obligatory thanksgiving post

i won't do a full year wrap up until the first of the year (which will be very epic, i feel). my moves alone are worthy of some sort of self-actualization language. but that's for later.
as most of you know, joy and i went to new york to visit andrew and mo this thanksgiving. it was my first thanksgiving away from home and my first foray into twentysomething holidays: there were eight lovely people there with various connections to andrew (joy and myself), mo his girlfriend (hannah and kelsey) and both of them (drew and drew's girlfriend). best food i've ever had. joy and i decided that choosing thanksgiving with our friend who is the best cook we know was a phenomenal choice.
here's the crew at the table (and yes, i'm behind the camera -- didn't want to deal with the self timer).
i'm thankful for these people - new friends, old friends, and old OLD friend (yes, that's bacon). the thanksgiving day parade made me feel like a little kid, as joy can vouch. i shouted "DORA THE EXPLORER!!! (with that same excitement for every other balloon) and made sure that joy looked over the crowd to take pictures of the floats. looking back at the photos, i'm pretty positive that NO ONE needs 50 pictures of giant balloons. but that's the way it goes. and yes, it did get me into the holiday spirit. here's the rockin animatronic turkey:

i guess this year i'm most thankful for knowing friends who will always be willing to let you sleep on their couch, delicious organic food AND.... tattoo parlors open at all hours and jazz clubs and shuffle board and tiffany earrings and handmade hats and laughs and belgian beer and the east village and the west village and brooklyn and central park and boots and reminiscing and weird music and marzipan and spiked cider and arts and crafts and squash and florists and co-ops that won't let you in and old bosses who text you HAPPY THANKSGIVING and getting lost with joy because we're overconfident in our skills and macy's and balloons and future trips and falafel and self-serve yogurt and gilmore girls marathons and ikea and public transportation and watching joy sleep on public transportation and french press coffee and andrew's communication style and mo and joy tap dancing and good weather and and AND.

friends who always make you feel at home.

if they taught me anything...

living in the south is an experience that i will carry with me for the rest of my life. i still have furniture there, which is really the only remnant of the place i have left, but mostly i will remember the south for being one of the most politically draining experiences of my life. maybe if i lived in columbia or charleston, where there are some more democrats around, or maybe if i didn't happen to work in such a insanely Palin- Joe Wilson-loving work environment, i would appreciate it more. but i didn't.
my biggest complaint was that republicans assumed i was a democrat because i was a young woman from the West, and that i really didn't know much of anything about what the republican party believes. and only, IF ONLY, i would listen to Rush Limbaugh, i would come over to the light side and become a Republican.
well folks, that strategy failed miserably. in fact, it only emboldened my commitment to ALMOST ANYTHING other than the Republican party platform. reading the Times today, I looked at the proposed RNC Resolutions for their winter meeting. The RNC is proposing that if they're constituents don't believe in at least 7 out of 10 items, they will be at risk for not getting money from the RNC. harsh.
After peeking at the Resolutions, I can say that I disagree with every one of them. It's nice to know that I do, in fact, know where i stand in my political beliefs. now i'm not saying i'm 100% jazzed on what's going on with the Democrats, but at least I agree with their basic tenets. (and yes, Dad, i will continue to be pissed about Afghanistan-- check out the most hilarious Onion article about it here). but at least i know i'm not involved with the RNC b.s. blech.
take that South Carolina.

p-town

i haven't posted in a while. i do have substantive things to say, and anecdotes (particularly about my new favorite bagel shop), but my college friend Matt Lamb, the giant discus thrower, posted this picture on facebook taken from WSU's The Daily Evergreen about drinking in Pullman and all the problems that go along with it.
The numbers really speak for themselves, and the last two truly underscore the ridiculousness of my college years.


See, Baltimore is pretty scary sometimes, but at least i don't get assaulted by Chewbacca.

avoid

for the most part, i feel like i do things in an efficient manner. and when i want to do something, i do it. want to go to a concert? i will figure out how to get there and buy tickets for the team. complain you haven't seen me in forever? i'll pick a time to meet. i feel like efficiency is something i'm pretty good at.
efficiency, though, only occurs when i WANT to do something. when i don't want to do something, or feel it would take all too much effort, i am the master avoider. i will put off fixing things that are broken, cooking an actual meal for DAYS at a time, and general household/life maintenance. these avoidances finally got too much for me to handle, so i fixed some. here are these, my least favorite activities that i finally manned-up and got to doing.
- system recovery on my laptop. it's been broken for about two months now, completely out of comission by a nasty terrible virus. i've had this disk (it was the second one i ordered) for over a week. i'm just now getting my computer fixed. mostly because i'm tired of what's on my ipod. and, for those of you i talk to on a regular basis, you never have to hear about my broken computer again! (i hope)
- dealing with pants that are too long. as a short girl, this will always be a struggle. got a phenomenal pair of jeans that were 4 inches too long. yep, 4 inches. rocked the heat n bond hem. i felt domestic.
- changed my billing address with bank of america. once again, they screwed me. i couldn't just change it online, i had to hand write a letter with my signature. this seems like a bush-league operation for BoA.
items that i still haven't done, and have lived here for a month now:
- unclog my drain. yep, it's gross. i know it. i try not to think about it.
- hung up my own shower curtain. i have a cute one, but next to fixing things on my computer, it is my least favorite household activity to do. it always takes too long. i have a shower curtain that sucks and came with my apartment, but i currently have no reason to change it.
- put together: a stool, a side table, a organization thing. all ikea. and, considering the amount of posts i've dedicated to the ikea situation, there no further explanation is needed.

at this point, the only reason i will do these activities is if someone sleeps at my house. and, since i have an air mattress, i feel like these things won't ever get done until i move again.

...so, looks like i'll go to a new coffee shop instead.

here's to avoidance.

from my father, i think

joy walked into my broken-in apartment last week and exclaimed, "this is a sarah apartment now." unsure of what constitutes something being "sarah," i asked her. she responded rather quickly with, "there are just piles of stuff everywhere. and not necessarily in any sort of order. just piles."
i'm not sure what sort of wisdom i can pull out of that statement, and i would be remiss to think that there is an epiphany hidden in that. but i do know that it is completely correct -- i am a woman of piles. Looking around my apartment now, i can count roughly seven or so different piles around the perimeter of my apartment. and here's the problem: i don't want to buy any more STUPID plastic storage containers. (i think this is partly from being scarred from childhood in having to consistently purge and fit things into "one plastic box." i loathed the plastic box.) once something goes in a storage container i will never take it out of there again and will have to buy a replacement for an item that i already own. case in point: handbags.
i have lots of bags - i'm pretty positive that i don't need to buy any more bags for a while, but when i was in greenville i put them in a box in my closet. i couldn't see them, therefore i would get sick of the one i would carry for a couple of months and buy a new one. would i look in the box to see if i had a suitable replacement for the bag i was sick of? nooooo. instead, i would just assume that i didn't already have one that was XYZ -- why? because the bags were hidden from my plain sight.
when things are in piles right in front of my face, i don't need to buy anything else. yes, it might seem claustrophobic to some, and it might seem without rhyme or reason (now why would there be a pile containing a flashlight, a box of checks, a still broken laptop, AND a paula abdul tape? it's the pile of misfit items, of course) -- but this lets me know i have all i need. consider it a practice in frugality.
also, i think it might be genetic: i have only dared go into steve-o's office a few times, and that man has more piles of strategically placed paper than i have ever seen. i think some have been there since 1995.
now that seems logical to me.

another reason...

...to love baltimore:
the club we went to on saturday night played Whitney's, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." joy, being the amazing friend she is, came up to me and some schmuck at the bar and said, "i don't care if you're getting a free drink, we're dancing right now."
we danced and sang to Whitney, i explord a new neighborhood that is excellent for weekends, i got nicknamed, and i only spent $20.
a great success.

when i grow up

i have jobs, and this makes me very very happy. most importantly, i managed to pull together this baltimore scheme without having to work in retail. this, for me, is a big deal.
the biggest job i have is with ASTT: Advocates for Survivors of Toture and Trauma. they are doing amazing counseling and social services for those who came to the U.S. to seek asylum from war torn countries and trauma situations (think Darfur and Guatemala, for example.) i'll be the development assistant, which helps my boss molly do the day to day stuff with funder relations, fundraising, newsletter, event planning, advocating, etc. this is exactly what i want to do when i grow up. well, my boss' job is what i want to be when i grow up. but i'll get there.
check out the great work that they do: www.astt.org
i'm also doing a small project internship with Unity Productions Foundation, a media company that makes movies about Muslims and Islam to help facilitate interfaith and interethnic dialogue, hoping to increase understanding of Islam in America and gain peace through the media. a totally necessary organization in this political climate. i'm writing a report to a funder about how we spent their money to finish the film Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think.
check out their website too, it's really interesting work they're doing: www.upf.tv

i heart working in organizations doing good.