new blog!

hey ---

due to unexpected asian porn hacking, i have a new blog.

go to www.sarahwithanairuh.blogspot.com for the new musings.

thoughts along the road

Sunday night, July 25

you know it's bad when you can smell yourself, and your self doesn't smell good.

i'm in a hotel in charlotte, NC with charita (road dawg extraordinaire) 100 or so miles into the slog back to baltimore. tomorrow, 8 hours of driving the 14' truck with no cds and no co-pilot.

last night in greenville was awesome - i was able to see my friends and my favorite relatives and i realized that visiting really is the best way to appreciate the South. a few days, then i'm good to go. and in typical sarah weakley fashion, i managed to drink far too much and this morning came a tad too early.

notably, we managed to see both a seersucker shirt (on my friend jamie) and white linen pants (on my friend graham). southern mission accomplished.

oh(!) and i bought my mayonnaise. Duke's. i don't care how unhealthy it is, i love mayonnaise on sandwiches. and for a girl who eats as many tuna sandwiches as i do, it matters. there is also 100 calories in 1 tablespoon.

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Monday, July 26

8 hours of driving, ugh. i only had to put in the i-pod once, in the middle of virginia where apparently gospel radio only exists. otherwise, i heard THREE Hall and Oates songs, i did not hit any animals, and hit dc before rush hour. i gloated.

charita and i also unloaded all my crap from the u haul in under and hour, went to home depot to get the plywood for my bed ( the box spring won't fit down the stairs...errrg), and then..

the only regret.

we were feeling so accomplished that at 8pm we started to put together an IKEA dresser. this project was abandoned in another hour after much swearing. do not attempt this. you will want to cut your eyes with the picture-only directions. (but we know how i feel about IKEA).

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Wednesday, July 28

i attempted work. i sound like a phlegmy Stevie Nicks and am tired all over.

this will not bode well for the housewarming party we are throwing on friday.

helicopters and schmaltz

if you have been lucky (?) enough to be following the bachelorette this season, know that i am one of your ranks. this is one of the only seasons i have watched, and it all began so benignly -- joy and i park in front of the tv, we pick favorites and mercilessly mock the 25 dudes who were foolish enough to be humiliated on national television. it's unfortunate that now most of those voted off have become a slogan, "the weatherman," "canadian d-bag" "weird voice 'guard and protect your heart' guy," etc. poor fellas.

joy and i also knew, though, that we would end up watching every episode. and i have. am i proud? no. will i watch the finale? absolutely.

that being said, there are a few qualms:

- helicopters. with every episode, there is a helicopter date and this last episode she remarked on the romantic-ness of the helicopter date. it is as if this is the only viable form of transportation when you are dating someone. you know what would be refreshing, and truest to life? they put these two in a '99 Ford Focus with a tape deck ONLY and tell them they have to drive from pullman to the tri-cities. then we'll see who's madly in love. i say one of them bails when they are stuck behind a semi going 45 near Dusty, WA.

- background music. this only serves to make an awkward quasi-romantic situation less so. i understand that you need some audio filler when a dude is stammering out that, "uhhh...i don't usually do this...but...uh...i think i might uh...be falling for you." good lord - you came on to the show knowing you'd have to spill your guts for good tv, now hop to it.

- the frank situation. for those of you who haven't heard about this, one of the dudes got to the last three and then decided he loved his ex-girlfriend in chicago. fine, whatever. but this d-bag has the balls to cry about the situation. YOU are dumping HER. no matter how hard you cry, i will not feel sorry for you. and NO-- she shouldn't ever forgive you.

- champagne. i saw ali and chris (one of the last two) FINALLY drinking a beer together. that is life. no one drinks that much champagne unless you're christening a boat or at a new year's eve party. even then, it's bad champagne. mimosas, maybe. drink some beer -- PBR would be fine (it's union made!).

- the team psychiatrist. chris harrison (the host) usually has the heart to hearts with the bachelor/bachelorette, that's fine. but when did he become the shoulder to cry on for both ali and the other dudes who have ex-girlfriend issues? or let alone, the authority on "following your heart"? i'll make sure to give mr.harrison a call if i'm not sure i'm in a good relationship or not. he seems to have all the answers.

and finally ---

the whole premise that ali "can't find anyone" and "always gets her heart broken" and that "this is the only way to find love." she's 25. 25?! and her love life is apparently over, no hope left. well put a fork in me friends, because it looks like i'm doomed to be alone forever according to the almighty bachelorette.

if you need me, you can find me on my air mattress with my PB&J sandwich and orange juice, wallowing in my lack of romantic promise.

the King

those of you that know me know that i love sports. i write extensively on this topic, most notably my dreams of working as a sportscaster.

this dream might have been ruined last night.

not only has almost every sports journalist spent far, FAR too much time on the LeBron James free agent debacle, the 60 minute ego-fest last night was the final straw. it's as if there are no other games being played. remember the World Cup? Tennis? Baseball? (a sport i don't even particularly enjoy.) sports happen EVERY DAY. there are thousands of contests being played every day at every level, and yet the only news worthy of reporting on is where LeBron will try to win a championship for the next few years. i would've rather heard reporting on the Tri-Cities U-14 Rec League soccer game than this buffoonery. (always put your money on the Scorpions. always.)

this circus has forced me once again to turn my back on professional basketball. when there are exciting Finals (see: Lakers vs. Celtics, 2008 and 2010) my hopes rise after a three year hiatus from the game. but then, like a jilted lover who realized AGAIN that my significant other went back to their ex, i slink away -- downtrodden, ashamed that i could be so foolish.

the sensationalism is too much for me. LeBron is good, yes. we all know this. but surely there is something else.

looks like it's back to hating professional basketball. it was a good month, NBA.

*Editorial correction

* Upon a cool down and a digital tongue lashing, this blog rescinds its comments regarding 7th grade badminton partner that have been removed from the previous post. The writer was very much in rant-mode at the time, and her comments only further reflect her bitterness.
Best,
Sarah *

social media makes me...

feel bad about myself sometimes.

i'm assuming that back in the day (pre-2005) if you didn't deliberately keep in contact with someone they dropped from your mental radar. had a class together freshman year of college? cool - see ya around, maybe. high school crush? relegated to storytelling moments for social gatherings. that high school crush is getting married? i wouldn't know until they bring their wife to the reunion 20 years from now.

but now social media is making it worse, especially this "married/engaged" thing. i know, i know, i don't want to get married any time soon. in my rational head, i know that. but why must facebook continue to throw it in my face that i, in fact, am nowhere near that time? in this season of weddings, if i have to look at another slew of pictures of the bride held up by all five of the groomsman i'm going to start shoving pencils down my fingernails. that might be less painful.

can't we go back to only knowing about people's relationships when you are invited to the wedding or if you hear if second- or third-hand? and it's not like i have talked to these now married people any time within the last three years. nope. but i know they had a wedding. i also know that they recently acquired a Yorkshire terrier and went to Napa for their honeymoon.

it's masochism at this point -- i know that i don't want to look at their wedding album but i do. i can't tear myself away. so the cycle of self-deprecation continues as long as i cannot tear myself away from the wedding album of my 7th grade P.E. badminton partner to a girl he met rock-climbing.

i think it will continue to be love-hate. without social media, where will i be able to share my witty social commentary? (sarcastic)

damn you facebook! *shakes fist at heavens*

MLA, APA or creative?

the title of my mom's email to me today.

my mom is an adjunct professor at CBC for some early childhood courses, and sometimes she asks me questions about students' writing and such. mostly if she's being too much of a hard ass grader. (she used to be).

today she asked me to look over a works cited page (which these four students labeled 'Bibliography') and see if there is anything in the general realm of a citation style. there really wasn't, but this is what I had to write back to her. proof that one day i want to be a professor so i can give this kind of feedback to my students:

"Yikes.

It looks like each person did a different couple and then put them all together. The books are cited ok -- the first one is alright except the title of the book should be italicized. It looks like they attempted to use MLA format, but just started guessing when it came to the websites and articles on the websites.

The websites are painful to look at, and they should be marked down for copying and pasting a website logo in their Works Cited page. It's not that difficult to type out the website.

They probably used a MLA citation generator, but many times those can't do complicated stuff (e.g. shit from articles on a website). Hence, wrong.

if we're going on GENERALITIES, i guess give them points. but not full points. the whole thing is discombobulated.

also - it's called a WORKS CITED page, not a bibliography. you wrote bibliographies for your 4th grade report about sea turtles. (which i completely copied from national geographic, by the way).

ALSO - WIKIPEDIA?! you should outlaw that as a source. any joe blow can update that crap. it should never be quoted in a paper. you look at wikipedia when you want to figure out when the last czar of russia died, not when you're writing a college paper.

- sarah"