

lost faith in love: May be a little ....

kissed under miseltoe: nope

WORK/SCHOOL

lost your job: haha yes

quit your job: yes

dated a co-worker: no

dated your boss: no

took an honors/advanced class: i guess

broke the dress code: dress code?

sent to the principle's office for misbehavior: college->no more principles!!

got straight A's: haha i wish!

met one teacher you really like: Yeah

met one teacher you really hated: not really....

failed a class: no

cut class: of course

skipped school: you don't skip school in college....you just sleep through classes

got into a fight with a classmate: nah

did something you were proud of: Yes

discovered a new talent: a few

proved yourself an idiot: Many times

badly embarassed yourself in front of the class: not BADLY....

fell in love with a teacher: no

intentionally tripped someone: heheh I wish

got lead in the school play: never tried out

were involved in something you'll never forget: Oh yes

OTHER

painted a picture: I painted a spider on my wall....does that count?

wrote a poem: not this year I dont think

ran a mile: yeah

shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch: I've entered a few times....and left 30 secs later

posted a blog on MySpace: yeah

listened to music you couldnt stand: Probably

skinny-dipped: nope

went to a sleepover: no

went camping: kind of....I slept in a deserted cabin on some island

threw a surprise party: yeah

laughed till you cried: yeah

laughed till you peed in your pants: noo

flirted shamelessly: only when I'm drunk

visited a foreign country: Egypt all the way!

visted a new state: yup

cooked a disasterous meal: all my meals are disastrous

drove the car drunk: no

lost something important to you: probably....

lied about how old you were: I dont think so

got a gift you adore: hmmmm

drank way too much: ummmm sadly yes

almost got arrested: haha too bad egyptian police would never arrest a foreigner....

got arrested: no

prank called someone: of course...its my fave occupation when i'm bored...

told someone you liked them: probly

bought something for someone? yes

played truth or dare: yes...

midnightdew @ 2006-10-05T00:41:00

2006-10-05T04:56:35Z

So yeah, somehow got back into the world of LJ after like a 3 month absence....I'm now back at school, taking boring classes (Econ Statistics at 8:50 am anyone?), working two jobs and trying to make the best of sophomore year. Somehow school seems so much less interesting last year....econ stats is just horrible so early in the morning,especially now that its ramadan and I can't have a cup of coffee to pull me through, International Trade is exactly like microeconomics, except instead of Firm A and B its country A and B, Comparative Political System half puts me to sleep,half annoys the hell out of me because our uber-conservative germany-obsessed professor is so full of himself, I don't understand whats going on in Arabic, and Islamic Thought in Practice is interesting and fun but the readings are neverendless. And I still have to decide my major....

I got two new jobs, as a student guard (doing nothing but sitting at a desk),and the DEA giftshop, which basically gets no customers so I just sit there and read e-mail/online news all day. Can't complain. Hopefully I'll be able to save up to get out of the country again this summer. My whole family's going down to Russia, but I can't go unless I find an internship because my mom thinks I'm gonna waste my summer there. I don't wanna be there when she is though because I'll have to deal with curfews, etc. Sooo thinking about either going back to Cairo for language classes or an internship, or some other arab country. Beirut would've been awesome, if it wasn't for the war this summer. So maybe Jordan or UAE or something. Alright, I should probably head to bed soon since I've been very sleep deprived lately,and that combined with fasting is not a good combination.

midnightdew @ 2006-06-07T23:04:00

2006-06-08T03:11:28Z

Ahhh fuck....my mother is gonna make me insane one of these days. She asks me to make Cream of Asparagus soup, then flips out becuase I cut the tops off the asparagus. The recipe said only use teh green parts and the tops looked purple to me....then she dumps the half-made soup into the sink (an hour's efforts gone to waste), starts screaming about how lazy I am, and the worst was when she grabebd $70 I had made babysitting and ripped it in half. That just set me off, if she wants to rip her own stuff go ahead but I didn't sit with 3 kids for nothing. Then tells me to stay at school for all future breaks. Like I'll ever even consider going home again after all the daily crap I have to go through here. The funny part was when she storms into my room complaining about how I spend all my time in front of the computer instead of being useful. The computer was turned off already, but she goes "I'm turning this off and don't you dare turn it on!". Pushes the button, the computer turns on, I'm like "good job" and she gets even more pissed and starts jabbing at the button, while the computer continues starting up. I swear I live with a bunch of idiots....

midnightdew @ 2006-05-26T23:36:00

2006-05-27T03:37:39Z

I love it how my family can never completely finish anything....like installing a new window in my room then not repainting the sides and failing to put in a handle that actually works and lets you open it. Or putting in an air conditioner that doesn't reach any outlet. Now how am I supposed to fall asleep when its a million degrees in here?!?

midnightdew @ 2006-04-28T01:42:00

2006-04-28T05:47:21Z

So I got registration back....everything's good except NO ARABIC!!! :-O Hopefully some kind professor will let me into their class. And I didn't get my first choice for International Trade, but whatever. I don't have class on tuesdays until 5:40 and none at all on thursdays. Bur of course thats without Arabic. But still, if my ARabic fits in rights I might possibly have room for an intership. Which would be awesome. Two people are staying over for a STAND conference that my roommate agreed to house people for. Of course, my roommate just leaves them in our room for me to find while she goes to sleep over at someone else's place. Yeaaaaah. This is awkward. And i had way to much caffeine so sleep is out of the question.

midnightdew @ 2006-02-03T22:31:00

2006-02-04T03:37:03Z

So....I think I should probably get a haircut soon because of split ends....but I want to do something more drastic than my usual trim with some layers...should I got with bangs? more layers? chop a lot off?

That's kind of what my hair looks like now...I know its a pretty bad picture, but I couldn't find anything better because I left the cord from my digital camera at home. So...any ideas?

midnightdew @ 2004-04-05T17:29:00

2004-04-05T20:30:15Z