I heart PA!

Dear friends,
I sincerely apologize for not blogging.
I'm going to make a fair attempt to catch you up on the week.
Love you,
Katie

Mom and I left for our most epic road trip of all time on Monday. We drove through Texas (for hours) and Arkansas in pelting rain (unbelievable, I know!), and made it to Nashville, Tennessee to spend the night. Nashville is a fascinating city, but I didn't get to see nearly enough of it. But Tennessee, oh Tennessee, I am in love. Green, flourishing, beautiful, and home of Jack Daniels. I know, you scoff, I rarely drink whiskey, but it does hold a fond place in my heart for the time that preceeds my 23rd birthday. I will be back to Tennessee.

It should be noted that I selected out listening choice for the road trip: Barbara Kingsolver's Vegetable, Animal, Miracle. You must read it. Must. Must read. Even better, listen to it. Kingsolver's voice is soft and poetic, and her husband's and daughter's voices truly add character to their included essays. I want to eat locally! I want to raise chickens! I even want to cut their cotton-pickin' heads off! Then eat them! A paradigm shift happens when things we typically see as "disgusting" and "nasty," like decapitating and plucking chickens or turkey sex, seem like extraordinary events I am completely missing out upon and I no longer want to be deprived of the joys related to growing, raising, and preparing my own food. Locavores don't seem so "loco" any more. In fact, Matthew and I are committed to weekly trips on Fridays to the Farmers Market and we're going on the 2009 Farm Tour to visit our local farms and inquire about how to purchase some meat locally. Yum! Not to mention, that seriously-- the Amish guy who sold me eggs is really attractive. It's a little strange, I realize, but he is... well... .gorgeous. No lie, ladies. My mom, Matthew, & Ben ALL agreed.

What did we get at the farmers market? This delicious spread of veggies:
The bag has zucchini cheese bread in it. We also bought a shoo-fly pie, which is a little like a brown sugar Pop-tart, but improved. I also bought eggs, a jar of jalepenos, and some rasberry-chipotle preserves. Yes, I found a sweet woman who likes her food spicy (she was a teacher, too!).

Fortunately for Ms. Kingsolver, Mom and I didn't go loco on her and show up at her farm. Humorously enough, we did drive right through the town in Virginia where her mailing address is located. We considered a detour, but can you imagine what we would say if we just drove on up there? It would not have been pretty. But the countryside certainly was!

To be honest, the drive through the rest of Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland was fairly boring. We stopped in Gettysburg, PA, for the night-- we had to visit three different hotels to finally find a room. But the one we ended up in had a jacuzzi tub, and I enjoyed the best bubble bath of my life. The bubbles rose up above my head, and I couldn't stop giggling from shear joy. Truly movie-star like.

We toured Hershey's Chocolate World. It was pretty darn silly. These ladies gave us a tour of the chocolate making process:Come visit me, and I'll take you! It's silly, but we had a good time.

The Good Stuff: State College
Matthew and I get along well, and have already been very productive. We even built our own bathtub, since our apartment didn't come with one. Isn't he great?

OK, yes, we do actually have a bathtub. We just broke out the silliness while creating our first artistic piece for the living space since our apartment didn't come with LIGHTS. Whoever built this place also had a lamp factory and needed to ensure they could keep the lamp factory in business. To really stick it to the man, we created our own light source. We found a vase and a crummy stained lampshade at the Goodwill and created a very lovely lamp.

HAHA- WE STUCK IT TO YA, LAMP-MAN!

Oh yes, we've stayed busy. Matthew has the kitchen organized beautifully, and we've been hunting furniture and working on the living room. We grabbed some more FREE lamps off the curb today and finally have the lighting situated for our living area.

In addition to fighting the lamp factory, we've also managed to

plant some herbs,

create an original piece of art,


and cook a few good meals.

All in a week's work.

I'm sure I've broken all rules of appropriate blog-length, so for those of you still reading, I'll post again soon (tomorrow, hopefully) with some real stories from the week.

Oh, and I hear you guys in Texas got a cold front. Congratulations!

Missed Connections

I can't help it; yes, I am a sick, sad, and depraved individual. I'm out to manipulate, to fantasize, to wonder. At least once (and sometimes twice) a week, I make a point to read some of the personal ads on Craigslist. Many are less than appetizing, some are humorous, quite a few are just plain disappointing. But my favorite indulgence is, by far, the Missed Connections page.

I guess it started when Amanda (yeah, I'm 90% positive) was on a Missed Connections ad. It was one perverted message, but led to many laughs around the bar table. It's a feeling I assume a line of cocaine is like-- you just want a little bit more. All the time. Who's next? I spend my time around fairly attractive, interesting folk, so you would think I'd stumble upon another great Missed Connections ad for any of my friends. As of yet, none have turned up.

And what about me? Is there a weird spot in me looking for that one that slipped by in the Chick-fil-A line? Did someone at the movies spot me out and decide they had to go immediately to Craigslist and post an ad stating that our connection was missed? Or what if I cut off someone in traffic-- are they pissed off enough to post their peeve publicly? Nah. No connection, just entirely... ignored. At least no one wants to bang my....OK, I won't go there, Amanda!

Really, I'm most curious as to the stories here. I want to be like Ira Glass in This American Life; I want to know the stories. Don't you? Which ones are really police officers setting up an unknowing criminal? Certainly, they're out there, right? Why did "David's" mom give him up for adoption, and why is her sister now looking for this long-lost nephew-- what sparked the search? Why are all of these married people so desperately unhappy? And what was it about her next-door neighbor in the Dallas hotel that struck her, so as to write a little ad welcoming a one-night stand on her last night in town?

And, of course, I want to know the answer to the ultimate question on the Missed Connections page: Are you gay, too? I wonder how effective the Missed Connections page is in establishing relationships (or sometimes, just hook-ups) for gay people. It must be rough, not really knowing if that hot guy in the grocery is gay or straight (I've had a few of those wonderings myself...).

Each one a little thread of people-- of relationships lost, failed, doomed, unexplored, unknown, or perhaps, after just that one little blue line of hyperlink, things might be looking up.

The book is always better than the movie.

I just don't understand this: Why can't Hollywood take a perfectly good story line and accurately transpose it to film? Understandably, cuts must sometimes be made for the sake of time, but the basic storyline should stay in tact. No one seems to care about the integrity of the story!

This rant follows my viewing of My Sister's Keeper. I decided I wanted to see a movie tonight, and I knew that there wasn't a soul to take, and even if there was, I can't drag anyone I know to see a sad movie. Perfect. That means I can cry alone in a dark theater without the embarrassment of family & friends passing me greasy popcorn napkins. If you care about the plot-- beware of spoilers.

Although I wasn't thrilled about My Sister's Keeper, I figured this was the opportunity to see it. I read the book, and I have this annoying habit of imagining the movie (or play) while reading the book. I knew it could make a fantastic movie! But the screenwriter failed to develop the characters and wasted a lot of time with montages of nothingness. The lone brother walked around town a lot doing nothing. Seriously, there were about three scenes of this. Do you know what he's doing in the book? Burning shit. Way cooler. But no, the choice was just to have him wandering a city & hopping on & off a bus (The kid is supposed to be old enough to drive-- can we at least get a solid fast car scene?).

And I'm just not ready to buy Cameron Diaz as the mother of teenagers. I guess she wants to push her limits from silly to serious, but she's simply not convincing. I don't know why I'm willing to buy Jennifer Anniston as a mother in Marley & Me, but not Cameron Diaz. She just isn't very maternal, I think. Sorry, Cameron.

Then-- the ending! The ending is totally different! Like, not even CLOSE to the same! The WRONG KID DIES! That is a major flaw in the adaptation. Basically, the screenwriter failed to write the entire climax. You want to make someone cry? People die of cancer. Kids die. We've seen this in movies, read it in books. You make people cry by killing the HEALTHY sister. Jodi Piccoult understood this-- she twisted your expectations. Hollywood fail. Book win.

Gah. I'm disappointed. A tear-jerker can't even make me cry. You just make me mad about the writing & direction! You know you suck at making tear-jerker movies when Katie isn't crying. Get a new job.

/end rant.

Happy Independence Day!

I made it through the holiday spending time with the family instead of out and about Austin or DFW, as I would have liked to do. For the sake of nostalgia, I wandered down to Yettie Polk Park and checked out the fiddlers, fried food, and fair fun. I was tempted to buy a bottle-top necklace with the Texas flag painted on it, but held back. It would be a little cheesy for me to walk around PA with a Texas flag around my neck, right?

Dad grilled burgers today-- and pineapple to top them with! Oh gosh, that was AMAZING. We've definitely made burgers withe pineapple in the meat in Denton, but I have never put a fat chunk of fresh, grilled pineapple on my burger. That's called fireworks in the mouth!

I finished J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey today which was a worthwhile read. I almost wish I had read it a few years ago, about the time I was reading Siddhartha. They would have complimented one another well. I've been in a spiritual funk, and honestly-- I don't mind it. I just have never been one for putting religion or spirituality on the back burner. It's nice almost, not thinking and just accepting. I don't have energy for religious seriousness anymore, I burnt it all out as a teenager, and maybe that's OK. I never want to be religious again anyway. But to deny the spiritual self is to deny a lot of life. Even practicing yoga would bring a little of that awareness back to me, and I'd like that.

The fireworks were nice, but not the best I'd ever seen. I almost wish I had gone alone. I hope next year I can celebrate the Fourth in Philadelphia, or New York, or D.C. Somewhere with a wild, raucous celebration!

Happy Fourth of July!

A poem written as I entered Year 24.

I wrote this on my birthday last year, a little drunk, but gloriously full of love. One year is coming full circle in a matter of a month- I dig this.

Late night habits
My boys
with lusty lingering eyes
My girls
Reciprocating with high class
I
Anticipate a year of life-long
Memories
See-you laters
And no good-byes
Late night habits
and long drives home