Tuesday, March 4

 
congratulations are in order to my two best friends, who rock the casbah more than anyone i know.

first, ms. janelle herrick, soon to be mrs. zachariah holmboe - congratulations on your impending matrimony. you're the only woman i know who could go to school full-time, work 35 hours a week, plan a wedding and still find time for alias, everwood and american dreams. i adore you (and your fiance... but that's another story.)

second, ms. lindy parker, soon to be ms. lindy i-own-the-city-of-new-york parker - congratulations on your acceptance to the nyu guillotine school (or whatever it's called.) i knew they would be dying to have you. i can't wait to visit you in your chic manhattan flat where i can try on your beautiful winter coats, go to broadway shows with you and pretend to understand your intelligent grad student discourse.

i am lucky to have girls like you in my life.
posted by from shannon at 4:24 PM

 
from my friend laura:

"where is that baby panda? is he underwater?"
posted by from shannon at 4:19 PM

Monday, March 3

 
two posts in a row! take that, poem boy.
posted by from shannon at 12:54 AM

 
if you love baby pandas (and who doesn't?*) then you should check this out.

the only problem: why would you call something a "panda cam" when there is nary a panda afoot? why would you promise the good wordlwide public a glimpse of god's most important gift to china**, only to deliver a nice shot of the dirt lot known as a zoo cage? the promise and lack of fulfillment is killing me here. i've developed something bordering on obsession as i have faithfully checked the panda cam every day for two weeks in a mad, never-to-be-realized desire to catch a glimpse of one of these beasts.

but still, it's good to hope, right?


*okay, two people popped into my mind immediately: 1) jared, who would only love them if they were in the form of smoking ashes after having been zapped by ninja monkey robots, or 2) my boyfriend, who, now that dodgers spring training has started, only loves baseball (seriously, ask my dejected sense of self-worth.)
**this claim is actually faulty on two accounts, as a) if one were to judge god's greatest gift to the chinese, the great wall or the eggroll would obviously supercede the panda, and b) god only gives gifts to white people.
posted by from shannon at 12:51 AM

Sunday, March 2

 
what a day to be locked up indoors. i should be eating ice cream at disneyland or reading a book on the lawn at farmer's market or exploring anything. instead i'm trying to bullshit my way through a scholarship essay and the longest short story of my life... bad decisions. it's days like this that i miss my italy life because i never seemed to have to do anything - just walk to school or through parks and side streets and markets. when there was sunshine, which admittedly came in short supply. but right now i can't stop thinking of the first day we had enough sunshine that i put on flip flops and wandered around the centro listening to death cab for cutie and thinking i had nothing to do.

speaking of there, an amazing thing has happened to me. i no longer fear the los angeles international airport. i can now drive near lax now without scrunching up my face with anxiety. i've stopped seeing that stupid concrete labyrinth as an enemy, ceased to irrationally believe the alitalia runway is a plank someone is going to force me to walk at swordpoint. the cycle of me wanting to leave los angeles and then come back to los angeles is back round, so i've stopped associating lax with one of the most frightening mornings of my life, the day i left for italy. actually, for the first time in a long time, when i drove through those strange lit-up pillars the other night, i actually got excited about leaving.

hooray.


posted by from shannon at 2:12 PM