holland?

i am cultivating an almost god-like knowledge of summer tv. have you seen the commercials for this new show, "pirate master?" the voice over goes something like this: "it's DANGEROUS!" and this guy says, "to be a pirate, you have to be COOL." wow, that does sound dangerous!!! it's basically a group of idiots running around the bahamas following a "pirate map" that was obviously made by an intern.

i am so bored, so so bored. yet whenever my phone rings, i am terrified that it will be someone wanting me to work for them. my mom is away at a committee meeting in washington so dad and i are just hanging out. yesterday we went to go get these flats that ive been trying to get for like 3 months now but couldn't find in the right color/size, but i found them over by SMU at a store called "cotton island." here they are:

this place is the epitome of the whole dallas/smu culture.. check out this picture of their store:

basically the people who work there are ridiculously done up, tanned, blond girls who are like...so nice. so sweet, so southern. i mean i'm sure it's a front but i love it so much. when we left my dad was like "you know, every girl working there came from the same model didn't they?" SMU is so weird... i'm fascinaed by it, and yet i know i should be repulsed by it because everyone else is. but it's so interesting and weird. forte describes it best, his wife went to SMU and he can do a hilarious impression of dallas women.. "oh youahh're funnn!"
anyways then we went to mockingbird station which is one of these new shopping/entertainment centers that are everywhere here, which i actually kind of like because in dallas' case there's a few that are actually pretty cool looking and have good restaraunts. actually i think the reason i have a soft spot for this kind of expansive and excessive development because it reminds me of oresund in copenhagen. anyways this one at mockingbird station has the angelika film center, which i always thought was unique to new york, but it turns out there's three in texas and one in new york. boyah! my dad wanted to see the new paul verhoeven movie, "black book," which as you might guess, is about holland during world war two. i'm a sucker for war movies so i enjoyed it. before that we went to the adjacent trinity hall for some dinner, and i was excited because they serve strongbow there. we sat outside and for once it was sunny.

ive watched marie antoinette twice today...weird

magasin

oh boy this is really starting to get old. i really hate to complain because i know i'm the luckiest kid... im just running out of stuff to be excited about or something. i guess yesterday was good, we went out to brunch at la duni with burt, the dean of my parent's school, and his wife.. burt is really awesome and loves to talk architecture so that was fun, turns out hes friends with antoine predock so that's really neat. predock is 'kind of a big deal' around here... i drove over and saw one of his houses in highland park last summer, and kinda liked it:

and then later it cleared up for like 5 minutes (it's been raining literally for 8 days straight now) so i took the refurbished bike out for a spin around oak lawn, which was unexpectedly awesome. when i had that bike at school, you know, it's from the 70s, i was always freaked out by it because the front wheel wobbled and the breaks didn't work...now both the iron pig and dad's bike are running like a charm. i took it down to walgreen's to get some pictures developed, and then after dinner, mom and i rode down to the katy trail (one of those rails to trails things that leads from our neighborhood to downtown dallas) and rode all the way down to victory plaza, where the w is and the new mandarin oriental next to it, and not far away from the koolhaas/foster construction sites. its only like a 2 mile ride, you can get there in like 10 minutes. we also found out that the parking lot of the theatre in turtle creek is a popular cruising spot! take notes. anyways i was gonna go back today with my camera to capture the progress on construction, but it fucking poured all day of course.
we went to the mall and i returned these bright blue jeans i bought, cuz it turns out they were just a little too crazy for dallas. that's typical. the color palette here is more subdued than up north, and i forgot that. dad, however, bought all these shirts and one of them is insane - like purple and green with these ferns which mom and i told him look like feathers. we told him to return it but he refuses. we'll see, i know mom won't let him wear it.
but anyways i have been sick for the last week, and ive been taking robotussin nighttime before bed, and its making me CRAZY. like i can't wake up at all during the day, and if i have to do anything within an hour of taking it i can't wake up from this really weird, crazy sleep. i mean people in highschool used to 'robotrip' or whatever, but i thought you had to drink like an entire bottle of the crap to feel any hallucinigenic effect? i'm taking a pretty normal amount, and last night i had a crazy waking dream about "the girls next door." wtf?????!!??!?!? im gonna go get some other kind of medicine if it stops raining ever.
in other news i finished "undaunted courage" and have started on "team of rivals" which is about abe lincoln and his cabinet. i mean honestly, its more of a sleep aide than anything, i read 2 pages and without fail i doze off... but it's really interesting, just really slow. obviously.
i want to go see the new 28 weeks later so bad but no one here will go with me and since my computer is broken my dad is refusing to let me download it on his since he could get in big trouble i guess.
my mom keeps saying if i want to go back to ny right now i can, but i dunno...i need to get a job and save some money before the fall and living in ny i can't see how that would help.

i've got a tigress back at home, and i need someone with soul power

oh god i think i have enough time now to write a post. it's been a WEIRD few days. or i guess, weeks now. i graduated, it was so weird... so fast. the senior donee dinner was amazing: forte brought all his own wine, year 2003 for the year we entered slc, and french in honor of michelle meyers leaving this year. we drank so much, and then it was the faculty show, and then the dance - so funny. then we went to a party in mccracken, and discovered a way to get up on the roof. it was really wonderful, i love roofs. so anyways then graduation happened, i could write a lot about it but you know, it was a graduation!

the real highlight was that night, when we went to AQUAVIT. it was quite literally, the coolest and best resteraunt i've ever been to in my life. just imagine: jacobsen swan chairs, a utzon-esque undulating wooden slat ceiling ala bagsvaerd's outer rooms, poul henningsen lights, verner panton chandaliers...oh god.

we ate in the dining room, sitting in these very 70s textiled booths. each table had a alvar aalto vase with nettles in them. we ordered aquavit to begin with - i chose raspberry lime and tried vanilla, pear and black pepper. if you don't know, aquavit is a scandinavian liquor which is basically ike schnapps or vodka, which is surrounded by a lot of tradition and so on - i remember my swedish relatives challenging my dad and grandpa to an aquavit drinkin contest or something when we visited them. so we began with that, and they bring it in these beautiful chilled crystal glasses which look like shot glasses with stems. also, aquavit is by far the most expensive place i've ever eaten - damn. so of course this is one of those places where they give you 3-4 little tasting plates of stuff the chef is trying out, the first one was mushroom soup with sort of pickled shrimp, and then there was salmon foam, smoked tuna, and caviar. i started my actual dinner with this really famous thing the chef magnus makes, the lobster roll, which is a really thinly rolled thing of lobster, pickled apples, and trout roe...and it comes with this little shot of frozen lemon lime juice! i also had to get an elephant beer because that's a classic thing to drink with fish. and then for our second course i ordered shellfish stew, which wasn't really a stew, it was a plate of one of each: lobster, scallop on mushrooms, something else i forget, and some kind of flower stuffed with crabmeat. and then the water poured this saffron/saslify soup all over it...delicious. and then we had this rose hip soup with lime foam over it, and then we had dessert, for which i had a chocolate truffle with lemon sorbet thing. my mom was so excited, because on the dessert menu they had fruit suppe with pepparkroker, and she said grandma ina and grandpa helge used to make it for dessert, and she hadn't seen it since then.. i am writing all this down because it was literally the best meal i've ever had. whoever this chef is, i guess he's a young swede who was raised somewhere in africa, but he's brilliant. we got little packs of pepparkroker to go, haha!
oh god it was so magical...i just had to write about it so i won't forget.

so here i am back in dallas, bored as hell and both trying to get a job while trying to hold out as long as i can without doing it. it's been rainy since we got back - kind of depressing. i don't know anyone here now that caitlin's in chicago, and annicka doesn't come home for another few weeks. my mom took me to see "the lives of others" which was fantastic. not much to report otherwise...the long cold months of boredom at a crappy job await... i'm okay with it though!

and all those lonely night down by the river, brought me bread and water, by the kith and the kin

i'm finally done. so hungover, spilled beer all over my computer and so on.i think it's because i still haven't made up my sleep debt - when the work induced sleep deprivation ended, the booze induced sleep deprivation began.

i was so sleepy in my last pre-calc class that i went to the bathroom in sheffield, sat down on the toilet with my pants still up and fell asleep with my head propped up against the toilet paper dispenser. some guy woke me up knocking - i was sure it was my prof coming to yell at me two hours later.

we had forte's last class, which was anticlimactic becuase instead of the traditional "end of year slide show extravaganza" we just has class as usual, but with mimosas. and you know, i'll never learn, because every end of semester in joe's class we have all this champagne and every time i drink it and fall asleep because i'm so tired, and have an awful day because i'm drunk/sleepy. and i say, never again will i drink in the morning during conference week! but next thing i know im telling the person to make mine a DOUBLE MIMOSA! ugh

i finished my thesis and turned it in yesterday... i'll admit i didn't even proof read the goddamn thing. it turned out to be about 80 pages with pictures. it's seriously so bad i'm avoiding joe.
trying to figure out what to get for graduation and the don/donnee dinner.

yesterday night was so great. we went to the malthouse, the last bar night FOREVER. yesterday was all "lasts." our last bates dinner - i had a sandwhich, some toast with jam and butter, and some coffee and ice cream. delicious. i made a toast - to the future! skoal. we drank so much last night but it wasn't in a bad way. everything was good at the malthouse, not weird like it sometimes is. i drank long island iced teas and white russians. boring! i really wanted a mojito but poor joe, the bartender. i can't believe they don't have two bartenders on nights like those. all this funny stuff happened, like justin had a complete freakout when they played "i would do anything for love" on the speakers. i mean really, a complete freak out. hahahhahhaha! i remember when annicka and i were little, we'd go up to the bedroom in the attic of our old house, and put pillows under our shirts to look fat, and sing that song dancing on the bed. BUT I WON'T DOOOOOO THAT! oh god it was so funny. so then we went back to campus and ordered wraps from eileen's. something else funny happened but i can't remember. then i went to bed finally at three or four, and woke up to what i think must have been the sound of someone puking in our bathroom, again. it sounded pretty bad..i felt bad for whoever it was, i felt like i should go see if they were okay but i've found sometimes i need to just let people be, i'm too inquisitive.

oh god i can't wait for this shift to be over so i can go back to bed. unfortunately every time i try to there's some "last ____" that i have to be at, so i don't sleep. i'm excited for tonight, i don't know why, i just am.

btw check out annicka's latest post:

and the rockets' red glare, and the bombs in the air

so here i am at 6am in the library, crying because i'm listening to the star spangled banner. i mean sufjan steven's cover, but it's for the same reasons. yikes.


ever since i was little i've been obsessed with scandinavia and going back where i seemed to belong, but after i went abroad i was able to realize just how american i am and just how much i love it, and how much i love the midwest. i dunno. this is just so corny and i must be insane to write it, but it's true. i guess i inherited my dad's love of american history - he used to tell us stories about the constitution and founding fathers when we were younger and all that, and he's got pretty much every major volume of american history and biography, and i started borrowing them lately - right now i'm on "undaunted courage: thomas jefferson, meriwether lewis and the opening of the american west." and i'm just in awe of it all, i guess is all i wanted to say! i need to calm down or something

there is a hospital inside me it's full of medicine and babies

what a week. work was due friday but forte said tuesday was okay so now conference week has extended itself like a bad cold. actually maybe more like...ebola. my computer has decided to crap out on me two weeks short of making it through our entire college experience together. i have submerged it completely in water, cracked the case, replaced the hard drive twice, replaced the exterior shell, and have dropped it countless times...its been so good and forgiving to me. annicka got a new powerbook pro this summer but i refused to my parent's chagrin. i love this goddamn computer and its tearing me apart to think i have to give it up. today my mom told me to just take a cab to the westchester mall and buy a new one, and i was freaking out, but then i shook the computer in frustration and it suddenly turned on. it's like a real person...

last night was weird. katie's cousin terry is visiting from umich, so that was really hilariously great - hes in a frat. everyone was pretty taken with him - he and jiddy are the funniest dancing partners EVER. i couldve watched that for hours..actually i did. we danced in jiddys room and it was fun. i also spilled beer ALL OVER jiddy's desk and computer, and of course freaked out. she's ALLERGIC to beer, on top of the wetness and beeriness. oh god. i hope to god i didnt ruin anything.

im very excited to be done with work so we can get on to the business of shopping for graduation clothes. unfortunately sarah lawrence makes graduating seniors wear CAPS AND GOWNS for graduation -- wtf?? fucking tacky. not like the academy, where we all had to wear the same shade of white and were led up towards the quad by four bagpipers. oh no, not like that. i guess for sarah lawrence we'd all have to be wearing fishnet and be led up to the lawn by that hookah kid. typing that sentance actually has actually got me feeling physically ill.

one really exciting thing that i found out today is that my dad got reservations for the night of graduation at AQUAVIT! oh yes! its the coolest restaraunt ever, check out the website: aquavit
its by scandinavia house, and its all arne jacobsen chairs and pH lamps and they specialize in herring! oh my god how did my parents think of it, its the most perfect idea ever. they launched their own cranberry aquavit this yr. i hope we actually get to drink some real danish aquavit at dinner but my grandma is coming so it's unlikely. i dunno though she's a white anglo saxon protestant, and we all like hard liqour right?? that rule goes double for us since were both wasps and a swedes (annicka and kelsey, get it???). im just so excited, i dont know if i should wear my black puffy skirt dress or get something new. i havent actually had a fancy enough occasion to wear that one yet but it seems more christmas-y. everyone wants to do a dress shopping day next week so i guess i'll find something then. i need to get my ideas down on paper cuz i'll be taking insane amounts of pictures and i want them to be only marginally embarassing.

whhen is bachannalia?